As a police officer, you swear an oath to uphold the US Constitution. If you believe a law is unconstitutional, you have an obligation to not enforce it. I know, that kind of autonomy and trust is foreign to non-USAers, but that's why this country is great.
This sort of thinking is, I think, pretty important. It is good if people feel responsible for following their oaths and professional obligations. This obviously depends on a personal interpretation of those obligations, so it will have to be performed by all us laymen. I don’t think, as some of the other comments here have pointed out, that the lack of legal training is a huge problem.
But that’s a personal obligation. And the obligation is not to simply not comply, it is to blow the whistle. You very well may be wrong about your interpretation of that oath, so the only answer is to, basically, bounce it to the populace and see what the people’s interpretation of that document is (might have to go through the news, courts, and politics to ultimately get the public’s opinion). This will likely be a career killer—it wouldn’t be an obligation, if following it was easy and cost-free!
This is not really what has happened here. In the NYC example: The police department is not an individual with an oath, it is a bureaucratic and legal entity that exists within a defined chain of command, it is supposed to comply with the laws that the government passes. In fact, if the department is asking individual officers to do something unethical by not following the law, the officers have an individual obligation to blow the whistle and not comply with the department.
In the SF strike: The police union is a labor entity, it exists to represent the interests of the members. The officers were not saying they were asked as police officers to do something unconstitutional, they were saying that the order to not strike or protest was unconstitutional. That has nothing to do with their oath.
>> If you believe a law is unconstitutional, you have an obligation to not enforce it.
This is so funny because police overwhelmingly do not seek any form of higher education & are given guns to kill people in weeks-months of training they’re essentially babied & coddled through.
Not a singular new police officer on the force in my small Ohio hometown took a singular advanced class in high school, and most of them legitimately got D’s and shit in basic US history class. These were my peers, some my friends. I know the level of their education and intellectual pursuits fairly well.
If we live in a nation where people have a developed world 6th-8th grade level education at best enforcing what they think is unconstitutional, we’re utterly unbelievably fucked.
Actually, it stems from the Nuremberg Trials, and actually having a goddamn moral compass.
If you're looking for something a bit more internal to the U.S., look no further than the original Declaration of Independence. While it may scare the bajeezus out of many, the responsibility for calling out governmental bullshit is vested solely with the People, and law enforcers are still People to.
Welcome to why the United States is "Home of the Brave". It takes courage to stick around in a melting pot of crazy, and you never really know who is coming to dinner, or how long the civility is going to hold out.
The issue here is that these departments are not complying with elected officials and laws. The individual has an obligation to not-comply a with an illegal order and blow the whistle so the public can weigh in. The department should faithfully implement the instructions of the public.
For example if the whole department really thinks that the requirement for the police to report their surveillance equipment is unconstitutional, they they should all quit and tell the public about this apparent grand violation of their right as police officers to secretly spy on the public.
>Actually, it stems from the Nuremberg Trials, and actually having a goddamn moral compass
It doesn't 'stem' from anywhere. It's just a right-wing thing to pretend that police have some unwritten ability to decide the legality of laws.
> While it may scare the bajeezus out of many, the responsibility for calling out governmental bullshit is vested solely with the People, and law enforcers are still People to.
Calling out 'governmental bullshit' is something they can do on their own time by practicing their 1st amendment rights. Choosing to not enforce a law because you don't like it is not free speech. It's job abandonment and should be treated as such.
If you think part of your job is morally wrong, you should quit.
>Calling out 'governmental bullshit' is something they can do on their own time by practicing their 1st amendment rights. Choosing to not enforce a law because you don't like it is not free speech. It's job abandonment and should be treated as such.
>If you think part of your job is morally wrong, you should quit.
Sometimes, quitting is just setting the stage for the next unscrupulous individual to come in and really muck things up where at least if you are still there, there's a brake, and a voice in the room. See the head of the Boston Office of the FBI. Those dead set on abusing power would prefer that all those principled people would just get out of the way to let them steamroll the populace or enact their designs.
>It doesn't 'stem' from anywhere. It's just a right-wing thing to pretend that police have some unwritten ability to decide the legality of laws.
