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In many respects policemen represent the most typical beliefs and attitudes of their communities, including what Los Angeles Chief Thomas Reddin deplores as a moralistic tendency to see things in terms of either-or. Not surprisingly, police tend to be appalled by abnormal behavior and rebellions against authority. Most scorn long hair, and homosexuality horrifies them. With their ingrained respect for work, they take a dim view of people living on welfare. Perhaps most irritating to cops are the white antiwar protesters, most of them collegians who have rejected advantages that policemen themselves lacked and toil to give their own children. "The police consider the beatniks spoiled darlings of society," says Berkeley Economist Margaret Gordon, who also serves on the city council. "Their rage and frustration at them can break out uncontrollably even in the historically well-disciplined and polite Berkeley police department." What most upset Chicago police during the Democratic Convention was obscenity from women and disrespect to the flag. When demonstrators blithely pulled down the Stars and Stripes in Grant Park, several cops at the scene could not hold back their tears.
Obviously policemen are just as entitled to personal prejudices as anyone else—so long as they control them better than anyone else. When scores of skull-cracking policemen "overreacted" against innocent bystanders in Chicago, they undermined the very order they meant to maintain. The fact that 56% of Americans approved (according to Gallup) makes such occurrences no more palatable. By responding as they did, Chicago police gave the true anarchists among the demonstrators a victory they never dared imagine. If a demonstrator can provoke a riot by hurling four-letter words at a policeman, the U.S. is in for more disorder than it even now fears.
Cold calm in the face of verbal provocation is the policeman's duty—even as it is the duty of a nurse in a hospital, or an attendant in an asylum. Rule No. 1 was laid down nearly 140 years ago, not long after Sir Robert Peel established the London Metropolitan Police, the first professional force in the English-speaking world. "No [officer] is justified in depriving anyone of his 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."
Why is it 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 with his "shoot to kill" order after Chicago's Negro riots last April, or by implying before the Democratic Convention that protesters were hoodlums or Communists.