NOTHING is tougher than being a policeman in a free society. For one thing, the U.S. Constitution guarantees as much individual liberty as public safety will allow. To uphold that elusive ideal, the policeman is supposed to mediate family disputes that would tax a Supreme Court Justice, soothe angry ghetto Negroes despite his scant knowledge of psychology, enforce hundreds of petty laws without discrimination, and use only necessary force to bring violators before the courts. The job demands extraordinary skill, restraint and character-qualities not usually understood by either cop-hating leftists, who sound as if they want to exterminate all policemen, or by dissent-hating conservatives, who seem to want policemen to run the U.S. in a paroxysm of punitive "law and order."
The U.S. policeman is forbidden to act as judge and jury—for that way lies the police state. Yet he also has enormous discretion to keep the peace by enforcing some laws and overlooking others. How does he exercise that discretion? Largely on the basis of common sense and common mores, plus his own private attitudes. Unfortunately, he now faces an era of drastically changing mores that challenges his most cherished creeds and conceptions.
Most Americans are not even sure what they want the police to police. "We ask our 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 and some to take bribes. Fear and loneliness are routine hazards. Last year 76 American policemen were killed and 10,770 injured by assault. "Everything you do is more or less on your own," says Christos Kasaras, a patrolman on Manhattan's West Side. "Trouble starts, and there you are." The average cop feels that he is unappreciated or even actively disliked by the public he serves. Very often he is right—and thus all the more prone to confine his entire social as well as professional life to his fellow cops, a group that all too often sees the world as "we" and "they."
Search for Power
Who wants to be a cop? One of the most common types is the ex-high school athlete who went directly into a virile military unit like the Marines, and now seeks security in a job that requires no college degree. Often he aims to live far from the inner city—a lower-middle-class aspiration that produces white commuter cops who nervously regard black-ghetto patrols as raids behind enemy lines. According to Chicago Psychiatrist Clifton Rhead, a policeman needs distinct traits—a tendency to be suspicious, act fast, take risks, be aggressive and obey authority.