TWO COPS TALK TURKEY: Letting Rizzo Do the Thinking

...It’s all in what you want to do...

...Since the statistical precision of Hoover’s arguments was never overwhelming, liberals bitterly attacked the UCRs and Hoover’s use of them...

...Just how ostrich-like this abdication of responsibility on the issue of violent crime enabled the left to become was finally demonstrated in the 1972 Democratic Convention platform...

...When he wasn’t crusading against communist subversion during the 1950s and 196Os, Hoover was making headlines with ominous warnings about the increase in the crime rates, as reported by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), compiled from police departments around the country...

...The suburbanite may expound on the scourge of crime, much as a Washington newspaper columnist who gets his stories over lunch at Sans Souci pontificates on“the mood of the country...

...What is important is realizing that there are solutions that liberal politicians and policymakers can use without damaging their own images or infringing upon civil liberties...

...People who venture out are often considered either brave or foolish...

...J. Edgar Hoover was primarily the author of this misunderstanding...

...Those who still live in the cities have generally clustered in pleasant residential sections that often have better police protection than many suburban developments...

...They are by no means the answer to all police staffing problems in every city, but they indicate the great potential of other forms of police auxiliaries...

...Other fellow recruits felt the same way...

...They object to particular police methods or individual police officers, but not to the concept of policing...

...There may be a partial explanation for this law-and-order typecasting in the way the people who influence our political decisions have chosen to live...

...So what if Middle America ate it up with a relish currently reserved for a meal of Phase IV sirloin...

...Consequently, most black citizens are more anxious for adequate police protection than most whites...

...On the one hand, we have worshipped the fictional policeman as a folk hero: but...

...Liberals became so beguiled with their own idea that crime wasn’t really increasing that they lost sight of the really important fact-fear of crime was increasing...

...Finally, a change in duty shift policy could put more men on the street during peak crime hours...

...There is a greater barrier to the establishment of a sound crime program, however, and it developed in the late 1960s out of what might be called the “Ramsey Clark syndrome.’’ This was the attitude that crime is just a symptom of our urban problems, that until we wiue out racial discrimnation and economic and cultural inequality, there is little that can be done about crime...

...Liberals fear and detest this authoritarian instinct and therefore resist appeals for more police protection...

...With the bulk of our population living in urban areas, crime has political implications, and savvy politicians are apt to cater to law-andorder sentiments...

...They do their thing, I do mine...

...When the sun goes down, many streets go off limits...

...Here, their perception of what constitutes crime is different than in the city...

...The left’s great difficulty in resolving its feelings about the police also rises from the conviction that law enforcement officers are naturally authoritarian...

...Yet the basic assumption of police authoritarianism may be quite faulty...

...I could’ve gone to the street, but that’s for losers...

...There is no way to eliminate crime quickly and humanely in a society as contradictory as ours, and to effectively confront crime control we must start trying to reduce it by degrees to an acceptable level...

...Feeding on Fear Statistics have obscured and distorted an already isolated middle-class intelligentsia from understanding the visceral realities of crime...

...Uniformed patrolmen provide another psychological boost, even if they have no real power...

...range, and speed than a footman, and, ultimately, the impression that police are always available...

...As the Americans for Democratic Action admitted in a recent paper, “Crime and Law Enforcement” : Americans have always been ambivalent about their police...

...Whether they succeed, or whether the hard-liners succeed, depends entirely on which school appeals to the public with the most effective antidote to a debilitating fear...

...In urban areas, the greatest criminal threat comes from murder, assault, robbery, and rape, which together constitute only 15 per cent of all criminal activity, but which account for a great deal of both the individual fear of crime and the political rhetoric of law and order...

...And it doesn’t mean that police captains should be required to have masters’ degrees in statistical analysis...

...They dumped plenty of shit on me...

...Her freedom of movement has been stolen...

...we have made the policeman the object of fear, scorn, and neglect, and have, in fact, attempted to hold him accountable for all society’s ills...

...To remedy this situation, the midnight tour could be made a permanent volunteer assignment, with higher pay as an incentive...

...Eventually, a level of security will develop which encourages people to feel safe .on the street, even long after the sun has set...

...Other changes would also make departments more effective: assigning officers to motor scooters allows for more public contact than a patrol car, greater mobility...

...While certainly none of their home environments was ideal, each had found it possible to make a choice and felt that others could, too...

...Who’s Biased Now...

...This doesn’t mean that urban police departments should hire the Rand Corporation to develop elaborate sociological measures of neighborhood cohesion...

...Frank Rizzo is now mayor of Philadelphia, and Thomas Bradley has been elected mayor of Los Angeles...

...Even though the threat of these violent crimes has a psychic effect in the suburbs, most of the offenses that actually affect suburban residents are the less violent forms of criminal activity-burglary , larceny, theft of $50 or more, and car theft, which make up 85 per cent of all serious reported crime...

...Washington, D. C. uses cadets-high school graduates not old enough to become regular officers-to handle traffic and write parking tickets, and to perform some administrative functions as well...

...Protection or prevention in these cases is relatively easy, because most secondstory men can be discouraged by a murmuring radio or a few lights left burning...

