Perspectives #6 :

The Dangerous Blue Line

Persistent Violence

"The police and the army, alone in modern societies, retain the ancient and almost archaic belief that violence and its exercise is both honorable and historically connected to the sacred."
—P.K. Manning & M.P. Singh

When I think of my police experiences dating back to 1958 when I began participant observation in a major state police department, my memories are kaleidoscopic. My studies in "copology" were always filtered by my concerns with social justice, and while my police contacts shattered my stereotypes, they have been replaced by the unwavering belief that modern police organization is dysfunctional and a danger to harmonious group relations.

The use of excessive force by the police (in the heyday of public concern we called it "police brutality") is the center of most public attention. For good reason. Nationally, police kill one to two people every day. (There is reason to believe, as I will show, that this is an undercount.) Most of the victims are unarmed. There is no definitive figure for the use of nonlethal but excessive force.

If this were a new problem, it might be difficult to diagnose. But the problem has been manifest throughout the century and so we have many reports on which to base our analysis. As early as 1931, the first of the major investigations of police the National Commission on Law Enforcement and Observance (The Wickersham Report) condemned police brutality, writing that police actions are "so appalling and sadistic as to pose no intellectual issue for civilized men."

The United States Commission on Civil Rights (1961), in one of its first reports, asserted that "police brutality in the United States is a serious and continuing problem." Seven years later, following the civil disorders that spread across the nation, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner Commission) concluded that "almost invariably the incident that ignites disorder arises from police action." The Commission was most cited for its conclusion: "Our nation is moving towards two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal."

The police, at least some cops, are also quite aware of their social role. Tony Bouza, former police chief of Minneapolis, wrote in 1991:

Police brutality is a fact of life all over America. It is an expression of cops succumbing to temptations and pressures. We need to understand our complicity in the process and how it is all tied to social, racial, economic and, yes, even cultural policies and programs that everyday widen the chasm between over- and underclass.

Following their national conference on police brutality and misconduct, in 1997, the Center for Constitutional Rights summarized:

The police are out of control and our communities all across the country are under attack. We reiterate, this crisis is not simply some isolated local phenomenon but national in scope. Nor is the reality of police violence confined to local police departments.

In 1998, Amnesty International in their unprecedented investigation of human rights in this country concluded:

There is a widespread and persistent problem of police brutality across the USA. Thousands of individual complaints about police abuse are reported each year and local authorities pay out millions of dollars to victims in damages after lawsuits. Police officers have beaten and shot unresisting suspects; they have misused batons, chemical sprays and electro-shock weapons; they have injured or killed people by placing them in dangerous restraint holds.

The overwhelming majority of victims in many areas are members of racial or ethnic minorities, while most police departments remain predominantly white.

Deadly Statistics

The statistical bottom line appears to be this: Police kill 1 to 2 people every day. They shoot and wound twice as many people as they kill, and they shoot at and miss three times as often as they kill.

Unfortunately, that bottom line wavers. Some police criminologists estimate 3 fatalities daily with four times as many people being shot at.

As you might expect, estimates vary drastically by city and over time. For example, during the 1970s, New Orleans police were 10 times more likely than Newark, NJ police to kill suspects. There are other wide differences across police departments. In the Police Executive Research Forum's summary of data, Deadly Force (1992), they offer another dramatic example. Comparing Chicago and Los Angeles over a five-year period, 1974-1978, they found that police officers fatally shot 132 people in Chicago and 139 people in Los Angeles. However, the Chicago police shot 386 people nonfatally compared to 238 people in Los Angeles. Moreover, the total number of people fired upon, including those missed, was 2,876 in Chicago but only 611 in Los Angeles. The Chicago cops missed over 80% of the time. These figures make clear that if you look only at fatal shootings, you may reach a different assessment than if you also consider nonfatal shootings and the number of shots fired which were off target.

There seems to be some consensus among researchers that rates of police shootings declined in the 1970s and early 1980s, and then began to rise again. However, data for the 1990s are scarce. Even so, the conclusion is inescapable. Police use of lethal force is disturbingly frequent. Most of those people shot were suspects whose crimes never would have resulted in a death penalty. Most were unarmed, and it appears that about one-third of the shootings occurred during traffic stops.

