The Benefits and Limits of the Law and Order Approach

Joe: What's on the schedule today?

Ben: Why, today you have some brain surgery.  We laid out the instruments.

Joe: Isn't that hammer a bit big?

Ben: When you've been at this as long as I have, you'll realize that some of these people have thick skulls.  Believe me, this is the only thing that will work.

Now, I'm a believer in brain surgery when it is necessary, but I don't want it done with a two-pound sledge and a rusty chisel.  I can kind of predict what the outcome is going to be and something tells me it will be a bit painful getting there!  And, thus it is with law enforcement.  I believe in law enforcement.  I know some people have thick skulls.  But, I also know that there are more advanced, better tools and understandings than what I've shown above.

A hammer is a great tool.  Smaller ones than what you see above are excellent for nailing pieces of wood together.  As big or bigger than what you see above can reshape metal or dislodge structural members scheduled for demolition.  But, try to open a jar of pickles with it.  Be sure to bring a rag.

Every workman knows that the best tool for any particular task makes life oh so much easier!  You aren't going to paint the Mona Lisa with a roller, yet that is what much of our law enforcement is like.  Paint with broad sweeps that obscure any view of underlying reality and worse, the underlying problem you are trying to fix with the paint.  The whole point of workmanship is skillful creation and material protection and the law enforcement officer is designed to be a highly skilled social carpenter sent to construct, repair and protect social structures.  If there is wood rot in the structure you are maintaining caused by imbalances in the environment, first understand and address the imbalances in the environment or your repair will only be temporary.  Dry rot covered with paint is still dry rot.  Wood replaced where there is dry rot without repairing the leak that is leading to it will just rot again.  And dry rot becomes termites and termites become collapse.  Collapse becomes expense ... and usually finger pointing.

As important as skilled carpentry is to a society, surgery is even more specialized, requiring more skill.  Centuries ago, much surgery was done with essentially the same tools the carpenter would use with wood.  Even the skilled carpenter with his tools really wasn't the person you wanted in what served as operating rooms.  So, the pain and death that fell from inadequate tools and techniques was a motivator to society to develop surgical instruments and practices.  Until this was done, the physician was probably more of a source of terror in the community than a source of support and comfort.

Today, surgery is often done with lasers rather than scalpels even, but our law enforcement practices as still using crude and inadequate tools and techniques that leave the officer with the only option being no force or lethal force.  The solution all too often is to simply say, "Don't blame the officer!"  Unions have formed to protect the policing as practiced, often preventing the type of examination and accountability that would allow adoption of much more modern tools and techniques.

Attitudes also need to change with the law enforcement practices examinations we are going through right now in America.  Is a cop less of a cop if a suspect gets away from him and he radios ahead to backup.  After all, the guy was drunk, not a serial killer.  As he sobers up, you know where he lives.  Follow him home, make sure he isn't driving and hurting others, work it through tomorrow.  The cop is not less of a cop and not less of a man for doing this, he is more of a truly supportive community hero.

We are heading there.  We can't stop now.  We have rot in too many structural members.

Please check out my other blog mates' takes on the same topic at their blogs, Padmum, Raju, Ramana, Sanjana and Shackman!