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Title: Our Enemies in Blue
Subtitle: Police and Power in America
Date: 2007
Source: 3rd edition ebook (2015)
Authors: Kristian Williams
Topics: USA, police, power, ftp

Foreword: Police and Power in America

What are police for?

Everybody thinks they know. But to assume that the police exist to enforce the

law or fight crime is akin to beginning an analysis of military policy with the

premise that armies exist to repel invasions. The ends an institution pursues

are not always the same as those it claims to pursue.

I begin, then, with a call for skepticism, especially about official slogans

and publicly traded justifications. Let us focus less on what the police say

they are doing and instead assess the institution based on what it actually

does. We should ask, always, who benefits and who suffers? Whose interests are

advanced, and who pays the costs? Who is protected and served? Who is bullied

and brutalized? The answers will tell us something of the forces directing the

police, both in specific circumstances and in the larger historical sense. They

will also reveal the interests the institution serves and the ends it promotes.

This book discusses much of what is worst about the police. It describes their

actions largely in terms of intolerance, corruption, political repression, and

violence. The first chapter, “Police Brutality in Theory and Practice,” offers

an overview of police violence, its prevalence, causes, and consequences. It is

followed by a history of the modern police institution, beginning with “The

Origins of American Policing” in Chapter 2. That section traces the lineage of

our modern police back to the slave patrols and other earlier forms, while

Chapter 3, “The Genesis of a Policed Society,” weighs the significance of the

new institution and the changing role of the state. Chapters 4 and 5—“Cops and

Klan, Hand in Hand” and “The Natural Enemy of the Working Class”—continue this

examination with a look at the use of police to stifle the social ambitions of

racial minorities (especially African Americans) and workers. The sixth

chapter, “Police Autonomy and Blue Power,” discusses efforts to reform

policing, especially during the twentieth century, and analyzes the

relationship between reform movements and the emergence of the police as a

political force. Then, “Secret Police, Red Squads, and the Strategy of

Permanent Repression” and “Riot Police or Police Riots?” (Chapters 7 and 8)

detail intelligence operations and crowd control strategies. Chapter 9, “Your

Friendly Neighborhood Police State,” brings the discussion up to the present,

focusing on current trends such as militarization and community policing. And

the afterword, “Making Police Obsolete,” considers community-based alternatives

to policing, especially those connected to resistance movements here and

abroad.

Throughout, the focus is on police in their modern form, particularly in urban

departments in the United States. Some discussion of earlier models will be

featured as background, and conditions in other countries are sometimes

described by way of comparison. Likewise, the mention of other law enforcement

authorities—federal agencies, county sheriffs, private guards, and the

like—will be unavoidable to the degree that they influence, resemble, or take

on the duties of the municipal police.[1]

As the narrative progresses, several related trends become discernible. The

first is the expansion of police autonomy and the subsequent growth of their

political influence. The second is the continual effort to make policing more

proactive, with the aim of preventing offenses. Related to each of these is the

increased penetration of police authority into the community and into the lives

of individuals. These trends are related to larger social conditions—slavery

and segregation, the rise and fall of political machines, the creation of

municipal bureaucracies, the development of capitalism, and so on. It is

argued, in short, that the police exist to control troublesome populations,

especially those that are likely to rebel. This task has little to do with

crime, as most people think of it, and much to do with politics—especially the

preservation of existing inequalities. To the degree that a social order works

to the advantage of some and the disadvantage of others, its preservation will

largely consist of protecting the interests of the first group from the demands

of the second. And that, as we shall see, is what the police do.

Robert Reiner claims that “[to] a large extent, a society gets the policemen it

deserves.”[2] It is hard to know whether Mr. Reiner is extremely optimistic

about the police or extremely cynical about society. But undeniably, the

history of our society is reflected in the history of its police. Much of that

history clashes with our nation’s patriotic self-image. The history of

America’s police is not the story of democracy so much as it is the story of

the prevention of democracy. Yet there is another story, an ever-present

subtext—the story of resistance. It, too, drives this narrative, and if there

is a reason for hope anywhere in this book, we may find it here—amidst the

slave revolts, strikes, sit-ins, protest marches, and riots.

Preface, 2014

In the summer of 2014, as I was working on the revisions for this new edition,

rioting erupted in a Midwestern suburb. The incident that sparked the unrest

was, in most respects, sadly typical. A white cop confronted a black teenager

over a trivial violation of the law—literally, an everyday occurrence. And, as

has happened many times before, at the end of the encounter, the young man was

dead.

Michael Brown had been walking in the street with a friend when police

confronted them. Police say that Brown attacked Officer Darren Wilson and tried

to take his gun, but witnesses insist that he had his hands in the air when he

was fatally shot. Police also note that Brown had stolen some cigars from a

convenience store a few minutes earlier, though Officer Wilson did not know

that at the time. What is indisputable is that Wilson shot and killed Brown,

and that Brown was not armed.[3]

This story was painful, and familiar. In fact the only reason we know these

details—the reason it is a story and not simply a statistic—is because of what

happened next: The people of Ferguson, Missouri fought back.

Suburban Warfare

Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown on August 9, 2014. The

next night, August 10, marked the beginning of a cycle of antagonism and

escalation, with police in riot gear and crowds looting stores. By August 11,

cops were firing rubber bullets and tear gas.[4] Soon the crowds were battling

them with rocks, bricks, bottles, firebombs, and occasional gunfire.[5] “The

effect,” as **USA Today** described it, “was a city turned war zone.”[6]

The police response surely helped to inflame the situation. One resident told a

reporter: “When I … see a cop in riot gear, first thing I think is, ‘Riot.’

