COPS UNDER SIEGE: SCANDALS IN NEW YORK, L.A. COULD HAPPEN ANYWHERE

At a time when the crime rate has plummeted all across the country, you
might expect the nation's police to be universally hailed as heroes. In an
odd turn, they are under siege as never before.

Sadly, in too many communities the men and women who wear badges are
resented, regarded by citizens they are sworn to protect as an occupying
force. From the Ramparts precinct in Los Angeles to the Bronx in New York,
police are feared, distrusted and despised.

For the moment, it's the police departments in the country's two biggest
cities that face the most serious breakdown in public confidence. In New
York, where a young African immigrant was mistakenly gunned down by four
white officers, angry citizens blame overly aggressive police tactics and
racism.

In Los Angeles, where one officer has already admitted shooting innocent
suspects and planting false evidence, a spreading scandal threatens to
engulf the entire force. Forty convictions have been reversed because of
allegations the police lied in court. Twenty-one LAPD officers have been
relieved of duty. Another 70 are under investigation.

Police departments not caught in the hurricane today can ill afford to
ignore the crises in those two big cities, which could happen anywhere. The
cops alone are not to blame. We, the law-abiding, good citizens, have
allowed it to happen.

The public has been far too willing to close its eyes when the rights of
fellow citizens are violated -- particularly if those citizens are poor,
black, brown, young or addicted. To fight the scourge of drugs and crime
and street gangs and violence, we've stood by as police jettisoned
important constitutional protections for "those" people. The Fourth
Amendment's constitutional protections against unreasonable search and
seizure has been a consistent victim. Young black men in New York,
Hispanics in California and young people everywhere complain of being
stopped and frisked routinely, with or without probable cause.

Joseph McNamara, the respected former police chief of San Jose, has been
sounding the alarm for some time. He blames the hyperventilated rhetoric
about "the war on drugs," which sends the wrong message to police - that
they are soldiers and the accused is the enemy. In a war, the enemy is not
entitled to the constitutional protections that safeguard us all.

Federal drug policy that rewards local police departments that wage drug
wars in poor neighborhoods adds immeasurably to the problem. Drug
enforcement is necessary, but when it slips into zealotry it leads to the
kind of excess that produces police scandals.

Whom should we blame? Politicians with their rabid tough-on-crime rhetoric;
the public, which has been seduced by it; and, yes, even the media, who've
fanned the flames with reporting that's too often long on sensationalism
and short on thoughtful analysis. We are all to blame.