What's Race Got To Do With It?

No one is saying that being a street cop is easy. You have to be a social worker one day and gear up for a riot the next. You are supposed to be winsome and unruffled as you ask that drunk to stop peeing on the sidewalk. The pay is bad, and, oh, yeah, you could get killed every day.

But are cops actually victims, oppressed like a minority group? Many have begun to feel that way, as everyone from the White House to the city council in Peoria has looked into racial profiling. "There's a tiny number of police officers who may be stopping people because of race, but for many of us these days, it's guilt by uniform," says James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police (F.O.P.), the largest police union in the U.S. "It's wrong to characterize a person because of the color of their uniform."

That may sound like self-serving twaddle if you have experienced racial profiling firsthand, as a staggering 52% of black men said they had in a study co-sponsored by the Washington Post. But what happens when cops believe they too are victims, when they become convinced they can't do their jobs without being called racists or being falsely accused of using improper force--offenses that could get them fired?

What happens is Cincinnati, Ohio. In the tense months since three days of violent confrontations in April between mostly black protesters and mostly white police, many cops seem to have taken a breather. According to figures the city provided TIME, in June of this year police made 2,517 arrests for nonviolent crimes such as disorderly conduct and weapons violations; in June of last year they made 5,063 such arrests. Arrests for violent crimes, such as murder and arson, declined slightly, to 487 from 502, despite a 20% jump from the previous June in the incidence of those crimes. The figures for May, the month after the rioting, are similar. "Our officers are very frustrated at this rise in crimes," says Keith Fangman, president of the Cincinnati chapter of the F.O.P. "[But they] are afraid of being labeled a racial profiler every time they arrest someone."

Of course, there are other interpretations of the department's behavior. For instance, it suggests that officers have become intoxicated by authority--by the expanded powers of arrest, search and seizure that the courts and many legislatures have given them in recent years. Some cops seem to be saying that if they can't run free, they won't leave the station house.

That would seem to set up a choice: Are we to have a low-crime society, in which cops are violent cowboys, or a high-crime culture, in which cops can't stop a mob without written Justice Department approval? That dilemma is surely a creaky contrivance. Police can be effective without being jackbooted thugs. But many cities besides Cincinnati will probably face this question in coming months as lawmakers look to monitor police activity and as police protest the new rules.