Beyond Good Cop, Bad Cop

Is a good police department one that has a high volume of arrests? Or is it one that has a high conviction rate for arrests? Is the model department one that has a fast response time to emergency calls? Few shootings by officers? Low crime rates? Or is it simply one that isn’t bad, a department that has no scandals such as the Los Angeles Police Department is agonizing over at Rampart Division? An easy answer is that a good department measures up to all the above. But it isn’t that simple.

Arrests take officers off the street to book prisoners, process evidence and appear in court. Unnecessary arrests lengthen response times to emergencies because there are fewer cops remaining to respond. Arrests for minor violations frequently cost taxpayers money in police overtime. And arrests for petty violations often produce complaints of harassment and racial and ethnic discrimination. In addition, such arrests can trigger resistance and escalate the use of force by police, leading to successful lawsuits against departments, especially if those arrested are found not guilty. In my rookie days in Harlem, I worked with a cop who made a lot of felony arrests, but eight of 10 were for felonious assaults on him. He produced his own crime wave.

Operation Hammer, launched against gangs by former L.A. Chief Daryl F. Gates in the late 1980s, perfectly illustrates unproductive arrests. In 1990, during police sweeps of minority neighborhoods, 25,000 youths were arrested but fewer than 1,500 of them were ever charged with a crime. Gangs thrived on the publicity. Their membership increased, along with gang violence.

Does this mean that officers should be rewarded for arrests that lead to convictions but chastened if charges are dismissed? Theoretically, cops are public servants who bring defendants and evidence before courts and have no interest in the outcomes. Cops and defense attorneys agree this is nonsense. Officers believe defendants broke the law and should be punished. They often are frustrated when courts don’t find suspects guilty or when they think sentences are too lenient. Many police officers are tempted to help the case a little.

Some of the worst cop criminals had the best arrest and conviction rates. Twenty-nine L.A. County deputy sheriffs were convicted a decade ago of robbing drug dealers, perjury, and stealing drugs and then selling them. The deputies found it easy to convict innocent people. Gangster cops don’t hesitate to plant evidence and/or lie on the witness stand. One of the toughest challenges facing police management is to convince the overwhelming majority of honest cops not to adopt a code of street justice that tempts them to falsify evidence or commit perjury. Rewarding cops for obtaining convictions would considerably increase the temptation.

Furthermore, it can be unfair to criticize an officer when a defendant is not convicted as charged. My first arrest illustrates the point. I was walking a foot beat when I saw a disturbance a block away. I got there too late to save the victim’s life, but I did arrest a suspect and learned that the crime had been premeditated. The defendant was indicted for first-degree murder by a grand jury. The prosecutor and judge, however, allowed the defendant to plead guilty to second-degree manslaughter. I certainly didn’t agree with their decision, but only in police states can cops expect to have the final authority over convictions and punishment.

When criminals try to enter their homes, people understandably want and expect a fast police response to their 911 calls. On the other hand, studies show that spending millions of dollars to shave seconds off police-response time does not affect arrest, conviction or crime rates. While police chief of San Jose, I discovered that quick responses to high-priority calls actually increased the time it took cops to respond to serious crimes in progress. It turned out that more than 90% of high-priority responses were to burglar and robbery alarms, 95% of which were false. The time it took to respond to actual assaults, robberies or burglaries was much longer, because people calling 911 reported such crimes as loud arguments in the street or suspicious strangers in their neighbor’s yard. The number of false alarms dramatically decreased when the city council passed an ordinance punishing those responsible for repeatedly making false alarms. This resulted in faster police-response times to all calls.

One would think there would be little disagreement about praising a police department not disgraced by gangster cops. Yet, in many instances, there was no publicized scandal largely because departments had ignored complaints that certain cops were robbing drug dealers and framing people. Such indifference allowed bad deputy sheriffs in Los Angeles and crooked cops in Brooklyn and many other places to hold guns to the heads of their victims with the same chilling words: “You have no rights. We can do whatever we want.”

In the final analysis, the key to running a good police department is balance. Voluminous arrests and fast response times are not ends in themselves. They are only tools a police department needs to serve the community. Nor should a city make the mistake of tolerating brutal and illegal policing in return for being protected from crime. On the contrary, when police and community groups lawfully work together they improve neighborhood safety.

Police departments have to balance the rights and needs of their cops with the duty they owe the public. Cops have to be given reasonable discretion to protect themselves and citizens, but that never justifies a police culture in which officers embrace a code of silence because of perceived threats or a “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality. When people wonder how gangster cops can engage in criminal activity for years without detection, officers should not respond by labeling them cop haters. Similarly, the police cannot dismiss news reports of police scandals as little more than hostility and ignorance.

If officers police themselves, all the right objectives can be achieved. Toward that end, department management must encourage and protect cops with the courage to stop and report wrongdoing by their colleagues. Police credibility is assured when the public believes a code of silence doesn’t protect criminal cops. When people trust cops, they will work with them to reduce crime. Public trust is also an officer’s best protection against unfair complaints.

If war is too important to be left to generals, policing is too important to be left to the police. Good police departments exist where citizens, their elected representatives and police strike the appropriate balance between providing security and protecting civil liberties. *