Giving police respect *UPDATED*
Bookworm on Jul 26 2009 at 10:39 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
I’ve been following with interest the discussion about police power. I agree with OldFlyer completely that police authority versus identity politics is not the main issue here, especially because of the fact that all evidence surrounding the Gates arrest is, to date, self-serving ex post facto data. Instead, OldFlyer is completely right that the important issue is Obama’s strikingly divisive and unpresidential behavior, followed by his narcissistic inability to admit that he erred. Nevertheless, the discussion about police power is an interesting one.
Thinking about it during the night (insomnia is a great spur to deep thought), it occurred to me that I have no problem giving police respect because I don’t see the relationship between civilians and police as a demeaning “they have power, I don’t” situation. Instead, I give police respect because they’re doing a difficult and necessary job. I don’t deny that police officers have a great deal of power, but I recognize the necessity of that on-scene power because they’re willingly entering dangerous situations most of us would flee. Without power, they’re just fish in a barrel, waiting to be shot. Ultimately, I am grateful for their service, and I admire what they do. More than that, I appreciate that we’re lucky enough to live in a country in which most police officers carry out this job with dignity, decency and honesty.
Unlike me, people who show respect to police officers only because the latter are in a power position don’t actually respect them at all. Instead, they hold them in contempt. Rather than viewing cops as an admirable front line against anarchy (“thank you for taking the time to make my world safer, even if it means casting a suspicious look on me”), they view them as power-hungry control freaks (“you’re just holding this job because you like to feel important, but I’ll make nice because I’m scared of your power”). It is these civilians who, when they get obstreperous, find themselves hauled in on “disorderly conduct” charges — and this happens because the police recognize the contempt motivating the behavior.
UPDATE: It turns out I’m not the only one who approaches law enforcement with genuine respect. (Not that I speed, so I haven’t yet had to talk myself out of anything!)
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Obama abuses his power. Because he doesn’t fully consider the consequences of exercising that power in words or deeds.
I have had numerous life lessons inflicted on me concerning the responsibility that goes with power.
The power to kill requires that you necessarily be responsible for your own life and even the lives of others. No more can you lash out blindly simply because you feel helpless, because now you understand the deadly ramifications. And because you understand that, understand how any unwise and reckless actions on your part may maim and kill so easily, so do you too understand that the same is true for others when it comes to wounding or killing you. This creates a balance of powers with deterrence. You don’t want to provoke them into killing you, and you know that they don’t want to provoke you into killing them. This is the underlining assumption behind all civilizations, even tribes.
Power, also, can often times backfire and hurt the hand that wields it. A particularly sharp blade can often cut the user, if the user is playing around or otherwise behaving irresponsibly, without due care and respect for the power inherent in the blade in his hands.
The police serves us. That means that whatever powers they have, it does not override our own. That’s why the police aren’t here to prevent crimes. They’re here to clean up the body bags, which they will use to catch your killers and prevent them from killing anybody else. That’s the role and duty of the police, to lock people away after they have committed a crime, not to micromanage your life in order to prevent you from committing crimes through your free will.
However, this is the same case with the military. Often both the military and the police must serve a public that simply refuses or is incapable of understanding the mindset or circumstances in which the military and the police must operate. How can civilians understand the war mentality? How can civilians understand the criminal mentality? How can civilians understand the enemies which the US military currently fights, mass murderers, rapists, and torturers? We don’t understand such mentalities, but police and military members must. They cannot NOT do so and conduct their duties to a sufficiently adequate standard.
In the end, it’s not healthy for a civilization or even any society, to have such a disconnect between the people on the ground and the people near the top who actually make such decisions. And contrary to what the comedians and socialist revolutionaries would like us to believe, America is still ruled by the people, if only because the US Constitution has not been completely killed yet. We have to make decisions about the military’s decision to kill or not to kill. We have to make decisions about police policies, not what they can do, but what we will allow them to do. How can we make such decisions when we listen to the ACLU? When we listen to Obama? When we consider Hollywood’s idea of what ‘ethics’ is to be our own guiding light?
We cannot. And so when there is a power vacuum, when the people cannot make such decisions in a timely manner, all kinds of charlatans, megalomaniacs, and Stalin/Hitler combos will come in and assure us that they will wield the power of authority for us. They will decide what’s good for us. We don’t need to decide. We don’t need to comprehend the situation on a military or police battlefield. We don’t need to live in liberty, as free men and women.
“…the important issue is Obama’s strikingly divisive and unpresidential behavior, followed by his narcissistic inability to admit that he erred.”
The more I think about this, the more I wonder if he did. There are two issues here:racial tension and the health care bill.
Racial tension has been elevated to new heights, with Obama taking the opportunity to point out – once again – that blacks are victims in a white society. His base gets to stand up and shout “yeahhh – he’s on _our_ side! _OUR_ guy is the big cheese – he’ll make them pay!” Whites, on the other hand, look at the event and say “here we go again with the political correctness affirmative action thing – blacks don’t have to follow the rules we do because they’re _special_.” And of course, if you’re Obama’s BFF, you’re especially special, and don’t have to follow the rules made for everybody else. The very soul of corruption. Who you know, not what you know.
