Breaking Rank

by Norm Stamper

  When a fear-inducing situation presents itself, embrace it. Reject the methods I employed in the past: burrowing under your fear, vaulting over it, weaseling around it. Open your body and soul to the fear. Keep your eyes open, your mind alert, the goal always in sight. Soon, you’ll reach the “half-life” of that fear. As you step into the daylight on the other side, you will have been rendered fearless. You are a warrior.

  America’s cities need warrior mothers and fathers, warrior teachers, warrior role models of all types to help make our streets, our schools, our homes safe. We need warrior cops and warrior police chiefs who fight as hard to uphold civil liberties as they do to fight crime, who treasure human decency and social justice as much as they love catching crooks.

  * He has updated the work in Transforming Leadership: The Pursuit of Happiness. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003.

  * In Arianna Online (“Appealing to Our Lizard Brains: Why Bush is Still Standing,” October 13, 2004), Arianna Huffington cites the work of Dr. Daniel Siegel who describes the physiological origins of fear. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, when a fear-inducing stimulus presents itself to the amygdala (an almond-shaped structure deep in the brain) the most primordial of all questions is raised: Is it safe? If the answer is “no”—and we have not learned to be fully conscious of, or in touch with our fears—the less fully evolved part of our brain, the reptilian “old brain,” will simply take over, and rule our reactions. The essential strategy of the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign, says Huffington, was to create a relentlessly reinforced image of the terrible things that would happen to us if we didn’t vote for them. As she wrote, “Fear paralyzes our reasoning and literally makes it impossible to think straight.” Sure worked for Bush-Cheney in 2004.

  * Alas, the Japanese seem to have little regard for female warriors in blue; women make up less than 2 percent of the force, carry no firearms, handle a tiny range of low-prestige duties such as traffic direction and parking enforcement, and serving tea to station visitors—and to their male colleagues. I appreciate cultural differences as much as the next guy, but this strikes me as a bit of a blind spot in Japanese “moral judgment.”

  CONCLUSION

  I WAS TWENTY-FOUR, a new sergeant with my own squad of patrol officers. A white officer from another squad went off on one of my cops, an African-American, calling him “boy.” When I found out about it, I drove Code 2 from East San Diego to headquarters and, in a rage, hammered out a memo. It was “one thing for a black officer to be subjected to community abuse, quite another to be exposed to the blatantly racist attitude of a fellow officer,” I wrote. A department commander responded by labeling me a “social crusader.” He spat out the term as if it had fouled his tongue. But his accusation was accurate, and I would wear the mantle for the rest of my career.

  Today, at sixty, both public safety and social justice continue to motivate me. How do we make life safer for that kid in National City who grew up scared of his own shadow? How do we create a safe, sane world for people of all ages? A heartbreaking number of Americans live with emotional and physical violence in their own homes. Many Americans, reacting to predatory street crime, are forced to change the way they live. Many suffer the effects of open-air drug markets, street prostitution, gang violence. Many are mistreated by their own police, some for no other reason than the color of their skin. And many do not receive the full protection and services of law enforcement they pay for.

  It’s distressing to think about the numbers of beat cops, police chiefs, lawmakers, attorneys general, and presidents who lack passion about safe streets and civil liberties. In a democracy, it’s these officials’ job to care about, and to aggressively pursue these complementary goals. Many, of course, do take the responsibility seriously, and they deserve to be recognized for it. But far too many of our officials take home a check for doing the job ineffectively, or improperly.

  As suggested throughout Breaking Rank, inept crime fighting and police misconduct are largely the product of (1) defective lawmaking, (2) weak or haughty politicians, (3) the police paramilitary structure, and (4) the workplace culture of police agencies. It’s the institution of policing, not rank-and-file cops, that is in need of an “extreme makeover.”

  As a reformist cop, I generated and absorbed a good deal of heat during my career. I’ve been called a “pinko” for agitating for social justice and civil liberties, and for criticizing police practices publicly. My vision has been labeled “naïve,” the ideas I promote “impractical.” But critics of reform are often, to put it kindly, cynics. And, as Oscar Wilde wrote, “A cynic is one who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” Cynics can tell us what a transformative change in public safety will cost—in dollars, in organizational instability, in political risks—but they’re obstinately blind to the benefits of reform. And to the costs of doing nothing.

