Russell Madden has an excellent piece on "the deteriorating relationship between the police and the citizens they are supposed to 'protect and serve'.” Madden states the core of the problem: When cops forget that they are civilians, too; when they forget that a uniform does not grant them a right to violate rights; when they forget the difference between police and soldiers; when they think it is “us” versus “them”; when they think they do not have to think simply because they accepted a job; they are either explicitly or implicitly defenders of a police state that will eventually get around to grinding their bones to powder, as well. No one gets relieved of the responsibility for being rational, for being moral, for being an individual first and foremost.

Russell comments on a common objection I hear in response to the blog entries in which I claim that cops are no longer the protectors of decent people (if they ever were); they are the enforcement arm of an aggressive police state whom decent people should revile and avoid. What is that common objection? -- the police are only doing their job.

Russell writes, Most people would not excuse a slave owner’s overseer for beating his boss’s “property” by claiming he was “just doing” his job. Who would ignore a Nazi’s execution of Jews or his attention to guard-duty in a concentration camp because it was a “duty” of his job? But even many among the few who are aware of the wrongs done by cops give them a pass because they “just enforce the law.” There is, however, no “pass” from moral responsibility. Cops — even the “better” ones — routinely violate the rights they are sworn to defend.

This story of police abuse illustrates Russell's point.

The St. Petersburg Times (Florida) reports on a 75-year-old grandmother who was arrested for "disorderly conduct" because she refused an officer's orders to move her car while she waited for coffee and fries at the drive-through window of her local McDonald's. The officer was behind her in line and (presumably) wanted to get his food but Jean Merola was parked where a McDonalds employee had told her to wait for her order and she wasn't budging. Merola wascuffed for what she estimates was an hour, searched, booked, fingerprinted, photographed and her car cost $160 to reclaim from impound. In explaining why she didn't "respect" the police officer's demand, Merola said, "I guess I felt he wasn't a police officer. He wasn't there to help me, he was there to be mean to me." If only more people reached that moment of wisdom and, then, generalized it to the entire force.