LAW ENFORCEMENT

POLICE IMAGE

THE BAD POLICE

JOHN LOGAN

IN THE SPHERE of law enforcement, a raid on a bar usually means that the target is a "gay bar" or some place otherwise a scene of "vice." But not so recently in Long Beach, California, where eager vice squad officers instituted a campaign of lightning strikes on neighborhood beer tavems and made arrests which have since been labeled indiscriminate and illconceived.

Transferred were two top officers on the vice squad: Capt. Fred J. Stevenson and Sgt. Donald Phelps. City Manager John Mansell heard 125 wrathful citizens at a meeting of the Long Beach City Council deplore the barroom "rousts" of "drunks" and he read a 2000-word statement which promised procedural changes in the Long Beach Police Department. Police Chief William Mooney, however, in transferring the two officers, said the moves were ordered "not because I lack confidence in their ability as police officers, but because their effectiveness in present assignments might be impaired as a result of the unfavorable publicity which centered on the division."

And unfavorable publicity it was. Beginning in late October, Columnist Bob Wells in the Long Beach Press Telegram devoted several editions to reports on the outpouring indignation of Long Beach citizens who had felt the police whip first hand. Among them was a citizen suffering a fractured rib after an officer floored him in a "scuffle" which others testified did not justify the officer's attack on the man, but which nevertheless netted the victim a charge of disturbing the peace, and drunken arrests for others who stepped up to inquire what was going on.

Bob Wells, in his columns, gave accounts of several people-people generally without arrest records, men with wives and families, who were summarily arrested as "drunk" after only a beer or two. Requests for sobriety tests were ignored. Pleas by a husband to contact his wife were dismissed, likewise attempts of a wife outside to contact her husband in jail were sarcastically put aside. In loading the persons arrested into paddy wagons, one instance after another of vulgar-even obscene-language used by police was heard. Corroborated testimony of several witnesses in a bar was not considered valid by judges who glanced at polygraph reports on police statements which was in contradiction to that testimony.

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In this connection, police departments and other law enforcement agencies have lately been concerned about the bad public image they have earned in the eyes of citizenry in general. The situation is getting so bad, they say, that nowadays a citizen will come to the aid of a person a policeman is attempting to subdue rather than to the aid of the policeman who is charged with protecting the public. Why has this situation come about? The Long Beach episode may contain a clue, albeit it is an extreme example. For instance, here is one of Bob Wells' columns which hits right to the point, and which may describe a situation that may ultimately cause a police chief or city manager to lose his job:

"Someone once said that á police officer is given 30 seconds to make a decision which the Supreme Court will study for two years to decide whether it was a right or wrong decision.

"One of the things that makes me admire and respect policemen is the fact that 9,999 out of every 10,000 of those split-second decisions are good, sound decisions. But now and then a mistake is made.

"Because it is made in 30 seconds does not make it any more right. It is still a mistake. And every time a mistake is made, it not only injures the public, it injures other policemen.

"A number of those mistakes have been made by the local vice squad lately in a series of swoops and raids on bars-primarily beer bars-in which citizens were arrested-apparently at random-and booked as drunks. When other citizens ventured to inquire what was going on, they were arrested for interfering with an officer.

"The biggest mistake was made when these raids were ordered. Since last weekend every policeman on the force has had to suffer the indignation of a sizeable part of our populace-an indignation stirred by the actions of a comparative few vice officers.

"Chief Mooney's attempts to educate the public to an understanding of law enforcement problems has been set back by years.

"I have talked with scores of victims and witnesses of these raids. It is my opinion, based on checking and rechecking these accounts, that the police making these raids were indiscriminate in arrests, offensive in manner and arrest-happy.

"It is my opinion that the purpose of these raids was not to jail drunks but to intimidate the entire patronage of the establishments hit. The police have admitted as much with their story that this was an attempt to cut down on holiday drinking. In other words, the victims were subject to pol-

ice action for crimes the police thought they might commit next month.

"This concept of 'preventive harassment' is both illegal and undemo-

cratic.