The Angry Mood of the Men in Blue

In New York City, off-duty police have scuffled with uniformed officers in vitriolic demonstrations over working conditions. In Detroit, bitter police officers insolently nicknamed their balding chief "Elmer Fudd" in washroom graffiti. San Francisco's new police chief removed the American flag to make his office less formal, and small flags defiantly sprouted on squad-car antennas. The Orange County Patrolmen's Benevolent Association in Florida gives its members a policeman's "Miranda card," outlining not the rights of criminal suspects but the officer's own rights if he is investigated by his department. Rank-and-file cops in San Diego hired Teamsters professionals for $150,000 to negotiate their contract, and the Chicago Patrolmen's Association has endorsed a Teamsters' bid to organize local cops.

Kojak Acts. In almost every large city across the country, police are in an angry, embattled, sometimes dangerously rebellious mood. During one of the ugly police demonstrations in New York City, the protesting officers spotted Telly Savalas, TV Supercop Kojak, and enthusiastically hoisted him on their shoulders. "I saw that as a significant act," says a sympathetic member of the police brass who was watching. "Kojak is a guy who talks back, who acts." That is, he gruffly tells his boss (and anyone else) to get out of the way so he can do his job --which is what growing numbers of real-life cops would like to do.

In some respects, the new police mood seems anomalous. It has been years since they heard the radical chants of "Pig!" Those insults--combined with the long list of Warren Court rulings in favor of criminal defendants--marked a nadir for police morale. Since then, however, the eight-year Republican Administration has pumped $5 billion through the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, much of it to improve local police departments. Under Chief Justice Warren Burger, the Supreme Court has decidedly tilted back toward the prosecution side. By many measures, the policeman's lot today would seem to be a happier one.

Then why are so many police so embittered? The answers start simply enough with money and security. After a few years of pushing up salaries to an average of nearly $13,000 annually for city cops, police negotiators now find municipal treasuries empty. Traditional civil service security has faded after mass layoffs in both Detroit and New York City. The resulting militancy of police unions--or benevolent associations as they are often euphemistically called--has led not merely to demonstrations, "blue flu" job actions and the threat of illegal strikes, but to fights over departmental policies. "Police union leaders have been attempting to invade what we chiefs have always considered management prerogatives," says Ed Davis, Los Angeles' tough top cop. Antonio Amador, president of L.A.'s Police Protective League, unapologetically pleads guilty: "I want to take away the right Chief Davis has to force my men to wear long-sleeved shirts when, goddammit, it's hot outside."

Shooflies Buzz. So far, the cops have not enlisted widespread support for such plaints. For example, the American Bar Association standards for police recommend that "law-enforcement policy not be the subject of collective bargaining." But cops on the street are unconvinced, and they increasingly rank the brass and the bureaucracy along with criminals on their enemies list. Boston police computers now keep a minute-by-minute check on patrolmen, even spewing out suggested time limits for each particular call. "Christ," explodes Patrolman William Hill, "I go out to where a guy is beating the hell out of his wife, and I'm supposed to solve his problem in 20 minutes be cause the goddam computer says that's all I've got!"

Anticorruption campaigns within departments are so extensive that one P.B.A. has taken to posting pictures and license plates of "shooflies," as internal investigative officers are called. There are also administrative reviews of many of the important decisions a cop makes while on duty. As a result, says Orlando (Fla.) Police Officer William Andrew Hutchinson, "some cops don't do a damn thing because as soon as they do something they're going to get themselves written up." It's "civil service with a vengeance," complains Joseph Wambaugh, the bestselling author who quit the L.A. force two years ago. "The internal bureaucracy is finally the thing that grinds down good policemen and really ruins them."

The emotional pressure of being second-guessed comes on top of the considerable pressures of the job. Police continue to have an unusually high rate of divorce and suicide. But the macho need to deny any weakness is disappearing. One in every nine Boston police officers has sought counseling from the department's Stress Program, with alcoholism, gambling and depression topping the list of problems. Psychologist Peter Runkle reports that a number of cops he has seen from the force in Sacramento, Calif., have impotence problems, "usually the men who do the best job in the streets." The physical dangers of the job are almost the least of it. "We expect that," says New York Policeman Ronald De Vito. "But seeing the people we deal with--the sick, the underprivileged children, the old, the maimed--and being eaten up because we cannot help, that is the most dangerous part of the job."

"Policemen feel they are more and more just numbers, that they are anonymous figures in society, that they are less and less individuals," says Professor George Kirkham, a criminologist at Florida State University who works part time as a patrolman to test his theories. Cops virtually to a man believe, with Boston P.B.A. Chairman Chester Broderick, that "we're the most discriminated-against minority in the country." Says Chicago Police Officer Ronald Green: "Some people just don't seem to realize that we are just as equal as they are--that we have rights too." Green's rage has a specific source: he was accused of taking a bribe by a motorist he had stopped. Green has become something of a folk hero among cops because, imitating the militancy of civil rights groups, he sued the motorist for slander and won a $1,000 settlement.

Less Special. Indeed, after years of suits against police, an increasing number of cops are filing suits of their own. Orlando Patrolman Hutchinson was beaten and injured last May while trying to make an arrest; he has filed a $2,500 civil damage suit against the three brothers who allegedly stomped him. In another emulation of civil rights tactics, police lobbyists got the California legislature to pass the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act, which will go into effect Jan. 1. This requires that police under investigation cannot be forced to take a lie-detector test, can block warrantless searches of their lockers and cannot be questioned by more than two interrogators at a time. Miranda never had it so good, at least in the opinion of L.A. Chief Davis, who thinks cops will now have more rights than civilian employees of the force.

If that be excess, it is still not enough so far as cops are concerned. Nor does there seem to be much satisfaction in the widely shared view that cops today are better educated and more professional than their predecessors. In the end, the root problem may be that something fundamental went out as improved performance came in. "Before now, policemen looked on their profession almost as a calling--like joining the priesthood," says New York Police Psychologist Harvey Schlossberg, who was a cop on the beat for twelve years. "But as they feel less and less special, as they begin to have to accept the idea that theirs is just another job, the romance, the glory, the commitment will go out of the job. And in the long run the public will be the loser."

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