Good Cop, Bad Cop

My father, a sergeant of the South Hadley, Massachusetts police department and a 32-year veteran of the force, is a good man. He is strong-hearted, brave, and unyielding in his passion for public service. He has, for the last 21 years, set an example for the kindness and conviction with which I try to conduct my life.

He is not alone on my family tree in his career credentials. My aunt and grandfather—his sister and father—are veterans of the South Hadley police department as well, and my uncle and cousin—his brother and niece—are officers with the University of Massachusetts Police Department. Another of my cousins is a police officer in Easthampton, Mass., and at least two more, including my own brother, work as part-time officers in South Hadley.

Suffice it to say that I grew up with a heavy law enforcement presence in my home and life. I respected police officers and firefighters (my uncle recently retired after his own 33-year run with the Holyoke, Mass. fire department), considered them heroes, and looked up to them with admiration. On the whole, and especially with regard to my own family, I still do.

But it has broken my heart to realize that America has something of a police officer problem. And I think it’s time that even those like myself, who admire police officers the most, admit as much.

Video has recently surfaced of an officer in South Carolina violently removing a disruptive high school student from her seat in an effort to subdue her, following complaints that she was causing a classroom disturbance. The officer has since been fired for his aggressive handling of the situation. Controversy over who was right or wrong in the scenario has exploded across the media: many say that the girl was to blame for her treatment, and that if she had been respectful and cooperative, things would have gone differently. Others argue that regardless of her behavior, the officer abused his authority and treated her inhumanely.

The fact that the officer was white and the student was black has also been acknowledged as indicating a potentially racially motivated reaction from the officer. Had this been an isolated incident and not dismally reminiscent of so many headlines before it, I may not have been inclined to agree with that conclusion. But this story comes in the wake of a mess of similar, racially charged injustices by police officers against people of color, and even someone as defensive of law enforcement as myself would be wrong to think that no visible pattern has emerged.

From the deaths of Eric Garner and Freddie Gray to the Texas pool party that saw a teenage girl violently thrown to the ground and an officer pulling his gun on party-goers coming to her aid, law enforcement officials are now under the watchful eye of a country harboring doubts about their infallibility. Ferguson and Baltimore are city names that come with harsh, negative associations of police brutality and violence. The racially motivated inactions of negligent officers have spoken volumes about the potential of any officer to cause great harm when given the power to do such good.

Yet the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement has elicited plenty of opposition claiming that America is waging a war on police officers. Cops and cop-defenders alike are rallying behind that claim that the Black Lives Matter call for justice on behalf of mistreated people of color is a battle cry against all law enforcement. And I really don’t believe that’s wise.

Certainly, instances of police brutality helped reveal the terrible way that police in America generally treat people of color. And officers exhibiting tyrannical behavior need to be held accountable for their actions. But I don’t think the Black Lives Matter movement calls for a war on police, and those that believe as much are missing an opportunity for education and enlightenment. All the movement really does is maintain that police officers need to be held to a higher standard of conduct than the average citizen, and that in putting on the belt and badge, they have a duty to acknowledge the marginalized status of minority civilians and avoid contributing to said marginalization through misconduct.

This country is obviously filled with well-meaning, law-abiding officers who spend their days making their communities safer. They are not and have never been the problem at hand. It’s those who go about their duties filled with prejudice, anger, and massive superiority complexes that have fueled America’s police officer problem. Some officers, we have to realize, don’t deserve to bear their badges.

I wrote an article a few weeks ago discussing the importance of holding the entirety of a specific group accountable for the actions of a few within it. That notion remains relevant here: placing the blame on “some” allows problematic officers to say “some, but not me.” And so it’s imperative that we hold all officers to the same critical standard.

These are not radical, new ideas. Rather, they’re notions that I once thought all police officers, and those that stand up for them, already understood. Certainly, I have faith that my family members understand them. And I hope that my father, family, and all their defenders would be as hot and bothered as I am about the precedent set by those officers who have forgotten that their duty is to protect and serve, not to terrify and subordinate.

And, you know what, you might not care about my family’s goodie-two-shoes separation from mainstream instances of police brutality. Nor might you care that I consider my father an example of what a police officer ought to be. And that’s completely fair; good police conduct cannot excuse the bad. But I hope you can agree that if America has a police officer problem, then it’s the responsibility of those blindly defending the police to first take a step back and acknowledge as much. From there, the “bad cops” across the country can take a look at the “good” and use them as a model for how to be better; how to acknowledge any of their own underlying prejudices and work to remedy them; how to be more critical of their own actions now that the entire country is going to be. Then, and only then, can we learn from the mistakes of the “bad” and achieve reform.

Kyle R. Whelihan ’17, is a psychology concentrator living in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.