Almost all studies of police shootings indicate that Blacks and Latinos are more likely than non-hispanic Whites to be shot, fatally and nonfatally. The Police Executive Research Foundation’s report, Deadly Force (1992), reviewed studies conducted in Atlanta, Birmingham, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kansas City (MO), Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, New York City, Oakland, Philadelphia, Portland (OR), and St. Louis as well as in Michigan and New York State. Regardless of analysis, raw numbers, population percentages, or population-specific rates, the pattern was clear. Blacks are victims of police shootings at a greater rate than Whites and at a greater rate than would be expected by their population size. This appears equally true for Latinos, although the number of Latino victims is smaller than the number of Black victims. Variations across cities is dramatic. In some cities, Black citizens were 6 to 7 times more likely to be shot than in others.

Excessive Force

How much force is permissible, and under what conditions? Most people would concede that an officer is justified in using lethal force when it is necessary to save him or herself or another person from death or maybe even serious injury. Most people would also concede that lethal force ought not to be used in the arrest of a suspected misdemeanant. However, between the defense of life and the apprehension of a suspect for a minor offense is an extraordinary range of options.

There is a difference between a choke hold and a wrist lock. What is "excessive force"? Let me suggest that any act which results or is likely to result in physical abuse is excessive. So, too, is the threat of physical abuse. I would include as well the use of techniques, tactics, or weaponry that promotes greater injury than less abusive alternatives would.

I would go further and include forms of verbal abuse such as harassment, name-calling, slurs, personal and ethnic insults and other acts which entail treating the suspect as an object, a nonperson. Admittedly, this view goes beyond the conventional perspectives of most criminologists. Most would limit the definition of excessive force to the realm of physical abuse and sometimes its threat. However, from the standpoint of the person being the object of force, the research on the traumatic effects of victimization indicates strongly that verbal aggression and harassment can be just as traumatic as physical force.

The term "police abuse" might well be reserved for other incidents: corruption and shakedowns, the planting of evidence, and the disregard of constitutional rights. My guess is that excessive force and police abuse are twins; where we find one, we find the other.

Driving While Black

Many Black citizens have accused the police of stopping them for no apparent reason other than their skin color. The battle over discriminatory traffic stops, especially along busy interstate highways, is no trivial occurrence. While this concern with police behavior on the highways is relatively new, concern over the physically abusive treatment of minorities of color is of long standing. There seems no doubt that the police shooting of Black victims exceeds the percentage of Blacks in the population. This appears to be true, as well, for Latino victims. The use of unnecessary but nonlethal force is harder to document. However, virtually all of the research evidence indicates that the police threaten, physically intimidate, and assault proportionately more Black and Latino persons than Whites. In some well-known instances, the physical assaults have indicated an alarming level of savagery and sadism consistent with the extremes of ethnoviolence. This differential treatment of Blacks and Latinos is reflected in their rate of complaints, as will be shown below.

Counting and Reporting

At the beginning of this decade, as public outrage over the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles pushed federal officials to action, the Justice Department announced that it would review all complaints received by the federal government from the entire country over the preceding six years. The head of the Department's Civil Rights Division, John R. Dunne, testifying before a House Subcommittee on Constitutional and Civil rights, revealed that the department had received approximately 41,000 complaints of police abuse from 1987 to 1991. That figure demands deconstruction. It means that the Department of Justice had done practically nothing about such complaints. How else could such a backlog occur? It meant, moreover, that as a low estimate of a baseline, there were approximately 8,000 complaints of police brutality every year made to the Justice Department. Why is it a low estimate? There are several reasons: First, these are incidents which were reported to the F.B.I. or U.S. attorneys. Those incidents which were reported and dealt with at a local level are not part of the Justice Department's files. Further, most incidents of excessive force, especially those involving verbal aggression, threats and minor physical injury, do not reach the stage of formal complaint. The National Crime Survey has continually documented high rates of nonreported crimes. We know, further, from The Prejudice Institute research on ethnoviolence victims that if the incident was perceived by the victim as having a basis in racial/ethnic prejudice, then it had a lower probability of being reported. So you can see that the Justice Department's 41,000 complaints is a shadow of what is out there. (We did ask a DOJ spokesperson what happened following Dunne's investigation. No reply has been forthcoming. )

A review of reports from 1985-1989 in 50 large city police departments (conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum) indicated an average undercount of 49% in police killings when contrasted with F.B.I. data.

