Law: Blue Funk

• Share

Police brass in a brouhaha

Patrick Murphy is the very model of the modern major police official. And that may be the trouble. As the former police boss in New York, Detroit, Washington and Syracuse, N.Y., and now as president of the small but influential Police Foundation, he has become a symbol of many of the changes in police forces during recent decades. Some departments have adopted such reforms as the hiring and promotion of blacks and women and the use of social science techniques. On the other side, more traditional chiefs, particularly in small towns, have preferred to stay with tried and true ways that they believe work just fine, thank you. In the past few years the two factions have been quietly wrestling for control of the nation's largest organization of police executives, the 13,500-member International Association of Chiefs of Police. Last week the feud came out in the open, and it was not an uplifting sight.

A majority of the I.A.C.P. members come from the many small-town forces, but the full-time staff that runs the organization on a daily basis has tended to reflect the more liberal views of members like Murphy. Adding to the resentment against Murphy has been the fact that he regularly breaks the eleventh commandment: "Thou shalt not criticize another policeman." In May, Murphy was informed that an ad hoc committee would be considering sanctions against him fora variety of "derogatory statements," including "The police world—I generalize—is a racist world. We're reflective of society itself," and "The I.A.C.P. is today dedicated to preventing most of the reforms that are essential to the improvement of police service." Condemning the committee's "attempt to suppress conflicting viewpoints," Murphy angrily asked that the hearing be open. When the committee said no, he stayed away from the hearing, released the sorry details to the press and appeared on the Today show to argue his case.

Unsettled by this unfavorable attention, the I.A.C.P.'s executive committee voted only to censure, not expel him. In the end, Murphy took the incident as further proof of one of his earlier volleys at the I.A.C.P.: "By your action, you summon up the image of police chiefs as members ol an inferior vocation in public service, fearful of dissent and debate and caught in a web of conformity. In this, you don't hurt Pat Murphy, but you bring ridicule to the calling of police management."