Florida Southwestern College
Absolute power corrupts absolutely
M. Dany Bassan
ENC1101 14962
Professor Lewis Perkins
12/3/2020
We all can remember that day in elementary school that our teacher brought in a police officer to meet them. They always looked so cool. Their uniforms signified strength with their sharp cuts and how they seemed to stand taller in them. Their belts were full of things that reminded us of the hero in action movies or someone like Batman. We would ask them so many questions about what it was like to be a police officer. They would give us a talk about safety and how to handle situations. Do you remember the biggest point they told us during that talk? If something was happening or if you felt unsafe go find a police officer. Not even out of elementary school and we were already being taught something that we have been seeing lately not to be true. At such a young age we are at our most impressionable state. This is a proper indoctrination.
The three pillars of public services that we are taught are police officers, firefighters, and EMTs. Each pillar we are taught in the sense that they are heroes. That they could do no wrong just like the heroes we understand at that age, like Superman or Captain America. These public servants are heroes in a sense but they are still human. There are bad and good people no matter the job or field. This includes police officers, firefighters, and EMTs. Yes, there is indoctrination with all three services but it is heavier regarding police officers. Since we are already teaching so strongly that these three pillars are so important we should use all three evenly and to their best ability. Currently, we lean heavily on police forces. We put most of our public funding and belief in them. When in truth this is causing police officers to be spread too far thin and improperly trained in how to handle situations. How can they possibly protect and serve when they are not properly trained to de-escalate situations. The root of this issue is how little time we spend training our officers. Compared to other countries it is a stark difference in time. “In Germany, for example, police recruits are required to spend two and a half to four years in basic training to become an officer, with the option to pursue the equivalent of a bachelor’s or master’s degree in policing. Basic training in the U.S., by comparison, can take as little as 21 weeks (or 33.5 weeks, with field training).” (Serhan). 4 months. That is 4 months compared to at least two years to an officer in another country. In addition to the shortened time there is no overall training given to officers. “The majority of the approximately 18,000 law-enforcement agencies across the U.S. are run at the city or county level, employing anywhere from one to 30,000 officers.” (Serhan). That means as you travel easily from one county to another officers have completely different training on how they handle a situation. In such a large country like the United States of America that is a dangerous thing.
If our country does not wish to start from the bottom up to fix the issue then it needs to start giving balanced power to all three pillars. Currently all three already work together but people are taught more to focus on the police. To call the police, to let the police handle it, etc. This connects back to how we are taught about police officers as children. When in fact many situations should be handled by our EMTs and firefighters. For example, in a large portion of situations where the police are checking on the wellness of a person, the EMTs are called to the scene to also handle the situation. The reason for this is because EMTs are more properly trained in that kind of thing. Police would not even need to be involved if EMTs had more funding and power given to them for such instances. So the options that lay here is either training the police more efficiently for all situations or shifting some of their ‘duties’ to other departments that can handle them properly. Overall there is no balance for all three pillars which has left us teetering on a single pillar. This is mismanagement, and improper use of resources and in turn is what feeds into the over-reliance of police officers.
This enforces the idea of indoctrination. Having such a heavy over-reliance on the police and putting them in places they do not belong. For example, our schools. Before kids are even out of school they start to experience interactions with the police. Having cops in schools from day one and keeping them throughout our education has shown negative effects. Instead of creating a sense of safety like we are taught instead we have seen that it just pushes a corrupt system onto the most easily influenced people of our society. Our children. “… the higher rate of suspensions, expulsions, and arrests that funnel kids into the criminal justice system. That’s especially true, he says, in schools attended predominantly by students of color.” (Corley). This causes many to feel like they cannot fight this and it is an absolute final result. In comparison to those who still believe that cops are fully good and simply just heroes they have now become another wall for that funnel. This shows how early the corruption of our police reaches into our lives. It is not just a few officers but the whole system. Which is something many argue against.
