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Criminal Justice Ethics

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Police and politics

a
William Ker Muir Jr.
a
Professor of Political Science , University of California , Berkeley
Published online: 01 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: William Ker Muir Jr. (1983) Police and politics, Criminal Justice Ethics, 2:2, 3-9, DOI:
10.1080/0731129X.1983.9991725

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 Police and Politics I 3
ARTICLES
Police and Politics
WILLIAM KER MUIR, JR.
I want to inquire about democracy and the police role
in it. I do not mean democracy in its broadest sense, of
social and psychological equality. I speak of democracy
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in the narrow sense of a procedure by which voters, or
half of them, expel their political leaders when they are
discontented. Democracy is civilized extortion.1 It en-
ables the people to threaten the careers of government
leaders who fail to respond to the concerns of the rank
and file. It is not a perfect system. It does not guaran-
tee that our leaders will behave wisely, with a view to
the long run and to the subtle consequences of public
policy. But democracy does evoke responsiveness very
effectively. Most of our leaders put their fingers to the
public pulse and energetically remedy the most minor
individual plaints. If democracy is not a panacea for all
our social ills, it is hard to think of a better mechanism
for making the politically powerful pay attention to the
specific needs of their people.
I want to question the wisdom of discouraging
police officers from actively participating in the demo-
cratic process. In fact, I want to urge police officers,
collectively as well as individually, to engage vigor-
ously in elective politics: Join political parties, enter
into coalitions, become a part of political clubs, write to
newspapers, work for candidates, and run for office
themselves if it pleases them. (This assumes, of
course, that these activities are not prohibited by "Lit-
tle Hatch Acts.")
In a country where some of our most distinguished
mayors are former police officers—I think of Tom
Bradley of Los Angeles and Bennie DiLieto of New
Haven, for example—one might ask, so what's new? I
William Ker Muir, Jr., author of Police: Streetcorner
Politicians, is Professor of Political Science at the University
of California, Berkeley.
Summer/Fall 1983
believe, however, that police participation in politics is
widely suspect, as much by police officers themselves
as by the public. The past is replete with abuses of
policing when mixed up in politics, summed up in
Robert Fogelson's phrase that big city police were once
"adjuncts of the political machine." 2 Police de-
partments did the dirty work of hounding political op-
position, and police appointments and promotions
were the stakes of urban politics.
/ want to urge police officers, collectively
as well as individually, to engage
vigorously in elective politics.
I think the current tradition of police abstinence
from politics—the remedy for those early abuses—is
itself corrupting. It makes officers feel guilty for engag-
ing or wanting to engage in the political process even
though, as I will argue, their participation in the politi-
cal mainstream would be appropriate and useful. I
think it would be better for police to be inspired by
their open experiences in politics than to be made to
feel corrupt by covert participation. The morality of an
ethic that forbids police political activity should be put
in question.
There are three modern arguments against police
activity in politics. I shall explore each one of them and
then look at some of the possible benefits which could
result if police were to become politically active. Fi-
nally, I shall sketch out a set of conditions under which
it might be possible to realize those benefits while at
the same time avoiding the dangers of police entering
the democratic process.
 William Ker Muir, Jr. I 4
Arguments Against Police Participation in Politics
The first argument is that political involvement of
police is unnecessary. This argument depends on a
view of the police as being exclusively interested in the
laws and procedures of the criminal justice system.
Criminal justice, as a matter of democratic theory, is a
most peculiar area of domestic public policy because
one of the significant groups affected by it is purposely
disenfranchised and denied the right to participate in
the making of legislation. Criminals, or at least con-
victed felons, do not vote, do not enjoy the freedom of
assembly, and cannot lobby. They are democracy's
outcasts—legitimately so, I believe—but nonetheless
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they lack democratic power. Arguably they are vicar-
iously represented through agents like defense coun-
sel and ACLU members who do vote, but we have
learned much about the limits of indirect representa-
tion. Our colonial forebears never thought that they
were particularly well-represented by their old friends
and neighbors back home in Great Britain. Similarly, a
wife of yesterday whose husband was the only voter in
the family felt less powerful than the wife of today
who can vote for herself. Virtual representation by
somebody else is not equivalent to representing one-
self. At least when faced with adverse groups who can
vote, organize, and lobby, the disenfranchised seem to
be at a definite disadvantage. In a democracy voters
outnumber nonvoters. What makes depoliticizing
police seem acceptable is the notion that the natural
political adversaries of cops are criminals, and since
Police withdrawal from politics may be a
cause of suspicion, not a remedy for it.
criminals do not vote, police do not have to have effec-
tive use of the ballot to countervail against them.
