Governing the American Police: Wrestling with the Problems of Democracy
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Governing the American Police:
Wrestling with the Problems of Democracy
Samuel Walkert
I. INTRODUCTION: GOVERNING THE AMERICAN POLICE-AND THE
PROBLEM WITH DEMOCRACY
Winston Churchill, the famed Prime Minister of England, once
observed that it has been said that democracy is the worst form of
Government except all those other forms that have been tried from
time to time.'
Churchill's trenchant remark well states the problem of governing
the police in the United States. For many decades, and not simply in
the period since the tragic events in Ferguson, Missouri, in August
2014, critics of the police have charged that the police are out of
control,2 and a law unto themselves,3 acting with little regard for the
law and standards of human decency. The melancholic truth, however,
is that the police are not out of control in terms of democratic self-
government. City police forces, which are the focus of our current
national police crisis and also the subject of this Article, are directly
controlled by popularly elected mayors and city councils. Sheriffs, on
the other hand, are directly elected and their departments controlled by
elected county boards.4 In short, the police in this country are and have
t Professor Emeritus of Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He
would like to thank Joanna Schwartz for her extremely helpful comments on an earlier draft of
this Article. Professor Walker would also like to dedicate this Article to Herman Goldstein,
Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Professor Goldstein has been one of
the most creative and influential thinkers in policing for more than a half a century, and his ideas
have helped shape the thinking that appears in this Article far more than any other person.
' Winston Churchill, Leader of the Opposition, Parliament Bill, Address before the House of
Commons (Nov. 11, 1947), in 7 WINSTON CHURCHILL: HIS COMPLETE SPEECHES 1897-1963, 7566
(Robert Rhodes James ed., 1974).
2 Herman Goldstein, Improving Police: A Problem-Oriented Approach, 25 CRIME & DELINQ.
236, 239 (1979).
Herbert L. Packer, Two Models of the Criminal Process, 113 U. PA. L. REV. 1, 28 (1964).
4 See HERMAN GOLDSTEIN, POLICING A FREE SOCIETY 132 (1977) (pointing out that [t]he
traditional means by which citizens are assumed to exert positive influence on the police is
through their elected officials, but devoting the book to the historic failure of that approach in
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Governing the American Police: Wrestling with the Problems of Democracy
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