Are the days of Officer Friendly behind us?
The way the people interact with police has entered a new paradigm.
A little more than a week ago, police in Hawthorne, Calif., shot a dog. The police were conducting business regarding armed robbery suspects. According to police, a man parked nearby and exited the car with a Rottweiler on a leash.
Witness videos uploaded to YouTube detail what happened next. The man, who seems to be intent on videotaping police, throws indistinguishable words at the cops. Police move to arrest him, and he places the Rottweiler in the car with the windows rolled down. The Rottweiler begins barking at cops as they cart off his owner. He becomes free of the car and runs up to the group. An officer draws his weapon, the dog leaps, and four shots are fired into the Rottweiler.
Few will disagree that drawing a weapon was the appropriate thing for an officer to do in such a situation, but some might question whether the use of lethal force was merited. Couldn’t the cops just have used a stun gun on the dog?
The major question behind this case is whether the cops should have bothered arresting the man in the first place. After all, the dog would probably not be dead, if not for that.
One of the witness videos exploded to receive almost 5 million views on YouTube as of print. Also, a www.change.org petition calling for the prosecution of the cops has received more than 97,000 supporters. For their own safety, the cops have been removed from the streets after numerous death threats.
With stories of police abuse revealed nearly every day, it may seem surprising that this story was one that exploded. Even so, it does underscore a shift in power. The Internet fundamentally changes interactions between police and the people. At its root, it changes how quickly and how broadly ideas can spread.
Whereas 20 or even 10 years ago police may have felt and been seen as indomitable. Now, they are checked regularly by the people. Whenever someone pulls out a camera phone, that little lens might be the eye through which millions view a situation replayed. And these little camera eyes are everywhere. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey even has an app in which uploaded videos are sent to an external server where police can’t delete the file.
But what some get even more frustrated about is, police seem to be regularly held to a different standard than the rest of society. So when police are consistently let off the hook with a little more than a slap on the wrist, where any normal citizen would receive harsh punishment, this stirs resentment. Every time a cop is recognized by someone as doing anything unlawful and getting away with it, whether it be murder or merely running a stop sign, it further stirs that resentment.
There are three things the people could do to remedy the situation. The first is to continue to peacefully exercise their rights by reminding police that they are being watched — and potentially by a lot of people. The second is to support all of the others who have faced police abuse. The third is to vote for people who see our point of view.