That argument obviously asserts too much. By its
spirit law-abiding citizens should not vote either.
Moreover, the argument imputes to police too limited
an interest in public policy. And, finally, a democracy
is wrong to deny a group the right to have political
experience because the group's political adversaries
are weak. Rather, we should redress democratic im-
Criminal Justice Ethics
balances by seeing that the currently disenfranchised
get representation, either directly or, in the last resort,
indirectly, so that the healthy competition of pitting
ideas and interests against one another can take place.
The second argument against police participation in
politics is that it endangers police legitimacy. Politics
erodes police authority on the street. Here, I believe,
the heart of the argument is that discipline, by which is
meant fidelity to the Chief's orders, is crucial in main-
taining a police department which the public will want
to obey. Legitimacy depends on the public's percep-
tion of the autonomy of policing from partisan and
selfish forces. By autonomy, I refer to the notion that
police officers should have a qualified supremacy with-
in their sphere of competence—say, apprehending
criminals—in exchange for which they subordinate
themselves to political decisions in all other spheres.3
This autonomy depends on the separation of politics
and police administration. Unless police officers main-
tain that separation—unless they are loyal to the Chief
who assures their political neutrality—police lose the
public's trust. Were the rank-and-file police officer to
undertake political activity and jump the gap separat-
ing precinct and ward, the Chief's authority would be
undermined. Political activity would permit police
officers to bypass their Chief and deal with politicians
who have no understanding of police autonomy and
its importance in eliciting public acceptance of law
enforcement. The rebuttal to this argument is twofold:
first, sometimes a Chief's authority can be streng-
thened by the necessity of rebutting public challenges
to it. And second, acceptance of police in the commu-
nity may be enhanced if police take a vigorous part in
community affairs, including its politics. Police with-
drawal from politics—behind the Blue Curtain, as it
used to be called—may be a cause of suspicion, not a
remedy for it.
The third reason against police political participation
is that it is dangerous to democratic processes. Police
have an investigatory power and have access to police
intelligence which can be used to harass and blackmail
political opponents. Police frighten and intimidate
people in politics. They have a chilling effect. This
argument is crucial, valid, and has been substantiated
by sad experience in the American past and in every
 Police and Politics I 5
region of the country. The proper question, however,
is whether there are conditions under which a nation
could contain the dangers of police intimidation with
less drastic means than a blanket prohibition of police
Advantages of Police Participation
I shall now examine some advantages of police
participation in the democratic process, and, in doing
so, shall assess whether the benefits justify the effort
of developing new and less restrictive limits on police
political action. I shall count as beneficial any result
which serves one or more of three goals—improved
public policy, enhanced public understanding, and
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better police ethics. In terms of these goals, I want to
discuss seven advantages resulting from police enter-
ing the electoral process.
First, police participation neutralizes an inherent
weakness in democratic decision-making: the problem
of the dispersed benefit. Let me first illustrate and then
discuss what I mean by that phrase. Typically, cities
today are faced with funding choices like this: Should
Berkeley, California close down a neighborhood fire-
house, or should it instead scrap a successful police
training program? There is not enough money to pay
for both. If we let the public hear debate and then
decide whether to maintain the firehouse or the train-
ing program, notice what happens. The advantages of
the firehouse are concentrated upon and are directly
seen by a small, distinct fraction of the public, namely
the neighborhood. The benefit of good police training,
on the other hand, is widely dispersed, accruing in
subtle ways to the entire public—every neighborhood.
If neither the fire fighters nor the police officers are
permitted to participate in the public decision, the fire-
house is going to win out, and the training program
will be scrapped. Why? Because no group with an in-
tense interest in saving police training will form to
countervail against the intensely interested neighbor-
hood group working to save the firehouse. The fire
fighters can count on their neighborhood group to
carry their water, so to speak, to fight in their behalf.
The police have no civilian group that feels equally
intensely about the endangered nature of the training
program. There will be a mismatch in the group con-
flict of that city, or at least there will be unless the
police themselves—the only group on whom the loss
Summer/Fall 1983
from politicking. To put the same question in different
words, if we believe there are substantial benefits in
allowing police to participate, are there ways in which
we can minimize the dangers of letting them do so?
of the training program is concentrated—have a
chance to enter the public debate. Democratic policy-
making characteristically depends on those who really
care. Group conflict can produce good policy only if all
intensely caring groups battle for their choices. Ban a
group from participation, and the position it would
advocate, even were it the better one and the one pre-
ferred by the majority, may lose for lack of an intense
protagonist. Exclude any group, including the police,
Police participation neutralizes
an inherent weakness in
democratic decision-making: the
problem of the dispersed benefit.
from a democratic process which depends on group
conflict, and real policy mistakes are likely.