When I see someone that looks like they’re ready to fight me, I’m going to put

up my fists.”[7]

The cops wore camouflage fatigues and body armor; some carried assault rifles,

even aiming them at protestors. They blocked off streets with armored cars, set

up sniper’s nests, and filled middle-class neighborhoods with tear gas. In an

effort to de-escalate, the Missouri State Highway Patrol took over crowd

control. Captain Ron Johnson, a Black man from the area, expressed sympathy

with the demonstrators and promised not to use tear gas; but faced with ongoing

rioting, his officers did so regardless. Soon the governor imposed a curfew and

deployed the National Guard. Amnesty International sent observers and called

for an investigation into the police action.[8] Navi Pillay, the UN High

Commissioner for Human Rights issued a statement “condemn[ing] the excessive

use of force by police,” “call[ing] for the right of protest to be respected,”

and accusing the United States of practicing “apartheid.”[9]

Clearly worried, the White House began calling civil rights leaders around the

country—1,050 of them—“to enlist these participants to help keep the situation

calm and focused.”[10] Mediators from the Justice Department’s Community

Relations Service facilitated town hall meetings, inviting in Ferguson

residents, police, and city officials—but excluding the media.[11] Some members

of the clergy took to the streets to urge peace, a few even calling for an end

to protests altogether.[12] Meanwhile, the right-leaning militia-style Oath

Keepers started sending armed volunteers to guard area businesses,[13] and the

Traditional American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan issued a warning to “the

terrorists masquerading as ‘peaceful protestors,’” threatening them with

“lethal force.”[14] A separate Klan group, the New Empire Knights, claimed to

be “guarding homes and businesses of whites that feel threatened,” and held a

fundraiser for Officer Wilson: “All money will go to the cop who did his job

against the negro criminal.”[15]

Rioting would continue, on and off, for months—igniting with renewed vigor in

late November, when a grand jury announced its decision not to indict Officer

Wilson. Louis Head, Michael Brown’s stepfather, screamed in rage outside a

Ferguson police station, “Burn this bitch down!” That evening, police reported

at least twenty-one buildings set on fire, 150 gunshots, damage to ten police

cars, and sixty arrests.[16]

Twice in Two Weeks

On November 24, the Ferguson grand jury announced its decision: no indictment.

A few days later, on December 3, in New York City, another grand jury reached

the same unsatisfying conclusion in a separate case of police violence,

declining to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo for the killing of Eric Garner.

Earlier in the year, on July 17, 2014, New York City police confronted Garner,

another unarmed Black man, allegedly for selling single untaxed cigarettes

called “loosies.” Video shows four officers pulling Garner to the ground, one

with an arm around his neck. Garner gasps repeatedly, “I can’t breathe.” He

died on the way to the hospital.[17]

“In the span of two weeks,” U.S. Representative Marcia Fudge, chair of the

Congressional Black Caucus, observed, “this nation seems to have heard one

message loud and clear: there will be no accountability for taking Black

lives.”[18] Phrased this way, she invited a comparison, deliberately or not,

between the recent grand jury decisions and the nineteenth-century legal

principle, solidified in the Supreme Court’s **Dred Scott** ruling, that

African Americans represent a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the

dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their

authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power

and the Government might choose to grant them.

Or, more simply: “they had no rights which the white man was bound to

respect.”[19]

For Dred Scott, the issue was slavery; for Brown and Garner, it was murder.

Connecting the cases was the failure—or rather, the **refusal**—of the

judicial system to extend its protection to the African American population.

That sense of existing without rights, of living under threat, of being

discounted was sadly, insistently, conveyed in the slogan that arose in

connection to the protests: “Black Lives Matter.”

It is shameful, I feel, that we even have to make this point. That it is

necessary to **say**, even once, that Black lives matter is itself a

testimony to the racism of our society. It ought to be obvious that Black lives

matter, that Black **people** matter, and by implication, that their

murder, especially at the hands of the state, cannot go unanswered. And yet it

is not obvious. In the context of the legal system, the recent evidence

suggests that it is not even true. The slogan represents, then, not simply a

fact, but more importantly a challenge. If we believe it, we must make it real.

When the Ferguson grand jury announced its decision, protestors mobilized in

more than 170 cities across the country, blocking streets and even freeways,

enacting “die-ins” at police stations, briefly occupying the mayor’s office in

Chicago. Most were peaceful. Only Oakland matched Ferguson in terms of

intensity: breaking windows, looting businesses, blockading a police station,

building and burning barricades.[20]

The protests grew when the New York grand jury likewise declined to indict

Officer Pantaleo. Approximately 10,000 people joined protests in New York City,

chanting “Shut the whole system down!” while blocking the Manhattan and

Brooklyn bridges and sometimes skirmishing with police. In the first two days,

302 people were arrested, three for felonies.[21]

Displays of solidarity started appearing in some unexpected places. Across the

country, individual athletes and sometimes entire teams—professional and

college, men’s and women’s—began wearing “I can’t breathe” T-shirts during

their pre-game exercises.[22] And, in the rush of one of the busiest weeks on

the Congressional calendar, dozens of Capital Hill staffers walked out of their

offices, gathered on the Capital steps, raised their hands in remembrance of

Michael Brown, and prayed for forgiveness.[23]

Officers Down

In the midst of the turmoil, on December 20, a disturbed man named Ismaaiyl

Brinsley approached two New York City police officers as they sat in their

squad car. Brinsley shot both officers, Wenjan Liu and Rafael Ramos, firing at

point blank range and killing them instantly. He then killed himself. He had

posted messages on the Internet earlier that morning announcing a plan for

“putting wings on pigs” to avenge Eric Garner: “They take 1 of ours. Let’s take

2 of theirs.”[24]

Naturally police and politicians, from New York Police Commissioner William

Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and

President Barack Obama, were quick to condemn the shooting and express sympathy

and support for the police—as did prominent civil rights leaders and Eric

Garner’s family. Patrick Lynch, the head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent

Association (PBA), however, put the blame on the cops’ political enemies:

“There is blood on many hands,” he said, “from those that incited violence

under the guise of protest … [to] the steps of city hall in the office of the

mayor.” He later repeated: “The mayor’s hands are literally dripping with our

blood because of his words, actions and policies.” The PBA went on to declare

war, though with the perpetrator dead, it is unclear against whom: “we have,

for the first time in a number of years, become a ‘wartime’ police department.

We will act accordingly.”

