Trust is Always Earned and Never Just Given

"The most erroneous stories are those we think we know the best - and therefore never scrutinize or question."

--Stephen Jay Gould--

"Anyone who goes through life trusting people without making sure that they are worthy of trust is a fool."

--Elizabeth Aston--

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

--Abraham Lincoln--

There are few things scarier to experience than to run into a thug late at night that has a problem with you and is hell bent on starting a fight or some sort of physical confrontation.  It is even more scary when that thug is accompanied by one or more of his "boys" that are ready, willing, and able to back the thug up no matter what happens.  And it is even scarier when that thug is wearing a gun and a badge.  Unfortunately, that situation happens from time to time and the main reason it does continue to happen is that we allow it.

I want to be crystal clear.  The purpose of this article is not to trash the overwhelming number of good, decent, and fair police officers that do their jobs everyday without incident.  Nor is the purpose of this article to hang a police officer that may have made a mistake due to a momentary lapse of judgment.  It is to bring the root issue out in the open and to deal with it.

A few weeks ago two cases where police officers who were accused of abusing their authority or flat out just breaking the law the officers were either acquitted or were found guilty but given no jail time. In the one case, the officers were acquitted because the judge (it was a bench trial so there was no jury) took the police officers' word over the several alleged victims in the case.  In the other case, the judge decided that the justice would not be best served by sending the police officer to prison since it was his first felony conviction.

I am not going to go on record saying that either case was decided wrong or sentenced incorrectly. Unlike many pundits with a political agenda or a philosophical bias, I accept the decision of the court -- especially since there is nothing that I know about the case that would indicate the court got it wrong. However, both cases are illustrative of the root cause of police brutality in Cook County.  It is blind, wishful, or negligent trust.

As a criminal defense attorney, I have tried my share of cases where the evidence against my client was essentially the police officer's word against my client's word.  The prosecutor, judge, and jury typically assume that the police have no reason to lie so they take his/her word as gospel truth.  I am not naive or deluded enough to assert that every client I have represented told me the truth or was innocent.  However, I have seen on more than one occasion cases that rested solely on the word of a police officer that was marginal at best and a bad piece of fiction at worst.  Yet, in those rare cases the prosecutor still went ahead with the case just as vehemently as they did in cases where the evidence was not so suspect.  And what is even more disturbing, members of the jury and judges here in Cook County tend to be like the prosecutors in that they tend to believe whatever the police say.

This is a problem because it sets police officers and the public up for failure.  Police officers are human, which means that most will fall into the old saying that "power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely."  We should grant police officers power with limits, instead of limitless power until they mess with the politically connected or economically advantaged.  

We as a society want rough, tough, no nonsense people to be police officers.  We want men and women that are not afraid or hesitant to "mix it up" if that is what is required.  However, we want the police to only behave that way towards criminals.  When we interact with the police we want sound judgment, restraint, and patience.  Well, there is another saying that "virtue is a product of habit."

What happens when the police act human -- meaning that they (like the vast majority of human beings) have biases against certain groups of people or they have a bad day and take it out on someone or what if they can not tell the guilty from the innocent?  What happens then?  Bad things happen.  Therefore instead of them being addressed right away when they may be small incidents or minor inconveniences they go unaddressed and covered up because we as citizens want to place blind, wishful, or negligent trust in the police.  This leads the police officer, who is only human, to believe that he/she can do anything and get away with it so by the time they are held accountable it is due to a big, nasty, and potentially tragic incident.

The African-American community is no different than any other community.  We would like to turn a blind eye to police brutality.  We would like to place blind, wishful, and negligent trust in every police officer we meet.  But we do not get to live in a fantasy world because to many of us, our family members, or our friends have experienced a police officer that has abused his/her power and created an unjust, unfair, or uncomfortable situation.

However, there is a solution to the problem.  It is called accountability.  We must require or mayors, city council members, aldermen, the governor, etc. to create and/or maintain an independent and credible agency that watches the police and holds them accountable.  We also must not allow politicians and judges to hide behind the myth that the only way to demonstrate their commitment to law and order is to be an unconditional crony of the Fraternal Order of the Police or to always side with the police regardless of the situation -- just as we must not allow politicians, preacher politicians, and racial opportunists to always use the police as scape goats in order to get a couple of seconds of air time on TV.

It is time to take the blinders off.  Trust is always earned.  It is never given.  It is about time we the people started thinking for ourselves and required our public servants (i.e. the police and politicians) to maintain an environment of trust through accountability.

That is my view.  What is yours?  Submit your response to avgbrother@yahoo.com.  I will post the best response to this article on Thursday evening.  Or you can post a comment.