Respect is a two-way street

As the West Philadelphia community and the rest of the world recently have been reminded of, a consistent and fair relationship between citizens and police officers is essential. Most of us were raised to view policemen as trustworthy protectors and heroes, and they certainly are both; however, their interaction with society is much more complex -- especially on a college campus.

Dealing with police is somewhat unavoidable even for law-abiding citizens. And unfortunately, sometimes these scenarios turn negative. There are many bad apples out there in the form of both uncooperative citizens and rude cops.

Growing up, I had always assumed that only troublemakers had to worry about the police. However, one day, as my friends and I were traveling to Dartmouth, we were stopped on a small country road by a Vermont officer, a clone of Super Trooper Rod Farva. We were just looking for directions and expected him to be helpful. Instead, he bombarded us with excessive questions and unreasonably delayed our trip, even after he had taken down the license and registration information. He was skeptical as to why college sophomores were driving through his state with New York plates.

At Penn, my experience with police was worse. One Saturday night, when relaxing at my friend's second-floor private apartment over a few drinks, we were surprised to hear a knock on the door. It was the cops. They claimed that they had smelled illicit substances coming from the apartment, but that was a complete falsehood. The officers, dressed in intimidating black boots and using an angry tone, demanded that we shut off the music, which was not very loud, and break up our gathering.

Afterward, though I was angry and shocked, my friend who lived in the apartment did not want me to report the incident because he was afraid of retaliation. The police had given him a hard time once before and did not seem to like him, for no apparent reason. He had no confidence that he would be able to maintain anonymity within the police's reporting process. While I certainly did not agree with the actions that these officers took on that night, their attitudes were reason for even more alarm. Attitude is not necessarily an issue of a few bad apples, but rather of an organization or perhaps even a city.

On the other hand, there is a misconception at Penn that cops are meant solely to protect us, as opposed to upholding the law for everyone. A conflict exists between campus security, which should take into account the nature of a college atmosphere, and city security, which doesn't. West Philadelphia is not like Princeton, where students' actions, instead of external crime, are the main focus of police activity. Many Penn students are rude to police because they take this for granted. They assume that cops should have more important priorities than stopping people from drinking on the street.

Some policemen, though, do not treat students with proper respect. Assumptions are made leading to the mistreatment of cooperative students. Police must act more rashly and swiftly in dangerous situations, but many situations at Penn are clearly not comparable. Rioters in Paris who are looting and destroying property obviously are treated differently from partygoers playing Beirut.

In the end, as we entrust the police with the security of our community, cops need to be held to a higher standard than the average citizen. I felt violated in that situation last year, though I was respectful of our intruders. There was no mutuality.

The unfortunate fact is that the police are often victims of the availability heuristic. When they do an excellent job, that often entails nothing happening, and few people take notice. But the media frequently reports stories of police corruption and brutality, which are really the exception. I can vouch for excellent police work firsthand, as I saw it when I worked at the Republican National Convention last fall. Facing a great challenge, police were able to deal with both the threat of terrorism and protesters pretty well. The confrontations I saw between protesters and police were, for the most part, civil and respectful.

By no means do I intend to indict either the police or students involved in this past Thursday's BMOC situation, but it is relevant when considering the attitudes of both parties in alleviating future conflicts and also looking for further warning signs that police potentially overstepped their bounds.

Given the trust our society has placed in them, they must set an example. We must re-examine our standards and the roots of the problem closely in the wake of such trying events, as it appears that this is more than just an isolated incident.

However, in a city full of governmental corruption and political intimidation, it is no surprise that these issues carry over to both police and citizens.

Mark Littmann is a senior, finance concentrator from New York. Case of the Mondays appears on Mondays.

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