Weed Some Out Beforehand : Police: Hostility and risks on the street are too great to allow undertrained neophytes or unfit officers into the fray.

Street patrol is the most difficult job in law enforcement. Intervening in the personal lives of citizens is serious business. No call is routine, and each carries a potential risk to the safety and welfare of the officers involved.

A reasonable attempt to arrest a citizen can trigger a multitude of responses. The thought of arrest and confinement terrifies and infuriates. It makes many people angry, fearful and humiliated. Coveting freedom, they resist, often very forcefully. Violence escalates when police forsake professionalism and use street language or crude ethnic slurs that sully and demean.

The majority of the complaints that I received as a district captain in the Buffalo (N.Y.) Police Department were from citizens who resented the angry, hostile attitudes of police, the vile language, the excessive force used when making an arrest. Such unprofessional treatment makes enemies for the department and is a direct violation of rules and regulations.

There are certain officers whose beliefs, temperament and attitude render them unfit to be enforcers of the law. Police agencies should employ every possible technique to weed out such candidates before they hit the streets. Another liability that cannot be tolerated is the undertrained neophyte police officer who attempts to disguise his indecision and lack of experience by acting belligerent and inflexible and resorting to excessive force.

It may be hard for police not to be perceived as brutal when criminals have access to sophisticated, high-tech weaponry, when respect for the authority of law is disappearing and crime has overwhelmed traditional defenses; when “taking on” the police seems only the day’s hedonistic challenge. But there is a fine line between aggressive police action and police action that is contrary to the law. It is a line that may not be breached.

Police training in citizen interaction and crisis intervention should be based on an analysis of the department’s problem areas. It should consider the benefits, both moral and legal, that accrue from a humanistic approach to enforcement of the law. It should emphasize that the most successful way for police to avoid civil liability is through knowledge of the law and department policy, coupled with the judicious use of restraint, a dose of common sense and impartial enforcement of the law.