Assume that killings are the most reliably reported of criminal events, how well are incidents involving force and excessive force counted? As is often the case, the accounting of sociologists is far more complicated than accounts of an inventory clerk or bookkeeper. For example, how do we account for the case of four officers who brutally beat a single suspect? Do we count it as 1 victim = 1 incident or do we count it as 4 perpetrators = 4 incidents? If 2 people had been beaten would it be 2 incidents or even 8 incidents? Where in our account book do we enter an incident in which the victim complains of being treated disrespectfully, or being pushed around and handcuffed painfully while the arresting officer believes that he used force which was appropriate for the suspect’s behavior? Suppose the officer is cleared in a formal hearing, don't we still have a citizen who perceives himself to be a victim of police misconduct?

Even if we invoke the standard of whether or not an act supported a legitimate police function, we run into some difficulty. For example, in getting someone to move on or submit to arrest, an experienced, well-trained officer might accomplish the task with little or no force while a lesser-trained or inexperienced officer might use threats of force or, maybe, prod the suspect with his baton. That second officer presumably believes that he used an appropriate amount of force to accomplish a legitimate police function. Is he right or wrong? Is this a case of excessive force?

Finally, as observers we need to consider the pattern of interaction that may precede the use of excessive force. The shooting or other act may be the final response of a police officer whose initial behavior effected a set of responses which escalated a routine stop into a serious incident.

Consider the inventory of techniques and weaponry available to the police officer and it becomes manifest that there is a high potential for excessive and even lethal force.

• Handcuffs, leg restraints
• Bodily force
• Brandishing weapon
• Swarm
• Wrist locks, arm locks
• Neck restraints, choke holds
• Chemical agents
• Batons
• Flashlights
• Electrical devices
• Dog attacks

The 1996 Bureau of Justice Statistics national survey, Police Use of Force, provides an important look at hard data. As the table indicates (page 3), force or the threat of force was reported in 1% of police contacts, approximately 500, 000 people. That is, persons were "hit, held, pushed, choked, threatened with a flashlight, restrained by a police dog, threatened or actually sprayed with chemical or pepper spray, threatened with a gun, or experienced some form of force. Of the 500,000, about 400,000 were also handcuffed."

National Data or Local Accounts?

Many people, including police, criminologists, and citizen-activists look for national data collection as a means of answering some of the perplexing questions about police use of excessive force. A survey such as the National Crime Survey or the more free-wheeling surveys of independent researchers can always yield solid data and serve as a check on official statistics. There are two problems with national survey data. First is the problem of scope. In the 1996 Police Public Contact Survey, a sample of over 6,000 people yielded only 14 people who said they had contact with the police where force was threatened or used. Since approximately 20% of the population have contact with police during a year, and only a fraction of them have encountered threats or actual force, any survey would have to be massive and costly.

More significant is the fact that national data are unnecessary and would actually obscure the information that local activists really want. Based on what we already know from the many case studies of police departments, there is so much variation across departments that national data, which would most likely maintain anonymity for local departments, would obscure poorly performing departments. Statewide reports, or reports that otherwise average the data by region or nationally, will be necessarily misleading from a policy perspective. To reduce the incidence of excessive force, we need to work at the local level. And that means that we need to collect data at the local level.

Police and Public Perceptions

Public surveys are important since overwhelming numbers of people do not file any formal, public complaint against officers who abuse them. Charles Peek and his associates reviewed the earlier surveys dealing with public attitudes. Comparing the findings of a 1973 national study with those of studies conducted during the 1960s, they found:

• attitudes towards the police tended to be highly favorable
• these positive attitudes were reflected in the over 20 studies conducted during the 1960s
• Whites viewed the police more positively than did Blacks, with younger and older Blacks consistently more negative.

One of the major studies of the 1960s was sponsored by the National Commission on Civil Disorders, which studied 15 cities. Their data indicated that 2% of whites and 7% of Blacks told pollsters that they had been "roughed up" by the police.

A Gallup poll in 1991 asked: "Have you ever been physically mistreated or abused by the police?" The poll results indicated that 5% of all respondents said they had been mistreated or abused, while 9% of "nonwhites" said yes. One out of five people said that they knew someone who had been mistreated or abused.