Second, a ban on politics means that police are ban-
ned from political campaigns. But political campaigns
are the public's best chance to learn about public
affairs. Restrict the public to getting information about
police problems to noncampaign times, and the public
will never get the message. Political campaigns con-
centrate editors' minds wonderfully and compel them
to send reporters into topics normally neglected. Edi-
tors' decisions on what is news turn on what the public
wants to learn. And what the public wants to learn is
linked invariably to purpose. People will generally find
the time to learn if their need to make an electoral
decision gives them reason for learning the specifics of
an issue. Let a police spokesperson explain between
campaigns the social implications of limited police re-
sources, and editors' eyes will glaze over. Come the
campaign, and this becomes news because it is grist for
a political battle in which the public is interested. For
practical purposes, campaign time is the crucial time
 William Ker Muir, Jr. I 6
for public education. Police participation in campaigns
assures that the public will learn something about
police matters.
Which brings us to a third advantage of police po-
litical participation. What makes campaigns interesting
is that they are competitive. Competition gives in-
formation its edge. Campaigns galvanize groups to do
// police do not participate in political
campaigns, many matters may go
uncontested, to the disadvantage
of all the interest groups.
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better homework, address tougher questions, shed
more of their parochialism, and become more interest-
ing and pertinent to other groups than when there is
no contest. Police are sometimes the best available
adversaries. Police may be the best challengers of
groups like the NAACP, the ACLU, neighborhood
associations, and merchant groups. If police do not
participate in political campaigns, many matters may
go uncontested, to the disadvantage of all the interest
groups.
Fourth, police associations faced with winning
general elections function very differently than if they
deal only with departmental problems. In any police
association there are conservatives and liberals, liber-
tarians and egalitarians. There are also police members
who have a sensitive understanding of the public and
ones who have only a limited and parochial public
awareness. If an association is working on a general
election campaign, it will need those members who are
publicly conscious: Good, public-minded leaders be-
come valuable. The structure of incentives within an
association engaged in a public political campaign sub-
tly alters, and those members who can walk in the
public's shoes will be welcomed as association leaders.
An association reaching out for public acceptance is
going to prize leadership from a different and, I think,
a less insular kind of police officer than an association
whose constituency is exclusively its own member-
ship.
The fifth advantage of political participation is that it
encourages officers to reside in the city they police. A
police officer who chooses to live outside the city in
which he works has little electoral influence over his
Criminal Justice Ethics
municipal employer. In contrast, an officer who re-
sides and works in the same city is going to be taken
more seriously by elected officials because he can vote
and can rally his friends and neighbors to vote. If,
however, he is forbidden to participate in city politics,
he has little more clout than his colleagues who live in
a suburb. In that case, on purely political grounds, it
makes little difference to an officer where he chooses
to live. I believe it has been a goal of some police critics
to get officers to reside in the city they police. The
means by which these critics would enforce com-
pliance with this goal offends my notion of freedom of
choice. Cops, I have always thought, ought to be able
to choose with impunity where they live: For example,
police families with children should be free to opt for
suburban schools and large backyards if they wish. It
is just better that way. But allowing officers freely to
make residential choices they care about does not
mean that we should refrain from encouraging the
truly indifferent to live where they police. If police po-
litical participation were no longer a taboo, there
would be an incentive for police officers to reside local-
ly. My belief is that the chance to participate politically
would tilt many police officers toward residing in the
city where they work.
Sixth, police who practice politics develop skills they
can profitably use on the street. Talking is an obvious
example. Learning to negotiate, to build coalitions in
support of complicated solutions, to persevere, and to
empathize are skills of politics which have obvious
application to good police work.
Seventh, political participation dissipates cynicism,
the major disease of police work. Cynicism means that
police think and behave according to three philo-
sophical assumptions. First, cynical thought divides
the world between the good and the bad. Cynics lose
Another advantage of political
participation is that it encourages officers
to reside in the city they police.
their common sense, the sense of the universalism of
human nature. Second, cynicism is a world view in
which individual fortune is seen as solely the result of
free will: The victim is the cause of his victimization,
and success comes to those who are smart enough to
seek it. Third, in the cynical ethic the secret of happi-
 Police and Politics I 7
ness is extreme individualism: Detach oneself from a
concern for others, and one attains true self-control.
