Thin Blue Lies: Police and the Art of Propaganda

Image is everything, or so the commercial says. In an age of public relations, how one is portrayed can be every bit as important as the substance of one's actions. Thus, it should come as no surprise that along with politicians, entertainers and corporate executives, even police departments have joined the p.r. game.

With one after another discovery of police misconduct around the country -- from high-visibility cases of brutality, to racial profiling, to corruption involving bribes and the planting of evidence -- the recent headlines have been anything but flattering. Since the beating of Rodney King, the American masses have been made more aware than ever that Officer Friendly is not often there to get your cat out of the tree. Sometimes his intentions are far more pernicious than that.

And so it is no shock to see police across the nation cranking up their own propaganda mills so as to counter the trend of bad press. In the wake of scandal, how better to get the public on your side than to portray yourself as under siege? How better to gain sympathy than to remind the citizens how crucial you ostensibly are to their own safety? A little crime scare can go a long way.

Case in point: recent headlines from Cincinnati and Nashville. In the former, the police have been trying for months to excuse their well-documented overreactions to perceived danger. Since the mid-1990's officers there have killed 16 black men, many under highly suspicious circumstances, including Timothy Thomas, shot in the back this past April while running away from arrest on minor traffic violations.

Ever since the rebellion that was triggered by the Thomas shooting, police have been working overtime to portray the "rioters" as terrorists with no legitimate grievances against the cops.

Keith Fangman, head of the local Fraternal Order of Police, called a press conference immediately after the April shooting to display pictures of all the police in Cincinnati who have been killed in the line of duty. Stretching back many years, their photos hung behind Fangman's podium like a Wall of Fame, and Fangman made sure to point out that many of these officers were killed by black men, just like Tim Thomas. The none-too-subliminal message was plain: you can't be too careful, especially with "those people" running loose.

Now, three months after the city's upheaval, Fangman is back, proclaiming that the recent rise in violent crime in Cincinnati has been due to the reluctance of officers to aggressively police high-crime areas for fear of being labeled racist. In other words, the calls for equitable treatment by the city's black residents have made cops afraid to do their jobs, with the attendant result that citizens are now less safe.

Fangman would like the public to think this is what happens when you don't support local law enforcement and give them carte blanche to crack heads, apply chokeholds and shoot those who make the mistake of reaching to adjust their seatbelt during traffic stops. The implicit message essentially boils down to this: black people are too irrational to differentiate real racism from valid policing, so cops can't take the chance, and shouldn't be expected to do their jobs. That this work slowdown by white officers is a kind of insubordination that would get black people fired from any position in the nation seems to escape mention. That Cincinnati's blacks are quite capable of differentiating legitimate law enforcement from racist brutalization -- as evidenced by the community's acceptance of the latest shooting, which was made necessary by the suspect's firing on the officer first -- also seems not to phase Fangman and his bunch.

Yet the Mayor's response to the refusal of Cincinnati's finest to do their jobs has been laughable. "Acts of kindness to police officers," Charlie Lukens says, "would be appropriate at this time." In other words, there will be no insistence that the police do what they are paid to do, and do it equitably. Instead there is only a plea for Cincinnatians to hug cops and thank them for their selfless actions. Apparently the FOP spin-mill is working.