“If you don’t want to get shot,
tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the
ground,” warns Officer Sunil Dutta of the Los Angeles Police
Department, “just do what I tell you.”
The thing is, Officer Dutta (pictured) is also an Adjunct
Professor of Homeland Security and Criminal Justice at Colorado
Technical University. And he uttered those words not in the heat of
the moment, but in an
opinion piece in the Washington Post responding to
widespread criticism of police attitudes and tactics currently on
display in Ferguson,
Missouri, but increasingly common nationwide.
Dutta
continues:
Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I
can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that
you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you
pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively
walking towards me. Most field stops are complete in minutes. How
difficult is it to cooperate for that long?
Dutta actually comes off as a reasonable law enforcement
officer, when compared to some of his colleagues who can be found
venting on police-only bulletin boards or referring to Ferguson
protesters as “fucking
animals.” Dutta acknowledges that police can abuse their
authority, saying “When it comes to police misconduct, I side with
the ACLU: Having worked as an internal affairs investigator, I know
that some officers engage in unprofessional and arrogant behavior;
sometimes they behave like criminals themselves.”
He endorses the use of body cameras and dashcams to record
interactions between police and the public. He counsels, “you don’t
have to submit to an illegal stop or search. You can refuse consent
to search your car or home if there’s no warrant.”
And yet he demands unresisting submission to police without
argument or even legal protest. Just how do you “refuse
consent to search your car or home” without running afoul of the
no-nos Dutta warns may get you “shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck
with a baton or thrown to the ground”?
Remember, this is a thoughtful police officer, with a
PhD., who teaches criminal justice.
Maybe Matthew Worden, an Enfield, Connecticut, police officer,
was being thoughtful when he
beat the living shit out of Mark Maher earlier this year. That
incident begaan when Maher asked Worden why another person was
being detained.
Worden’s own department thought the officer’s actions were over
the top, but the state’s attorney declined to seek arrest or
prosecution.
The last week has seen an
enormous and justifiable focus on the militarization of
police departments in this country, including tactics and
equipment. Jungle camouflage, assault rifles, and armored personnel
carriers have been part of an intentionally intimidating show of
force in Ferguson, Missouri—the sort of display that has become all
too common throughout the country.
But you don’t have to have an armored vehicle to be a jerk and a
danger to the public. If you have the attitude that you are owed
deference and instant obediance by the people around you, and that
you are justified in using violence against them if they don’t
comply, we already have a problem. That’s especially true if
official institutions back you up, which they do.
If you really think that everybody else should “just do what I
tell you,” you’re wearing the wrong uniform in the wrong country.
And if you really can’t function with some give and take—a few
nasty names, a little argument—of the sort that people in all sorts
of jobs put up with every damned day, do us all a favor: quit.
The law enforcement problem in this country goes well beyond
boys with toys. It’s much deeper, and needs to be torn out by the
roots.
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