Word: laws
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...officers to be a combination of Bat Masterson, Sherlock Holmes, Sigmund Freud, King Solomon, Hercules and Diogenes," says Rocky Pomerance, Miami Beach police chief. Indeed, the U.S. often seems lucky to have any cops at all. Plato envisaged the policeman's lofty forebear as the "guardian" of law and order and placed him near the very top of his ideal society, endowing him with special wisdom, strength and patience. The U.S. has put its guardians near the bottom. In most places, the pay for an experienced policeman is less than $7,000 a year, forcing many cops to moonlight...
...liberty for words only, and language, however violent . . . is not to be noticed. [A policeman] who allows himself to be irritated by any language whatsoever shows that he has not a command of his temper, which is absolutely necessary in an officer with such extensive powers by law...
...necessary? Why should a policeman be required to stand filthy abuse from highly unattractive protesters? In part because, as the Supreme Court interprets it, the First Amendment commands American policemen to protect free speech. More important, a policeman who can ignore abuse is not only a good law officer, not only a moral victor, but a living symbol of a free society strong and calm enough to withstand any challenge. But this takes the kind of police and civilian leaders who respect the Constitution-and set the right tone for cops on the front line. Mayor Richard Daley hardly helped...
...Equally important, police duties should be drastically reduced and refined. Certainly, police should not be responsible for carting drunks to jail-one-third of all arrests. A good case could be made for putting traffic control in the hands of some other body-and for repealing scores of antique laws that make it criminal to behave in ways that offended society in the past but are now irrelevant. "The white middle class uses criminal codes as garbage cans," says University of Michigan Law Professor Yale Kamisar. "Whenever it has a problem it doesn't want to treat adequately...
...decision that usually must be made according to ill-defined rules. Under Illinois law, for example, a policeman is justified in using deadly force "only when he reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another person, or when he reasonably believes that such force is necessary to make the arrest and the person to be arrested has committed or attempted to commit a forcible felony, or is attempting to escape by use of a deadly weapon, or otherwise indicates he will endanger human life or inflict great bodily harm unless...