Who watches the watchmen?

In the Satires, the Roman poet Juvenal asks, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” Or in English, “Who watches the watchmen?”

Centuries later, it is time to come to terms with the full import of this question and what it means for our fractured society and even our campus community, which has boldly attempted to meet this question head-on by orchestrating protests, vigils, and sit-ins.

In recent months, much impassioned discussion has surrounded the justifiabilityof certain police killings of black men. But equally worthy of concern is another dimension of the same issue: that in the legal proceedings following these incidents, the police officers involved seem to be treated with inexplicable laxness by our justice system. After all, for them to commit these killings is troubling in and of itself, but when they successfully avoid the legal consequences, the severity of their actions is increased tenfold. There are so many others who fall victim to Lady Justice’s heavier, more scarred hand — mandatory minimums, for instance, which disproportionately affect minorities. Why should policemen be subjected to different treatment?

Consider Eric Garner, whose chokehold-induced death did not even result in an indictment for the officer involved. Or Freddie Gray, who died after suffering severe injuries to his spinal cord and falling into a coma in a police van, while the responsible police officers ended up with three “not guilty” rulings and a mistrial. Taken alone, these incidents are extremely distressing, but they are only a grim reflection of a broader trend. Mapping Police Violence found that in 2015, at least 346 black people were killed by the police. Of these cases, only 3 percent resulted in any officers involved being charged. Even fewer resulted in conviction.

This is not to say that all of the remaining 97% should have been charged; there are undoubtedly situations in which the police must resort to extreme measures to subdue incompliant criminals. But the additional cold-blooded killings of black males such as Laquan McDonald and Alton Sterling make the less-than-3 percent conviction rate far from reassuring. And this sense of unease is further exacerbated when you consider that without relatively clear video evidence, these incidents might never have received widespread public attention. Think of how many killings might have gone unnoticed over the years without video documentation, how many policemen might have conducted themselves as beings above the law.

In fact, policemen, as literal men of the state (“polis” being Greek for “state”), should be held to a higher standard of integrity. Their greatest weapon is not the gun in their holster or the truncheon by their side, but the law that they are able to wield because we have entrusted them with it. Indeed, in encounters between policemen and civilians, restrained and upright behavior is expected fromthe former, not the latter. (It would be a wonderful world if everyone followed the law, but then we wouldn’t need the police, would we?)

After all, the badge of a police officer functions best as a shield — a shield with which the officer can protect his community from violence, crime, and harm. But too many officers are using it to shield themselves — from justice, from accountability, from the law. And because they are getting away with it, the system loses credibility, the community loses faith, and the nation loses unity. Because, ultimately, a single rotten apple is only able to spoil the entire barrel if it is allowed to continue to decay and fester. So too will our nation’s police force lose its well-earned luster if its rogue elements — though they are few — are allowed their occasional trysts with lawlessness, safe in the knowledge that the law is a weapon only meant for other people.

Two months ago in Dallas, five police officers were killed in a tragic shooting by a man named Micah Xavier Johnson. It was an utterly unforgivable act of violence; despite all the public outcry over suspicious police killings, two wrongs never make a right.

But two wrongs don’t cancel each other out, either. There were many on television, behind podiums, and in homes who felt that because of the Dallas shooting, the Black Lives Matter movement had lost its validity and deserved to be branded as a radical hate group — a view that is at best illogical, and at worst ignorant. Never mind that Black Lives Matter openly and emphatically condemned the shooting, or that Johnson’s actions were those of a lone and crazed gunman. His was a wrong soon righted.

Because for all his sins, for all the lives he destroyed that day, Johnson did not escape justice. He was killed by a bomb squad robot, ultimately forced to face the consequences of his terrible actions by a group that is supposed to represent the inherent goodness and fairness of American law: the police.

He did not escape justice. But there are others who do.