An interesting column by one of my favorite commentators, Prof. John McWhorter. An excerpt:
Precincts across the nation do, in fact, have rules against profanity on the job. However, they are barely enforced if at all …. This casual cursing at people is not a mere matter of the informality of our times and it must stop. It is a much more serious matter than it may seem….
Profanity can be a form of hostility. To be sure, I am skeptical of claims that injurious words always constitute "trauma" (just as I am that "silence is violence"). However, profanity can still be a game changer. In interactions with cops it influences public perception. One study (of many similar) showed that, when presented with a silent video of a person detained by a police officer with captions in which the officers' profanity was left out, observers judged the interaction as more reasonable than when the profanity was included in the captions. Other studies similarly document that, when it comes to the cops, profanity matters—profoundly influencing how citizens view their interactions with police….
On the other hand, we must not fall for a crude, blanket notion that police officers must never be caught in a recording using, say, the word "fuck" on the job for any reason. This would operate upon an almost willfully uninformed sense of how language actually works. Any word remotely interesting likely has a lot of meanings….