The PBA also offered its own instructions to patrol officers: “At least two

units are to respond to every call, no matter the condition or severity, no

matter what type of job is pending, or what the opinion of the patrol

supervisor happens to be.” Meanwhile, patrol officers began an unofficial, and

likely illegal, slowdown. In the days following the ambush of Liu and Ramos,

police made 66 percent fewer arrests and wrote 94 percent fewer tickets.[25]

The rift between the cops and the mayor seems particularly deep: Lynch has

complained repeatedly of a lack of support after Garner’s death, in part

because Mayor de Blasio spoke publicly about a conversation in which he advised

his bi-racial son to “take special care” when interacting with police. In

retort, the PBA began offering a form for officers, instructing the mayor not

to attend their funerals if they die in the line of duty. Then, when de Blasio

spoke at Liu and Ramos’s funerals, hundreds of police turned their back to

him.[26]

“A Legitimacy Problem”

The death of Eric Garner, and that of Michael Brown, the grand jury decisions,

and even the riots—all fit an established pattern, one we’ve seen repeatedly in

just the past few years, beginning in Oakland in 2009, then Portland and Denver

in 2010, Seattle and San Francisco in 2011, Atlanta and Anaheim in 2012, Santa

Rosa, Flatbush, and Durham in 2013, and Salinas and Albuquerque earlier in

2014.[27] But the scale of the crisis sparked by Brown’s shooting, and its

duration, make it truly exceptional, and both political and cultural elites

seem to have understood it as such. Police unions, and some commanders, as well

as the reliable right-wing pundits, have obstinately defended their positions

and cynically used the deaths of two hapless patrolmen to go back on the

offensive. Other authorities, however, have been more careful and conciliatory,

offering modest reforms and adjusting their rhetoric to match the nation’s

overall mood. As journalist Matt Taibbi so succinctly put it, “the police

suddenly have a legitimacy problem.”[28]

President Barack Obama did his best to equivocate, while calling for “peace and

calm”: “There is never an excuse for violence against police or for those who

would use this tragedy as a cover for vandalism or looting…. There’s also no

excuse for police to use excessive force against peaceful protests or to throw

protestors in jail for lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights.”[29]

Attorney General Eric Holder added, “At a time when we must seek to rebuild

trust between law enforcement and the local community, I am deeply concerned

that the deployment of military equipment and vehicles sends a conflicting

message.”[30] Soon thereafter, the president ordered a review of the police use

of military weaponry.[31]

It’s too early to know whether any lasting structural changes will result from

the current unrest, but if nothing else it has certainly changed the terms of

the debate. **Time** magazine, for example, ran a surprising piece titled

“In Defense of Rioting.” It cogently argues:

Riots are a necessary part of the evolution of society.… [Until human rights

are respected] the legitimate frustration, sorrow and pain of the marginalized

voices will boil over, spilling out into our streets.… Blacks in this country are more apt to riot

because they are one of the populations here who still need to.[32]

<em>Rolling Stone</em>, likewise, published a short piece looking at

historical—and, in retrospect, entirely justifiable—uses of property

destruction, pointing to precedents like the Boston Tea Party, slave

rebellions, the Suffragists, the anti-nuclear movement, and ongoing resistance

to fracking.[33] The magazine then went a step further, arguing that “It’s time

to start imagining a society that isn’t dominated by police,” and offering

suggestions to help build a “Cop-Free World.”[34]

Even some conservatives—among them Senator Rob Portman, Senator Ted Cruz,

Representative Paul Ryan, and the writer Erick Erickson—expressed concern about

the crackdown on protests.[35] “There is a systemic problem with today’s law

enforcement,” Senator Rand Paul wrote in an op-ed, pointing to “militarization

. . . [paired] with an erosion of civil liberties and due process” represented

by “national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, [and]

pre-conviction forfeiture.” Then, unexpectedly, he departed from the Tea Party

script:

Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible

for African-Americans not to feel like their government is targeting them.…

Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the

application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough

attention.[36]

It may be that the video of police literally strangling an African American

man—is it too much to compare it to lynching?—disturbed the conscience of the

nation, even those on the political right. And it may be that the sight of

armored vehicles on suburban streets proved disconcerting to the “small

government” crowd. But the cops kill Black people with some regularity, and the

militarization of local police has been underway for decades, often with the

support of some of the same figures now expressing their somber concerns. The

simple fact is that the authorities are responding, not to the deaths or to the

military-grade weaponry as such, but to the riots.

Rioting made policing a problem for elites. On its own, the death of a Black

man is what economists call an “externality”—somebody else’s trouble. Racial

profiling and zero-tolerance policing—the treatment of whole communities as

suspicious in themselves, and the idea that the cops might stop, arrest, or

even kill you simply for jaywalking—are just business as usual until they

provoke a crisis. Neither President Obama nor Attorney General Eric Holder had

any qualms about **giving** the police military hardware; it was only when

the armored vehicles and assault rifles started showing up on the television

news that they started to worry.[37] It was the riots that put these issues on

the national agenda. No number of petitions, lawsuits, op-ed columns, or books

on the subject could have had the same effect.

The riots of the previous few months pulled into focus some of the most

troubling aspects of policing, and with them, some of the deepest injustices in

our society. The unrest was not just about Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Officer

Wilson, Officer Pantaleo, gunshots, and chokeholds. It was also about racial

profiling and the standards of public order. But beyond that, too, it was

about race, class, and violence—ultimately, about questions of freedom and

equality.

Revisions

<em>Our Enemies in Blue</em> first appeared in 2004, ten years before the

events described above. Yet so many of the themes central to the book have

suddenly found themselves in the headlines—race, class, violence, standards of

public order, rioting, crowd control, the militarization of local departments,

the power of police unions, collaboration with racist paramilitaries, the

co-optation of social movement leaders, the promise and perils of reform, and

alternatives to policing. History, suddenly, seems very present.

I have, in this preface, only begun the story of Ferguson and the nationwide

wave of resistance that followed Michael Brown’s murder. We do not yet know how

that story ends, but I hope that it comes to represent, not merely a new

chapter in the history of policing, but a decisive break from the past.

It is with the future, as well as the past, that this book is concerned. I

began my research on policing, nearly twenty years ago now, not as an academic

exercise, but because in my political organizing I was confronted with pressing

questions that I did not then know how to answer. I turned to the past to help

us understand the present, so that we might change the future.

Returning to the book, ten years later, my aims are largely the same. This new

edition brings the history up to date and revises some of the earlier material,

while keeping the same general structure, argument, and narrative as the

original. As one might expect, the bulk of the revisions come toward the end of

the volume. In addition to updating statistics, adding more recent examples,

and correcting some mistakes or oversights, I have also substantively adjusted

my analysis when new developments—or just new ideas—require it. For instance,

the implications of the USA Patriot Act, shifts in crowd control strategies,

and even the domestic effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are all far

clearer now than they were ten years ago. Fortunately, the decade’s changes are

not all in the same direction. As policing intensifies, resistance also seems

to be growing—not only in the recent riots, but in the immigrants’ rights

movement, in the short-lived (but long-reverberating) Occupy encampments, and

in a marked increase in experiments with community alternatives to the criminal

legal system. I have tried to incorporate all of those developments into this

new edition.

