Poet’s View of the Policeman’s Lot . . .

A month or so ago I was speaking to a policeman – a robust and cheerful man who took an interest in other people as well as in the details of his job.

He had just interrogated me very politely [about some explosives] that had been stolen from a building site. He had made no suggestion that I had stolen them. I think he knew that my own approach to social and political matters was grounded on non-violence.

But he thought I might know the people who had stolen the explosives, page 216 and that I might persuade them to return them. He was worried about the possibility of injury to members of the public.

In the event I was unable to give him any information. And later when I did find out who had the explosives, it was not the group whom he had suspected. But at this particular interview I felt some liking and respect for him as a human being. So I became a little expansive.

‘You know,’ I said, ‘from time to time you may hear me sounding forth about the police. And you may think I’m being hypercritical.

‘But if you look at what I say, you’ll see there are only three points on which I am likely to criticise the police – if they tell lies in Court, if they use violence either in interrogation or as a private revenge on people they are holding in their custody, or else if they plant drugs or other articles on people and then arrest them for possession of them.

‘In each of these cases the police are acting illegally. I object to this. They can’t administer the Law well if they don’t keep the Law themselves.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m a Catholic, and I would be afraid to tell lies in Court. I’d count it very wrong to do that. And I always let a man have the first punch at me before I take a swing at him.’

He said nothing about planting incriminating evidence, either because he would never dream of doing such a thing, or else because there was a very delicate situation of this kind in which some of his colleagues had recently been involved.

We parted company on quite good terms. I think he understood my own vocation of voluntary poverty, though he may not have approved of it. And I regarded him as a reasonably just and fair-minded policeman. But just as he was escorting me to the police car, he made one remark that I have not yet forgotten.

‘I’m an emotional man,’ he said. ‘Nearly everything I think and do comes from my emotions.’

I did not reply to this remark. But if I had replied, it might have been in terms something like this: ‘I think you’re in a rather dangerous position. A policeman should not be guided too much by his emotions. It is hard to be very emotional and wholly just at the same time. It may not matter so much if I am emotional. Society has not given me the same authority it has given you, or the same blanket approval.

‘If you are too emotional, you may find yourself judging issues you have no right to judge, and taking on the role of a social crusader rather than simply concentrating on being an honest cop. In that case, you may be tempted to act outside the Law. And that would be bad for you and me and everybody else in the country.’

It would have taken far too long to explain the ins and outs of this ethical situation with my policeman friend. But if we had had the time to sit down over a cup of coffee or a jug of beer, I could have mentioned a relevant portion page 217 of the teaching of St Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas speaks about the virtue of equity, which means that virtue by which a man distinguishes when it is right for him to keep the law of the land and when it is right for him to break it.

If a friend escaped from a mental hospital and knocked on the door of my house, seeking shelter, I might judge, from my knowledge of him, that his treatment in the mental hospital was doing him no good, and that a stay in my house would benefit his mental health.

If I then sheltered him, I would be breaking the law, and running the risk of a stiff prison sentence. But I would be exercising the virtue of equity.

As a private citizen I could exercise that virtue since the law of the land is never absolute unless it coincides with the law of God, which is in essence that one should love God and one’s neighbour to the utmost of one’s power.

But a policeman would be on dangerous ground if he tried to exercise the same virtue. A policeman might tell a lie in Court because he judged that the man in the dock was guilty anyway, and that legalism should not stand in the way of his conviction.

Or he might judge that he stood in the relation of a pseudo-father to some young man who had insulted him in the street and thus had the right to give the lad a punch-up in the cells despite the fact that he was breaking the law of the land by assaulting him.

Or he might judge that some drug-user was a menace to the public, and both plant marihuana in his room and arrest him for possession of it, setting aside as trivial the legality of his own actions.

If he were a knowledgeable Catholic – and many of our local policemen do belong to the Catholic fold – he might even appeal to old Aquinas for support.

‘Look,’ he might say, ‘I’m simply doing what you do from time to time. You shelter your friend who has escaped from the mental hospital. You break the law according to what you claim is a good motive. I do the same. I am practising the delicate virtue of equity.’

