I freely admit: I’m a fan of western stories. Most of them are set in the late 1800s and it was surely a simpler - if not as comfortable - time then. Indoor plumbing may have been a rarity and outhouses weren’t fun. Heating was a fireplace and lots of blankets while air conditioning meant opening windows and staying in the shade. Grocery shopping wasn’t really a thing and hunting or fishing if you wanted meat in your diet was mandatory. But one of the simpler things that would have impacted the day to day lives of citizens in any given town or city would have been law enforcement.
It occurred to me this morning (as I type this), while reading one of those “old westerns,” that the law men of that era were more trusted by the people who employed them. With far less legislation... less nit-picky controls... no general orders, standard operating procedures, personnel laws, etc., the judgment of the law men was depended on for enforcement. Rather than having a person commit an act that meets the components of a given crime, and having a deputy or police officer arrest them, write out all the documents, take them before a commissioner or magistrate and then provide testimony against them weeks or months later in a trial, if that same person committed the same act in the late 1800s, it was up to the law man on the scene, or in that area, to determine whether or not the crime had been committed. The law man arrested as necessary, jailed as necessary and cared for as necessary.
Judges were needed for the few civil matters that existed and the occasional serious crimes trial. Due to the expanse of land and scarcity of population in the west / mid-west at that time, it wasn’t uncommon for judgment to have been rendered and delivered long before an actual judge got to the location. Every incident was handled on its own merits and circumstances, and court precedent, case law, etc. didn’t play a part. In the individual incident, the law man decided whether the offense committed was right or wrong and whether an arrest was necessary.
On the one hand, such circumstances and situations did offer a much larger chance for overuse of power, prejudicial treatment, unfair or unwarranted arrests and more. On the other hand, if the law man chosen and hired had a sufficient moral value system, his judgments would have been more likely to meat out justice than today’s judicial system in a lot of cases. Think about that for a few minutes: A Sheriff in one of those old west towns, selected by the city or town aldermen, was responsible for keeping peace in the town. He likely knew who the problem people were and carried the responsibility of keeping them in line... or arresting them... or shooting them if they resisted arrest too stringently. If he arrested them, he was responsible for caring for them while they were in his jail. That meant the Sheriff, or whichever deputy he appointed, had to make sure all prisoners were fed, taken to the outhouse for bathroom breaks, etc.
The Sheriff also had to protect, or arrange for the protection of, the town. That meant knowing which citizens were good, which weren’t so good and which had the courage to stand and defend not only themselves but their families and potentially their neighbors. In doing all of that, the Sheriff would surely have learned what kind of people he was dealing with; what kind of person each of those citizens was; whose values and beliefs were less selfish and more charitable. In knowing that, if he got word of a disturbance involving those folks, he’d likely know, once he arrived and saw who was involved, who was the problem and who was “righteous,” for lack of a better word
Sure, there were probably times when a Sheriff would have to shoot someone and that someone’s parents or other family felt it was unnecessary or they mourned the loss of their child/sibling. More often than not, though, those parents/families also knew the Sheriff to be an upright man who had proven himself time and time again. Those parents/families also knew one other thing that so many today seem to miss: The Sheriff wouldn’t have had any reason to even come in contact with their child/sibling (mind you, the “child” could be 20+ years old) if s/he hadn’t been doing something wrong or illegal in the first place.
Something that was well learned and well remembered back then was that for every decision and every action there are consequences. If the action was charitable, helpful or even simply part of the day to day function in some productive manner, it would earn the respect of the Sheriff and even, sometimes, praise. On the other hand, if the action was criminal or hurt the town in some way, the Sheriff’s response would be as it should be: one of protection and enforcement to keep the peace.
In today’s world, although I believe we do have Sheriffs with those types of values; deputies, Police Chiefs and police officers all with those higher values and levels of morals / ethics driving them to perform in as professional a manner as they are capable, I also believe that all too often their hands are tied by micro-managed legislation. More laws are passed every year and we’ve reached a point in our society where even legal scholars debate the proper meaning and interpretation of a word or string of words. The laws sometimes seek to control what a law enforcement professional can or can’t do. Mandates to arrest, controls on how to handcuff, video cameras watching every move officers or deputies make... today’s law enforcement professionals are micro-managed to the point where their individual judgment and discretion is severely limited. While all of that may have been done in an attempt to keep things more fair and impartial, the side effect is more work for the judicial systems and a constant critical questioning of how any officer or deputy does his/her job.
Our society, our judicial system and our legislative bodies need to realize this one thing: There is simply no way to legislate right and wrong. We can legislate legal and illegal but we cannot legislate right and wrong. Right and wrong is determined case by case dependent on the actions and words of those involved as filtered and controlled by the circumstances in that specific incident. Who gets arrested or even if anyone gets arrested shouldn’t be a legal mandate that gives no consideration to the totality of the circumstances.
Discretion is a powerful tool that, when used properly, can help build a community’s trust of the law enforcement agency and the individual officers. Discretion depends on judgment and judgment can be refined; it can be learned and improved. Parents do it all the time with their children. We teach them right from wrong and then as they grow and experience different things, we help them refine their judgment on that case by case basis. Law enforcement leaders carry the responsibility of doing the same thing with the officers under their command.
By taking that discretion away or limiting it so severely, while our intent might be to insure fair and impartial handling of situations, we also create situations where the officer is literally prohibited from doing what is obviously the right thing because some micro-managing law requires him to do something else. I’ve seen it and it sucks. That situation, intended to serve the community better in the minds of well meaning legislators, actually ends up creating mistrust between the officer(s) and the community served.
Maybe simpler is better. Maybe fewer laws are required. Maybe simpler language in those laws is necessary. Maybe we need to return to a time when the character and judgment of a law man carried more respect and trust from the community.
It’s just a thought...