There is much, still, that I could have added. Historical accounts are by their

very nature incomplete. There are other stories that could be told, other

histories still to be uncovered—and, with each new day, more that could be

said. So I begin, here, not at the end, but in the midst of a crisis. We can

see in these moments of rebellion—and this is true, however they turn out—not

only anger and grief, but also an almost instinctual feeling for the demands of

justice, an urgent recognition of the humanity of the oppressed, and a sense of

possibility, however vague or distant, for a different kind of life, a new

society.

The fires of rebellion burn with rage, but they shine with the light of hope.

—Kristian Williams

Portland, Oregon

December 31, 2014

Introduction by Andrea J. Ritchie: Broken Windows, Broken System

As the original edition of **Our Enemies in Blue** would predict, not much

has changed in terms of how policing functions in the United States since it

was first published. This reality, in and of itself, underscores the unique

contribution and critical importance of this book, and of its timely update.

<em>Our Enemies in Blue</em> offers a systematic, well-researched, readable,

and engaging examination of the evolution of police forces as tools of

political control as well as political entities of their own. Tracing the roots

of policing from imposition of colonial order in England, Ireland, and the

Americas to slave patrols and urban watches allows us to see the skeleton

underlying the present shape of policing, illuminates the social forces that

drive policing paradigms, and charts the complicity of community members, from

the Klan through George Zimmerman, in the project of controlling Black,

immigrant, and working class people.

There are new names—Oscar Grant, Ramarley Graham, Mike Brown, Eric Garner,

Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley—and with each of them, new moments of resistance. Yet

the history of modern-day policing outlined in careful and compelling detail in

the first edition of **Our Enemies in Blue**, now updated and applied to

the events of the past ten years, continues to play out, not only in single

incidents of deadly force against Black and Brown bodies, but also in the

everyday violence of policing—be it racially discriminatory “stop and frisk”

practices in New York City, continuing racial disparities in traffic stops on

the nation’s streets and freeways, or through daily stops, searches, beatings,

sexual assaults, and police occupation of communities of people of color that

are not just reminiscent of slavery and the Jim Crow era, but its direct

descendants. Exposing the core of policing, as well as the social forces that

drive it, enables us to see that, even as its outward form shifts over time,

the underlying structure and purpose ultimately remains the same, decade after

decade.

This is not to say that resistance has had no impact: it has forced police

departments to shift strategies and has at times reduced some harms of

policing. It is simply to say that the history of policing, the underlying

forces of punishment, and responses to calls for reform laid out in the

following pages is essential to understanding how we arrived at the present

moment, and to envisioning what lies ahead. By placing the string of individual

cases of police violence that have captured headlines over the past two decades

into a larger context, we are pushed beyond an understanding of them as

individual acts of racist police officers to an examination of their root

causes and sinister systemic underpinnings. Our demands for change are thus

necessarily expanded beyond prosecutions in individual cases and advocacy for

policy reform, while simultaneously acknowledging the pain and outrage

generated by each individual act of police violence, and the limited respite

changes to policing policies can bring.

Particularly relevant to the present moment and the “broken windows” policing

practices that ultimately killed Mike Brown and Eric Garner, <em>Our Enemies in

Blue</em> chronicles the emergence of “order maintenance policing” as the

modern-day manifestation of Black Codes, vagrancy laws, and common nightwalker

ordinances. Pursuant to this theory, through what has become known as “quality

of life” policing, officers are given explicit permission and discretion to

target populations inextricably intertwined with notions of the “dangerous

classes” described in **Our Enemies in Blue**. Police extortion schemes of

old are replaced with a more elaborate shakedown of poor people through

assessment of exorbitant fees and fines for minor, vague, and discriminatorily

enforced “quality of life” offenses such as littering, sleeping, eating, or

appearing disorderly or lewd in public. Indeed, it is telling that the biggest

impact of the slowdown by NYPD officers in early 2015 was loss of revenue, not

increased crime, and that first olive branch offered by the Ferguson police

department in the wake of the uprising following Mike Brown’s murder by Darren

Wilson was a reduction in fees associated with failing to appear in court to

answer to minor charges which were the bread and butter of city coffers.[38]

Perhaps the most critical intervention **Our Enemies in Blue** makes to

the current moment comes in the final chapter, which traces the roots of

militarization of police departments displayed in such stark and brutal relief

during the days and months following Mike Brown’s killing in Ferguson to the

advent of SWAT teams and the declaration of a “war” on drugs. Here, Williams

reveals “community policing,” the kinder, friendlier face of law enforcement

being advanced as its alternative, to simply be another side of the same coin.

Like early police forces, “community policing” works to conscript civilians and

“helping” institutions into the project of social control, while serving as the

stick that continues to enforce the “order” that serves existing power

relations.

One thing that **has** changed since the first edition is the way we

understand how policing operates along the axes of gender and sexuality, within

and alongside those of race and class. Over the past decade a body of work has

emerged, which, like <em>Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian

Genocide</em> by Andrea Smith, traces its lineage back to Indigenous women’s

resistance to the sexualized violence by state actors that has been an

essential weapon of colonization, or, like “Law Enforcement Violence Against

Women of Color,” an article I authored for <em>Color ofViolence: The INCITE!

Anthology</em> (South End Press 2006), to Black women’s resistance to slave

patrols and lynching, and to the struggles of freedom fighters like Fannie Lou

Hamer, Angela Davis, and Assata Shakur in response to police violence against

themselves and their communities.[39]

Some of this work—like the book I co-authored with Joey Mogul and Kay Whitlock,

<em>Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United

States</em>—draws directly on the history of morals enforcement through

vagrancy laws and on the critical analysis of “broken windows” policing offered

by **Our Enemies in Blue** to highlight how policing operates to enforce

racialized and classed norms of gender and sexuality in both public and private

spheres**.**[40] This process is mediated, as we discuss in <em>Queer

(In)Justice</em>, through criminalizing narratives and archetypes that

literally shape how the same conduct by different people is perceived

differently within the context of maintaining “order” and ensuring community

“safety.” Others, like Dean Spade’s <em>Normal Life: Administrative Violence,

Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law</em> and <em>Captive Genders:

Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex</em>, edited by Nat Smith

and Eric Stanley, further elucidate the multiple ways in which law enforcement,

prisons, and other systems of control explicitly police the lines of the gender

binary.[41]

This literature, along with research conducted by grassroots organizations,

policy advocacy groups, academics, and even law enforcement, as well as

powerful interventions made by Black feminists in the post-Ferguson public

discourse, has irrevocably expanded the frame of the conversation around

policing to incorporate the voices and experiences of women of color and LGBTQ

people of color targeted by gendered and sexuality-based forms of racial

profiling and police violence, painting a more complete picture of the

structures and dynamics of policing.