These three themes of cynicism—dualistic human
n a t u r e , extreme i n d i v i d u a l i s m , and moral
indifference—bespeak an adaptation to powerless-
ness. Cynicism is the natural response of police offi-
cers because of all occupations policing brings in-
dividuals closer to recurrent and unpreventable
tragedy. Cynicism can be dissipated by education and
training and accumulated experience. The cynic
philosophy can be neutralized by what has been called
a tragic perspective—a philosophy which holds that
good and bad inhere in each of us, that self-control is
an important but not exclusive determinant of man's
fate, and that life is meaningful only if we give a damn
about others, no matter how such concern hurts. 4
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Tragedy, not being avoidable, must be confronted and
redeemed by the wisdom we take from it. Because
police confront much more tragedy than the rest of us,
the lessons of compassion and moral courage are much
harder, and much more important, for police to learn.
Politics can—and does—teach the themes of the tragic
perspective. Politics is the mating of strange bed-
fellows; in building the coalitions necessary to demo-
cratic success we have our noses rubbed in the
common sense that all individuals aspire and need
meaning. One learns in politics how to effect changes
and modify circumstances so that new possibilities
arise. Finally, in politics one learns that only in associa-
Countering the Threat of Police Extortion
No matter these substantial advantages, however,
they would not be worth the attaining if police began
to practice political extortion. If we removed the taboo
on police political activity and police used the author-
ity of office to intimidate political opposition, we
would have been very foolish to relent on the taboo of
police politicking. How can we guarantee that police
will not be politically abusive? I have three sugges-
tions. One involves diligence on the part of journalists,
the second an external police review board, and the
third professional training.
First/diligence on the part of journalists. It is com-
mon practice for news media to cover police activity by
assigning a single reporter to the police blotter. In my
experience the invariable result is that the reporter be-
comes sympathetic with the police and sometimes be-
Summer/Fall 1983
tion with others—persuading and caring about them—
can important social ideas be realized.
Politics, in short, takes police out of their precinct
stations and their daily preoccupations with the mor-
bid side of life. In politics police touch base with per-
sons of every walk of life. Politics teaches police where
the newspaper is and also teaches them how to use the
Cynicism is the natural response of police
officers because of all occupations policing
brings individuals closer to recurrent
and unpreventable tragedy.
power of the pen. They master the craft of making an
argument which touches the minds and hearts of a
heterogeneous public, and, in seeking to persuade
others, they find themselves accepting the premises of
a free society.
These are not inconsequential benefits—correcting
interest group imbalances, educating the public, im-
proving the level of public debate, galvanizing the
most public-minded members of the police depart-
ment to take on leadership responsibilities, encourag-
ing police to reside in the city they police, enhancing
street skills, and abating cynicism.
comes reciprocally implicated with them: The police
facilitate the reporter's writing tasks in exchange for a
selectively blind eye. That is understandable and dif-
ficult to change. If an antidote to offset this effect is
necessary, the antidote is competition. Newspapers
must assign another reporter to cover police activities
from a community point of view. Let the ambition of
the community police reporter counter the ambition of
the departmental police reporter. That is the American
way; and, if the experience of the Oakland Tribune a
few years back is an indication, it works. In 1979 a
number of citizens were killed by the Oakland police in
a relatively brief time. Tensions really heightened. The
editor of the Tribune, Robert Maynard, assigned one
reporter to the department and the police association
and a second reporter to cover the citizenry and its
 William Ker Muir, ]r. I 8
reaction to the police department. These competing
police reporters complemented one another so effec-
tively that their articles facilitated understanding be-
tween the department and the community, and a
mutually tolerable solution was developed and
implemented—a civilian complaint review board. The
point is that two reporters are better than one, that
keeping tabs on the police requires both a sympathetic
and a critical grasp and that sympathy and criticism are
incompatible requirements if one person has to fulfill
them both. Unless it would be devastating not to do
so, few newspapers will allot two reporters to police
services. We tolerate the condition of the captive police
reporter when police are not actively in politics. But if
police begin to play a more active political part, the
captive reporter would then be a real hazard because
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he would not blow the whistle if police became
dangerous and began to hound political opposition.
A second condition: I think a price police organiza-
tions may properly be asked to pay for political
participation is the establishment of an external review
process where public complaints against the police can
be openly heard and adjudicated. For conventional
police misbehavior, an external review is an in-
adequate substitute for a strong internal review proc-
ess. In practice, some external review of police abuse is
probably a valuable adjunct to a system of internal re-
view because through public hearings the citizenry
A price police organizations may properly
be asked to pay for political participation
is the establishment of an external review
process where public complaints
against the police can be
openly heard and adjudicated.
and newspersons come to understand the complexity
of good police work. External review ends up
legitimating good internal review of police abuse. But
with charges of police political wrongdoing, external
review is indispensable. Only an external review board
consisting of civilians can act credibly because it alone
can hear charges in public. When police political mis-
behavior is charged, only public hearings will effec-
tively appear to do justice and restore public confi-
Criminal Justice Ethics
dence in the fairness of the police and the political
process.
