Reforming the Local Police

...The conclusions????and the supporting evidence????are depressing...

...Both authors ignore such interesting peripheral questions as who becomes a policeman and why, how prior ethnic or religious values influence behavior and, in turn, contribute to community distrust...

...He perceives an inherent conflict within the police between the goals of "Law," with its guarantees of civil liberties to the accused and suspected, and those of "enforcement," the "professional" ability to discern and neutralize actual and potential law violators...

...Cray, after cataloguing the pos sible controls on police action (criminal prosecutions under Civil Rights Laws, civil lawsuits for false arrest, grievances to police-dominated complaint bureaus) and rightly deciding that none are effective, argues for the kind of institution so overwhelmingly rejected by New York City voters last year...

...To achieve "order" by better police training is also one of the overriding concerns of the President's Crime Commission...

...If the vaunted police professionalism is a euphemism for "closed shop" thinking, perhaps rotating assignments between the police departments and other civil service agencies (at the higher levels, at least) should be encouraged in the cities...

...To a great extent we do get the kind of law enforcement we ask for and deserve...

...Or, have middle-class white grievants foregone use of the Board...

...Both books make clear the undeniable fact that just as war is too important to be left to the generals, law enforcement is too important to be left to the police...

...In addition, there are numerous flaws in legal analysis...

...Although it may not have been intended to meet the problem described in these books, the suggestion could "open up" the closed room in which the police mind functions...

...If "order must be maintained," most Americans seem perfectly willing to let the Bill of Rights go hang...

...Cray may rouse the kind of public indignation necessary for meaningful change (if his effort does not backfire into the pit of public apathy...

...His book is a serious attempt to understand precisely how the work environment colors a policeman's perceptions of his social and political role...

...He cites the success of the Philadelphia Review Board and hopes that more such bodies will be created...

...This may well be true (as may his equation between brutality and corruption), but there is simply no evidence for it in this study...

...Skolnick perceptively observes that "police reform means finding a new source of police...

...Cray cites available statistics to show that anti-minority group senti ment is strong among policemen...

...Skolnick argues that the community must enforce the concept of legality and demand that "professionalism" be re-defined to include integration of democratic values...

...If, as both authors conclude, there is a "police problem" and police isolation from the community compounds it, what can be done to alleviate the situation...

...Unfortunately, as these two books demonstrate, the presumed equation between better training and better law enforcement may well be false...

...And here, perhaps, lie the seeds of hope...

...Both authors recognize that the police share certain communal values, despite the apparent tensions between the community and the police...

...Skolnick, on the other hand, is both a lawyer and sociologist...

...Yet he admits that policemen are no more authoritarian than most of us and that the community generally shares the cop's "working presumption" of an accused's guilt...

...As class tensions within cities rise, that hope may well be quixotic...

...Anger at the brutal examples so lavishly depicted, and despair at the apparent hopelessness of possible solutions...

...Or, are the police better behaved...

...If the wearing of uniforms reinforces police authoritarianism and is otherwise meaningless, conceivably policemen (except for traffic cops) should not wear them...

...Prevention of police misconduct is infinitely preferable to haphazard (and often non-existent) punishment for gross abuses, and any meaningful proposal should aim for prevention...

...Like Packard's wholesale indictments of American life, the probable and unfortunate effect of Cray's book will be to arouse feelings of anger and despair...

...The number of complaints to New York's Police Review Board has diminished sharply since last November...

...Faults can be found with each author's approach...

...Both authors are concerned with the meaning of "order" in a democratic society, how social control should be maintained, and the methods American police forces are using to maintain it...

...Cray is encouraged by increased efforts at police professionalization (although he apparently believes Los Angeles police have not particularly benefited by the process), while Skolnick understands "professionalism" to mean technical proficiency and thinks it constitutes an added detriment to society's ability to instill the "values of a democratic legal order" into law enforcement...

...Skolnick pinpoints much of the problem...

...Skolnick admits that such prejudice exists, but attributes discrimination to the policeman's feeling that the danger to his authority lies in lower class high-crime areas...

