Fred Reed on Cops

Two very good posts by brother Fred on police and the problems of policing.

Here  and... Here

I sometimes wish that people knew more about cops, who they are, and the world they live in. There are pretty good cops (most) and very bad ones (few) but accounts in the press usually bear little relation to the truth. What happens on the streets is not as clear, not nearly as clear, as the immaculately coifed indignations of the flickering screen would have you think. Permit me a few examples of routine ambiguity.

First, though, a journalistically unwelcome reality: Almost everyone charged by the police is guitly, no matter what Jesse Jackson thinks. There are two reasons. First, the perps are almost all caught in the act: They are swerving all over the road and blow museum-pickled on the Alka-Sensor, or caught coming out the window with the TV set, or the car is reported stolen and they are driving it, or caught slinging rock and it’s in their possession. Second, the case load is so great in the cities that the DA won’t paper a case unless he is sure he will win. The cops know this, and know the DA will raise hell with them if they send him iffy-maybe-could-be cases, so they don’t.

Cops engage in, and have to engage in, a lot of Not Quite by the Rules policing (NQBTR). Sometimes the rules just don’t quite work. For example, the aging widow in DC who didn’t sell in time when the neighborhood went bad and drug dealers started hanging on her corner. Property values died and she can’t sell for enough to buy elsewhere, and she is afraid to leave to walk to the grocery store past a cloud of dirtballs. The cops tell the dealers, “Get your sorry butts off this corner, now, and don’t come back.”

It isn’t legal, but the druggies don’t know it. Or maybe they do, but know better than to push their luck. They move to another corner, the old woman gets her groceries, and everybody is happy. Got a better answer? I don't...