I\u0092ve been working on a post on the whole \u0091wilding\u0092 thing, and it just keeps on coming out badly. Maybe it\u0092s just that I am friends with too many cops, and see the damage done to them \u0096 and to their ability to be what we want them to be \u0096 by the overt hostility coded in these articles. I want to write something thoughtful and evenhanded and my emotions keep getting in the way.
\nHere\u0092s the objective point: First, there is error in any system, and our system of justice is no different. Some of the error is caused by bias, some by laziness, some by unavoidable chance, all of it is tragic. Every system of justice has the same problems, and has had them for as long as there have been systems of justice\u0085or human systems of any kind. What is unique about ours is the very faith in its perfectability\u0085in the attainability of a justice beyond that given through personal relationships, connections, clout, or bribery. On one hand this faith is misplaced\u0085the reality is that we are nowhere close to there.
\nBut on the other\u0085on the other\u0085the goal speaks to virtually everyone in our society. The shining, Platonic, unattainable ideal of perfect justice is one that we do believe in, and fight for, and the genius of our system is that it lets us do it, and harnesses our desire for it, and does so in the name of progress toward the unattainable perfection. It speaks to us, and we act on it.
\nI think that\u0092s great, and that\u0092s what I spoke to when I gave my opinion on this case.
\nI think that sets our system of justice apart from any other that I have read about.
\nI think that the root of my kind of liberalism is that belief that we can build human systems that strive toward improvement, believing that perfection is unattainable and still worth struggling for.
\nAnd what I don\u0092t see in these rounds of endless criticism is a real belief in making the systems better; what I see is a wholesale rejection of the systems\u0085the brutal cops, corrupt prosecutors, the enforcers of the intolerable status quo\u0085that protect the middle-class critics, who seldom acknowledge the benefit of the protection they receive.
\nSee, I believe that there are Really Bad People out there\u0085and that there are many of us who given the right circumstance can be really Bad. The police and the folks in the criminal justice system deal with it every day, at its very bad worst.
\nWe need them. It\u0092s a crappy job done for little money and less respect. It has its own satisfactions, and the good cops I know live for them\u0085for the times they can save someone, the times they can \u0093hook up\u0094 a bad guy, the times they can bring some justice and order to an unjust and chaotic world.
\nI know the \u0093choose\u0094 the job, but as a consumer of their services, I\u0092ll tell you that we all have a vested interest in seeing them do as good a job as possible.
\nSome, very few of them are corrupt in meaningful ways (not talking about free donuts); some are racist, some cruel. But fewer today than ten years ago, and fewer still than fifty years ago.
\nSome of my employees do a bad job, too. Sometimes my sons do bad things. But I find that a blanket condemnation is seldom a good way to get good performance out of them; and if you want to deepen the \u0093us v. them\u0094 chasm, the kind of criticism I\u0092ve seen levied at the NYC folks seems like a pretty good shovel.
\nSo I\u0092m sorry that I haven\u0092t been able to set out the logical social critique of the case and the arguments; I\u0092ll work on it and try to do better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u0092ve been working on a post on the whole \u0091wilding\u0092 thing, and it just keeps on coming out badly. Maybe it\u0092s just that I am friends with too many cops, and see the damage done to them \u0096 and to their ability to be what we want them to be \u0096 by the overt hostility […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}