  Firsthand experience causes me to conclude that most station-house critics of police reform are bystanders—the kind of cops who watch passively as fellow officers club and kick a passive traffic violator, or shove a broom handle up a man’s rectum. Bystanders don’t take risks. They’re obsessed with preserving the status quo, covering their tails, hiding behind the blue wall of silence, or the union label. Cynical chiefs and cynical political leaders cannot seem to get beyond the bureaucratic mindset. Change threatens “disruption” of their lives. Or their re-election.

  How do reformers confront this resistance? First and foremost, by listening to and respecting one’s opponents. Whether right or wrong, everyone deserves to be heard.

  Early on as a police reformer I was a terrible listener. I couldn’t understand how my peers could be so stubbornly resistant to my desire for them to change. (Didn’t they realize their willingness to change themselves would make me a happier person?)

  Tom Murton, who pushed fundamental reforms as the warden of the Arkansas prison farm system, was an early inspiration.* I remember a dinner, held in the early 1970s in Murton’s honor at the home of Tom Gitchoff, SDSU professor and longtime friend. A novice reformer at the time, I cornered Murton and asked him how he kept his sanity working in a field with so many “ideological opponents” (I think I used the word assholes). He told me he worked hard to practice a philosophy of collaboration and compromise with his enemies—however repulsed he might be by their conduct.

  Sometimes it was easy: If Governor Winthrop Rockefeller wanted the prison’s barns painted green, Murton would “paint the damn barns green”—even though he was partial to traditional red. On matters of principle, however, he refused to make concessions.

  Murton exposed legislators and other state officials who for years had driven their Cadillacs and Lincolns up to the back gate of the Tucker and Cummins prison farms, where they’d toss sides of taxpayer-funded beef into their trunks. He fired guards, and “demoted” trustees who couldn’t be trusted to perform competently, or to behave responsibly. He disconnected the “Tucker telephone”—a sinister device (literally a modified telephone) wired to the testicles of uncooperative prisoners, who were then made to endure excruciating “long-distance” calls. And he unearthed the bodies of murdered prisoners whose deaths had previously been attributed to “natural causes.”

  Murton understood that when it comes to incompetence, corruption, or brutality you simply don’t “collaborate.”

  Resistance to even modest changes in law and in the structure and policies of policing is as natural as sun in San Diego or rain in Seattle. But we need to get on with it. How, then, apart from becoming a good listener, do we proceed?

  I think where you start depends on where you are. Are you a student of political science, public administration, sociology, criminal justice? An analyst of government’s failed approaches to “social control”? A survivor of domestic violence or other crimes? A victim of official abuses, and official excuses? A black mother, frightened that your young boys won’t be coming home after a run-in with the local police? A beat cop, bothered by what you
’ve seen, or done, and willing to “break rank” to atone, and to help improve your police department?

  Whatever your motives (and it’s important to understand them), here are some basic “dos and don’ts” I’ve learned during my many years in police work, and in community-police politics.

  DO:

  Become a student of that which you seek to change. Learn everything you can about policing. Are the laws your police officers are called upon to enforce sensible? Do they add to, or subtract from, community safety? Are they humane?

  What is the stated mission of your police department? Its goals, objectives, and core values? Is the agency organized efficiently, and appropriately, to get the job done? Does it recognize that domestic violence is a precursor to all other forms of violence, and does it place its highest priority on DV prevention and DV law enforcement?

  Does your department take advantage of the latest developments in management, technology, and forensic sciences? Is it adequately funded to carry out its mission? Does your community have enough cops? Enough civilian personnel? Who gets chosen to be a police officer? How are candidates selected? How are new cops welcomed into the department—trained, educated, acculturated? Who gets promoted? How and why?

  What are your local agency’s enforcement priorities? How is individual police performance appraised? How is organizational effectiveness evaluated?

