The following, from Scalia’s opinion, is an absolute joke:

Another development over the past half-century that deters civil-rights violations is the increasing professionalism of police forces, including a new emphasis on internal police discipline. Even as long ago as 1989 we felt it proper to “assume” that unlawful police behavior “would be dealt with appropriately” by the authorities, but we now have increasing evidence that police forces across the United States take the constitutional rights of citizens seriously. There have been “wide ranging reforms in the education, training, and supervision” of police officers (cite omitted).

[...]

Moreover, modern police forces are staffed with professionals; it is not credible to assert that internal discipline, which can limit successful careers, will not have a deterrent effect. There is also evidence that the increasing use of various forms of citizen review can enhance police accountability.

Holy hell, I wish my paper were out right now. This entire passage is, simply, false. Wrong. On all counts.

Police are certainly more highly trained than they once were, but they aren’t better trained at obseving constitutional protections. They’re better trained at paramilitary tactics. They’renow trained by former Navy SEALs and Army Rangers. They’re better trained at treating civilians like enemy combatants, not at treating them as citizens wih constitutional rights.

Scalia’s synopsis is shockingly naive. He ought to look up Hearne. Or Tulia. He might look into the Dallas informant scandal, or the Miami SWAT-Internal affairs scandal, or LAPD’s multiple police scandals, including a civilian review board scandal, or the fact that New York City’s civilian review board has no jurisdiction whatsoever over — guess what? — no-knock raids. Here’s another fun one. These are just off the top of my head.

Internal affairs investigations are a joke. Even in cases where there were egregious offenses committed by cops, they were uncovered during federal investigations or during civil trials, by journalists, or by mere happenstance — not by “internal police discipline.” Is Scalia oblivious to “the blue wall of silence?” “Internal discipline,” as he calls it, certainly does “limit successful careers,” but not in the way Scalia portrays it. You are “disciplined” to keep your mouth shut when it comes to abuse, excessive force, and corruption, or you’ll find your career severely limited. How many examples do we need before they stop being anomalies?

In all of my research on this issue, I’ve never — not once — seen a police officer convicted of even a misdemeanor for shooting an innocent civilian in a botched raid. Very few are even subject to internal discipline (Sal Culosi, anyone?) And it’s happened (”it” being the death of innocent as the resut of a botched raid) about three dozen times. And as Breyer notes in his dissent, the state of Michigan couldn’t cite a single time a police officer has successfully been sued for conducting an illegal no-knock raid. Oh, and then there are these.

Police aren’t better trained at respecting civil liberties, they’re better trained at finding ways to get around them. The ratcheting up of the drug war in the early 1980s has made police abuse of civil liberties routine.

Scalia’s pronouncement that we’ve entered a new era of police respect for civil rights is so far off-base it’s laughable.

I can stomach a decision that doesn’t go my way. But it needs to be grounded in reality.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 15th, 2006 at 2:31 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Police Militarization, Police Professionalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.