Civil forfeiture is yet another mechanism by which the criminal justice system routinely inflicts harm on people that is wildly disproportionate to the magnitude of their guilt. To take just one example, after Philadelphia police arrested Chris and Markela Sourvelos's son for selling $40 worth of drugs outside their home, they came back with padlocks and ordered the family out because the city had decided to forfeit their house, just as it had done with countless other homeowners. Anyone who thinks that is an indisputably moral act deserving of no condemnation simply because it was done in accordance with then-prevailing law is a poor philosopher and a worse human being. At a minimum, we should not be surprised when people who disagree grow increasingly disdainful of an institution that will, without the slightest compunction, throw a family out into the street and take their home over a $40 drug sale.

To summarize, not all laws are morally defensible and neither is every punishment. People who unquestioningly enforce immoral laws and help inflict morally disproportionate punishments deserve to be condemned. And while reasonable people may certainly disagree about whether any of our current laws and punishments are morally indefensible, that is precisely the point—reasonable people may disagree.

2. The routine use of deceit by police.

Another bedrock moral precept is the injunction against deceit, including particularly in the context of an adjudicative proceeding—what is commonly referred to as "bearing false witness." Few people seriously dispute that police perjury is widepsread, and surveys of judges, prosecutors, and even cops themselves confirm the perception that so-called "testilying" by police happens regularly.

As my colleague James Craven documents in this recent blog post, the use of deceit by police also occurs outside the courtroom, given that American police—unlike their European counterparts—have embraced deceit as a legitimate tool of law enforcement. Our cops learn deceptive interrogation techniques, and numerous studies have confirmed how heavily they rely on these practices, often to the exclusion of using other strategies. Indeed, the use of deception is so widespread that Richard Leo, a leading expert on police interrogations, has described it as “the single most salient and defining feature of how interrogation is practiced" here in America.

The impression of cops as deceitful and untrustworthy has been exacerbated by people's ability to record their encounters with police and upload them to social media. Back in October, for example, the Fraternal Order of Police had to delete a tweet in which they claimed Philadelphia police had discovered a young child "wandering around barefoot in an area that was experiencing complete lawlessness" when it turned out that the child had in fact been pulled from an SUV that had taken a wrong turn, resulting in the child's mother being yanked out of the driver's seat by police and thrown to the ground with such force that she required medical attention. Other examples include this North Carolina police officer falsely advising an Uber driver (who also happened to be an attorney) that state law prohibited him from recording the encounter, and this traffic stop in which an Iowa cop first issues the young driver a warning about his headlights and then segues into an astonishingly ham-handed and deceitful ruse designed trick him into consenting to an entirely baseless search of his car. Defenders of police claim incidents like these are vanishingly rare, but how would they know? Cops do not make a record of every time they try to trick someone into waiving their rights, as in the two videos above.

The bottom line is this: It is perfectly reasonable for people to perceive that American police too frequently practice deceit, both officially and unofficially, in the course of their jobs. Those who would dismiss that perception or minimize its significance vastly underestimate the intensity of the cultural taboo against dishonesty and the universal moral condemnation of those who bear false witness.   

3. Refusing to take responsibility for wrongful conduct.

The final point—accountability—has garnered so much attention in the context of Cato's campaign to end qualified immunity that it scarcely requires elaboration. But here again, we see police flouting a fundamental moral precept that says every sentient adult, regardless of their vocation or social status, must take responsibility for the harm they inflict on others.

Consider a wealthy diplomat who gets drunk at a reception and causes a car accident while driving home. The diplomat may well be able to avoid being sued by invoking diplomatic immunity, but that has no bearing whatsoever on his moral obligation to compensate the driver of the other car. Similarly, if you're a police officer executing a warrant in someone's home and you use the opportunity to help yourself to some of their belongings—$225,000 in cash and gold coins, let's say—then you have a moral duty to make restitution, just like the drunk diplomat. And, just like the diplomat, the fact that the law allows you to escape civil liability by asserting personal immunity from suit has no bearing whatsoever on your moral duty to compensate the person from whom you stole the money. 

Of course, you may take the position that you've done nothing wrong; maybe you claim that you seized the homeowner's property as evidence in an investigation or as contraband to which the homeowner had no rightful claim. You certainly have a right to assert those justifications in litigation; but your decision to deny the homeowner his day in court by invoking a technical defense that arises purely from your status as a government official—which is what happens when police invoke the judge-made doctrine of qualified immunity—is a morally blameworthy act. Simply put, there is a disagreement between you and the homeowner about whether you had a legitimate reason for taking his property. But instead of submitting that disagreement to the judgment of a neutral arbiter, you have chosen to play what amounts to a legal wild card that enables you to avoid making restitution regardless of whether you were in the right. People who refuse to answer for their conduct violate a fundamental human value, and it is no surprise that they are universally condemned.  

Conclusion

We started with a simple question: Why are so many people so mad at cops these days? Plainly there are many reasons, and we should avoid the temptation to oversimplify. But it would be a monumental error and a grave injustice to dismiss that anger if there is some basis for it. Police play a vital role in our society, but they cannot do their jobs effectively without the trust and support of the community. In order to hold that trust, they must earn it—including by asking themselves hard questions like whether there are certain laws they have a moral duty not to enforce and professional practices they have a moral obligation to disclaim.

A final point: Keep in mind that it is entirely irrelevant whether you yourself agree with people who condemn police for the behaviors described above. Chances are no one's asking you to march with them in solidarity or pledge your support for fundamentally overhauling the police. But if you reflexively dismiss and condemn the anger that has been pouring into our streets without trying to understand its origin, then make no mistake: You are part of the problem.

This article first appeared on the Cato Institute blog.

Image: Reuters