To Protect And To Serve?

I tried to keep an open mind when reading Mark Leviton’s interview with Alex S. Vitale [“To Protect and to Serve?” September 2019], but I couldn’t stop hearing my father’s voice in my head, saying, “When you put a man in a uniform, he thinks he’s god.”

My dad was a World War II veteran and a corrections officer at a minimum-security prison in Upstate New York in the 1950s and 1960s. He knew about men who wear uniforms. One of the reasons he left that job was the godlike attitude of his colleagues — and these were people guarding the lowest-risk, pettiest criminals out there. He was appalled at the guards’ behavior, and he repeated his opinion about giving a man a uniform until the end of his life.

Has anyone ever really addressed what my dad said long ago? If so, I haven’t heard of it.

After reading Mark Leviton’s interview with Alex S. Vitale [“To Protect and To Serve?” September 2019], I have a few stray ideas on overpolicing.

In 2018 a black man named Stephon Clark died of eight gunshot wounds to the back. He was standing in his grandmother’s backyard, holding a cell phone, which two white male cops mistook for a gun. (They had been sent to the neighborhood to investigate a broken window that had nothing to do with Clark.) The policemen felt threatened, so they shot him. The officers were never charged. I believe it would decrease the probability of tragedies like this if responding officers were a man and a woman. Two men typically just reinforce one another’s behavior. The first step should be for the woman to talk to the suspect. Women are generally better in such situations, and more able to calm someone down.

We should also pay the police better and improve their training, which would entail recognizing mentally ill people and handling them kindly. Another idea is not to hire ex-infantry for at least two years after they were deployed. People who’ve been in a war zone are too ready to shoot or use force and need a calming-down period before they work as officers of the law.

I agreed with many of Alex S. Vitale’s points on overpolicing, but he missed one crucial element: overzealous prosecutors.

I have been a criminal-defense attorney for more than twelve years, and I now see the system as an inmate. Throughout my career I have seen prosecutors overcharge defendants and then offer to reduce the charges to facilitate a plea bargain. Our system has become: presumed guilty until proven innocent. That is why we let police officers get away with malfeasance. Those are “bad guys” they’re dealing with.

Americans are bombarded by shows and movies about law enforcement catching the bad guys through any means necessary. Our society seems to have accepted the broad powers of prosecutors to bring whatever charges they want.

Despite my background as an attorney, I was scared into taking a plea bargain when a prosecutor threatened to overcharge me. Knowing my innocence, I regret that decision.

Alex Vitale’s thoughts on the history and politics of policing [“To Protect and to Serve?” interview by Mark Leviton, September 2019] were enlightening. I agree that prostitution between consenting adults is entirely different from sex trafficking, which is the buying and selling of human beings for unpaid sex work. Victims of such slavery are not criminals. They are victims of human-rights violations. We — and our Congress — need to be their voice.