Being the son of a cop I am probably a little more sympathetic to the difficulties of police work than many on the left. My father ran a riot squad for a number of years in the late 60s and into the middle seventies and got hurt a number of times -- hit by a brick at an anti-war riot in Harvard Square, struck multiple times with a steel pipe during a prison riot in the early seventies, hit with a bottle at a race riot at a South Boston beach in the mid-70s. These were extremely volatile affairs involving sometimes thousands (and tens of thousands) of angry people or, in the case of the prisons, hundreds of people who were not exactly strangers to violence. My father was always proud to have never have hit anyone with a stick no matter how rough these situations got.
So I was anxious to hear his reaction to the UC Davis pepper spraying and not at all surprised when he characterized it as "excessive," "unnecessary," and "cowardly." He dismissed outright the notion that this action was (or should be) in conformance with standard police training -- at least as he had taught it -- and he spent years involved in training, something about which he was a zealous enthusiast. He noted that when he had dealt with these kinds of non-violent demonstrations by college students during the Vietnam era, he typically tried to meet with student leaders in advance and talk about what was happening and what would occur, assuring them if they did not attempt to hurt his men that no one would hurt them. If students engaged in passive resistance tactics he would have four of his men take them by the arms and legs and carry them away from the scene.
As Peter Moskos expresses in this post, my father rejected the notion that policing could be a hands off affair. Sometimes you have to be willing to take your lumps if you are going to use the lowest level of force possible -- but that's part of the job. Sadistically spraying a toxic substance at people who are no threat to you is the very opposite of this approach. It does harm, where none is necessary and it also threatens to escalate a situation that is not violent. It's both contemptible and stupid.
I also reject the notion that the cop who did the spraying should not be condemned. Bullshit. He's a bully, a coward, and a thug -- he should be fired and shunned. But I do agree that he is a symptom of a much larger problem. The militarization of the police in recent years is alarming. It is reflected in the increased use of not only pepper spray, but tasers, plastic bullets, and other violent approaches to all kinds of resistance, even of the most passive kind. And it manifests itself in a love of quasi-military equipment and increasingly lethal weaponry. Again, my father expressed amazement that DHS was promoting the distribution of automatic rifles to police forces throughout the country. Such weaponry can easily lead to mass casualty incidents if placed in the hands of a poorly trained or panicky police officer. Hell, even the nine millimeter pistols now favored by most cops can be dangerous in this regard as has been shown in a number of incidents in NYC alone.
The police and the military have fundamentally different missions. The military when deployed, no matter how much we like to sanitize things, is basically intended for the purposes of killing people -- it is designed to bring overwhelming deadly force to bear. The police, by contrast, are supposed to preserve peace and order by using the minimal necessary force -- and should be trained at all times to remember that they are dealing with their fellow citizens. Turning cops into paramilitary outfits is a policy mistake of the highest order and an affront to the idea of living in a free society.
One last bit of wisdom from my Dad -- I remember him telling me back in the early 70's that the police were, in the end, instruments of political power. Ultimately, politicians determine the mission and the tone set for the police to do their work. When civilian authorities embrace the excessive use of force, police will act accordingly. In this regard, ultimate authority for the UC Davis debacle lies with Chancellor Linda Katehi and there will be no resolution of this matter that is satisfactory -- no matter how many sacrificial lambs get thrown to the wolves -- until she resigns. She has shown herself to be manifestly unfit for the job of educator -- and to be a gutless prevaricator to boot. She belongs on the scrap heap. (Friends of the blog Ari Kelman and Eric Rauchway teach at UC-Davis and have been doing a great job posting about this affair at the happily revived Edge of the American West blog. I hope that they and their fellow faculty members succeed in having Chancellor Katehi ousted -- she is a disgrace.)