For instance, researchers have begun to dig deeper into the statistics

illuminating patterns of racialized policing detailed in Chapter 4 to unearth

the experiences of women of color. As noted in a submission endorsed by over

seventy-five organizations and individuals to the President’s Task Force on

21st Century Policing (which was convened as a result of sustained national

outcry in the wake of failure to hold officers who killed Mike Brown and Eric

Garner accountable):

Although racial profiling data reported by federal and state governments is

rarely, if ever, disaggregated by race **and** sex, racial profiling

studies which do analyze the experiences of women of color separately from

those of men of color conclude that “for both men and women there is an

identical pattern of stops by race/ethnicity.” For instance, in New York City,

one of the jurisdictions with the most extensive data collection on police

stops, rates of racial disparities in stops and arrests are identical among men

and women. Racial profiling of women of color has specifically been reported in

the context of law enforcement practices associated with the “war on drugs” and

the policing of prostitution-related offenses.[42]

Black women and women of color, who have played a leadership role in struggles

against state-sponsored violence since colonial times and slavery, have

increasingly insisted on recognition that we too are direct, and not collateral

or occasional, targets of police shootings and violence. As pointed out to the

Task Force:

Black women and women of color also experience excessive force up to and

including police shootings, including most recently Jessie Hernandez, a 16 year

old queer Latina killed by Denver police as this submission was being prepared,

Aura Rosser, a forty-year-old Black woman killed by Ann Arbor police, and

Tanisha Anderson, a 37 year old Black woman killed by Cleveland police, all of

whom were killed in the short period of time since this Task Force was

established. In the weeks following Eric Garner’s killing in New York City, an

NYPD officer put Rosan Miller, a Black 27 year-old 5 month pregnant woman in a

chokehold as they attempted to arrest her for grilling on the sidewalk, Denise

Stewart, a Black grandmother who also had asthma was dragged naked into a

hallway by officers who falsely assumed she was abusing her children, a woman

perceived by NYPD officers to be queer was thrown to the ground and beaten

after being accused of jaywalking in the West Village, and another pregnant

mother was thrown to the ground in Sunset park by NYPD officers who then used a

TASER on her stomach. These are but a few examples of the excessive force to

which women of color are submitted on a routine basis, and which must also be

at the center of national debates surrounding police shootings and use of

excessive force against people of color.[43]

As **Our Enemies in Blue** points out early on, what is defined as police

brutality is normatively constructed. The common construction excludes not only

women and LGBT people of color’s experiences of what is normatively defined as

police brutality—physical violence up to and including murder of Black and

Brown men—but also gender- and sexuality-specific forms of racialized and

poverty-based police violence. For instance, since the time of colonial armies

to the present day, sexual violence has been an unacknowledged but essential

weapon of institutionalized policing so clearly described in these pages. The

submission to the Task Force goes on to note:

In 2010 the CATO Institute’s National Police Misconduct Statistics and

Reporting Project … [found] Sexual assault and misconduct was the second most

frequently reported form of police misconduct after excessive force,

representing 9.3% of complaints analyzed. Over half of the officers involved in

reported misconduct were alleged to have engaged in forcible nonconsensual

sexual conduct while on-duty. Over half of incidents analyzed alleged police

sexual misconduct with minors. Rates of sexual assault rising to the level of

FBI index crimes were found to be significantly higher among law enforcement

officers than the general population.…

Other studies found that up to 2 in 5 young women reported sexual harassment by

law enforcement, and that young women of color, low income women, lesbian and

transgender women, and otherwise marginalized women—as well as men and

transgender people—are particularly vulnerable to sexual misconduct by law

enforcement. Sexual harassment and assault have been reported to be

particularly pervasive during traffic stops and in the context of police cadet

programs intended to engage youth from the community. It is also reported to

take place with alarming frequency in the context of responses to requests for

assistance or investigation of domestic violence or sexual assault.

Sexual harassment and assault by law enforcement officers may take many forms,

ranging from sexual comments, to unwarranted call backs to crime victims, to

extorting sexual favors in exchange for leniency, to unlawful strip searches,

including searches to assign gender, to forcible or coercive sexual conduct,

including rape.[44] It is by no means an isolated phenomenon, and while not an

officially sanctioned law enforcement activity, is facilitated by the authority

vested in law enforcement officers.[45]

Similarly, separate testimony submitted to the Task Force on behalf of over 45

LGBT organizations pointed out that,

As noted by the NAACP’s recently released report, **Born Suspect**, LGBTQ

people of color experience gender and sexuality-specific forms of racial

profiling and police brutality. Additionally, LGBTQ people, particularly LGBTQ

youth and people of color, also experience pervasive profiling and

discriminatory treatment by local, state and federal law enforcement agents

based on actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or

expression, or HIV status.

Over the past decade, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP)

has found that law enforcement agents have consistently been among the top

three categories of perpetrators of homophobic or transphobic violence against

LGBTQ people reported to anti-violence organizations. In a recent national

survey of LGBTQ people conducted by Lambda Legal, a quarter of respondents who

had in-person contact with police reported at least one type of misconduct or

harassment, including profiling, false arrests, verbal or physical assault, or

sexual harassment or assault. LGBTQ people of color, LGBTQ youth, low-income

LGBTQ people, and transgender people were much more likely to report an

experience of at least one type of police misconduct or harassment.… Across the

country, non-heterosexual youth are more likely to be stopped by the police and

experience greater criminal justice sanctions not explained by greater

involvement in violating the law.… Investigations of local police departments

in New Orleans and Puerto Rico by the U.S. Department of Justice have

documented patterns and practices of profiling and discriminatory policing of

LGBTQ people, and a number of local organizations have documented

department-specific patterns and practices.[46]

These more recent studies echo the patterns and practices of police misconduct

identified by Amnesty International in its 2005 report <em>Stonewalled: Police

Misconduct and Abuse Against LGBT People in the United States</em>—widespread

homophobic, transphobic, and sexual harassment; name calling and verbal abuse

by law enforcement officers; profiling and discriminatory enforcement,

including citation of possession or presence of condoms as evidence of intent

to engage in prostitution-related or lewd conduct offenses; failure to respect

gender identity and expression when addressing members of the public, and

during arrest processing, searches, and placement in police custody;

unconstitutional and unlawful searches to assign gender; sexual assault and

rape by law enforcement officers; and dangerous placement and cruel, inhuman,

and degrading treatment in police custody.[47]

By incorporating an analysis of the ways in which systemic police violence

affects **all** members of our communities in both similar and unique

ways, this literature has informed and driven the work described in the

afterword to this edition—envisioning, and more importantly, enacting, a world

without police—while offering the clearest of rationales for doing so.

