neutralize this guy’s threat to other people and himself.
The force we used was well within the guidelines of the Los Angeles Police Department; I’d made sure of that. And, I was proud of the professionalism [the officers had] shown in subduing a really monster guy, a felony evader seen committing numerous traffic violations.84
In three paragraphs, Koon employs minimization, blame, redefinition, unintentionality, counterattacks, competing victimization, and the Hero Defense. As is usual, his little story stresses the possible danger of the situation, and elsewhere Koon emphasizes the generalizable sense of danger that officers experience: “[W]e’d all thought that maybe we were getting lured into something. It’s happened before. How many times have you read about a cop getting killed after stopping somebody for a speeding violation?”85
The Dangers of the Job
The danger of the job is a constant theme in the defense of police violence. It is implicit (or sometimes explicit) in about half of the excuses listed above. By pointing to the dangers of the job, the excuse-makers don’t only defend police actions in particular circumstances (which might actually have been dangerous), but as often as not take the opportunity to mount a general defense of the police. This is a clever bit of sophistry, as cynical as a Memorial Day speech during wartime. It’s one thing to make a banner of the bloody uniform when discussing a case where the cops actually were in danger, but quite another to do so when they might have been in danger, or only thought that they were.
The fact that policing is risky, by this view, seems to justify in advance whatever measures the police feel necessary to employ. This point lies at the center of the Hero Defense. Its genius is that it is so hard to answer. Few people are indifferent to the death of a police officer, especially when they feel (though only in some vague, patriotic kind of way) that it occurred because the officer was selflessly working—as former Philadelphia city solicitor Sheldon Albert put it—“so that you and I and our families and our children can walk on the streets.”86 The flaw of the Hero Defense, however, is both simple and (if you’ll pardon the term) fatal: policing is not so dangerous as we are led to believe.
A total of 105 patrol officers died on the job in 2012. Less half of those (51) died as the result of violence, and another 48 died in traffic accidents.87 Between 1961 and 2012, 3,847 cops were murdered and 2,946 died in accidents—averaging about 75 murders and 58 fatal accidents in a typical year.88
Naturally it is not to be lost sight of that these numbers represent human lives, not widgets or sacks of potatoes. But let’s also remember that there were 4,383 fatal work injuries in 2012. As dangerous professions go, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, policing is not even in the top ten. In terms of total fatalities, more truck drivers are killed than any other kind of worker (741 in 2012). A better measure of occupational risk, however, is the rate of work-related deaths per 100,000 workers. In 2012, for example, it was 17.4 for truck drivers.89 At 15.0 deaths per 100,000, policing is slightly less dangerous than being a maintenance worker (15.7) and slightly more dangerous than supervising the gardener (14.7).90 The highest rate of fatalities is among loggers at 127.8 per 100,000, just ahead of fishers at 117.0. The rate for all occupations, taken together, is 3.2 per 100,000 workers.91
Where are the headlines, the memorials, the honor guards, and the sorrowful renderings of Taps for these workers? Where are the mayoral speeches, the newspaper editorials, the sober reflections that these brave men and women died, and that others risk their lives daily, so that we might continue to enjoy the benefits of modern society?
Policing, it seems, is the only profession that both exaggerates and advertises its dangers. It has done so at a high cost, and to great advantage, though (as is so often the case) the costs are not borne by the same people who reap the benefits.92 The overblown image of police heroism, and the “obsession” with officer safety (Rodney Stark’s term), do not only serve to justify police violence after the fact; by providing such justification, they legitimize violence, and thus make it more likely.93
Institutionalized Brutality
Given the pervasive nature of police violence, it is astonishing that the public discourse so frequently focuses on the behavior of individual officers. Commonly called the “Rotten Apple” theory, the explanation of misconduct favored by police commanders and their ideological allies holds that abuse is exceptional, that the officers who misuse their power are a tiny minority, and that it is unfair to judge other cops (or the department as a whole) by the misbehavior of the few.94 This is a handy tool for diverting attention away from the institution, its structure, practices, and social role, pushing the blame, instead, onto some few of its agents.95 It is, in other words, a means of protecting the organization from scrutiny and of avoiding change.
Despite the official insistence to the contrary, it is clear that police organizations, as well as individual officers, hold a large share of the responsibility for the prevalence of police brutality.96 Police agencies are organizationally complex, and brutality may be promoted or accommodated within any (or all) of its various dimensions. Both formal and informal aspects of an organization can help create a climate in which unnecessary violence is tolerated, or even encouraged. Among the formal aspects contributing to violence are the organization’s official policies, its identified priorities, the training it offers its personnel,97 its allocation of resources, and its system of promotions, awards, and other incentives.98 When these aspects of an organization encourage violence—whether or not they do so intentionally, or even consciously—we can speak of brutality being promoted “from above.” This understanding has been well applied to the regimes of certain openly thuggish leaders—Bull Connor, Richard Daley, Frank Rizzo,99 Daryl Gates, Rudolph Giuliani, Joe Arpaio (to name just a few)—but it needn’t be so overt to have the same effect.
On the other hand, when police culture and occupational norms support the use of unnecessary violence, we can describe brutality as being supported “from below.” Such informal conditions are a bit harder to pin down, but they certainly have their consequences. We may count among their elements insularity,100 indifference to the problem of brutality,101 generalized suspicion,102 and the intense demand for personal respect.103 One of the first sociologists to study the problem of police violence, William Westley, described these as “basic occupational values,” more important than any other determinant of police behavior:
[The policeman] regards the public as his enemy, feels his occupation to be in conflict with the community and regards himself as a pariah. The experience and the feeling give rise to a collective emphasis on secrecy, an attempt to coerce respect from the public, and a belief that almost any means are legitimate in completing an important arrest. These are for the policeman basic occupational values. They arise from his experience, take precedence over his legal responsibilities, are central to an understanding of his conduct, and form the occupational contexts with which violence gains its meaning.104
Police violence is very frequently over-determined—promoted from above and supported from below. But where it is not actually encouraged, sometimes even where individuals (officers or administrators) disapprove of it, excessive and illegal force are nevertheless nearly always condoned. Among police administrators there is the persistent and well-documented refusal to discipline violent officers; and among the cops themselves, there is the “code of silence.”
In its 1998 report, Human Rights Watch noted the inaction of police commanders:
Most high-ranking police officials, whether at the level of commissioner, chief, superintendent, or direct superiors, seem uninterested in vigorously pursuing high standards for treatment of persons in custody. When reasonably high standards are set, superior officers are often unwilling to require that their subordinates consistently meet them.105
Even where officers are found guilty of misconduct, discipline rarely follows. For example, in 1998 New York’s Civilian Complaint Review Board issued 300 findings