The third condition is better training of police. Police
must be made to feel that they are professionals and
not flunky labor. One Oakland, California police offi-
cer had a term for officers who lack adequate human
skills to manipulate human affairs: "Basement cops"
was what he called such poorly trained police. They
sat around downstairs in the station's locker rooms
and groused about the bad policies imposed on them
from above, from upstairs, by the Chief or the judges
or the Mayor. They lacked the political insight to an-
alyze and alter bad policies through acceptable chan-
nels. They were angry at their impotence and their
indignity. Good police training must consist of build-
ing confidence in police officers to seek policy change
through legitimate means including political
participation—so long as it stays within the democratic
rules of the game. Can such training succeed? The past
tells us so. Modern cops have been trained to think
that political activity is illegitimate, and they have
accepted that taboo as part of their police responsibil-
ity. They then can be trained to think that scrupulous
political activity is ethical, while accepting the fact that
the practice of political extortion is out of line.
I have left unspoken additional conditions which
make police participation beneficial nowadays when it
was not desirable earlier in the century. These con-
ditions have already been attained to a significant
degree—an activist judiciary and a watchful de-
fendant's bar to represent the disenfranchised convict
in the rough and tumble of interest group conflict, the
security of police tenure provided by civil service, the
decline of the urban political machine, the increased
education of the public and of police officers them-
selves, public budegetary and accounting techniques,
the general enhancement of political ethics, the
nationalizing of professional police standards, and a
Federal Bureau of Investigation to enforce national
civil rights protections against local police. Ticking off
these relatively new developments may help remind
us that circumstances do change and that old taboos
which were once appropriate may come to be counter-
productive.
A few years ago, when the egalitarian ethic was
sweeping America, it was sometimes said that the
measure of a civilization is how it treats its worst off,
its miserables. I take a more libertarian point of view.
The mark of a civilization is how well its police officers
have breathed and absorbed the spirit of liberty—how
 The Justifiability of Hollow-Point Bullets I 9
deeply the guardians of the social order of a free soci-
ety understand the philosophy of this remarkable, arti-
ficially contrived open society in which tolerance of
others' differences is demanded and diversity and dis-
agreement and individual self-discipline are cele-
brated. Police are the guardians of our civil liberties.
Long before the lawyer and the judge enter the pic-
ture, the cop is at the scene, protecting the wife, the
unpopular neighbor, the political pariah, the bullied.
Police rub shoulders with the world and in doing so
can rub their notions of fairness and justice and power
NOTES
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1 Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950, 3rd edition), p. 272:
". . . electorates normally do not control their political lead-
ers in any way except by refusing to reelect them . . . "
2 Robert M. Fogelson, Big-City Police (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 13.
3 Philippe Nonet and Philip Selznick, Law and Society in Tran-
The Justifiability of
Hollow-Point Bullets
JAMES B. BRADY
The choice of weapon systems by police departments
raises complex and controversial ethical and technical
issues. The ethical questions center on the circum-
stances in which it is legitimate for officers to use force
against individuals and on the particular types and de-
grees of force that are permissible in different situa-
tions. The technical questions concern the ethically
James B. Brady is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the
State University of New York at Buffalo.
Summer/Fall 1983
off onto the citizenry they meet. Police officers are the
great teachers of liberty to the poor. They have an un-
equaled opportunity to show the downtrodden and
the momentarily despairing how to cope in a free
country. As such, they must partake of all the elevat-
ing experiences of democratic man, including active
participation in party politics. They must be drawn out
of their confinement to the basements of the precinct
stations and into the vitalizing and inspiring and con-
fusing world of a free people attempting to govern
itself.
sition: Toward Responsive Law (New York: Harper & Row,
1978), p. 58.
4 Richard P. Sewell, The Vision of Tragedy (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1959); William Ker Muir, Jr., Police: Street-
corner Politicians (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1977), p. 178.
relevant properties of different weapons and different
kinds of ammunition—their accuracy, their "stopping
power," the harm they cause to their intended targets,
and the danger they pose to innocent bystanders. It is
not surprising, therefore, that the decision to adopt a
particular weapon or ammunition is often a con-
troversial one.
The controversy over the use of the hollow-point
bullet1 is a prime example. In much public debate on
this issue, factual disagreements about the characteris-
tics of hollow-point ammunition have been in-