...When they recognize simple terror and try to reduce it step by step, enlightened governments will also reduce hard-line demagoguery...

...Most had experienced the effects of heavy-handed law enforcement, and some talked about friends and neighbors who were involved in criminal street activity or were in jail...

...Police must begin by greatly reducing the importance of the much-abused accounting systems and other s tatis tics-gathering methods and abandoning the illusions of authority and accuracy they breed...

...It perpetuates, if only implicitly, the myth that the only suitable environment for stable personality development is the white, middle-class suburb...

...Yet many have still to learn what conservatives have known for almost a decade-that crime in the streets has a reality for most Americans that goes beyond simple code words...

...Hoover, of course, had a vested interest in soaring crime rates since he used the statistics to justify sizeable increases in FBI funding...

...A police department can develop its own commonsense measures of citizens’ confidence in the safety of their neighborhoods...

...While simultaneously reducing the number of patrolmen working midnights, the remaining officers would rotate between the day and night shifts, making the changeover following their days off so no one would have to work 16 straight hours...

...For 150 years, we permitted an institution vital to our social health to drift into isolation from us...

...Remoteness -physical and philosophicalfrom the center of violent criminal activity certainly accounts for some liberal ignorance about urban crime control...

...They serve as police eyes and ears as much as any patrolman, and their calls to the dispatcher yield an immediate response...

...Anybody on the street after dark is viewed by’ both police and local inhabitants as ipso facto suspicious and dangerous...

...For the average Washington pedestrian, cadets are as much of a police presence as a regular officer...

...In an anthology entitled The Police, editor Gerald Leinwand observes: There is a common feeling that it is the authoritarian personality that thrives on police work and is lured to the police department...

...Confidence, like fear, will feed on itself...

...Most of my classmates were black, many from bleak family backgrounds...

...Here, so it is said, the authoritarian personality can find an outlet for his tendency to enjoy both giving and taking orders...

...In excusing criminal conduct as a product of inferior upbringing, many people display a condescending, if subtle, elitism which is not lost on urban residents...

...Other areas, however, despite constant police patrolling, appear almost deserted...

...For many years it has been clear that suspects in criminal proceedings are disproportionately black...

...at the same time...

...Bias doubtless exists, but this simple explanation ignores the undeniable fact that crime rates are highest in inner city ghettos and that the victims of violent urban crime are usually black citizens, not affluent whites...

...The woman who refuses to go out at night because she is afraid that she’ll be raped has already been victimized...

...and “How can you be a cop and still be a liberal...

...Many were quite militant and spoke far more enthusiastically about Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver than more moderate black leaders...

...Politicians like Reagan, Rizzo, Wallace, and the early Nixon attempted to make physical safety and security synonymous with the specific, often authoritarian, policies proposed by the political right...

...They imply that the police are an element of society that is totally incompatible with the liberal concept of that society...

...Both are former police officers, as was Minneapolis’ mayor, Charles Stenvig...

...In some sections of town stores stay open throughout the evening, people congregate on the streets, adequate lighting minimizes the number of forebodingly dark doorways and alleys, and the police are relatively inconspicuous...

...When I was in training at the D. C. Police Academy this paradox bothered me...

...With a look of puzzlement combined with a bit of amusement, he replied, “Yeah, I used to hate cops...

...These white, college-educated, and middle-class citizens have participated in the great exodus from the cities to the suburbs...

...Stores close in the late afternoon and residents barricade themselves indoors...

...Crime is a serious issue for most Americans...

...Rather than training more regular patrolmen, a department might hire assistants for certain specific purposes...

...Cadets do have an impact even though they aren’t armed...

...Thus, they cannot be held fully responsible for their actions...

...Furthermore, the urban resident also faces a higher frequency of burglaries than his suburban counterpart, and must recognize a de facto curfew as well...

...But the main point is this: because they are so removed from, the origins of city violence, the suburban humanist has no true understanding of how police relate to an urban community’s needs...

...Uniformed but unarmed “watchmen” equipped with portable radios might walk beats in lowcrime districts, freeing regular officers to concentrate on the more dangerous areas where they are really needed...

...As Don Graham notes in his review of Jonathan Rubinstein’s City Police, (page 39), “Most big-city departments keep a third of their patrolmen on the street in the early morning hours when crime and traffic are at their lowest...

...By using the pernicious effects of ghetto life as the means of explaining away criminal conduct, we imply that the pain and suffering inflicted on victims in the city is somehow insignificant...

...Worse, he may not perceive what is unmistakable in the cities: that even when the police do their job poorly, the presence of some external force is necessary to protect individuals’ safety . People in the suburbs often think they know more than they do about the violence that constantly runs through the city...

...A rotation like this would, in effect, put more police on the streets at the times they are needed, with minimal additional cost and no new officers...

...Liberals could always smugly take comfort in the conviction sthat civjl liberties are never popular and that the Bill of Rights wouldn’t win a popular referendum...

...Effective crime control means recognizing the psychological dimension of crime and working against it from that angle...