It isn't a right wing thing. It's a fact of life. Lets say every cop isn't fine with law X. You say you'll dismiss every cop who won't enforce it. You start doing it. You fire cops in droves. You'll very quickly start running out of candidates for the job, or you'll find yourself having to make concessions elsewhere. In fact, if it's a lot of cops you get rid of, you may find yourself short of any degree of law enforcement. Anyone who has ever found themselves running a Department of a large organization will be familiar with the phenomena by which work to be done requires people to do it; and whereby if you don't have enough bodies to do it, it doesn't get done or is otherwise "pocket veto'd".
In reality, everyone has limited bandwidth to effect things in proximity to themselves every day. No one person can be everywhere at once. So you have to delegate. Ergo everyone you delegate to is a potential filter on what things actually get done. If they don't do it, and you can't, it ain't getting done.
As much as anyone wants to believe police are cogs... Really take the time to think on the fact that if they fon't do it, it doesn't get done. They are as much a part of setting what the law really is as the judges, juries, DA's that close the loop. I don't care what the law is on paper. I care about what the cop in closest proximity to me thinks about it.
And as far as policing the police? Internal Affairs, much like Quality Assurance in software, is a bitch. No one likes it when you're really doing your job, friends are few, and the politics and potential for undermining is ungodly. You alone are tasked with handling the banality of your own group objectively every damn day, and it wears on you.
>Sometimes, quitting is just setting the stage for the next unscrupulous individual to come in and really muck things up where at least if you are still there, there's a brake, and a voice in the room
Then don't quit and do your job. Simply not doing the job you are paid to do isn't an option. There are parts of my job that I do that I don't agree with. Its called life.
>Those dead set on abusing power would prefer that all those principled people would just get out of the way to let them steamroll the populace or enact their designs.
This is rich. The NYPD is abusing their power. This isn't some valient cops sticking up for us. It's criminals who want to continue to act in a criminal manner.
>It isn't a right wing thing.
Yes it is
>Lets say every cop isn't fine with law X. You say you'll dismiss every cop who won't enforce it. You start doing it. You fire cops in droves. You'll very quickly start running out of candidates for the job, or you'll find yourself having to make concessions elsewhere. In fact, if it's a lot of cops you get rid of, you may find yourself short of any degree of law enforcement.
I mean yes, you are just describing how police hold the public hostage to avoid accountability. That doesn't make it okay for them to do it.
>Then don't quit and do your job. Simply not doing the job you are paid to do isn't an option. There are parts of my job that I do that I don't agree with. Its called life.
Nope. To hell with that. Paying me buys my time. It does not buy unthinking compliance. It does not get you my integrity. It gets my sense of right and wrong, my knowledge, my skills oriented on furthering whatever it is you're doing as long as you're keeping it clean. Cross the line, and as the best equipped person to dig in and drag your ass back, you will find yourself square in my sights. "Go lynch the darkies." "Go do some transparently corrupt BS." I will not follow those orders, and I won't get out of the way to let you find someone else more willing to do it for you. You want to do it anyway? Good. Fire me. The ensuing scandal will amuse me greatly. You think you can weather it? Good for you. Maybe you can, but it won't be at the expense of turning my back on what I know to be right. You don't get to cherry pick for the next unscrupled piece of meat while I'm around. Evil is that which is left in the void created by the inaction of Good people.
>This is rich. The NYPD is abusing their power. This isn't some valient cops sticking up for us. It's criminals who want to continue to act in a criminal manner.
Yes. They are. Arguably because either all the principled cops followed ypur advice/caved to the pressure to make their Brothers in Blue's lives easier and have stopped fighting to keep the PD above board, or you've made the job so impossible to reconcile or do in a legit manner, that the only ones attracted to it anymore are more into the power fantasy in the first place, and not genuinely in there to keep the peace or serve the cause of Justice.
>Yes it is
>I mean yes, you are just describing how police hold the Public hostage to avoid accountability.
