Responses
Kennedy, Randall
Iagree with Michael Tomasky that public safety is an essential public good, that there is no good reason for the left to cede to the right the lawandorder issue, that poor people have a...
...And all persons should receive that protection without having to pay as a price the devaluation of their personhood on account of race, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, religion, or any other similar characteristic...
...To some extent these feelings have been FALL • 1997 • 93 Arguments nurtured by scholars, politicians, and activists who, for various reasons, exaggerate the degree to which the criminal justice system is corrupt and unfair...
...F]or every black teenager who gets brusque treatment from a white cop," Tomasky asks rhetorically, "aren't there hundreds of thousands of black people who, on balance, need that cop to be there...
...For one thing, complaints about police typically involve conduct that is considerably more distressing than mere "brusqueness...
...These feelings cause some people to decline to be witnesses, to avoid joining police departments and prosecutors' offices, to evade jury duty, or, if they do become jurors, to impose upon police and prosecutors unreasonably heavy burdens of persuasion...
...That is because all persons—including black teenagers— need and are entitled to the protection of the police...
...Second, the legal and political system does scandalously little to police the police...
...Police lawlessness helps to generate the cynicism and anger that erode the cooperation needed for efficient law enforcement in our communities...
...That is, I think, the wrong answer...
...FALL • 1997 • 95...
...What this means, concretely, is that in many contexts courts authorize police to view me, a black American, differently—more suspiciously— than my white neighbor even though we are behaving in precisely the same manner...
...he mentions...
...As I argue in my book Race, Crime, and the Law, an important impediment to effective and decent law enforcement is that an appreciable number of Americans, particularly AfricanAmericans, look upon the criminal justice system with mistrust and resentment...
...In sum, I agree with much of what Tomasky writes but maintain that he should be more demanding of the official guardians of law and order...
...Furthermore, I infer from his mention of the race of the teenager and the race of the cop that Tomasky means to suggest that racial selectivity is, to some degree, animating the brusqueness (rudeness...
...I will briefly mention two...
...Tomasky notes the presence of police brutality, much of which he seems to attribute to racial prejudice...
...Formal permission to engage in racial discrimination helps to bring about the situation under which, as Tomasky notes, "cops are obviously far more likely to look askance at black male teenagers than [at] anyone else...
...he should also criticize it and urge his readers to demand that legislators and judges and police officials change it...
...It does no good to Tomasky's cause, however, to minimize (as he does) significant deficiencies and inequities in the administration of justice that are the focus of those whom he criticizes...
...These feelings, however, are also nurtured by conditions that are all too real and all too ugly—conditions to which Tomasky pays insufficient attention...
...There are formal rules that prohibit officers from mistreating those they are presumably serving...
...The answer 94 • DISSENT Arguments that Tomasky implicitly offers is that hundreds of thousands of black people do need that cop to be there, even if he is brusque with a certain number of black teenagers...
...Yet he is disturbingly reticent in his criticism of police misconduct...
...First, as a matter of law, police are authorized to use race (typically meaning apparent African or Latino ancestry) as an indicator of an increased risk of criminality...
...Iagree with Michael Tomasky that public safety is an essential public good, that there is no good reason for the left to cede to the right the lawandorder issue, that poor people have a special need for effective law enforcement because they lack the resources to obtain private protective services for themselves, and that significant sectors of the left have demonstrated too much solicitude for street criminals and too little for the victims and potential victims of drug dealers, muggers, pocketbook snatchers, rapists, murderers, and other assorted dangerous hooligans...
...In actuality, however, in many jurisdictions, including New York City, political authorities fail to impose appropriate discipline on the putative guardians of law and order...
...Complaints arise from being spoken to in a humiliating way, or from being shoved around menacingly, or from being wrongly arrested for purposes of harassment, or from being shot under circumstances that did not require the deployment of potentially lethal force...
...Tomasky, however, should not simply observe this well-known police behavior...
...If that is so, then this brusqueness is a major—not a minor— problem...
Vol. 44 • September 1997 • No. 4
