The ethical paradox and challenges for Seattle Police Chief John Diaz

LIKE most law-enforcement officers, I learned early in my career that police work is defined by ambiguity and imperfection. There were many moments when my decisions had overwhelmingly positive or even lifesaving effects; but even so, the exercise of police power is always tinged by tragedy, because policing and violence are inseparably related.

Even in situations peacefully resolved (which is nearly all of them), potential for violence still hovers in the background. If this weren't true, then policing wouldn't be the coercive mechanism of last resort that we demand and expect it to be. We give police officers authority to command us in a vast range of circumstances, and power to ensure that we comply.

However, as sociologist Max Weber argued, those who wield power cannot escape the ethical paradox that sometimes they must rely on violent means to bring about potentially good ends.

Every officer is ultimately judged by how he or she negotiates this paradox, and so it will be for John Diaz as he assumes command of the Seattle Police Department. Amid growing demands for enhanced public safety in times of scarcity, Chief Diaz will doubtless feel more than ever a twofold pressure: on one side, indignation from marginalized, dispossessed community members who are the disproportionate focus of police activity; on the other, contempt from self-righteous elites who want to enjoy the fruits of civic order without shouldering any of the sacrifices for its protection.

This pressure is hardly unique to Seattle: It is one of the defining dilemmas of modern urban policing.

As for the first source of pressure, Chief Diaz must foster an organizational culture at SPD that actively acknowledges pain born of social inequality. The best street cops know that earning and giving respect is the linchpin of safe, effective police work.

Time and again, I have been in fights with people and later parted with kind words and a handshake upon booking them into jail because the use of force need not entail humiliation.

Like the doctor or nurse who acknowledges patients' humanity even while causing discomfort, good cops strive to understand what it feels like to be on the receiving end of raw power.

As a further step toward earning the respect and enhancing safety of some of Seattle's most vulnerable citizens, Chief Diaz must aggressively commit resources to the reduction of gun violence while developing creative, cost-effective and holistic responses to nonviolent drug offenses and youth crime.

Over the past decade, nearly 60 percent of homicides in King County have been committed with firearms, and a vastly disproportionate number of victims have been young men of color. A new report from the Police Executive Research Forum, which also oversaw selection of the SPD chief, summarizes growing recognition by police leaders across the United States that getting guns off streets pays far higher dividends in community safety and trust than repeatedly arresting drug users and user-dealers.

As for the second source of pressure, Chief Diaz must educate Seattle's elites about the ethical paradox of policing, and must demand they become participants rather than passive, critical observers.

Too many citizens prideful of their social activism and ostensible sophistication scarcely recognize the moral and practical complexity of street-level policing. Yet one of the greater promises for police reform lies in the possibility that social elites will eventually accord law enforcement respect commensurate with its responsibilities.

Among other things, this might also lead to greater idealism in police ranks. Whenever I ask my university students whether I have more respect and prestige as a police officer or as a professor, they overwhelmingly choose the latter.

Surely it's worth discussing why we ask so much, yet in some ways think so little of the one group in society that has the legal power to use force under such wide circumstances and must wrestle daily with the ethical paradox this power carries.