Ultimately, police operate as a source of violence rather than safety—even for

those the law claims to protect—for reasons deeply rooted in the history of

policing that **Our Enemies in Blue** so clearly lays out for us.

<em>Our Enemies in Blue</em> critically informs and provides an essential basis

for analysis of present and future possibilities in the current moment, and

offers examples and criteria by which to evaluate our efforts. What does

prevention and response to violence look like? And given the history of police

and policing through the present day, can the police ever be the ones to

provide them?

—Andrea J. Ritchie

Brooklyn, NY

March 2015

Andrea Ritchie is a Blacklesbian police misconduct attorney and organizer who

has engaged in extensive research, writing, litigation, organizing, and

advocacy on profiling, policing, and physical and sexual violence by law

enforcement agents against women, girls, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and

transgender (LGBT) people of color over the past two decades. She was recently

awarded a Soros Justice Fellowship to engage in documentation and policy

advocacy around the experiences of women of color—trans and not trans, queer

and not queer—of profiling and policing. Ritchie helped found and coordinate

Streetwise & Safe (SAS), a leadership development initiative aimed at sharing

“know your rights” information, strategies for safety and visions for change

among LGBT youth of color who experience of gender, race, sexuality and

poverty-based policing and criminalization, and now serves as the

organization’s Senior Policy Counsel. Ritchie is co-author of <em>Queer

(In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States</em>

(Beacon Press, 2011) and serves on the steering committee of Communities United

for Police Reform (CPR).

1: Police Brutality in Theory and Practice

In the first hours of 2009, police boarded a Bay Area Rapid Transit train,

responding to a call about a fight. They detained several young men, most of

them Black, among them one named Oscar Grant. As Grant was lying face down on

the platform being handcuffed, one officer, Johannes Mehserle, drew his gun,

shot him in the back, and killed him.

The entire incident was recorded on video from multiple angles. Several

witnesses were filming with their cell phone cameras when Grant was shot;

afterward, they hid the cameras from police, and then posted the footage on the

Internet. Within days, demonstrations were organized in Oakland, and quickly

escalated into riots—beginning with an attack on a police car parked in front

of the BART headquarters. More than 300 businesses and hundreds of cars were

damaged in the unrest. Police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, an

armored personnel carrier, and more than a hundred arrests, but demonstrations

continued for weeks.[48] A year later, Mehserle was tried and convicted, but of

manslaughter rather than murder. Rioting resumed. Damages were estimated at

$750,000.[49]

While clearly a limited victory, the Mehserle verdict remains remarkable.

Looking back over the fifteen previous years, the <em>San Francisco

Chronicle</em> could find only six cases in which police were charged for

on-duty shootings, and none of the thirteen officers involved were

convicted.[50] “If there’s one lesson to take from this,” a participant in the

unrest was later to conclude, “it’s that the only reason Mehserle was arrested

is because people tore up the city. It was the riot—and the threat of future

riots.”[51]

Grant’s killing marked the start of a cycle of unrest affecting west coast

cities for the better part of two years, manifesting not only in militant

protests and riots, but arson, sabotage, and ambush attacks. In October 2009,

several unoccupied police cars were firebombed in Seattle; a few days later, on

Halloween, two cops were shot in a drive-by attack, and one died. The following

month Maurice Clemmons ambushed four cops in a Lakewood, Washington coffee

shop, killing them all. On January 29, 2010, Portland police shot and killed an

unarmed Black man named Aaron Campbell as he was trying to surrender; his

family had called 911 because they feared he might be suicidal. In March, they

shot and killed a homeless man, Jack Collins, as he approached holding an

Exacto knife. Then in May, they shot and killed a young Black man named Keaton

Otis, whom they had pulled over because (as one officer explained) they thought

he “kind of look[ed] like he could be a gangster.” Each shooting was followed

by protests of increasing militancy, as well as after-hours attacks on the

offices of law enforcement agencies. In August 2010, Seattle police shot and

killed a Native American woodcarver named John T. Williams, seemingly without

provocation. Weeks of protests followed. Then, in September 2010, after police

killed Manuel Jamines, a Guatemalan day laborer, Los Angeles saw riots lasting

three nights.[52]

It’s no surprise that the police come into conflict with members of the public.

The police are tasked with controlling a population that does not always

respect their authority and may resist their efforts to enforce the law. Hence,

police are armed, trained, and authorized to use force in the course of

executing their duty. At times, they use the ultimate in force, killing those

they are charged with controlling.

Under such an arrangement, it is only too predictable that officers sometimes

move beyond the bounds of their authority, and that the affected communities

respond with anger—sometimes rage. The battles that ensue do not only concern

particular injustices, but also represent deep disputes about the rights of the

public and the limits of state power. On the one side, the police and the

government try desperately to maintain control, to preserve their authority.

And on the other, oppressed people struggle to assert their humanity. Such

riots represent, among other things, the attempt of the community to define for

itself what will count as police brutality and where the limit of authority

falls. It is in these conflicts, not in the courts, that our rights are

established.

The Rodney King Beating: “Basic Stuff Really”

On March 3, 1991, a Black motorist named Rodney King led the California Highway

Patrol and the Los Angeles Police Department on a ten-minute chase. When he

stopped and exited the car, the police ordered him to lie down; he got on all

fours instead, and Sergeant Stacey Koon shot him twice with an electric taser.

