First, it is laudable that you are teaching your son respect for the police and other authority figures. However, a better lesson might be that it is the government the police serve that should be respected. The police are merely a representative of a government formed by the people for the people—for all people. Being respectful of the government would mean being respectful of all persons, no matter what their views.This is generally my sense of how policing should be done. The point is not to administer punishments, but to ensure the common peace. This is especially true in difficult moments, when it requires care and discretion.
Later, it might be good to point out that the government needs to be, and is, somewhat flexible, especially in situations where there are minor violations of law. A government that had zero tolerance for even minor infractions would prove unworkable in short order....
In the year 2013, our officers made over four hundred thousand vehicle stops, mostly for traffic violations. A citation was issued in only about one in six of those stops. Five of the six received warnings. This is the police exercising discretion for minor violations of the law. Few, if any, persons would argue that the police should have no discretion. This is an explanation you might give your son.... Nashville, and all of America, will be even more diverse when your son becomes an adult. Certainly, tolerance, respect and consideration for the views of all persons would be valuable attributes for him to take into adulthood.
An Excellent Example from Nashville PD
While the civic culture in New York shows troubling signs, we might take some comfort from this letter from the chief of the Nashville, TN police. He is responding to a citizen concerned by the protests arising from the several recent cases of civilian deaths at police hands resulting in no indictments. The citizen worries that the police failure to stop the demonstrations is eroding faith in public order as the demonstrations are often cases of trespassing, leading to a spectacle of the police being cowed into not enforcing the law. Not so, the chief says:
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6 comments:
I enjoyed reading that.
http://21stcenturywire.com/2013/10/04/obama-bodyguards-dc-cops-gunned-down-unarmed-black-woman-where-is-al-sharpton/
This got brushed under the conspiracy cover up table though.
Grim, I've always struggled with this- from both sides. As the son of an auditor for the Catholic Archidiocese, adhering to the rules was always seen as important in it's own right- but of course, life always makes situations where exceptions apply. The thing is, once we recognize that exceptions are to be made, the trick is in understanding the rules for applying exceptions (as opposed to finding them in our convenience). What would you suggest as rules for making exception to the law from the point of view of keeping the peace? Certainly fairness is an issue here.
I think a set of rules for waiving the rules is probably counterproductive. That just expands the rulebook. The point is to know when to set it aside.
There are probably generalizations that could be culled from exceptions that get made, but gathering them together doesn't give you a new rule. It just gives you a set of analogies to apply to future cases that are actually unique cases.
Clearly, though, the Nashville PD thinks that exceptions in some sense are the rule, if they're giving warnings five out of six times. That doesn't necessarily mean the rule is too harsh: it could be that the potential harm that the rule represents (i.e., the fine the law codifies) is adequate without actualizing the harm. But if you removed the potential harm, you'd have nothing.
Is that fair to the one out of six who do get tickets issued? One has to wonder...
I have the sense you could write the Nashville PD chief and ask. You'd probably get a thoughtful reply.
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