The Police Game

Scott Glover and Matt Lait report in today's LOS ANGELES TIMES that one Los Angeles Sheriffs Department (LASD) supervisor, Lt. James Tatreau, organized "games" in which deputies were urged to compete to see who could make the most arrests in a day.

The reason Tatreau said he instituted the games were, one, "there are good, hardworking deputies and there are the lazy guys [and] he was trying to encourage the less motivated deputies to get more involved in proactive police work."

This unwittingly provides information to the rest of the world that LASD may not have wanted disclosed. Civil rights activists, and victims of false arrest, have long recognized that there is pressure on law enforcement officers to make arrests, which naturally leads to false arrests. If they make fewer arrests, they are viewed as not doing their job.

That's not true, of course. An officer who investigates, finds no basis for an arrest, and refrains from arresting is doing his or her job. But law enforcement agencies don't all see it that way. They like officers who make lots of arrests.

Tellingly, despite the game, the number of arrests didn't go up. Apparently the law-abiding officers didn't give a rat's ass about Lt. Tatreau's "game." But we should. Because police all over the country play that game every day. That's how it works.