...Whether or not the paranoia that grips the cities is based upon fact or fantasy, the fear of street crime is predicated on a recognition that considerable risks attend a nighttime amble...

...Some liberals have often contended that this disproportion is due to a racial bias inherent in the system...

...When some people begin to use the streets regularly late at night, others will follow...

...This appearance tends to reassure the public, makes criminals less daring in their operation, and somewhat deters crime...

...Ultimately, citizens, not statistics, determine whether a police department is doing its job...

...Essentially, people on the street lure other people out...

...Yet, [a study of the Denver police force] found that this was not true at all...

...The key factor is the intangible community confidence that develops independently of police activity...

...By asking how you can be a liberal and still be a cop, liberals essentially acknowledge the success of a conservative tactic...

...The law enforcement plank consisted of a boatload of platitudes, and included George McGovern’s 1971 proposal to uplift policemen by providing them funds to attend college...

...In the same book, Rubinstein mentions that “most [police officers] feel that ‘the night is made for loving and sleeping,’ ” an attitude which leads to high absenteeism on the midnight shift...

...Cops have become folk heroes, with Joseph Christopher Wren is a former Washington police officer and is now on the staff of The Washington Monthly Wambaugh’s The New Centurions and The Blue Knight leading the revival...

...and then, when our social problems became so severe that we could not deal with them, we called in the policeman to save us-and then criticized, scorned, and called him names because he did not respond to our satisfaction...

...After all, we knew all along that exhortations about crime control were, in reality, code words for racism and repression...

...The hiring of more civilian personnel could relieve officers of clerical and administrative functiqns which don’t require police training, releasing policemen for street duty and, once again, creating the impression of having more police without hiring and training more officers...

...TWO POLICEMEN TALK: Letting Rizzo Do theThinking by Christopher Wren Dick Gregory, in his Political Primer, defined “crime in the streets” as “America’s new way of saying ‘nigger...

...Yet these questions carry the blunt implication that there is an absolute dichotomy between a “cop” and a “liberal...

...And by no stretch of the imagination could these black recruits be called Uncle Toms, either...

...While the police and the political left have had their run-ins, the assump tion that police are the enemy means that the left has agreed to think about the issues under all the conservative definitions and premises...

...So it is not surprising that suburban residents often speak of crime in terms of burglaries and auto thefts...

...People find their presence alone is reassuring...

...Better lighting can help reverse the trend of violent urban crime by reducing the darkness which initiates the cycle of crime and fear...

...As a police officer and volunteer in the McGovern campaign, I had an especially sharp exposure to the difficulties that McGovern supporters had with crime and police issues...

...Otherwise, why should there be such astonishment at discovering a policeman in the McGovern camp...

...The unwillingness of white, middleclass intelligentsia to deal with realistic police reform-not merely unworkable civilian review boards-is quite understandable...

...Criminal activity, which thrives on fear in dark, lonely spaces, will fade, moving into areas where fear levels are higher and confidence much lower...

...But man, we’re all different, just like you white dudes...

...While they carry the threat of possible violence, burglaries are directed primarily against inanimate objects: a home and its contents...

...Certainly, this can be measured in psychological termsfor the impact of crime is frequently as much psychological as it is physical...

...One course of action that would create greater confidence in neighborhood security is relatively simple and yet can have a profound effect: better street lighting...

...Sales of burglar alarms, German shepherds, firearms, and other personal security devices have soared...

...The list of possible changes could go on endlessly, but that’s not the point...

...City dwellers face the far more real likelihood of assaults, robberies, rapes, or any other incident that presents a perceived physical threat...

...One day I asked one of them why he had decided to be a cop while many of his “brothers” had chosen drastically different lifestyles...

...ln response to lines like this many liberals nod their heads knowingly...

...So here we are, a nation divided between fear and loathing: the public paralyzed by fear of crime and elected officials loathe to seriously consider any real remedies...

...In their place the police should substitute methods for determining the “confidence level” or “fear level” of the residents in a neighborhood...

...A nighttime drive along city streets illustrates what can be measured...

...This is one more way that many liberals remove themselves from the heat of the violence...

...You know, different strokes for different folks...

...No one would deny that police officers as a group have a conservative bias...

...This contention invokes an invidious class attitude that should be offensive to liberal sensibilities...

...On all personality scales the data show that policemen are absolutely average people and when thev do differ from the community norm it is in the direction of being better or more nobly disposed than their fellowmen...

...This “deprived childhood” theory contends that because black and other minority group offenders don’t have the advantages of a good home, financial security, a stable family, and equal educational opportunities, they can’t be expected to accept the norms of society and are only reacting in desperation to a hostile and alien cultural environment...

...Meanwhile, because they have refused to seriously confront the realities of criminal violence and have failed to come up with viable law enforcement control measures, liberals have ended up acquiescing in Nixon’s law-and-order controls, such as the District of Columbia Court Reform and Criminal Procedure Act of 1970...

...For one thing, I was constantly asked carefully phrased variants of these basic questions: “How can you be a copand be for McGovern...

...Increasing numbers of Americans cower in their homes, afraid to walk at night on the streets of their own neighborhoods...