The other passengers in King’s car were cuffed and laid prone on the street. An

officer kept his gun aimed at them, and when they heard screams he ordered them

not to look. One did try to look, and was clubbed on the head.[53]

Others were watching, however, and a few days later the entire world saw what

had happened to Rodney King. A video recorded by a bystander shows three cops

taking turns beating King, with several other officers looking on, and Sergeant

Stacey Koon shouting orders. The video shows police clubbing King fifty-six

times, and kicking him in the body and head.[54] When the video was played on

the local news, KCET enhanced the sound. Police can be heard ordering King to

put his hands behind his back and calling him “nigger.”[55]

The chase began at 12:40 A.M. and ended at 12:50 A.M. At 12:56, Sgt. Koon

reported via his car’s computer, “You just had a big time use of force … tased

and beat the suspect of CHP pursuit, Big Time.” At 12:57, the station

responded, “Oh well … I’m sure the lizard didn’t deserve it … HAHA.” At 1:07,

the watch commander summarized the incident (again via Mobile Data Terminal):

“CHP chasing … failing to yield … passed [car] A 23 … they became primary …

then tased, then beat … basic stuff really.”[56] Koon himself endorsed this

assessment of the incident. In his 1992 book on the subject, he described the

altercation: “Just another night on the LAPD. That’s what it had been.”[57]

King was jailed for four days, but released without charges. He was treated at

County-USC Hospital, where he received twenty stitches and treatment for a

broken cheekbone and broken ankle. Nurses there reported hearing officers brag

and joke about the beating. King later listed additional injuries, including

broken bones and teeth, injured kidneys, multiple skull fractures, and

permanent brain damage.[58]

Twenty-three officers had responded to the chase, including two in a

helicopter. Of these, ten Los Angeles Police Department officers were present

on the ground during the beating, including four field training officers, who

supervise rookies. Four cops—Stacey Koon, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, and

Theodore Briseno—were indicted for their role in the beating. Wind was a new

employee, still in his probationary period, and was fired. Two California

Highway Patrol officers were disciplined for not reporting the use of force,

and their supervisor was suspended for ten days. But none of the other officers

present were disciplined in any way, though they had done nothing to prevent

the beating or to report it afterward.[59]

The four indicted cops were acquitted. Social scientists have argued that the

verdict was “predictable,” given the location of the trial:

Simi Valley, the site of the trial, and Ventura County more generally, is a

predominantly white community known for its strong stance on law and order, as

evidenced by the fact that a significant number of LAPD officers live there.

Thus, the four white police officers were truly judged by a jury of their

peers. Viewed in this context, the verdict should not have been

unanticipated.[60]

Koon, Powell, Wind, and Briseno were acquitted. They were then almost

immediately charged with federal civil rights violations, but that was clearly

too little, too late. L.A. was in flames.

A Social Conflagration

The people of Los Angeles offered a ready response to the acquittal. Between

April 30 and May 5, 1992, 600 fires were set.[61] Four thousand businesses were

destroyed,[62] and property damage neared $1 billion.[63] Fifty-two people

died, and 2,383 people were injured seriously enough to seek medical

attention.[64] Smaller disturbances also erupted around the country—in San

Francisco, Atlanta, Las Vegas, New York, Seattle, Tampa, and Washington,

D.C.[65]

Despite the media’s portrayal of the riot as an expression of Black rage,

arrest statistics show it to have been a multicultural affair: 3,492 Latinos,

2,832 Black people, and 640 White people were arrested, as were 2,492 other

people of unidentified races.[66] Likewise, despite the media focus on violence

(especially attacks on White people and Korean merchants), the data tell a

different story. Only 10 percent of arrests were for violent crime. The most

common charge was curfew violation (42 percent), closely followed by property

crimes (35 percent).[67] Likewise, the actual death toll

definitely attributable to the rioters was under twenty. The police killed at

least half that many, and probably many more.… Moreover, although some whites

and Korean Americans were killed, the vast majority of fatalities were African

Americans and Hispanic Americans who died as bystanders or as rioters opposing

civil authorities.[68]

Depending on whom you ask, you will hear that the riots constituted “a Black

protest,” a “bread riot,” the “breakdown of civilized society,” or “interethnic

conflict.”[69] None of these accounts is sufficient on its own, but one thing

is certain: the riots speak to conditions beyond any single incident.

In the five years preceding the Rodney King beating, 2,500 claims relating to

the use of force were filed against the LAPD. To describe just one: In April

1988, Luis Milton Murrales, a twenty-four-year-old Latino man, lost the vision

in one eye because of a police beating. That incident also began with a traffic

violation, followed by a brief chase. Murrales crashed his car into a police

cruiser and tried to flee on foot. The police caught him, clubbed him, and

kicked him when he fell. They resumed the beating at the Rampart station; the

attack involved a total of twenty-eight officers. One commander described his

subordinates as behaving like a “lynch mob.” Though the city paid $177,500 in a

settlement with Murrales, none of the officers were disciplined.[70]

Such incidents, as well as the depressed economic conditions of the inner city,

supplied the fuel for a major conflagration. The King beating, the video, and

the verdict offered just the spark to set it off.[71]

A Lesson To Learn and Learn Again

Rodney King’s beating was unusual only because it was videotaped. The community

that revolted following the acquittal seemed to grasp this fact, even if the

learned commentators and pious pundits condemning them did not. By the same

token, the revolt itself also fit an established pattern.

In 1968, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (commonly called

the Kerner Commission) examined twenty-four riots and reached some remarkable

conclusions:

Our examination of the background of the surveyed disorders revealed a typical

pattern of deeply-held grievances which were widely shared by many members of

the Negro community. The specific content of the expressed grievances varied

somewhat from city to city. But in general, grievances among Negroes in all

cities related to prejudice, discrimination, severely disadvantaged living

conditions and a general sense of frustration about their inability to change

those conditions.

Specific events or incidents exemplified and reinforced the shared sense of

grievance.… With each such incident, frustration and tension grew until at some

point a final incident, often similar to the incidents preceding it, occurred

and was followed almost immediately by violence.

