The recent reinstatement of Lori and Buddy Visser to the Tulsa Police Department highlights the creeping divide that separates ordinary citizens from the police. On April 10, 2000, the Vissers were travelling off-duty with their daughter when an unidentified object from a nearby vehicle struck their car. Whether the object was thrown deliberately or simply flew from the vehicle is as yet undetermined. Nevertheless, to this menace responded Officers Visser with what even Tulsa Police Chief Ron Palmer called “excessive force”—pulling the car over and pointing handguns at the occupants.
Despite the opinion of Chief Palmer and his decision to fire the officers after an Internal Affairs investigation into the incident, both are expected to be back on the job by July 16 of this year. An arbitrator overturned Chief Palmer’s decision after the Vissers appealed their termination.
Many will find the decision to put Lori and Buddy Visser back on the police payroll about as surprising as the incident itself. Even fellow police officers from area departments have described the Tulsa Police Department as being “made of Teflon”—nothing sticks to it. Whether or not this is an accurate generalization, there is a growing tendency to see the police not as protectors, but as part of the problem. The entire situation involving the Vissers only deepens that distrust.
Some today are beginning to understand why there was often popular resistance to the establishment of police departments; it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that any existed in either America or England, and even for a short time after that they were an anomaly. It was generally held that in order for law enforcement to remain sensitive to the rights and welfare of the people, an elected sheriff or city marshal would represent the law and deputize a few local hands as assistants. Should an emergency require a larger number of officers, the sheriff could invoke his posse comitatus prerogative—he’d call out the posse. The sociological and practical advantages of such an arrangement were obvious: a person who one day found himself in a position of legal authority over his fellows would more than likely be back behind his grocery counter the next. It also meant the citizenry at large maintained a strong sense of personal responsibility regarding day-to-day law and order.
Today, by contrast, we have citywide police departments with massive numbers of full-time uniformed officers. It could be argued that the centralization of the population into large urban areas makes the old style of policing obsolete. This is correct, at least for larger cities. However, the legitimate role that policemen play in our lives has not changed—a policeman is not a special construct of the local government—like the sheriff and his deputies of yesteryear, he is simply the person we hire to keep the peace in our absence. The police officer is an extension of the legal authority established by the citizenry, not a bully empowered to make us all behave.
Tulsa police officers Buddy and Lori Visser could have chosen a much different approach to resolving their situation with people they believe threw something at their car. They could have recognized their less-than-objective connection to the dispute and involved on-duty officers. Failing that, they could simply have ordered the suspect vehicle to the roadside, arrested the occupants and left the rest to a judge and jury. Instead, they appear to have lost their cool and succumbed to Road Rage, Police Style. They flashed their badges, pointed their guns, and proceeded to act like common thugs instead of professional law enforcement officers.
This isn’t to say that an average citizen would never have behaved the same way were he in their place—far too many of them do—but the difference is that the average citizen isn’t backed up by a powerful union, its lawyers and civil service protection, all designed to ensure that Buddy and Lori Visser are not treated like average citizens. In such behavior by an average citizen, we call road rage by its rightful name; we don’t gloss it over with claims that it “didn’t violate department policy”. If a simple citizen had behaved as the Vissers did, he would be facing a charge of “Pointing a Deadly Weapon” at a minimum.
Of course, some would say that subjecting the police to the same standards as normal folks is unfair. Fine, then let us have an internal review of the situation and leave it to the chief of police to resolve. Oops, that didn’t work either.
Sadly, the reality is that as long as we feel we need a professional police department to enforce the law, we can expect an elitist mentality from those officers. Several reforms could be suggested, like employing only part-time policemen or ending civil service protection. But first, foremost and last, we should take a step back and, in reviewing all police behavior, take a firm ethical stand in declaring that there is absolutely no reason why conduct that would get you or I arrested should be treated as a mere “disciplinary matter” when perpetrated by a cop.
07/10/01
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