The Standard

There is a predictable response whenever a police officer is accused of going too far with a young person. We hear that children today are disrespectful. We hear that parents need to raise their children better. We hear that teenagers need discipline, that young people have no respect for authority anymore, and that sometimes somebody needs to “put them in their place.”

Some of those observations may even be true. None of them answers the question.

A teenager can be rude. A teenager can be disrespectful. A teenager can roll his eyes, look away while an adult is speaking, suck his teeth, curse, make an offensive gesture or behave in a way that would make most parents furious. His parents may have every reason to discipline him for it. But the question before us is not whether teenagers should have manners. The question is what a police officer is legally and professionally permitted to do when confronted with a teenager who does not.

Those are two entirely different issues, and confusing them is how inappropriate exercises of authority become normalized. What we saw in the encounter that has generated discussion appears, at its core, to be an officer reacting personally to perceived disrespect. If the physical contact with the teenager was simply about forcing him to look at the officer, correcting his attitude or demonstrating who was in charge, then that should concern everyone, including people who strongly support the police.

Police officers absolutely have circumstances in which physical intervention is justified. Someone may have to be arrested. A person may be resisting lawful detention. Someone may pose a danger to himself, the officer or another person. An officer may have to physically control a situation before somebody gets hurt. Nobody seriously arguing this issue should pretend otherwise.

But “he looked away from me” is not the same thing as “he was trying to escape lawful detention.” “He disrespected me” is not the same thing as “he was threatening somebody.” “He gave me attitude” is not automatically a public safety problem. And this is precisely where professionalism should come in.

We give police officers powers that ordinary citizens do not have. We authorize them, under defined circumstances, to detain people, arrest people and use force. With that authority comes a higher expectation of self-control. Not a lower one.

Two people can be wrong in the same encounter. A teenager can be wrong for his behavior, while an officer can be wrong for his response. That is apparently difficult for some people to accept because we have turned too many public debates into contests in which choosing one wrong somehow requires us to excuse the other. It does not.

There is another comeback we should expect: “You don't know what police officers have to deal with.” That is true. Police work can involve aggression, danger, insults, provocation and situations that change in seconds. Officers regularly encounter people at their worst. But it cannot become an all-purpose excuse.

In fact, the difficult nature of police work is exactly why training, discipline and emotional control matter so much. We do not train officers merely to handle cooperative people. Anybody can remain calm when everyone is polite. Professionalism is tested when the person in front of you is angry, disrespectful, immature or deliberately trying to provoke you.

The teenager is allowed to be immature in the literal sense that he is still a child developing judgment and emotional control. That does not make bad behavior acceptable. It does mean, however, that the trained adult carrying the authority of the country cannot descend to the emotional level of the child. That officer has to be better because the uniform demands a higher standard from the person wearing it.

Then there is perhaps the weakest defense of all: “It wasn't that serious. He only touched his face.” Be very careful with that argument. The issue is not simply how much physical harm resulted. The issue is why an officer put his hands on someone in the first place. Small exercises of unjustified authority matter because they establish habits, both for institutions and for the public. Once we accept that an officer may physically correct someone because the officer feels disrespected, we have created a standard that depends not on law but on emotion.

How disrespectful does someone have to be? Who decides? Can an officer grab an adult's face for refusing to make eye contact? Can he push someone because that person rolls his eyes? Can he physically correct your daughter because he believes her tone is disrespectful? If the answer suddenly changes when we replace somebody else's teenager with our own child, then perhaps the principle was never very sound.

Respect for police cannot mean obedience to the personal emotions of every individual officer. It should mean respect for lawful authority, which protects police officers too. Every officer who handles a difficult encounter professionally strengthens public confidence in the uniform. Every officer who refuses to take insults personally demonstrates why society entrusted him or her with extraordinary authority in the first place.

In the aftermath of a situation such as this, the parents of that child should be able to question boundaries and restraint, without being told that questioning an officer means they are defending bad behavior by their child. They can do both. They can tell their son, “You were disrespectful and you were wrong.” Then they can turn to the officer and say, “You are the trained professional. What you did was also wrong.” Those statements do not contradict each other and young people should hear both lessons just as clearly.

Respect police officers. Follow lawful instructions. Do not provoke confrontations unnecessarily. Being rude to someone carrying significant legal authority is neither courageous nor intelligent. Your actions have consequences, and growing into adulthood means learning how to conduct yourself even when you are angry.

But there is a second lesson, equally important: a uniform does not erase boundaries. Authority is not ownership over another person's dignity. Respect cannot be physically extracted from somebody. And an officer feeling personally insulted does not transform an emotional reaction into a lawful police action.

This is bigger than one teenager and one officer. The standard we defend today becomes the standard available tomorrow.

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