In a 1997 review of national surveys, sociologists Steven Tuch and Ronald Weitzer, writing in the Public Opinion Quarterlies, reconfirm Black-White differences. Their findings show further that the occurrence of well-publicized incidents of police brutality or deadly force leads to a decrease in positive attitudes towards the police. While that is not surprising, their data also show that the proportion of Black and Latino respondents who become more negative is much greater than the share of Whites who become more negative. Attitudes of most Whites rebound to their earlier and more positive status as time goes by. For the Black and Latino respondents, the incidents have greater staying power. It appears for them that as knowledge of incidents cumulate, the rebound effect becomes smaller.

There are a small number of case studies of police departments in which officers have been asked whether they witnessed acts of police brutality. These are instructive considering the norms of many departments which enable officers to act improperly in front of other officers without fear of being reported. The anonymous survey provides a vehicle for reporting the unreportable. These data, of course, show variations by department. However, the data consistently indicate more policemen are using excessive force than is revealed by public survey statistics. The range of police officers reporting having witnessed the use of excessive force varies from 27% to a high of 53%.

Formal Complaints

Another perspective on the prevalence of excessive force can be drawn from the number of complaints lodged against officers. We already noted the Department of Justice tally of approximately 8,000 annual complaints and why we deemed that an undercount. As we look city by city, we get a considerably different view. The Civilian Complaint Review Board for New York City reported that in 1998 it received 4,976 complaints. When the Board began in 1993, it had received 3,580 complaints. It would be appropriate to view complaints at least three different ways: the number of complaints per officer; the number of complaints per contact; or the number of complaints for each given population group (for example, Blacks, teenagers, traffic offenders, etc.). Such data are not readily available. However, a Police Foundation report (1993) indicates that Blacks were twice as likely to file complaints than were Whites. Several studies suggest that Blacks comprise about 40% of the population making complaints.

There is no conclusive evidence on rates of reporting/nonreporting of complaints, including those for excessive force. There are some data concerning the results of citizen reports. These data suggest that a majority of those filing complaints were dissatisfied with their treatment or the way the complaint was handled. Further, it appears that more than 9 out of 10 complaints of police misconduct are dismissed. In departmental reviews only about 2 to 3 percent of the cases are substantiated by investigating agencies. In jury trials, according to a National Law Journal study in southern California, the police prevail over citizens who claimed they were physically injured in two out of three trials. Such a high level of dismissal and loss must have some bearing on whether people decide to make a complaint.

A Question of Ethics

At various times, the police have sought to evade the responsibility of being an armed agent of the state by asserting the constitutional right against self-incrimination. The earliest case we encountered was the 1977 shooting of an unarmed, slightly built nude man (allegedly with his hands above his head) by Los Angeles police sergeant, Gernot Barz. Mr. Barz, who subsequently left the department, refused to testify on fifth amendment grounds.

There have been several recent occasions in highly publicized incidents where police have shot or brutalized someone and then invoked their fifth amendment right to avoid testifying. In 1992, FBI agent Lou Horiuchi shot and killed Vicki Weaver, the wife of a suspect at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. Three years later he refused to answer questions from a Senate subcommittee investigating the FBI. In New York City, in September of 1997, two officers accused of beating a suspect refused to testify and were both fired. In the August, 1998 brutalization of Abner Louima in New York City, officials of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association invoked the Fifth Amendment when they appeared before the grand jury. At least two other cases of taking the fifth occurred in 1998, one in Denver and another in New York City.

Although the number of cases in which active duty police officers have invoked their fifth amendment rights have been limited, these cases do raise a serious question. Should a person acting under the auspices of the state be permitted to invoke the power of the state to escape responsibility?

The Expanding Role of the Police

The separation of the judiciary and judicial operations from partisan politics is an ideal of the political system. To be sure, in some courts and localities there are judges who are elected to office, but these are not elections run on political platforms. This is not to say that political considerations do not intrude on elections or appointments; rather, such considerations are not expected to intrude in the judicial process itself. Judges, juries, hearing officers, and quasi-judicial panels are expected to be free from external influence.

Now consider the following: a Police Benevolent Association endorses a candidate for Circuit Court Judge. Is that acceptable? Probably most people would answer yes. But what if that Jurist hears cases involving police abuse?

