What Should We Do About the Police?

The relationship between the police and the community has become an urgent problem in this nation’s domestic life, as we vainly strive to control the law’s legitimate monopoly on the use of force without deepening the division between Middle America and our various minorities (blacks, youth, the intellectuals, etc.) . Let us assume for a moment what may be unlikely: that the police could be brought into an ideal relationship with the community. What would that relationship be? And what are the chances of coming anywhere near it during the 1970s? The first question I find a good deal easier to deal with than the second.

The desirable relationship between police and community in today’s America requires, in my view...