Uniforms, whether they be worn by military officers, police, the gas meter reader, or the guy behind the counter at McDonald’s, are symbols of service. They make it easy to spot a person who has taken an oath or accepted a contract, whether it’s “To Serve and Protect” or to serve a happy meal. They are designed to inspire confidence and trust, and at some level they are designed to make us believe that anyone wearing that uniform will provide the same product or service to anyone they interact with.
In most cases those uniforms tell the truth, because those services are rote or the range of decisions are limited. The person at McDonald’s can’t make decisions more momentous than leaving the pickles off of a burger, and the only judgment the gas meter reader has to make about any individual customer is whether to move the bicycles that block the path to their destination. The gas meter reader only wears a uniform so that people won’t be worried by a stranger coming in their yard. Their politics, opinions, and prejudices don’t come into play as they do their job.
Police, military, and fire personnel lead much less scripted lives, and their opinions and judgment do matter. A member of the public should have the right to know that the person who puts on that uniform and swears that oath of service will extend their service and protection to everyone without prejudice. We can’t read minds, but we can make reasonable inferences about certain associations if we know them. One way to make that discovery would be to put all serving peace officers and all candidates for the job on the record by demanding as a condition of employment that they disclose any past or present membership in the KKK, any neo-Nazi organization, or the New Black Panther Party. As all of these organizations have a dedication to prejudice against a particular racial group, it would be hard if not impossible for anyone who willingly joined to claim that they could be fair when dealing with someone from other ethnicities.
The officer or candidate would have to make such a statement under oath, with laws against perjury applicable, and the completed form would be a public document. If officers are forced to file this document as a condition of present or future employment, there would be several benefits. The existence of a document that might prove the officer’s connections to a racist organization would be useful after any incident in which their impartiality was put into question. I predict that after the filing of such a document was made necessary there would be a sudden wave of early retirements and transfers to other jurisdictions, and those who made a transfer just at that time might be regarded with justifiable suspicion.
Some people might object that this disclosure requirement is weak – that officers are not forced to quit any such organization, just to disclose their ties to it. This is appropriate for two reasons. First, while the readers of this blog might rightly regard these groups as terrorist organizations, membership in them is still legal, and the officers have a civil right to free association. In practice I think that current membership would disqualify them from any job with contact with the public, and past membership would certainly demand explanations. The failure by the local law enforcement higher-ups to make that determination or ask those questions would call their judgment and fairness into question too.
Another objection might be that the jurisdictions where this law would be most needed would be the ones where it would be least likely to pass. This is true, but not entirely a bad thing. If this requirement put to a vote everywhere, the far right is forced to defend the existence known racists in law enforcement. It’s a win either way – if the proposition is passed it will strengthen citizen confidence that their police are not secret members of racist and fascist organizations, and if it does not pass then the people who like racist police will have to go on the record to defend a repugnant idea.
I am interested in comments on both the legality and practicality of this idea, and if there is a general consensus that it is a good thing then those who are experienced in drafting legislation are invited to propose language that might be submitted to a city council or state assembly. If municipalities around America start passing this requirement then it will generate news coverage and questions about why neighboring jurisdictions aren’t following suit. Change can come from the bottom, city by city, county by county, and filter up to the point where a failure to have such a requirement would be a black mark on a community. It is perhaps not the sort of radical change that some might hope for, but it would be a step along the way. It would make it so that we could all have a little more confidence that the uniform is a symbol that may be trusted rather than feared.