  How are allegations of poor service or misconduct, including racism, sexism, and homophobia, investigated? Are such investigations timely, and of high quality? Are citizens meaningfully involved in complaint investigation and adjudication? If not, why not?

  How are officers disciplined? Are police officers, civilian employees, supervisors, and managers expected to treat one another, and the community, with respect? Does accountability for performance and conduct operate at all levels of the organization, from the cop on the beat to the chief in the corner pocket?

  Your police department belongs to you and your fellow citizens. You have a right to ask these questions, and your department has a duty to answer them. (If they won’t, try the Freedom of Information Act. It’ll frustrate police administrators and records personnel, but it works wonders.)

  Strengthen your own capabilities. You are the most critical agent of your vision. Are you effective? Do you demonstrate the knowledge, technical and political skills, and interpersonal competence necessary to persuade others? Are you trustworthy? Do you refuse to take yourself too seriously, even as you demonstrate the seriousness of your purpose?

  Organize and mobilize. “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing the ground,” wrote Frederick Douglass. Change is never unopposed. It rarely happens because it should, even less often because you want it to. Protectors of the status quo outnumber and usually “outrank” you and your fellow agents of change. Further, they are at least as deeply wedded to stasis as you are to transformation.

  It’s true that an individual can make a difference, and I would never denigrate the efforts of courageous, single-minded, “Lone Ranger” reformers. But it’s easier, faster, usually much more effective, and frankly a lot more fun when people band together and agitate for positive change.

  Show a little respect. The “rule of reciprocity” says if you treat people with respect, they’ll treat you with respect: Give them information, they’ll give you information; trust them, they’ll trust you. Of course “reciprocity” is rarely a fifty-fifty proposition in the real world, each party exhibiting equal courtesy, openness, generosity. But a diligent, persistent, collective, and respectful campaign for change will bring about transformation—or at least visible progress.

  DO NOT:

  Make an ass of yourself. One of the reasons cops don’t listen to their detractors is that detractors often shout so loud they can’t be heard. Or they resort to obscenities, name-calling, and/or threats. I recently saw a photo of a demonstrator at an International Monetary Fund conference in Washington, D.C. She was holding aloft a large sign that read, “Ramsey [chief of police]: Clean Up Your Pigpen.” Such rhetoric may satisfy on a visceral level, but it’s stupid, and self-defeating.

  Be docile. There’s no immediate danger of the meek inheriting the earth—quite to the contrary. Passive or overly polite people get steamrolled every time they attempt to effect changes in policy. You don’t have to be obnoxious about it, but be assertive, stand your ground. Do not relinquish your rights as an American.

  Give up. Journalist I. F. “Izzy” Stone, that marvelous warrior for social justice, wrote:

  The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing—for the sheer fun and joy of it—to go right ahead and fight, knowing you’re going to lose. You mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it.

  However much one enjoys being a cop or a police chief—and I loved my three and a half decades in police work—there are moments of unspeakable horror. And sadness. I’ve seen raped and murdered children, bloodied spouses, the maggot-infested bodies of society’s “throwaways.” I’ve participated in, witnessed, and later punished brutal, racist, or corrupt police behavior. I’ve attended far too many cops’ funerals, choking on the lump in my throat as the “last call” for a fallen officer is broadcast live over the police radio. Labor of love or not, there are times when being a cop just leaves you sick at heart.

  But through it all, there is this: There’s no other job with greater potential for making a difference in the lives of one’s fellow citizens. Police officers stop people from hurting other people. They render assistance when individuals and communities are most in need of it. They save lives.

  As I used to tell my officers, misery is optional. If you’re able to keep a sense of humor, to rejoice in the humanity of policing and even police politics, you can have a ball being a cop. I know I did.

  * Murton’s book, coauthored with Joe Hyams, Accomplices to the Crime (1969), became the basis for the 1980 film Brubaker, starring Robert Redford.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With endless gratitude to my exceptional Nation Books editor, Ruth Baldwin who, with Carl Bromley, Jerry Gross, Meg Lemke, Sherri Schultz, and my agent, Elizabeth Wales, offered up sound advice, a keen eye, and uncommon patience at every step.

