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Annons
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Matt Taylor: At the most basic level, in terms of your interaction with them or how they appear to most Americans on the street, state police and local cops or sheriffs aren't that different. They all carry guns and wear vaguely traditional police garb. Federal police aren't visible in the same way. There are various law enforcement entities at that level – US Marshals, FBI – but no "federal cops", per se.Right. It kind of sounds like everyone has a gun. Does this apply throughout, from chiefs to detectives to beat cops?
Just about every cop in America seems to carry a gun. In the case of chiefs or higher-level officers like detectives, the gun and holster we see on beat cops might not be present or visible. For instance, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton – that job is actually a step up above "chief" – doesn't carry one, or at least not one we can see. His is more of a political role.What's the wage gap between, say, a commissioner and a lowly street-based police officer? Is the disparity the source of any internal concern within the police force?
It's pretty substantial, but probably not as enormous as you might think. Certainly not on the same level as, say, the gap between low-level workers and CEOs at most American companies and corporations. Even regular beat cops can do well in certain locales. I grew up on eastern Long Island, in East Hampton, essentially a resort town, and getting a job as a cop out there is a ticket for life, from what I'm told. One can easily earn well above the median salary in the US thanks to a healthy local tax base, lots of valuable real estate, etc. Police unions are a powerful force in American politics, or at least they were. Their influence is fading, as is the case with most organised labour organisations in the United States.
Annons
It probably is, yeah. As I think you're alluding to, we tend to love us some guns and the strong men who wield them in America. That sort of John Wayne mentality extends from a worship of the armed forces – even when they do terrible things to civilians and each other – and cops. The mantra is that white Americans love and respect cops – that they feel safe around them. Whereas blacks, Latinos and other minorities have been trained by our culture to be leery.Cops have become "others" in a new way over the last year or so, I think. Whereas in the 1990s and 2000s many police shootings – and there were many – of people of colour stoked controversy, something about the killings that began last summer – with Eric Garner in New York and Michael Brown in Ferguson – has touched a chord. You can probably go back to Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012 for the spark that got this uproar going, even though [his killer, George Zimmerman] wasn't an actual cop, just a rogue neighbourhood watchman.
Annons
Good point. I think it's partly what we see in terms of shootings in America generally, right? Lots and lots of people shoot and kill each other every year, and cops aren't even involved in many of those incidents.As far as that mentality – that weaponising of the everyman – I'm reluctant to point the finger at some cultural bogeyman like video games or movies. I do think we mythologise violence, and also generally have a disastrous mental health system that means men – and it's almost always men – who shouldn't have guns, or maybe shouldn't even be on the street, are out there and armed. In the 80s and early-90s, when American crime rates were high, you could make the case that gun ownership was wise, or at least reasonable. But violent crime has plummeted in the United States over the last two decades.There's something also about how individualistic our culture is – the capitalist, Manifest Destiny impulse – that seems to encourage individuals to stock up on weaponry. Like, that cops and the army are militarised to the point of absurdity isn't enough. We need a gun in our house, too.
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It's been steadily getting safer to be a cop in America. We had 27 cops die because of felonies – i.e. people breaking the law – in 2013, according to FBI stats. That was down from 2012 and 2011, and the lowest total in about 50 years, if I'm recalling correctly. The number for 2014 is likely to be higher when the FBI releases it, but the fact is that police are very rarely killed by civilians, whereas police killings of civilians in 2013 was at a two-decade high of some 450 people [461, to be precise].
Annons
Racism is obviously central to American culture and history, and still very much a part of everyday life. And the legacy of formal, systematic discrimination means blacks are still disproportionately likely to be poor and living in cities where cops feel like they can do whatever they want. Even if an individual cop isn't bigoted, they might be interacting with black and brown people way more than whites. As far as black males, I think Americans are trained by TV news and pop culture to fear them, or at least be leery of them in a way they aren't anywhere else.What is policing like in small town America, where the race divide isn't so prevalent?
It's a more casual affair, in a lot of ways. Whites in suburbia and rural areas often know individual cops and have relationships with them. Using my own weird background in a resort town on eastern Long Island by way of example, it's not uncommon to hear about people ducking traffic tickets because they went to high school with the cop in question. But when you have mostly-white police forces in mostly-black areas, as in Ferguson, as in North Charleston – the site of the horrific incident [the shooting of Walter Scott] a couple of weeks ago – is when you seem to run into the most trouble.
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One of our staff writers is actually working on a story about that right now – like, why are reserve cops even a thing? I suspect it has something to do with austerity; that is, just as the EU has forced governments to cut back, many local and state governments have reduced spending after the financial crash and may have started to lean on volunteers more often. But again, we have a gun culture – deputising random men to take up arms is part of our history. You saw it in old Westerns like High Noon, and apparently you still see it now.
Annons
Gotcha. That sounds so reasonable and British!Aside from these racially-aggravated killings, what other scandals do the police in America tend to suffer from?
So there are non-killings that are still cases of brutality; beatings are common. Rodney King being one of the most notorious, back in 1991. And then there are corruption cases; in the US we have something called civil asset forfeiture, where cops can seize goods from criminals and, in some cases, they pocket cash, drugs, etc.
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Right, except in some cases lots of cops are involved. Philadelphia has had big issues with this, as have other cities. It's got to the point where the feds have recently begun changing the rules a bit to discourage cops from seizing stuff.Christ. Final question: have you ever had any run-ins with the police and, if so, how did you find them to deal with?
I have, but mostly in the context of driving rather than on the street. And I was incredibly privileged because I'm a) white, and b) from an upper-middle class background, which really does seem to make a difference in police encounters. Since I've been in New York City – about four years – I've basically had zero interaction, because cops don't aggressively patrol gentrified neighbourhoods inhabited by white creative-class types, like Williamsburg and the East Village. They spend their time in neighbourhoods like Flatbush, East New York and other parts of the city that have higher crime rates and are the sites of a lot of police brutality.
Annons