Police and Censorship

Definition: Government law enforcement officers

Significance: As the agents of law enforcement, members of police departments are often involved in censorship controversies

Police enforce previously enacted policies of censorship, and in some cases they also engage in developing their own censorship as a result of the discretion that society allots to police methods. The police sometimes choose to become censors and are sometimes thrust into the role of censors. Police departments, as bureaucracies generally, have been accused of internal censorship and secrecy that hides police brutality and other wrongdoing by officers.

The police are an agency of social control. They are constantly involved in a process of trying to guarantee that members of society conform to social norms as described in criminal codes. Although the police are not the only agency of social control (others include the family, the peer group, school, and religious institutions), they are usually the last resort for controlling illegal behavior in the community.

The job of police becomes more difficult when a sizeable number of an area’s population does not accept the police’s definition of community norms. Typical censorship dilemmas have come into play when police enforce policies that do not have widespread public support across the social, ethnic, racial, and economic sectors.

Discretion, Police Abuses, and Censorship

In the United States, police departments have become involved with issues of censorship when they attempt to enforce the laws of a city, county, or state government. In addition, the origin of a censorship incident may on occasion come directly from the police and not through any legislative initiative or chief executive’s authority. For example, if a person is shouting threatening obscenities in the street, the police officer on the scene may choose to arrest or may choose to ignore the person. A police officer may also choose to arrest a man who was not shouting obscenities in the street but say that he was. Much police power, and abuse of power, lies in such discretion.

Although the police are the ones who were called upon to shut down a pornographic theater or arrest a bookstore owner, such acts of censorship, experts argue, were rare compared to practices that may be called internal censorship or maintaining silence about illegal acts committed by police as part of the enforcement of laws not related to censorship issues. Such acts include beatings, verbal abuse, arrest and search without probable cause, intimidation, perjury, falsification of evidence, and other instances of police corruption. In all such cases, it is unlikely that the police officer who breaks the law will be punished unless another officer speaks against the first officer.

Critics have argued that a number of legal mechanisms help maintain the police behaviors that end in cover-up, denial, and a type of group censorship. A New York City attorney, Paul Chevigny, for example, argued that charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and felonious assault, or all three—together with a story to establish them—constitute a police system for covering up street abuses. Such legal devices provide the standard explanations for police brutality by some police in American law enforcement. Suppression of information that could lead to the truth has occurred in most urban police departments and county sheriff’s offices as well. In the more sophisticated departments, police abuses rarely occur without the accompanying criminal charges to cover them, and little can be done to uncover, for example, a police beating unless the cover charges are modified or witnesses are found to help corroborate the testimony of the abused citizen. The videotaped record of Rodney King’s beating at the hands of Los Angeles police in 1991 revealed how technological development could help expose internal police censorship and in doing so, heighten public awareness. In contrast, while footage of police interactions with the public—captured by dashcams or body cameras worn by officers—has been hailed as a solution to reducing incidences of police brutality, such footage has gone missing or was allegedly never recorded in some high-profile cases of alleged police misconduct.

When addressing the concept of police and their record as censors, many police activities are inherently covert operations but are legitimate policies. Many times police investigators will not release critical information relating to a case if this is information only known to the perpetrator. Moreover, the withholding of information about suspects, victims, and witnesses is a form of necessary censorship that is done to protect the parties involved. Witness protection programs are representative of this type of censorship. Police agencies have sometimes been accused of being too careful about releasing crime information; for example, sometimes departments have not released information about serial rapists to the community, when critics argue that the benefits of such an announcement outweigh the negatives.

Throughout police procedure there is a deliberate effort to protect the process of an investigation. Techniques such as surveillance and wiretaps pose legal and ethical problems in a free and democratic society. Wiretaps are a common tool of information collection, as is the case with hidden video cameras and audio recorders. Police are required to show probable cause prior to planting these information collection devices, so as not to violate Fourth Amendment rights of citizens. There is definitely a reasonable expectation by citizens not to have their privacy violated. Likewise, the protection of minors is the reasoning behind the confidentiality of a minor’s criminal records. It could be argued that evidence itself, kept under lock and key, is a form of legitimate censorship so that the evidence will be preserved in its original condition.

Censorship by police and sheriff officers has been practiced to some degree in most American communities. Censorship or the suppression, control, or restriction of expression of ideas believed dangerous to society may be found in both official and more subtle, nonofficial forms involving the participation of law enforcement officials. Any attempt by police in city and town government or sheriff’s department in county government that stifles expression may constitute censorship. Numerous opportunities arise for censorship by the police either in their role of enforcer of specific laws or through their own discretion, when they may select to operate outside the law. There is evidence that most departments have a few bad apples, but it is important to understand why the police struggle to police themselves and search for ways to discipline or purge such offenders from their ranks.

The Development of the Modern Police Department

The police power of the states is found in the Constitution and grants authority for each of these governments to provide for the “public health, welfare, and safety” of its citizens. Police departments, as an example of public bureaucratic growth, are partially a product of urbanization in America. The most important development of the nineteenth century in law enforcement was the birth of a modern professional urban police system during the period from 1844 to 1877. The antiquated watch and ward system (daytime constables and nighttime watchmen) was not able to respond to large-scale rioting and increasing urban crime and disorder. The impetus for reform of the police system came from New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and other cities that had been overrun with serious problems of criminal violence and rioting. Thus, the riot era of the 1830s to 1850s was a catalyst for the present professional urban police department and its paramilitary organizational system.

The police organizational culture provides an environment for various forms of censorship. It has been characterized by many scholars and practitioners as a closed and secretive group. Officers feel that they must act as a team and band together to protect themselves and the public from criminal elements. Often this defensive behavior evolves into an us-against-them mentality, because many police tactics are not supported by a particular neighborhood they might patrol. Some residents in extreme cases may even view the police as an occupying army, without any appreciation of what police values may be. This negative image of the police has been most notable and most constant in predominantly African American and Hispanic communities, but may also be found in other nations where one ethnic or racial minority group has been constantly the subject of retaliation and persecution by government authority controlled by the majority population. There was some hope that as US police forces became more diverse and thereby better reflected the racial, ethnic, and gender mix of the areas they patrol, they would be more responsive to change. While some positive steps of opening the closed society of the police brotherhood have evolved since the Kerner Commission’s (1968) condemnation of police during the urban riots of the late 1960s, much evidence remains that major problems still exist; in the realm of censorship, a central problem that has been cited is self-censorship, specifically in which illegal acts by officers are not reported by other officers.

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