There are two reasons why he would be treading on very dangerous ground. The most important reason would be that society has not entrusted the administration and safeguarding of the law of the country to policemen because policemen are better people than other men, but simply as a public and necessary function. The job of a policeman is primarily to look after the law, as MPs look after Government or doctors look after patients.

Doctors and MPs have to have special code of professional ethics. So do policemen. A doctor may commit adultery, but not with a patient under his charge. A policeman may indulge in a punch-up, with his uniform off, at a private party, but he may not do it with a suspect at police headquarters. Because he is the professional custodian of the law, he is very unwise if he tries to practise the difficult virtue of equity.

The other reason is that if policemen break the law, and are convicted of page 218 doing so, they are almost certain to lose their jobs.

There is a strong group loyalty among policemen. I have heard of a policeman taking off his coat and beating up another policeman who had injured a girl in interrogation. But one is very unlikely to find policemen bearing witness against other policemen in the Court, and magistrates are notoriously prone to accept police evidence in preference to any other evidence whatever.

If a policeman breaks the law he does it from a special position of protection and privilege.

From time to time one hears that some New Zealand policemen have used what seems to be excessive violence in dealing with political demonstrations. I suggest that they are unwisely trying to practise the virtue of equity.

The law of the land permits them only to use that absolute minimum of physical force necessary to restrain an arrested person. But the vague phrase ‘disturbing the peace’ may carry many connotations both peculiar and precise in the mind of an individual policeman.

He may feel that long hair and bare feet are an affront to public decency. He may feel that all demonstrators are Leftists, and all Leftists should be . . .

He may feel that there is a danger of sexual licence among young people who behave in public in an uninhibited manner. He may feel that students in particular are in a sense jobless, and that jobless people are a menace to public order. He may feel that students adopt an attitude of intellectual superiority which is humiliating to him personally and also to other citizens at large.

This not-so-fictional policeman is predominantly a man of feeling. He is guided by his feelings in his thoughts and his actions. A feeling of indignation can very easily take charge of him. Especially if the sphere of his employment is urban, he may see demonstrators not as potential neighbours but as an anonymous and dangerous riff-raff, strangers and possibly also personal enemies.

I sympathise with this policeman. His job is full of fears and tensions. His code is close to the military one – a code of efficiency, cleanliness, obedience to orders requiring perhaps a conventional acceptance of the social status quo.

Nevertheless a policeman who runs amuck is far more dangerous than a belligerent demonstrator could ever be. I think that policemen who are too emotional should seek out other employment.

A policeman has a right to his private prejudices. If he chooses to regard demonstrators as social misfits, he had no doubt plenty of opportunity to voice his opinion. But if he foists these prejudices on others, physically or mentally, in the name of public order, he is stepping outside his function.

When I have talked these things over with policemen, they have nearly always stressed the dangers of their profession. Yet the section of the population from whom policemen run the risk of physical assault is in fact extremely small.

page 219

A few of the motorbike boys, a few aggrieved Maoris or Islanders, a very few gunmen, and a very small scattering of belligerent drunks – these are the people who will from time to time menace them.

I suspect, however, that the policemen themselves tend to think of life in violent terms. They tend to see the natural solution of any argument in a punch-up. In this they resemble the most conventional section of our population – the boys who come off the football field to get drunk at the local pub.

It is perhaps the most ordinary Kiwi lens through which our policemen look at life around them.

But the long-haired tribe practically never settle arguments with a punch-up. They go in for long discussions. They value very much good communication between the sexes. If they are students in a demonstration, their aggression is likely to be purely verbal. I feel that the problem of violence at demonstrations comes mainly from the fears and tensions and intensely held prejudices of the police themselves.

I hope I have indicated my real sympathy with them as persons in a psychologically difficult situation. But I suggest that the solution lies in selecting men of varied experience and outlook for the police force and eliminating those whose approach to life is excessively prejudiced or violent.

Otherwise a social drift towards Fascism is quite possible.

1970 (631)