Police and the complexity of the law

Earlier this month, before a game with the Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins wore a shirt protesting the deaths of John Crawford and Tamir Rice, both of whom were shot by police officers. Though neither death has received as much sustained attention as the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, these shootings are part of the larger, current national discussion about police shootings of black men, and in Rice’s case, boys. And Hawkins’ protest is part of the larger reaction, and he has joined several other athletes in calls for justice for these deaths.

The Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association President Jeff Follmer, in a reaction sent to a local TV station, stated that “It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law.” In an ironic twist of fate, a day later the Supreme Court issued a decision in Heien v. North Carolina, in which the court ruled, 8-1, that a police officer’s mistaken understanding of a law does not mean that there has been a Fourth Amendment violation of a reasonable search. A smaller story making its way around social media currently is that of a law student ticketed, in Florida, for playing loud music and having proof of insurance on a smartphone app, rather than a paper document. The problem is that the citations are based on outdated laws. In other words, the police officer was incorrect about the state of the law in the state.

{mosads}I think it is important to rectify these seemingly dichotomous positions. A police union president thinks that it is “pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law,” suggesting that the police do. Yet, no less an authority than the Supreme Court of the United States recognizes that sometimes police officers don’t know the law, and if that ignorance is “reasonable,” is willing to let the slight slide.

For the record, I think the Supreme Court is right, at least in the short term, in its decision. Why? Because the complexities of law are overwhelming, and it may be that it is “pretty pathetic” to expect an athlete or officer to have the vast codification of law memorized. For example, earlier this year Missouri rewrote its criminal code for the first time since 1979. Gov. Jay Nixon (D), however, expressed concern over its complexity. It is 645 pages long — but according to St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Alex Stuckey, the new code “streamlines existing criminal statutes.”

There exists an old cliche that “ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking the law.” Yet, if laws are so complex that those charged with enforcing them don’t know or understand them, is it too much to ask the citizenry to have internalized or memorized the laws that they are required to follow?

That the police union president doesn’t think that Hawkins — whose job requires him to have memorized a huge playbook with a language all its own — is capable of knowing the law would seem, somewhat ironically, to suggest that the answer is no.

Gibson is an associate professor of political science at Westminster College in Missouri.