Now consider: Following his arrest on the charge of murdering two policemen, the defendant requests bail. The Fraternal Order of Police sends a telegram directly to the judge (bypassing the district attorney) asking that no bail be granted to a person charged with murder. Is this an acceptable intervention?

Following his conviction, allegedly of murdering a police officer, he files an appeal. The police union takes out a full page advertisement in a prestigious newspaper, arguing, in the ad, that the judge should turn down the appeal.

Have the police violated the norms associated with their role? Did such an action usurp the separation of arrest and trial?

In this case the appeal hearing was held and the appeal was rejected. A major component of the appeal was the behavior of the police who were accused of mishandling evidence and intimidating witnesses. The attorneys asked one of the judges to recuse himself because the Fraternal Order of Police contributed to his candidacy. The judge refused, stating that such grounds would admit an undesirable precedent since there were three other appellate judges who had taken FOP money. The case, for those who haven't recognized it, is that of the Black broadcaster, writer, and activist, Mumia Abu-Jamal. It took place in Philadelphia.

Try this: a woman who was involved in a robbery where policemen were shot, (she was not at the scene of the crime, but under state law was implicated in the murder charge) comes up before the governor, who is considering a petition for clemency. The woman has served many years as a model prisoner. Outside the hearing room, uniformed police officers picket, opposing clemency. Was the uniformed officers’ presence intimidating? Was it another violation of the boundary between police and the judicial process?

The intrusion of the police into court proceedings, clemency and appeal hearings, and even the selection of judges, represents an essentially undemocratic expansion of police powers. The exemption of armed police from proceedings involving their use of weapons as agents of the state through fifth amendment pleadings adds to the insularity of police. Together they represent a serious corruption of police power in a democratic society.

There is a serious conflict over the future of the policing in the U.S. and elsewhere. The police no longer have a monopoly on policing. In fact, private police now outnumber public police by about 5 to 1. Much of that growth is a consequence of the perceived failure of police agencies. There seem to be two opposing trends in policing. On the one hand we can observe a more overtly repressive role characterized by the policy of "zero tolerance." Under this policy, the police have attempted to control disruptive behaviors and pursue misdemeanors on two grounds. The first is that of the presumed necessity for establishing a police presence. The second, and widely publicized, is the argument that these petty crimes constitute a necessary condition for more serious crimes. While the crackdown on petty offenders has attracted most public scrutiny, it is the organizational implications of controlling disruptive behavior that are truly significant. This has taken the form of the increased militarization and armament of police agencies.

The other strategy is, in appearance, a more liberal one. This is the strategy of community policing. Community policing is a strategy based on the cooperation of police and "the community," in ways not fully defined as yet. It is rooted in the increased presence of police in social service and helping activities and the recruitment of citizens in quasi-policing activities. Its major tactic is the increased surveillance of everyday activities. While these two are different organizational strategies, they have the same sociological function: increased control.

Surveillance and Militarization

The issues of surveillance have centered generally, on the local level, on the use of television cameras in mainly public places such as parks, buildings, sidewalks, and public streets. Baltimore City, for example, has a sixteen square block section of its downtown under constant television observation.

Many technology transfers have come from the military. Infrared scopes have expanded vision, including the ability to see through walls to detect body movements and plant lights (suspect as indicative of marijuana cultivation). Some courts have ruled that the use of these infrared devices may constitute an unreasonable search. The matter is not resolved.

At the national level, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has led the police battle for telephone surveillance. In the October 16, 1995 Federal Register, the F.B.I. proposed a national system of wiretapping that would give them the capacity to monitor one out of every 100 phone lines simultaneously.

This proposal was in keeping with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 which called for private industry to build surveillance systems into their telephone networks. F.B.I. director Louis Freeh has called the development of digital telephony "the number one law enforcement, public safety and national security issue facing us today." In keeping with this "threat," the F.B.I. has demanded not only the capacity to monitor the content of communications but also the capacity to determine the physical location of the user/speaker. Because of the expense to industry and the failure of Congress to fully fund the Act, the surveillance technology is still under negotiation.

In 1997, the F.B.I. took a further step which, like the former, had Presidential support. This was an attack on computer privacy. As programmers have developed encryption codes (software which allows computer data to be scrambled to protect privacy) law enforcement has adopted the position that such codes would insulate criminals and terrorists from observation.

