If a cop says 'jump,' do you say 'how high'?

Sir Robert Peel intended police to be just
members of the public who kept the peace.

In the comments to a post on arrests at the DNC, one reader says:

They should have kicked that weenie's butt.

He showed no respect for the law or the police. ... If the police need you to move on - you need to move on. You don't dismiss them with "wait a minute I'm on the phone".

I assume the "weenie" is the ABC producer who was hauled off for standing on a public sidewalk, but it just as well could have been the Code Pink protester who was thumped and then handcuffed by officers. It's all the same; both incidents raise the questions: Do you really have to do whatever a police officer tells you to do? And is it OK if they "kicked that weenie's butt" because he puts up an argument?

What is our relationship with police officers anyway? Are they just regular folks who happen to wear uniforms and badges? Or do they have special authority that puts them above the rest of society?

The law as it's currently written doesn't really provide us with much help. What it says isn't necessarily what it should say. Besides, even black-letter law is open to interpretation. Arizona, where I live, has a statute saying:

A. A person shall not wilfully fail or refuse to comply with any lawful order or direction of a police officer invested by law with authority to direct, control or regulate traffic.

B. A person who violates this section is guilty of a class 2 misdemeanor.

But that still begs the question: What's a "lawful order"? There's a lot of wiggle room in that phrase -- it's meaning can change with the time and the culture.

So it's worth looking at the role that police officers were originally intended to play when Sir Robert Peel formalized and professionalized the business of law-enforcement in the 19th century. He established a set of principles that were intended as ethical guidelines for police work, so that officers would be protectors of the public rather than predators upon it. He is most often quoted saying, "The police are the public and the public are the police."

More specifically, Principle 7 says, "Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence."

So, yes, police officers were intended by Peel to be just regular folks -- not a separate category from the "civilian" population.

But police officers have dangerous jobs, right? Doesn't that give them the right to be a little more confrontational? A little more ready to kick some butt?

Well ... law-enforcement is dangerous -- but it's not the most dangerous profession. Fishermen have the most dangerous jobs, followed by loggers and aircraft pilots.

But, granted, fishermen don't generally have to dodge bullets and blades as part of their everyday work.

Taxi drivers do, though. So do chauffeurs.

In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (PDF), taxi drivers and chauffeurs face about four times the rate of homicide (17.9 per 100,000) as police officers (4.4 per 100,000). So if cops' fears of violence justify wrestling you to the ground just because you give them a little lip, cabbies should be forgiven for running you off the road, then backing up and finishing the job, when you honk your horn.

It's a dangerous world out there.  A cabbie's gotta do what a cabbie's gotta do.

There's also the small matter that policing is a voluntary career choice (so is driving a taxi). Nobody has to accept the dangers of the work if he or she finds them too daunting.

So police officers were never intended by the man who created the profession to be our lords and masters -- just people paid to do the job full-time. And the dangers they face don't really seem to justify an especially adversarial -- let alone domineering -- attitude toward the public.

Of course, there's still the matter of philosophy. Maybe you think that Sir Robert Peel was a weenie, too, and cops really should kick butt if not given deference.

To judge by the way police officers too often conduct themselves these days, the folks in power probably share your opinion.