ON FREEDOM'S 'THIN BLUE LINE'

It is a widely held view that police officers form the "thin blue
line" that protects law-abiding citizens from the criminal element.
But police also maintain another thin line of sorts - the one that
separates a free society from a tyranny.

That's why the laws and customs that govern police behavior have a
direct bearing on the day-to-day freedoms Americans enjoy.

Yet those who raise concerns about unwarranted searches and seizures,
police codes of silence that cover up corruption, questionable
shootings of suspects or the militarization of police forces, often
are tarred as "anti-cop," or "soft on crime."

Don't try that with Joseph McNamara, a research fellow at the Hoover
Institution at Stanford University. This former police chief of San
Jose and Kansas City, and onetime New York City cop, is no enemy of
police. But he is willing to talk about law enforcement issues that
make some cops squeamish.

"I suppose it sounds a bit corny," he told us. "But I have always
considered the American police officer to represent the ultimate
decentralization of a government of, by and for the people. Cops are
public servants with a fundamental duty to protect life and
constitutional rights, not an armed force occupying territory."

The war on drugs and the increased federal involvement in local law
enforcement funding and training, McNamara believes, promote this
dangerous shift in which police often develop "a fermenting contempt
for the people they encounter," he wrote in an essay for Time magazine.

"I've seen the frightening extent to which the government has taken
over training," he told us. Police forces now routinely request bigger
weapons and learn tactics more appropriate for the military. "There's
nothing wrong with being a soldier. If that's what you want, that's
what you should be," he said, but not a police officer.

One consequence of the drug war, he wrote in a June 6 Register column,
is that it encourages police to unjustly seize property and then keep
the assets for their budget: "[I]n around 80 percent of the seizure
cases no one is even charged with a crime. Because it is a civil
proceeding, the property owner does not enjoy the presumption of innocence."

Ultimately, McNamara believes that "police tactics must always be
consistent with a rule of law in a democratic society and never those
of totalitarian nations." We're pleased that at least one prominent
one time police official has the gumption to articulate such a vital
principle.