From the military, police departments have received systems for locating gunfire (presumably adaptable to "normal" audio surveillance), weapons carriers, body armor, assault rifles, and helicopters, which are disturbingly present in many urban neigborhoods. In the 1997 fiscal year, the military gave over 43,000 pieces of equipment to more than 11,000 police agencies across the country. This was valued, according to the Associated Press, at $204 million.

A different form of surveillance is the photo database. Although civil libertarians have been successful in preventing the issuance of a national ID card, the Secret Service, along with unpublicized Congressional funding, has been providing technical assistance to a private firm, Image Data of Nashua, NH. The firm is building a database of driver's license photographs (and other information on the licenses) ostensibly to market its work for preventing check and credit card fraud. It has received $1.5 million in federal funds. Its funders, and the Secret Service, view the photo file as a law enforcement tool for combating "terrorism," immigration fraud, and other identity crimes.

The military has become a model for many police executives. Police paramilitary units (PPUs) were developed in response to the civil disorders of the 1960s. Today approximately 90 per cent of all police departments in cities larger than 50,000 have PPUs. One sociological study has estimated the number of these paramilitary units at 30,000. With their armament of automatic weapons, armored vehicles, helicopters, gas masks, concussion and gas grenades, night vision equipment, automated battering rams, and their organization of snipers and quick response units, these agencies have taken on some of the characteristics of a standing army. These forces were not originally designated for routine policing but were, rather, intended as an army for the control of city neighborhoods, civil disorders, and the "war on drugs." Given their weaponry and military style, their potential for excessive force is high. Their targets are not the middle class.

Sociologists Peter Kraska and Victor Kappeler provide current data to indicate that the use of the PPUs has changed. First, the frequency with which these units have been deployed has escalated at an increasing rate 538 per cent since 1980. The largest category of call-outs is for serving "no knock" warrants and drug raids. These military-style assaults are dangerous to both the police and the building residents.

Second, and most significant, was the study finding that 20 per cent of police departments are using paramilitary units in "routine" patrol work. The researchers conclude:

Our research found a sharp rise in the number of police paramilitary units, a rapid expansion in their activities, the normalization of paramilitary units into mainstream police work, and a close ideological and material connection between PPUs and the U.S. armed forces. These findings provide compelling evidence of a national trend toward militarization of U.S. civilian police forces, and in turn, the militarization of corresponding social problems handled by the police.

What can be done?

Since the pivotal sociological function of the police is "control," then control must be the focus of change. We need to look first at those changes which are internal to the organization of police and then at those which involve the larger community.

One of the central mechanisms of organizational control is "visibility." How do we make the activities of police and police departments more observable to people? We do so by developing direct and indirect modes of observation. For example, we can require residence in the city; employ video cameras on patrol cars; require reports of firearm usage; keep public records displaying the basic statistics of operation as well as such data as the number of complaints and judgments made, against whom, and at what cost to the department. Hearings of police abuse need to be as public as any trial (and they should be conducted promptly with all parties routinely informed).

Education and training are of obvious but neglected importance. One way of breaking down the insularity of police departments would be to increase the educational requirements and to recruit officers from other settings and at all ranks. There are not many jobs, other than a police department, where you can take a high school graduate and keep him in the same workplace for the next 25 years. Is it any wonder that such an insular culture develops? As part of recruitment, there should be pre-employment screening for indicators of violence. Along those lines, there ought to be an early warning system so that violent cops are not allowed to repeatedly act out in an abusive manner.

I doubt that many people will dispute the need for human relations training, especially for anti-racism and diversity training. And shouldn't as much time go into education in conflict resolution and mediation techniques as in firearms training?

Finally, like virtually all commentators on police affairs, I believe that there is an uncompromising need for a full-time, nonpolitical, community-oriented police oversight board. Such a board needs to have the power to investigate complaints of human rights violations and the power to require witnesses to appear. A genuine oversight board would be able to do internal audits, publicize departmental operations and issue regular, detailed reports to the community.

While these proposals may seem ordinary, and in many instances applicable to many different agencies of government, their simplicity shouldn't mislead us. Their commonplace character should lead us to ask: why aren't they commonplace?

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