And since the health care bill has been put off, guess what – people are still talking about Gates-gate, and not about the health care bill. Item two is taken off the table.
I agree with those who say he knew the question was coming – whether he set it up or not. I don’t think it was an off the cuff answer. He already has a beef with the Cambridge police. Did I plant the link here on his scoff-law tickets for the time he lived in Cambridge?? very extensive. Therefore, I have to at least suspect that his answer was intentionally offensive, no matter what he says.
We’re in scorpion-riding-on-the-back-of-a-frog territory here, where the scorpion stings his ride across the river, even though it will lead to his own death, “because it’s my nature.”
At 47 years, Obama’s personality is signed, sealed and delivered. Only an intervention by God could give this man any sort of insight, wit, intellect or generosity of spirit. It’s his nature to snark uncontrollably at his perceived enemies.
That’s why I’m feeling a bit better these days. As suek has rightly pointed out, whites (self-haters like Helen excepted) are really getting sick of whiney, self-important, affirmative action dolts like Gates (and increasingly, the greatest affirmative action beneficiary of all time, B.H. Obama).
Add to that what people are beginning to see is Obama’s inability to be gracious or unself-referential. He’s going to do himself in, folks. That’s the beauty of narcissism—in regular society with grown-ups all around, the narcissist’s self-absorption gets old real fast. And since Obama has nothing to offer us beyond it, we’re soon going to see those ol’ checks and balances start clicking into place.
That’s why I’m feeling a bit better these days. As suek has rightly pointed out, whites (self-haters like Helen excepted) are really getting sick of whiney, self-important, affirmative action dolts like Gates (and increasingly, the greatest affirmative action beneficiary of all time, B.H. Obama).
One of the first lessons in the study of propaganda is that the greater the exposure, the higher the resistance of the population to that specific attack technique.
Bookworm, I’m going to stir the pot a bit but I hope you understand the underlying principles I’m trying to get at here. I really don’t want to make your blog too contentious. I expect flames, mostly from people who read with eyes shut, but nothing I write will be something cops haven’t said themselves. Most here probably haven’t read a police blog once but still think they can pontificate on what the police think, as if the police speak in one voice. I also won’t write anything that our Founding Fathers haven’t said themselves, haven’t worried about for the survival of our Republic.
I’m going to use this quote as a springboard “I appreciate that we’re lucky enough to live in a country in which most police officers carry out this job with dignity, decency and honesty.” But I will address it towards the end of this plaintive comment.
I agree wholeheartedly with what you wrote regarding respect versus fear and the police. There are much more dangerous professions whose contribution we don’t recognize but should, however police serve a function that directly aids us, for which all of us should be grateful, but they also represent the State. A balance must always be maintained because Police straddle both the needs and rights of the People and the State police powers. This is always a struggle, a struggle which our Founding Fathers wrote long and often about, and they attempted to safeguard us against the State police powers through those first ten amendments. There isn’t wiggle room here, either you believe the meaning of those Amendments or you don’t. After that we can argue regarding how they should be applied, how far those safeguards should go, as courts have done since the beginning of this Republic. But we can’t argue their purpose, their deep and actual meaning, to protect us from the State. The anti-Federalists were quite clear on this, and you have them to thank for that protection.
The State should fear the People, not the People the State. This is the very essence of our Founding.
It wasn’t until the 1920s that our Republic actually began to live up to those ideals, when the Police Powers actually began to be restrained to follow those Amendments. I forget the SCOTUS ruling, I even forget the subject of the ruling, but a consistent view of those Amendments throughout this Republic didn’t begin until then. It took over 120 years and I don’t want to go back. Never. It is a disrespect to the men that risked their lives and property to establish this Republic.
When you wrote that line you couldn’t in good conscience leave out the “most”, because you recognize that it isn’t “all”. That’s the nature of people, of course. But shouldn’t those police who continually violate our trust, or egregiously violate even once, be removed from their positions at a minimum and punished by the rule of law at most? If you say yes, then you are left with is this being done, is this being done consistently? Sadly, it isn’t, and that is the problem. If you say maybe, we can talk. If you say no, if you give special pleading, then I have nothing to say, I don’t understand you.
My great-grandfather left me with a dictum on respect: “Some people earn it, some people command it, and some people demand it. Only the first two deserve it, but you will damn well give it to everyone until they prove which they are.” Do I need to explain how this applies? Do I need to explain how people, even Police, don’t earn it? I’ll give it to the Police who earn it, but I won’t give it to those Police who damn well don’t. They dishonor you, they dishonor me, they dishonor the Badge, and they dishonor this Republic. They dishonor every Medal of Honor recipient, every man and woman that died for this Republic. If to any of you that makes me “anti-cop”, so be it.