PERSPECTIVErnPlaying God, or Being Men?rnby Thomas FlemingrnIn the American TV nightmare, the police are the protagonists.rnOr the antagonists. It depends on the program and thernpoint of view. We love the idea of the tough cop—Clint Eastwood,rnDennis Farina, Dennis Franz —who breaks the rulesrnand busts a few heads in a good cause. But change channels,rnand when the hero is a private eye or a civilian, the police arernrogues, on the take, out of control, and worse than the criminalsrnwho do not carry a badge. They are Gary Sinese in Ransom orrnthe thousand bad cops in shows like The Equalizer, The ATeam,rnand The Rockford Files.rnThe good cop/bad cop dichotomy is more than a dramaticrndevice or interrogation technique, and the same police officerrncan switch roles, alternately finding lost children and beatingrnthe bejesus out of speeders who give him lip. The godfather ofrnthe modern policeman was Jonathan Wilde, the London thieftakerrnwho turned out to be the city’s criminal mastermind.rnWilde unionized the cutpurses, footpads, and burglars until,rnwhen they turned against him, he ended up on the same gallowsrnto which he had consigned his unruly confederates. Manyrn(probably most) policemen resist the temptation to misuse theirrnauthority, but it must be hard on a man’s humility to be given arnbadge and a gun, along with the mandate to protect the livesrnand property of innocent and largely defenseless strangers.rnTraditionally, the left has always hated the police, not simplyrnbecause they are called in to arrest agitators. For radicals, thernpolice are the embodiment of the social order, and while thernbad cop is easier to criticize, it is the good cop who is the realrnenemy, the gun-for-hire who, as Yeats put it, “defends the sumrnof things for pay.” To the extent that a real left exists today, theyrncontinue to hate the police even though, for all practical purposes,rnthe boys in blue are working for a socialist regime. Butrncops and radicals are like cats and dogs: even when they are onrnthe same side, they do not like each other’s smell.rnConservatives instinctively support the police, and many ofrnthem have been bewildered by the daily occurrence of outragesrnand brutality committed by the forces of public order. Wacornand Ruby Ridge have become code words for a Middle Americanrnparanoia that sees the eyes of Lon Horiuchi behind thernhorn-rimmed glasses of every IRS agent and FBI clerk. Mostrnconservatives, however, shll regard the police as their allies andrnthink more prisons and longer sentences are the only solutionrnto the criminal insurrection that has America in its grip. In onernsense, they are right: keeping criminals off the street does, inrnfact, lower the incidence of crimes in cities like New York,rnwhere Mayor Giuliani’s “kick ass and take names” approach tornlaw enforcement has made the city more nearly habitable.rnCrackdowns, however, have a limited effectiveness. Crime,rnas liberals are fond of saying, is a symptom rather than a disease.rnReversing St. Paul’s dichim that the ruler’s sword is a threat tornthe wicked, not to the good, we have created a criminal justicernsystem that is kind to the criminal classes but a terror to anyrnsmall-time embezzler or petty infractor who is made the sexslavernof the raping-murdering thugs whose TV and workoutrnrooms are provided by the taxpayer.rnA little personal story (which I have told before) illustratesrnthe problem. I once worked in a hotel with a two-bit hoodlumrnwho called himself Mike. One day the hood (who reached forrnhis knife when he was asked to clear a table) confessed to mernthat his real name was Tom —Mike was his brother. “Thisrnway,” he explained, “When I get caught, it goes on my brother’srnlO/CHRONICLESrnrnrn