...The defeat of a civilian review board in New York raises some interesting questions...

...He observes that English police are not particularly tolerant of Englishmen's "immemorial" civil liberties...

...Most people are in no mood to re-educate the police, especially since they perceive stringent law enforcement to be the only barrier between "them" and "us...

...And he finds that most policemen enjoy their work, fail to relate to the outside community, and relish????often request????dangerous assignments...

...Here the books bog down in conventional rhetoric...

...Indeed, his comment on the ineffectiveness of judicial curbs on police action ("Were the state and lower Federal courts more aggressive in implementing Supreme Court decisions...

...Although the California Supreme Court's reaction to Escodebo was, as Cray says, salutary, he fails to note the almost uniform reluctance of other state courts to apply Es-cobedo'% spirit...

...Ed Cray's book finds systematic violations of civil liberties by police at almost all pre-trial stages of the criminal process...

...they are simply more sophisticated than their American counterparts in denying them...

...While the answers may be illuminating (and someone like Skolnick should be working on them) the last possibility seems the most dubious...

...No one really knows how the presence of draftees affects the democratic values of career military men, but it may be worthwhile to experiment with a similar plan for the police...

...He concentrates on several functional duties of police officers, such as service on vice and narcotics squads, contrasting the degree .of professionalism in a city called Westviile (obviously Los Angeles or a satellite city) with the decidedly unprofessional law enforcers in Eastville (probably Boston...

...Skolnick lays to rest several prevalent misconceptions...

...For example, in a general chapter on police perception of restrictions in their ability to search and seize, he notes that the problem is enhanced by the fact that the Law tries to enforce morals...

...The disgraceful failure of state courts to meaningfully apply Escobedo led to the much harsher Miranda restrictions (inadequately discussed by Cray), and the end is not yet in sight...

...If corruption????deplored by all though participated in by many????can be seen to correlate with brutality, much latent communal distrust can be mobilized to curb both excesses...

...Cray's analysis is exceedingly unhistoric and fails to mention, as a meaningful backdrop, the Wickersham Report of 1931, the classic treatise on lawless American law enforcement...

...Skolnick is more reserved than Cray and his insights are fascinating, but he often throws controversial statements into his chapter conclusions without prior analysis...

...And contrary to Cray's flat assertion, a police officer conducting an otherwise valid search may legally "seize" evidence of an unrelated crime in many instances...

...Unlike Cray, who is hard on Los Angeles, Skolnick sees little brutality in Westviile????not unexpectedly, since he spent only two weeks on foot patrol, where much of the misconduct occurs...

...This, presumably, leads to increased police hostility since everyone becomes a potential law breaker...

...Do the police now feel they have a "free hand" to perpetrate rank injustice, or do they believe that a trusting public is willing to let them responsibly handle their own affairs...

...Senator Robert F. Kennedy recently suggested that a draft exemption be granted young men who join police forces...

...Cray, director of publications for an American Civil Liberties Union affiliate????and not a lawyer or sociologist????writes in a hortatory style which might be characterized as "Vance Packard Gothic...

...He notes that "enjoyment of police work rises with education...

...Thus the famous Escobedo decision, which held that a suspect under certain circumstances had a Constitutional right to counsel "in the station house," came under the Sixth rather than the Eighth Amendment...

...Although the author denies any intention to limit his observations to "casual" (i.e., spontaneous) police brutality, the vast majority of his examples belie the disclaimer...

...Reviewed by ISIDORE SILVER Assistant Professor of Law, University of Massachusetts In his State of the Union address, President Johnson solemnly intoned, "Order must be maintained . . ." and, to effect that end, he has offered legislation designed to help "professionalize" local police forces...

...does this mean that ghetto dwellers?who rarely complain to any disciplinary agency anyway????have given up...

...Neither explores the contradictory attitudes of the ghetto toward law enforcement: minority group leaders want more police protection (according to the polls), yet the mere presence of the police often incites disturbances...

...could be most aptly applied in the Escobedo context...

...the burden on the High Court could well be lessened...