‘Back the blue’ cannot mean blind obedience

They can give you a gun and a badge. They cannot give you good judgment.

The Fort Worth Police Department gave Sarah Stogner both a gun and a badge. What it apparently failed to determine was whether she possessed the judgment — or the constitutional literacy — required to exercise the state’s coercive power over free citizens.

Sarah Stogner did not shoot anybody, thank God. But that’s an extraordinarily low bar for fitness to exercise state power.

The controversy arose during Fort Worth’s Trinity Pride celebration on June 27, where Christian street preachers were evangelizing outside the event.

Video shows Stogner telling one preacher he could be cited if he said something “offensive.” City officials later emphasized that the citation itself was based on a noise ordinance governing amplified sound, not the content of the preacher’s message.

Sure.

The department then ordered First Amendment retraining after the encounter went viral.

Those facts may determine the outcome in court. They do not change what thousands of people on social media saw with their own eyes: a police officer confidently asserting authority the Constitution does not give her.

The retraining is welcome, I suppose. It also adds insult to injury.

What are they teaching at the police academy these days? This was not some obscure Fourth Amendment exception or a tangled question of qualified immunity.

This was constitutional law 101.

Americans do not lose their right to speak because somebody — a cop especially — dislikes what they have to say. Giving offense is not a crime. Hurt feelings do not create probable cause. The First Amendment does not contain a Pride festival exception. Yet.

What struck me most, however, was not Stogner’s ignorance. It was her arrogance.

She never appeared uncertain. She never asked a supervisor for guidance. She never paused to consider whether she was inventing a speech code on the spot.

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KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP/Getty Images

She spoke as if the badge settled the question.

That’s worse than stupidity.

A stupid officer can be corrected. An arrogant officer believes correction is for everybody else.

A badge is not a moral credential. It is a legal office.

It does not make its bearer wiser, more virtuous, or more trustworthy. It confers authority — massive authority — within limits established by law.

For years, conservatives have rightly defended law enforcement against the left’s poisonous campaign to “defund the police.” They have recognized the indispensable role police play in maintaining civil order, protecting innocent people, and arresting violent criminals.

They have also rightly rejected the left’s habit of judging an entire profession by its worst actors.

But somewhere along the way, respect curdled into deference.

“Back the blue” became less a defense of lawful policing than a demand for unquestioning loyalty to anyone wearing a badge. Conservatives who instinctively distrust IRS agents, public health officials, and federal regulators somehow came to regard local police as natural allies in the defense of liberty.

That is a dangerous mistake.

Police officers are not the conservative movement in blue uniforms. They are not constitutional scholars with Glocks. They are government employees exercising delegated power.

“Protect and serve” is a worthy ideal. It’s also good marketing.

Every bureaucracy develops its own interests, habits, and institutional mythology. Every bureaucracy eventually divides the world into “us” and “them.”

Police departments are no exception.

Officers spend their days giving commands, issuing citations, conducting searches, making arrests, and using force when necessary. They are trained to establish control and treat uncertainty as a potential threat.

Much of that is unavoidable. Police work is dangerous. Hesitation can get an officer killed.

But the habits required for survival can become habits of mind.

The citizen becomes the subject. Disagreement becomes defiance. Questions become challenges to authority. The officer acts; the public is acted upon.

A Bible, a flag, or a thin blue line decal will not save you when an officer decides you are the problem. Neither will your voting record. The state does not ask whether you backed the blue before it puts you in handcuffs.

Do not misunderstand me. This is not an argument against police. It is an argument against political idolatry.

Conservatives understand, at least in theory, that government power must be constrained because human beings are fallible, self-interested, and prone to abuse authority.

We remember that principle when discussing the FBI, the IRS, or unelected regulators. We remember it when federal agents raid somebody’s home or some public health official invents a mandate.

Then a local officer puts on body armor, and suddenly half the right forgets everything it claims to believe about the state.

The uniform changes. The principle doesn’t.

Police exercise executive power. They carry the state’s monopoly on lawful violence on their hips.

That is precisely why they deserve more scrutiny, not less.

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A DMV clerk can ruin your afternoon. A police officer can ruin your life.

That power requires more than tactical training, physical courage, or marksmanship. It requires judgment. More than anything, it requires humility.

An officer must never forget that the badge does not create rights. It imposes limits.

The Constitution does not exist to make police work easier. It exists in part to prevent government officials from doing whatever seems easiest in the moment.

A citizen saying something offensive may cause some heartburn. A loud preacher may irritate festival-goers, businesses, officers, and city officials. None of that gives police authority to suppress protected speech.

Enforce the noise ordinance if the facts support it. But do not allow the police to invent an offended listener’s veto.

Good officers understand the distinction. Good departments reinforce it. Good conservatives should insist upon it.

The answer is not hostility toward law enforcement. The left has already demonstrated the stupidity and destructiveness of treating every cop as an occupying soldier.

The answer is constitutional realism.

Support police when they uphold the law. Defend them when they are unfairly maligned. Hold them accountable when they exceed their authority.

But stop pretending they belong to us.

They are not supposed to serve conservatives, progressives, Pride organizers, or street preachers.

They are supposed to serve the law.

When they forget that, another training seminar may satisfy the public relations department. It does not answer the more serious question.

Should someone who must be retrained on the basic meaning of the First Amendment continue to carry a gun, a badge, and the public’s trust?

Sarah Stogner did not shoot anybody, thank God. But that’s an extraordinarily low bar for fitness to exercise state power.

They can give you a gun and a badge. They cannot give you judgment.

And when an officer displays arrogance instead, conservatives should not avert their eyes simply because the uniform is blue.