Thin Blue Lies: Police and the Art of Propaganda.

• Author: Wise, Tim
• Position: Thinking Politically

Image is everything, or so the commercial says. In an age of public relations, how one is portrayed can be every bit as important as the substance of one's actions. Thus, it should come as no surprise that along with politicians, entertainers and corporate executives, police departments have joined the p.r. game.

With one after another discovery of police misconduct around the country--from high-visibility cases of brutality, to racial profiling, to corruption involving bribes and the planting of evidence--the recent headlines have been anything but flattering. Since the beating of Rodney King, the American masses have been made more aware than ever that Officer Friendly is not often there to get your cat out of the tree. Sometimes his intentions are far more pernicious than that.

And so it is no shock to see police across the nation cranking up their own propaganda mills so as to counter the trend of bad press. In the wake of scandal, how better to get the public on your side than to portray yourself as under siege? How better to gain sympathy than to remind the citizens how crucial you ostensibly are to their own safety? A little crime scare can go a long way.

Case in point: recent headlines from Cincinnati and Nashville. In the former, the police have been trying for months to excuse their well-documented overreactions to perceived danger. Since the mid1990's officers there have killed 16 black men, many under highly suspicious circumstances, including Timothy Thomas, shot in the back in April 2001 while running away from arrest on minor traffic violations.

Ever since the rebellion that was triggered by the Thomas shooting, police have been working overtime to portray the "rioters" as terrorists with no legitimate grievances against the cops.

Keith Fangman, head of the local Fraternal Order of Police, called a press conference immediately after the April shooting to display pictures of all the police in Cincinnati who have been killed in the line of duty. Stretching back many years, their photos hung behind Fangman's podium like a Wall of Fame, and Fangman made sure to point out that many of these officers were killed by black men, just like Tim Thomas. The none-too-subliminal message was plain: you can't be too careful, especially with "those people" running loose.

Now, three months after the city's upheaval, Fangman is back, proclaiming that the recent rise in violent crime in Cincinnati has been due to the reluctance of officers to...