  And to Sarah Buel, Adrienne Casey, Steve Casey, Anita Castle, Dr. David Corey, Don Drozd, Jack Mullen, Anne O’Dell, Ann Rule, and Paula Russell whose wisdom and insights added so much to my understanding of their specialties.

  And to esteemed SDPD and SPD colleagues who taught me, and often fought me. In San Diego: Rulette Armstead, A.D. Brown, Bob Burgreen, Don Davis, Bill Kolender, Ken O’Brien, and Mike Rice. In Seattle: Harry Bailey, Janice Corbin, Robin Clark, Jim Deschane, Harv Ferguson, Ed Joiner, Clark Kimerer, Nick Metz, Debbie Nelson, and Lisa Ross.

  And to civic, academic, and community leaders who’ve inspired me and held my feet to the fire for years. In San Diego: Rev. Robert Ard, Irma Castro, Dr. Dennis Doyle, Bonnie Dumanis, Jon Dunchack, Scott Fulkerson, Murray Galinson, Maria Garcia, Dr. Stu Gilbreath, Dr. Tom Gitchoff, Dr. Kenji Ima, Ernie McCray, Jack McGrory, Helen McKenna, Sherry Silver, George Mitrovich, Dr. Joyce Ross, Dr. Rick Ross, Dr. Janet Sherman, Andrea Skorepa and Rev. George Walker Smith. In Seattle: Aileen Balahadia, Debbie Barnes, Guadalupe Barnes, Robin Boehler, Connie Bown, David Bown, Bert Caoili, Terrence Carroll, Rev. Ellis Casson, Dr. Robin DiAngelo, Dr. Roy Farrell, Dr. Camilo de Guzman, Rebecca Hale, Sheila Hargesheimer, Alma Kern, Anne Levinson, Jan Levy, Dr. Hubert Locke, Lonnie Lusardo, Dr. Sandra Madrid, Roberto Maestes, Dorothy Mann, John Morefield, Mark Murray, Todd Nelson, Vanna Novak, Judy Osborne, Margaret Pageler, Kate Pflaumer, Norm Rice, Deborah Terry-Hays, Richard Wildermuth, Mark Sidran, Harriett Walden, and Jo Ellen Warner.

  And to cherished pals wh
o’ve stuck by me through good times and bad, whose professional expertise, personal mastery, and dedication to social justice is evident in all they do: Lisa Belsky, Joe Brann, Bill Geller, and Nancy McPherson.

  INDEX

  Allen, Dennis, 189–90

  Anderson, Edward, 224–25, 235–38

  Armstrong, John Eric, 40

  Baldwin, Lola, 113

  Belsky, Lisa, 375

  Benes, Michael, 122

  Bennett, Bud, 207, 209–11

  Blankenship, Betty, 110

  Borchers, Connie, 114

  Brame, David, 1–16, 18, 122, 251

  Bratton, William J., 285–97

  Brown, A. D. “Brownie,” 138

  Brown, Rob, 223–24

  Brown, Willie, 306–8

  Buel, Sarah, 17–18

  Burgreen, Bob, 41–45, 162–65, 191–92, 197, 228, 314

  Burns, James MacGregor, 385–86

  Bush, George W., 24, 59–60

  Cameron, Don, 322

  Carberry, Joseph Alan “Joey,” 262–66, 271

  Carberry, Joseph Anthony, 262–66

  Carmona, Richard, 152–53

  Chessman, Caryl, 56–57

  Chouinard, Gene, 365

  Churchill, Winston, 110

  Cinco, Joselito, 53, 62, 196

  Clinton, Bill, 23–24, 60, 71, 75, 332–33

  Cochran, Johnnie, 96–97

  Coffal, Elizabeth, 110

  Colburn, James, 54–55

  Coleman, Tom, 26–27

  Conlon, Edward, 198

  Coolidge, Calvin, 248, 249

  Cora, Joey, 21

  Corey, David, 176

  Curtis, Edwin U., 247

  Davidson, Alaska P., 113

  Davis, A. B., xii

  Davis, Angela, 204, 208–9, 214

  Davis, Jack, 26