Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR POLICE REVIEW How ludicrous for Michael D. Padnos, in the one "documented" case in his article "Why Police Review Fails" (NL, September 12), to say that there was "nothing unusual"...
...Let me add that I hope that in the future you will continue to devote full issues to single articles and topics...
...I suspect his image of a police officer is a kindly Irishman who smiles paternally as he helps a little girl at a crossing...
...But in the power politics of New York this idealism is not much in evidence...
...Unlike the guilty man, the innocent arrestee is not interested in blabbing about the facts of his case: He wants to get out of jail immediately so that he can fight for his rights and get even with the cops...
...He wants to sue them and have each of them kicked off the force...
...I can't, however, remember any occasion in which an intellectual unknown was given an opportunity to appear in print, and, as a matter of fact, his remarks were more interesting than those of Brown...
...At the turn of the century, James Bryce pointed out that our local governments were the worst in the world...
...Even more odd, though, is the fact that the world's best local government is found in Germany, a nation that in international politics is synonymous with brutal cynicism...
...Unfortunately, these two are not compatible...
...I can even spare the extra nickel you now charge...
...Moreover, the guilty arrestee, it can fairly be said, almost always lies...
...Our politics are deranged...
...The difference in attitude is clearly visible in the lawyer's office, where the innocent man wants to know what he can do after this is all over to punish the police, but the criminal is promptly and enthusiastically ready to discuss his defense...
...This statement is made more ridiculous by his trying to paper it over with the comment that their dress was "conservative...
...Although we are of course speaking conjecturally, my guess would be that it is the innocent, not the guilty, who will most benefit from the Miranda decision...
...The connection between Nichols and poor Negroes was made by Nichols, who was concerned fto my mind justifiably) by the implications for them of the treatment received by himself, a respectable white man...
...he has an excellent idea of the kind of arguments that they might find persuasive...
...Incidentally, I am not referring to the philosophical basis of American government, but its reality...
...By the time he is brought into the station, he usually has thought up what he regards as an airtight cover story, and he wants nothing so much as to tell this story to anyone who will listen...
...And unlike the guilty arrestee, who knows that everything hinges on the defense he can establish, the innocent arrestee often is not at all interested in discussing his defense, for he feels as a matter of fundamental faith that the law will not punish an innocent man...
...Switalski to John Casesse, President of New York's Patrolman's Benevolent Association, who like most policemen, lawyers, and court officials, uses the word constantly in precisely the same sense that I did: as a slang synonym for law enforcement officers devoid of pejorative connotations...
...New York City Peter Alcott CONFESSIONS Park Chamberlain writes ("Dear Editor," September 12) that "the extension to the station house of the privilege against self-incrimination is of virtually no use to the innocent but immense benefit to the guilty [because] the innocent arrestee wants to talk all he wants is the privilege to tell the police why they should let him go home...
...He wants much more than "the privilege to tell the police why they should let him go home...
...Granted that police should not harass white men seen with Negroes (the officer's version is given in the briefest of sentences'?», such harassment also is not evidence--and Padnos is a "practicing lawyer"!-that police treatment of poor Nesroes in that area is bad...
...This judgment is still correct...
...Now that he has been elected to the Senate, he has grander things in mind and is supposedly the repository of the nation's youthful idealism...
...I have found that no one is as anxious to avoid the cops and as unwilling to open his mouth before them as an innocent man...
...Chicago, Illinois John Switalski Michael Padnos replies: John Switalski has missed the point...
...In my experience, it is a rare criminal who will pass by the chance to look into a policeman's eye and tell a baldface lie, even though the Supreme Court tells the criminal he has a constitutional right to keep his mouth shut...
...He thinks that most people trust and have confidence in the police...
...Apropos of which may I note that Captain Eugene Gooding is not as bad a cop as was mistakenly suggested in the New Leader...
...Washington, D.C...
...Up until quite recently, Kennedy was viewed largely as the "tough Irish cop" of American politics and was known chiefly as his brother's political gauleiter...
...Almost all Americans are denied local governments free of cynicism...
...My praise for the sensitive and dedicated officers in the Community Relations branch of the Washington Police Department should have made it clear that I recognize the existence of good cops as well as bad...
...As for my use of the word "cops," I refer Mr...
...HARLEM'S AMERICA Your issue of September 26 ("Harlem's America"), particularly the testimony of Arthur Dunmeyer, was one of the great issues of the New Leader...
...Michael Thompson AMERICAN IDEALISM As Senator Frank Church hints, but does not explicitly say, in his review of Power and Impotence ("Dissent from the Monolith," NL, August 29), it is really amazing that a nation with an internal political system as sordid (Church says "realistic") as ours could produce, in international politics, such militant idealism...
...Thus, if Kennedy is forced to chose between idealism and "reality" (although O'Connor seems like a bad dream to me), he will chose "reality," even if this means collaboration with the most cynical and corrupt elements of the Democratic party...
...I don't mean to dispute the excellence of Claude Brown or Ralph Ellison, but we have heard from both these gentlemen, and other literary Negroes, before...
...The dichotomy between "realism" and idealism is found even within individual political figures...
...If he is so well-informed on Eastern police departments, surely he must know that the term "cop" is hardly less offensive to policemen than are "Polack," "Kike" and "Wop" to Polish, Jewish, and Ttalian Americans...
...But what is one to expect from a writer who reveals his prejudice against law-enforcement officers by his repeated reference to policemen as "cops...
...It is still possible for the Democratic party of New York to nominate -and nominate for Attorney General at that -a man deeply incriminated by the State Gambling Commission a few years earlier...
...If Kennedy is to be nominated he will need a strong state party...
...The innocent arrestee, on the other hand, is usually outraged by being arrested...
...I did not recite the Nichols case in order to demonstrate that "police treatment of poor Negroes is bad...
...Chamberlain's error, it seems to me, stems from a basic misconception about the nature of the average citizen's feeling toward the police...
...It is not only Negroes who are denied the freedoms on which our statesmen dote...
...Lest anyone take me as a Humphrey man, 1 must say that while Kennedy at least manages to seem glum about it, Humphrey has literally embraced the bosses' finest...
...But then, the Kennedy who promised to be "a great United States Senator" would also like to be President...
...A guilty man is more likely than an innocent one to have been arrested before and therefore is more at home with policemen...
...DEAR EDITOR POLICE REVIEW How ludicrous for Michael D. Padnos, in the one "documented" case in his article "Why Police Review Fails" (NL, September 12), to say that there was "nothing unusual" about a partv of four white men and two Nesroes leaving a disreputable bar in Washington's Harlem at 2 a.m...
...We are told that Kennedy merely "accepted" this year's Democratic ticket and I am not terribly surprised that he was not enthusiastic about O'Connor and his minions...
...And if he had challenged O'Connor the Democratic party would have split...
...Robert Kennedy is an excellent example, since we seem doomed to have him as President someday...
...But in Harlem, and on 14th Street in Washington, and on Chicago's South Side, where I was bom and raised, that image doesn't exist...
...To the poor, and indeed to many middle-class people as well, the cop is the man to be avoided whenever possible...
...Though used occasionally in headlines, it is a taboo word in today's American Press...
...Chamberlain's argument looks irrefutable, but in my experience as a lawyer, it is the guilty, not the innocent, who are anxious to talk...
...Los Angeles, Calif...
...It was John Sullivan, head of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police, and not Captain Gooding, who called politeness "the idiotic approach" to community relations...
Vol. 49 • October 1966 • No. 20
