A Call for Human Rights Policing: We Can Make The World Better
/By: Peter Marina & Pedro Marina
Interested in finding new ways to make law enforcement even better? Do you want police officers to further excel at their jobs? Do you want to foster improved trust between police officers and the community? Is it time to end the “us” against “them” mentality?
While some people talk of eliminating police, such talk carries more bark than bite. Even so-called progressives, who argued for defunding police, actually voted “present” allowing increased funding for the police when it protected them personally.
On the superstitious fear of the mob, Orwell states:
The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day’s liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. ‘Anything,’ he thinks, ‘any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose (Orwell, 1984).’
Despite the virtue signaling, police are here to stay.
To become the world’s best model of policing, we need a standard national human rights police training program that trains law enforcement agents how to apply human rights in their everyday police interactions with community members.
Human rights police training goes beyond virtue-signaling and preaching ideological liberal concepts using vague, poorly defined terms. It goes beyond teaching police officers the culturally correct attitudes and sanctioned forms of thought. It goes against anti-intellectual orthodox views that teach police what to think instead of how to think. It refuses to force police officers to undergo thought correction therapy for ideas questioning the status quo.
Rather, human rights policing teaches police officers the meaning of human rights along with its recent emergence in human history. It requires police to analyze the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights to discuss how it relates to police work. Police officers learn how other officers think about human rights and apply it to everyday policing situations.
Human rights police training teaches police that power derives from institutions, as does trust, and if police want to be trusted, they must restore the legitimacy of law enforcement. It also teaches police officers to use their power, not for use of force, but rather to realize their sense of agency to protect the human rights of the people they serve. Human agency is the ability of human beings to go against the deterministic forces of biology and culture. When police use their agency to protect the human rights of those they serve, they go against the hierarchical logic of power and domination. Rather, they use their agency to save lives and protect people’s ability to enjoy the rights that naturally belong to them. In such a training program, police officers discuss new and creative ways to use their agency for the advancement of human rights in the communities they serve.
Human rights police training teaches police how to use the sociological imagination to understand crime as a structural problem that exists within the institutional arrangements of society. They learn that much of what accounts for street crime is a creative, even if destructive, cultural solution to the collectively experienced structural problems people face. Most importantly, they develop the ability to see the world from the actor’s point of view, through talking with members of the community they serve and learning their story. Police officers discuss their experiences talking with community members only to realize that those they police live colorful, vibrant and nuanced lives very much like our own.
Human rights police training involves police officers interviewing members of a community organization, especially those critical of police, to learn their perspectives on how police officers can apply human rights to their community. Police officers learn how people in their community interpret and understand what human rights policing looks like from the points of view of community members. Police officers discuss their findings with their colleagues and reflect on how this might better inform their ability to apply human rights to policing.
Finally, human rights police training teaches police officers how to apply specific rights from the Declaration of Human Rights to a wide variety of real-life policing situations. It trains police to think about all the human rights that belong to people, and how they can allow community members to enjoy the rights that belong to them, even under tough conditions.
Human rights policing can become the focus of police training and the standard model of policing. Police officers can become the leaders of applying the highest standard of human rights in law enforcement.
Human rights remains a concept, but far from a practice in society. Is it possible that police officers can serve as the harbinger towards making human rights a reality?
We say yes.
We can make the world better.
That’s why we created the Human Rights Policing Certificate Program offered through the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse’s Extended learning Program.
Peter Marina is an Associate Professor of Sociology & Criminal Justice at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse.
Pedro Marina is a U.N.O. graduate in sociology and a retired police lieutenant from the New Orleans Police Department with thirty years of law enforcement experience in the Big Easy.
Their book Human Rights Policing: Reimagining Law Enforcement in the 21st Century is now under contract with Routledge Press.