Many use the straw man argument that not all cops are bad, calling them just, “a few bad apples.”. This does nothing but derails the point of the argument. The main issue still is that there is a toxic system that leads to corruption. That is not inherently the cops themselves but the system itself that is spoiled. Overall though this proverb is being completely misused. “”The idea of the proverb was to take this image of rotting that can have a corrupting influence on the apples nearby and using that as a kind of a metaphor to say, ‘You have to be careful about a bit of wrongdoing in an organization or it could have this overall corrupting effect on an entire system,’” Zimmer continued.” (Cunningham). This was the belief of the saying ‘ a few bad apples’ regarding any kind of context. In fact, the proverb had not been used in reference to police officers and their behavior until someone spoke up regarding the racial issue in how cops handle these situations. “One bad apple became a few bad apples as the phrase slowly became a defense for a few rogue cops. Reports show officials used the flipped proverb after the Rodney King beating in 1991, the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown , after the fatal shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and now in the midst of protests over the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.” (Cunningham). Now suddenly the use of ‘only a few bad apples’ has become a focal point in any argument regarding police officers and their actions. This furthermore shows how people are using the proverb to derail the conversation away from the true problem. Instead of having people focus on the issue of how corrupt the source itself has become they must defend the idea of there being good and bad cops.
Even among themselves, cops that consider themselves to be good cops have left the service because of how corrupt things are. They have been forced to cooperate with horrible actions and when they do speak up it is often shut down. Former cop Redditt Hudson spoke of his years of service and what he saw. He witnessed first hand his fellow officers using excessive force for no reason and when he tried to speak up. This is what he reported would happen. “Back at the department, I complained to the sergeant. I wanted to report the misconduct. But my manager squashed the whole thing and told me to get back to work.” (Hudson). This is a prime example of what is called “The Code of Silence”(Exhibit 3, Weisburd). Something we see often in jobs that may require using force against the public. Like the police, military, EMT’s, etc. In the table we can see that despite many officers disagreeing with the idea of the ‘code of the silence’ they will go along with it. The reasoning for this is because they do not believe it is worth going against it because they will suffer mistreatment from their fellow officers.
As time went on Hudson felt like what he was doing wasn’t right. “But more and more, I felt like I couldn’t do the work I set out to do. I was participating in a profoundly corrupt criminal justice system. I could not, in good conscience, participate in a system that was so intentionally unfair and racist. So after five years on the job, I quit. (Hudson). A good officer who wanted to help others and make a difference in his community quit his job because of how corrupt these ‘bad few apples’ had caused everything to be. If things continue on the way they are how many good apples will there be left in the barrel?
As a country we need to change how our police are handled. If we wish to keep the police decentralized as it is without full control of our government they cannot have the level of power that they do. They should not be in schools at such a young age for our children. If we do, it should be at an education standpoint where kids can decide on their own what to believe. Instead of blindly telling them to trust these people no matter what. They should not be used as a presented force to inflict fear and control in schools. We should be using our public services to their highest capabilities. Also a balance of power between all three. Police officers have far more laws and control that leans heavily in favor to them compared to firefighters and EMTs. Overall cops are not doing the job that is expected of them. The power they control was given for those extensive duties which they have failed to rise up to. If we wish to continue to give them such control and power they should be properly evaluated and held to a higher standard compared to other public services. I truly do believe that this is a bipartisan issue that needs to be addressed by all sides. It’s not about race, creed, or political leanings. It is the vast difference in power that police officers have over civilians. They are meant to protect and serve. Yet it seems it has progressed to more of an idea of power and control over the people of our country. If this is the land of the free why are the people not allowed to freely think about services that are meant to be there for the public. If you are not allowed to question something that is indoctrination at its strongest.
Work Cited
Cunningham, Malorie. “‘A Few Bad Apples’: Phrase Describing Rotten Police Officers Used to Have Different Meaning.” ABC News, 15 June 2020, abcnews.go.com/US/bad-apples-phrase-describing-rotten-police-officers-meaning/story?id=71201096.
Corley, Cheryl. “Do Police Officers In Schools Really Make Them Safer?” Npr.Org, 8 Mar. 2018, choice.npr.org/index.html?origin=https://www.npr.org/2018/03/08/591753884/do-police-officers-in-schools-really-make-them-safer.
Hudson, Redditt. “Being a Cop Showed Me Just How Racist and Violent the Police Are. There’s Only One Fix.” Washington Post, 6 Dec. 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/06/i-was-a-st-louis-cop-my-peers-were-racist-and-violent-and-theres-only-one-fix.
Hirschfield, Paul. “Why Do American Cops Kill so Many Compared to European Cops?” The Conversation, 25 Nov. 2015, theconversation.com/why-do-american-cops-kill-so-many-compared-to-european-cops-49696.
Serhan, Yasmeen. “What the World Could Teach America About Policing.” The Atlantic, 10 June 2020, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/06/america-police-violence-germany-georgia-britain/612820.
Weisburd, David, et al. U.S Department of Justice. Police Attitudes Toward Abuse of Authority: Findings From a National Study. National Institute of Justice, 2000. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/181312.pdf
