Perhaps it takes an outsider to dispassionately note the obvious dichotomy in Spokane’s frustrating quest for an effective police ombudsman program, as it seems reflected in the news media.

On the one hand, the community understandably does not want to be policed by a police force over which it has no control. On the other hand, so-called “leading experts” propose an ombudsman program, to police the police, over which the police would have little or no control. Why would this reasonable concern for potential abuse, and its associated fair representation ethic, be good for the goose but not for the gander?

I was a career cop, but for the last 13 years I’ve been a “civilian.” Since I retired, I’ve been the victim of a couple of aberrant — albeit minor — police misbehavior incidences which I was able to have effectively addressed only because I knew from the inside what was acceptable, and I knew how to direct grievances where they hurt. No one appreciates the need for a fair, effective police monitoring program more than I, yet there are salient factors bearing on this issue that don’t get reported evenly.

We should accept a few givens if we’re to institute a police ombudsman program that’s fair and workable for both the police and the policed.

First, all police agencies absolutely must be subject to extra-departmental oversight, lest by human nature a few cops abuse their power and break the law themselves. Aside from the importance of our constitutional rights, I echo those “leading experts” that an effective oversight system is essential to earn the community trust and support vital to the effective performance of the police mission, upon which we all — including the police — critically depend.

But there’s more: Cops are always negligently too lenient on criminals and other folks that we don’t like, yet they’re always abusive, brutal and over-reactive when they’re dealing with us or our friends or our political cause. This, too, is just human nature.

Third, nobody likes to be policed. We all like to be protected, but no one wants to be told they can’t do what they want to do, let alone have official force applied to them. Hence, encounters with the police are almost never viewed in balanced ways.

Fourth, the police are always guilty until proved innocent, and then they’re still guilty, evidence be damned. Witness the much-trumpeted Otto Zehm tragedy. After two solid years, the most professional investigators in law enforcement have thus far apparently found no credible evidence that Mr. Zehm was killed by anyone, let alone by police. Yet, to behold it in the greater media and editorial letters from day one, the closet-Nazi cops brutally slaughtered poor Otto.

Fifth, and here’s the real kicker, cops are people too. Citizens. They have the exact same constitutional rights as we do. There is nothing in their job description that says they may rightly be spit upon, threatened, slandered, assaulted or killed.

Like us, cops don’t want to be in the cross-hairs of a hostile monitoring agency against which their careers and rights are left no defense. Far too often, this means an agency that has no experience in the realities of the difficult, complicated and dangerous police job, and which can frequently be swayed by a retributive racial or political agenda.

What to do?

I say Spokane is on the right track with its proposed ombudsman selection committee and the intended role for that ombudsman.

Notwithstanding the reported opinions of alleged “leading experts” who read like they never heard a shot fired and who often exhibit more insulated ideology than street wisdom, a truly “independent” ombudsman program — meaning one with no balanced police role — simply will never work. Worse, it will be painfully counterproductive for both the community and the police.

Any ombudsman system that leaves the cops out promises costly, unnecessary, time- and tax-money-wasting litigation by cops protecting their constitutional rights the same way we would.

The police must have fair representation in any effective ombudsman program, for the community’s sake as well as theirs. Place police under a stacked, prejudicial ombudsman program, and, just as you and I would, they’ll apply more time and taxpayer dollars protecting themselves from that biased program than they’ll spend protecting us, a lose-lose proposition for all.