Machan's Musings - Corruption of the Police
by Tibor R. Machan
My youngest daughter and I were driving about when she told me her theory about contemporary police officers. Her idea was that police departments in our time attract bullies, people who have always liked to flex their muscles and show everyone who is boss. She said, "Look what these people are required to do—hassle people who are doing no one any harm, just because they smoke some stuff that’s been banned, or sell sexual favors, or break some rule that’s almost surely arbitrary."
She was about 20 when she said this mouthful, but I was impressed. I have never pushed my kids in the direction of my own thinking, mainly because my thinking is that people need to come to their own conclusions, not be told what to think. Sure, some elementary guidance is vital, but not with regard to politics, religion, and other convictions. I will give them help with examples, mostly in how I live, but that’s it.
So this insight on my daughter’s part impressed me. I thought about it more and concluded that it at least made good sense. Who would join a police force that required officers to go about busting people for victimless crimes? Mainly someone who liked pushing people around. Yes, of course, it is their job to enforce the law—but when police officers must enforce bad laws, this is likely to attract bad people into the force.
What is the right job for the police? To defend citizens against aggressors. They are to serve us in the capacity of protectors against violence. When murder, assault, rape, robbery, burglary, and such are perpetrated, that’s when a just police force goes out to do its job. As our Declaration of Independence says, "governments are instituted to secure [our] rights." And the most directly force-wielding elements of our government are the police and the military. They are to protect our rights. That idea of the American Founders is the most civilized, the most enlightened idea concerning the proper function of government and its armed forces.
Some among those who love and champion freedom say government is always a bad thing—they are anarchist libertarians. But they, too, want law enforcement, in a slightly different way from the limited government faction. The bottom line is, however, that what those who enforce the law must do is to also stick by the law that needs to be enforced. There is really just one such law, namely, protect everyone’s individual right to liberty, to be free of the aggression of other people.
In that capacity, as protectors of our rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, the police would be doing something noble. They would be warriors in a good cause, namely, our freedom. With such a job they might even gain the respect of the citizenry, including young people who don’t mind it when cops fight genuine crime. They just mind it when they are being hassled for what they choose to do without hurting anyone else. But when the cops start hassling them, they lose all respect. They dub them corrupt cops. They are the equivalent, only far more dangerous, of a medical malpractice culprit or quack.
If you pay any attention to the news, you know that in all corners of the country cops are getting rougher and rougher. It is perfectly natural—they see themselves not as protectors of the citizenry but as rulers, ones who enforce the way of life preferred by the administrators of our government. This makes cops enemies of the people. And that is too bad. They are the Dr. Frankensteins of our world, people who pretend to be helpers but in fact are monsters.
Oh, there are exceptions, but it is difficult to be such a cop since one’s duties as an officer of the law now include out and out violence, something that’s only by degrees different from the duties of Nazi or Soviet police officers. This way a perfectly honorable profession, that of the police officer, is fundamentally corrupted.
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