Should police Sgt. James Crowley have arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. on July 16, after Crowley responded to a 911 report of a possible break-in at Gates' Cambridge, Mass., house? And to what degree was the arrest related to the fact that Gates is black and Crowley is white?
I don't know the answers to these questions, and neither do you. But here's what I do know: We're lucky that we can ask them, lucky that possible police misbehavior demands an official response, lucky that the alleged outrage isn't worse. And if you think otherwise, take a look at how police behave in many other parts of the world.
According to Transparency International, which surveyed 73,000 people in 69 countries for its 2009 Global Corruption Barometer, 24% of respondents reported paying bribes to police in the last year. And people around the globe routinely identify the police force as the most corrupt institution in their societies, ahead of the judiciary, tax collection agencies and everything else.
Even worse, police officers frequently abuse or murder civilians with impunity. The 2009 country-by-country report by Amnesty International is a virtual dictionary of brutality by police, who assault citizens with truncheons (Armenia), electric shocks (Bahrain), cigarette burns (Mauritania), sexual assaults (Pakistan) and suspension by the wrists or ankles (Yemen).
And then there's Togo, which I happened to be visiting when the Gates controversy exploded. According to Amnesty International, human rights activists and other Togolese detainees are routinely beaten by the police.
So I was on my best behavior as I crossed into Togo from Ghana with my teenage daughter and her friend. A policeman fumbled with our passports, seemingly uncertain about how and where to stamp them. Then he finally issued our visas and announced the fee: 15,000 African francs (about $30) each.
"Whom should I pay?" I asked him in French.
"Oh, you can pay me directly," he smiled.
So I did. There was no receipt, of course, so no one would ever know. And I knew better than to ask for one.
On our return to Ghana, a few days later, a border policewoman asked me if I would buy her a drink. I'm married and I wear a wedding ring, and I had two adolescent girls in tow, so it's pretty unlikely that she was flirting with me. Instead, she was probably soliciting a bribe.
