What is Wrong with the Police in Ferguson?

By Dr. Henry Flores, NewsTaco

The shooting of young Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri by the police has led me to contemplate several issues.  It wasn’t too long ago, I guess for us older folks it seems like just the other day but it was really in the 1960s, when we confronted this same issue.  Police were brutalizing inner city folks, Latinos and African Americans; it all culminated with the hot summers of the latter half of the 1960s when the large cities erupted with riots and large parts of the cities being burned down.  The most infamous occurred in Detroit when law enforcement completely broke down, martial law was declared and the United States Army was sent in to quell the rioting.  Now we’re having unprecedented levels of police involved shootings in San Antonio, Texas, the Ferguson incident, and police killing citizens using choke-holds in other cities.

 The Problem as I See It

I think several things are going on.  The first and most important is that the police have alienated themselves from the community.  I’d bet my bottom dollar that those communities having police problems have officers who don’t even live within the communities they police.  What this does is create unprecedented levels of mistrust between the police and the community.  Additional alienation is caused when your police department or for that matter any public employee group does not mirror the population they serve.

Another issue is the notion that our public servants have lost the meaning of why they are “serving” our communities.  The police like to say they “protect and serve” our communities.  Many police departments around the country have this saying emblazoned on their vehicles, sometimes on the patches that adorn their uniforms.  But, many police officers take the saying for granted.  I’m also willing to bet that the concept of service is not taught in any great depth during the training at police academies throughout the country.  Well, I have news for our police, they are public servants—they are supposed to serve us!  The reason we have a “public” police force, paid for by our tax dollars is to do more than protect us from some of us who get out of hand every now and then.

 Policing and Democracy

Policing, at least the way it is currently practiced in the United States, is anathema to democratic values.  Some will disagree with me and say, “Yeah, but we’re not a democracy, we’re a republic!”  I’ve heard this trite argument in the past and it’s really an excuse to prevent dialogue about the specific issue from occurring.  We may have a republican form of government but it is one based in democratic values where the people and their power are the foundational core of that republican government.

One of the most important tenets of democracy is that we “have government by and for the people.”  The main problem underlying the behavior of our police organizations these days is plain and simple; there is no people oversight of our police agencies.  As a result the police agencies feel no responsibility to the people.  On one level our tax dollars pay the salaries, health benefits and pensions of these public servants and they need to feel responsibility to us.  Given the policing disaster unfolding in Ferguson I’ve concluded that there is a lack of responsibility to the community by the police in that city.  I also feel that this is the case in most American communities as well.

 Politicians and the Public Good

The bigger issue is, however, that the police are not the only public servants who have lost sight of their relationship to the communities they are supposed to be serving.  I think this same situation exists at many levels of our republican form of government.  I see it in politicians who disregard the voice and will of the people and just do whatever their own ideological predilections tell them to do. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  The public servants in our republican form of government need to get down with us folks and try to live how we live and try to understand our daily problems and issues before they go off “half-cocked” doing what they feel like doing.  Public officials at all levels need to reassess their sense of responsibility to those they are supposed to be serving.

Henry Flores, PhD, is a Distinguished University Research Professor, Institute of Public Administration and Public Service; Director, Masters in Public Administration (MPA); Professor of International Relations and Political Science at St. Mary’s University.

[Photo courtesy of @machable]

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