Good cop, bad cop: The myth of the saintly police

It’s time to stop acting shocked whenever police officers break the rules and abuse their position.

Somewhere the myth of the saintly police officers got started in our culture. These officers do no wrong, and lay their lives on the line in an epic battle of good versus evil each day. Speaking any criticism of these holy figures is blasphemy.

It’s a compelling myth. We want to believe that justice is always done, that authority is always on the side of the righteous, that crime does not pay, that the innocent are freed and the guilty punished.

Frequently, the evidence contradicts this — a notorious example was a few years ago, when a Chicago police officer shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in the back many times, then claimed McDonald had been brandishing a knife at him. Video evidence instead appears to show an unjustified killing (commonly called murder) that other officers lied about to help him cover up.

Among many other incidents, the other day an officer shot motorist Terence Crutcher dead in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Crutcher had his hands up and was not armed.

Then there are the less bloody incidents, the ones in which nobody dies but officers still abuse justice. The ACLU in Connecticut recently announced it was suing state police for trying to retaliate against protester Michael Picard. They took his camera, but didn’t realize it was still running as they discussed dubious charges they could pin on him to “cover our ass.”

So are the vast majority of officers virtuous angels with halos around their heads? Or are they pitchfork-bearing devils who set out to abuse power and hunt down minorities?

Life is more complicated than that.

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Is anyone you know either all good or all bad? Are you, the reader, a shining example of ethical purity in every hour of the day? Let’s be grownups here and admit that humans are capable of both good and evil, sometimes in the same five-minute span.

There are plenty of examples of heroic policemen saving those in distress and risking their lives to protect the community. But history also plainly shows that bad cops have always been with us, whether they were corrupt policemen working for Tammany Hall in New York in the 1800s, or Bull Connor and his club-swinging Alabama ruffians with badges, or the many documented cases of corrupt police in other times and places.

In the era of cellphones with video cameras, this reality has become painfully obvious. Yet many people don’t want to accept it. And more than that, they’ll attack those who do.

Some of this thinking may be coming from police unions. James Surowiecki wrote in his recent New Yorker piece, “The thick blue line,” about police unions that have fought back against attempts to bring accountability and justice for rulebreaking officers, and have vilified those who protest.

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I call baloney. It’s unclear how criticizing corrupt officers is an attack on all police. Those who violate the standards of their office deserve to face consequences, especially since they are supposed to be the ones upholding the law. And it’s entirely appropriate to protest when they abuse their power.

It shouldn’t come as a shock that police are human like the rest of us. As in any profession, some people cross ethical lines in the workplace. Lots of them stick to stealing pencils or the police equivalent, but others go much further.

Pretending otherwise doesn’t make it go away.

Andrew Sharp is a producer at The Daily Times and delmarvanow.com. Email him at asharp@dmg.gannett.com. Find him on Twitter @buckeye_201 and on Facebook @andrewsharp201.

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