That's cute, but no, wrong. The police are part of the Public. Posse comitatus, remember? Who do you think you're hiring from, huh? You can't force squat beyond the capabilities of convincing a group of prople to do violence on your behalf. Whether that is the police force in question, or some other group; coercion and capitulation happens only at the tip of a weapon used in anger, no matter the form. If you put them in opposition to you; you have no position of legitimacy or power when the people expected to be the instrumentality of that authority do not align with you. They are the ones willing to even attempt to do the damn job.
So again. You want it done, but nobody is willing to do it. This isn't their problem, this is your problem. You can shout and curse, and deny that all you want. You aren't, at the end of the day, entitled to anyone else to put their skin on the line to provide you a Police force tailored to your liking. No one owes you that. We've run and organized them out of a common interest and recognition that not making them causes more strife in the long run. That still doesn't mean anyone is beholden to them (the Police), or that they (those making up the Force) are beholden to anyone beyond their own sense of obligation. They are fundamentally volunteers.
What are you going to do anyway, make Police unions illegal? Oh wait... I mean, the Federal government thinks that making collective bargaining by anyone inconvenient illegal is going to work out for them in the long run. All it does is prove to more and more people that Leadership is completely out of touch with reality, though.
>Right wing thinking
If you think that something that can be extrapolated simply by observing the mechanics of how human beings collectively organize to get things done is "right wing"; well, I guess that's on you. Tell ya what though. See an awful lot of rich people evading taxes, and not a whole lot of skilled IRS agents to go after them. See an awful lot of "less than legal" decisions made in many tech businesses, but hardly any prosecution. I see a heck of a lot of drug crimes leading to convictions... But golly gee, it seems the investigators responsible for handling police misconduct are frequently blue-balled, limp wristed, under-funded, and not exactly generating the highest rate of evicting corrupt actors from the force.
Sure seems to me like there is indeed, a difference between the law as written, and the law as enforced. Note, I'm not saying they align with me, or I align with them. I'm simply stating de facto law is the law only in so much as the rank and file, the boots on the ground, enforce it; period. If that weren't the case, you'd never see things like Sanctuary cities.
Life is not black and white. Politics encompasses all that gray in between, and as much as it may frustrate you, not one cop on the force is there without their oen unique prioritization about what is worth enforcing and what isn't. If you think you can do a better job, with a group of like-minded people to yourself, then do it. Start up a competitor to the NYPD. Challenge them. Shake them up. Until you are angry enough to do so, nothing will change. Even if you do, nothing will fundamentally change about any of my points though; because each of your group of Big Apple PD will prioritize your particular umwelts of law enforcement, and let the rest slide as unable to be enforced, or not ultimately worth it, just like the NYPD ultimately does.
Welcome to life. You only have one, and ultimately, you are the one responsible for everything you do in it. Employed or not. You don't get to dodge respondibility for you deciding to do something fucked up because someone else told you to, and happened to be paying you at the time. Your responsibility to be a decent, morally upstanding person comes first. Your failure to do so is no one else's fault but your own. No one said it was easy, or that the battles would be fun, or come at a convenient time, or that any of us will see all of what we want to see done, done. What gets done, generally does so because a lot of people made the best tradeoffs they knew/felt they could make to do the right thing to them at time. We can have a lively argument about the relative merits of one view vs. another; that's politics. I'm pretty sure though, that unless you're willing to take the reins from those you're dissatisfied with the performance of without sacrificing the performance of any other duties you have in life, then the amount of change you're going to realize trends toward whatever everyone else is willing to throw you a bone in terms of making happen in your stead.
As a police officer you also typically have a high school education, and your idea of whether or not something is constitutional carries little to no weight.
Not to poopoo your train of thought but I wouldn't put any faith in someone that's college educated having a better understanding of constitutionality either. Most college degrees are useless now, with the majority of college grads being roughly as educated as the average high school grad a couple of decades ago. And the majority of the ones that do actually hold any value don't give you much expertise on Constitutional law.
That would have been relevant if they were at least consistent about it. But, somehow, stuff like asset forfeiture or stop and frisk is never "unconstitutional" as far as cops are concerned, while stuff like publishing reports on their activities or removing qualified immunity suddenly is.
