SUDDENLY THE COPS AREN'T THE EXPERTS

Canadians like and respect police officers. They value what cops have
to say. They support police funding and can usually be counted on to
applaud when a politician promises to hire more cops and "give them
the tools to do the job." All of which is particularly true of
conservatives.

Except when it comes to the gun registry.

As the mostly urban and centre-left defenders of the registry never
tire of pointing out, all the major police organizations back the
registry. They say it makes policing safer and more effective and it's
good value for the money.

This drives the mainly rural and centre-right opponents of the
registry crazy. Grassroots officers are against it, they insist. The
police brass and official organizations all have vested interests.
Their arguments are bogus. Their statistics are nonsense.

What few on either side of the debate seem to have noticed is that
both sides are contradicting themselves.

Name the issue. Drugs, prostitution, pornography, whatever. If the
police line up in support of an initiative, you can be sure of two
things. One, the police think it's essential that we take a harder
line. And two, conservatives insist that the police are the real
experts we should listen to, not the eggheads from universities who
say that cracking down will do more harm than good.

The response from liberal opponents is that the police have vested
interests, their arguments are bogus, and their statistics nonsense.
Social scientists are the real experts and their research should guide
policy.

But mention the gun registry and the polarity flips.

"Presumably Conservative MPs know more about fighting crime than the
men in uniform," mocked Jeffrey Simpson in the Globe and Mail. "After
all this is also a government that has scorned the expert advice of
almost every criminologist, judge, and lawyers' group in Canada, even
as they say how ineffective, useless and even dangerously
counterproductive are most of the Conservatives' 'tough on crime' proposals."

But the "men in uniform" generally support those "tough on crime"
proposals. If police are the experts when it comes to the gun
registry, why aren't they the experts when it comes to the other stuff?

The contradictions are even more stark among conservatives, who are as
savagely critical of the police when it comes to the gun registry as
they are uncritical when it comes to every other issue. On
conservative blogs, right-wing crazies tear into police claims about
the registry with the zeal of Christopher Hitchens taking on the
Vatican -- all without the slightest recognition that the cardinals
they are accusing of ignorance and corruption are the same cardinals
whose every other utterance they treat like Scripture.

Funny thing is, I'm with the right-wing crazies on the matter of the
registry. The police are certainly self-interested and I find their
arguments bogus and their statistics nonsense.

But unlike the right-wing crazies, I recognize that this is not only
true in the matter of the gun registry.

I know that sounds like a terrible slam at the police, but it's really
not. The police are not social scientists. They are not policy wonks.
They are the police. They are experts on policing, but nothing more.

I once spent a night on patrol with a Vancouver vice cop who was smart
and thoughtful. He knew everything about his streets and the people on
them.

When things were quiet, I asked him what he thought of legalizing
prostitution. He was against it, he said, because he'd met a detective
from Las Vegas at a conference once and the detective told him about
the terrible problems in his city.

But prostitution isn't legal in Las Vegas, I said. He looked confused.
So I explained that while prostitution is legal under certain
conditions in Nevada's rural counties, it is completely criminal in
Las Vegas.

He didn't know that. Why would he? It's not his job.

I've had lots of conversations like that. Even police chiefs and other
senior officers who testify before parliamentary committees are -- for
all their indisputable expertise -- often ignorant of basic policy
facts and have little ability to conduct research and assess evidence
about the effectiveness of policy choices. Case in point: A very
high-ranking RCMP officer once told me that a record seizure of heroin
in Vancouver caused a significant decline in the city's overdose
deaths. Very interesting, I said. Do you have evidence? Oh, yes, he
said, but he'd have to dig it up. A couple of days later I was faxed a
copy of a newspaper article which claimed the seizure would reduce
overdose deaths -- a claim supported with a quote from an RCMP officer
saying so.

Everyone says they support evidence-based public policy. And everyone
claims their opponents ignore the evidence. But the truth is most
people think almost anything that supports their existing beliefs is
valid evidence while almost anything that contradicts those beliefs is
flawed and should be dismissed. That, unfortunately, is human nature.
Psychologists call it "confirmation bias."

Police officers have lots of important insights to offer but they are
not social scientists or public policy experts and their opinions
about policy are, in most circumstances, very weak evidence. That's
true and easy to accept when the police contradict what we believe.

It's much harder to accept when they confirm our beliefs. But it's
just as true.