License to
lie
My narrow focus
will be on a single clue to the nature of the police: their universal enjoyment
of a license to lie to the public. In no jurisdictions, of course, do police
enjoy the legal right to lie to courts (although in every jurisdiction
they often do), and the United States, by allowing investigators to lie during
interrogation, further than some other countries, extends the license. The foregoing
lies are either prohibited by law or subject to public debate, whereas lies
to arbitrary members of the public are never
punished as crimes.
On what
subjects do the police—not just with impunity but approbation—lie? They lie
about rights of citizens: it is routine for the police to ask citizens lawfully
in their own homes or perambulating the neighborhood for identification papers,
even expressly claiming they have the right to see them in jurisdictions (like
California) where they have no such right. Police will also tell citizens that
they can’t use a given piece of angry language when on their own property.
Other examples will occur to people in different walks of life. The police lie about their intent: "We just want to talk to you." Police
prevarication is common knowledge, but it wasn’t always; once, law students
were surprised upon being instructed regarding the police license to lie, about
which, today, the police are heard to openly brag.
Servants don’t
claim the right to lie to their
masters. That some countries may have peculiarities isn’t to be denied; what is
striking is the license’s universality. As far as I can discover, no
jurisdiction criminalizes informal police prevarication. Whether it be only among the police themselves (when their
license to lie is semisecret) or the broader public (when the police flaunt
it), the license to lie serves to differentiate the police from the population
as the sole possessors of a right to
moral turpitude.
Some will
contend that, to infiltrate the mob, the police must lie. The secret police are outside the scope of
this essay because they raise different associated problems, not those of
personnel who represent themselves to the
public as state officials, yet avoid the otherwise general criminal
prohibition on official misrepresentation.
Consequences
A general
consequence is that, morality
being fundamentally habitual, the officerly habit of lying increases the
incidence of police perjury. In circumstances where the public doesn’t know
about the license to lie, the result is expansion of arbitrary police power.
When it is known, a hazardous uncertainty is, in addition, created. Increasingly, you can’t know whether the police are telling
you the truth about vital matters without placing yourself it risk.
A horrific
example was the Ohio
Walmart shooting of a youth holding a pellet gun that was part of the store’s
merchandise. A veritable SWAT team responded to a meritless complaint, and the
police demanded he drop the gun. Did the police have the legal right to make
this demand? When the youth had a moment of doubt, he lost his life.