As we see it, the prior incidents and the reservoir of underlying grievances

contributed to a cumulative process of mounting tension that spilled over into

violence when the final incident occurred. In this sense the entire chain—the

grievances, the series of prior tension-heightening incidents, and the final

incident—was the “precipitant” of disorder.[72]

The Kerner report goes on to note, “Almost invariably the incident that ignites

disorder arises from police action. Harlem, Watts, Newark, and Detroit—all the

major outbursts of recent years—were precipitated by routine arrests of Negroes

for minor offenses by white officers.”[73]

A few years earlier, in his essay “Fifth Avenue, Uptown: A Letter from Harlem,”

James Baldwin had offered a very similar analysis:

[T]he only way to police a ghetto is to be oppressive. None of the Police

Commissioner’s men, even with the best will in the world, have any way of

understanding the lives led by the people they swagger about in twos and threes

controlling. Their very presence is an insult, and it would be, even if they

spent their entire day feeding gumdrops to children. They represent the force

of the white world, and that world’s real intentions are, simply, for that

world’s criminal profit and ease, to keep the black man corralled up here, in

his place.… One day, to everyone’s astonishment, someone drops a match in the

powder keg and everything blows up. Before the dust has settled or the blood

congeals, editorials, speeches, and civil-rights commissions are loud in the

land, demanding to know what happened. What happened is that Negroes want to be

treated like men.[74]

Baldwin wrote his essay in 1960. Between its publication and that of the Kerner

report, the U.S. witnessed civil disturbances of increasing frequency and

intensity. Notable among these was the Watts riot of 1965. The Watts rebellion

has been said to divide the sixties into its two parts—the classic period of

the civil rights movement before, and the more militant Black Power movement

after.[75]

Like the riots of 1992, the Watts disturbance began with a traffic stop.

Marquette Frye was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol near Watts, a

Black neighborhood in Los Angeles. A crowd gathered, and the police called for

backup. As the number of police and bystanders grew, the tension increased

accordingly. The police assaulted a couple of bystanders and arrested Frye’s

family. As the cops left, the crowd stoned their cars. They then began

attacking other vehicles in the area, turning them over, setting them on fire.

The next evening, the disorder arose anew, with looting and arson in the nearby

commercial areas. The riot lasted six days and caused an estimated $35 million

in damage. Almost 1,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. One thousand

people were treated for injuries, and thirty-four were killed.[76]

Fourteen years after Watts, and thirteen years before the Rodney King verdict,

a similar drama played out on the other side of the country, in Miami. On

December 17, 1979, the police chased, caught, beat, and killed a Black

insurance salesman named Arthur McDuffie. McDuffie, who was riding his cousin’s

motorcycle, allegedly popped a wheelie and made an obscene gesture at Police

Sergeant Ira Diggs, before leading police on an eight-minute high-speed chase.

Twelve other cars joined in the pursuit, and when they caught McDuffie, between

six and eight officers beat him with heavy flashlights as he lay handcuffed,

face down on the pavement. Four days later, he died.[77]

Three officers were charged with second-degree murder, and three others agreed

to testify in exchange for immunity. Judge Lenore Nesbitt called the case “a

time bomb” and moved it to Tampa, where an all-White jury had recently

acquitted another officer accused of beating a Black motorist. The defense then

used its peremptory challenges to remove all Black candidates from the jury.

The outcome was predictable: the cops were acquitted; crowds then looted

stores, burned buildings, and attacked White passers-by. Crowds also laid siege

to the police station, breaking its windows and setting fire to the lobby. When

calm returned, seventeen people were dead, 1,100 had been arrested, and $80

million in property had been damaged. Four hundred seventeen people were

treated in area hospitals, the majority of them White.[78]

Here was a key difference: in Miami, the typical looting and burning of

White-owned property were matched with attacks against White **people**.

In the disorders of the 1960s, attacks against persons had been relatively

rare. In three of the sixties’ largest riots—those of Watts, Newark, and

Detroit—the crowd intentionally killed only two or three White people. Bruce

Porter and Marvin Dunn comment:

What was shocking about Miami was the intensity of the rage directed against

white people: men, women and children dragged from their cars and beaten to

death, stoned to death, stabbed with screwdrivers, run over with automobiles;

hundreds more attacked in the street and seriously injured.… In Miami,

attacking and killing white people was the main object of the riot.[79]

Among those injured in the riots was an elderly White man named Martin

Weinstock. Weinstock was hit in the head with a piece of concrete and suffered

a fractured skull. He was hospitalized for six days. Still, he told an

interviewer:

They should only know that I agree with their anger.… If the people who threw

the concrete were brought before me in handcuffs, I would insist that the

handcuffs be removed, and I’d try to talk to them. I would say that I

understand and that I’m on their side. I have no anger at all. But they’ll

never solve their problems by sending people like me to the hospital.[80]

Weinstock is right: violence directed against random representatives of some

dominant group is hardly strategic, much less morally justifiable. But if such

attacks are (as Porter and Dunn insist) “shocking,” it can only be because

Black anger has so rarely taken this form.

White violence against Black people has never been limited to the destruction

of their property. Even in Miami, Black people got the worst of the violence.

Of the seventeen dead, nine were Black people killed by the police, the

National Guard, or White vigilantes.[81] Are these deaths somehow less shocking

than those of White people?

Yet—how loudly White people denounce prejudice when it is directed against

them, and how quietly they accept it as it continually bears down on people of

color. They indignantly point out the contradiction when those who object to

prejudice employ it, and all the while adroitly ignore their own complicity in

the institutions of White supremacy.

James Baldwin, again in his “Letter from Harlem,” imagines the predicament of a

White policeman patrolling the ghetto: “He too believes in good intentions and

is astounded and offended when they are not taken for the deed. He has never,

himself, done anything for which to be hated.… But,” Baldwin asks, “which of us

has?”[82]

The Basics

We are encouraged to think of acts of police violence more or less in

isolation, to consider them as unique, unrelated occurrences. We ask ourselves

always, “What went wrong?” and for answers we look to the seconds, minutes, or

hours before the incident. Perhaps this leads us to fault the individual

officer, perhaps it leads us to excuse him. Such thinking, derived as it is

from legal reasoning, does not take us far beyond the case in question. And

thus, such inquiries are rarely very illuminating.

The shooting of Oscar Grant, the beating of Rodney King, the arrest of

Marquette Frye, the killing of Arthur McDuffie, and any of the less noted

atrocities I’ve mentioned here in passing—any of these may be explained in

terms of the actions and attitudes of the particular officers at the scene, the

events preceding the violence (including the actions of the victims), and the

circumstances in which the officers found themselves. Indeed, juries and police

administrators have frequently found it possible to excuse police violence with

such explanations.

The unrest that followed these incidents, however, cannot be explained in such

narrow terms. To understand the rioting, one must consider a whole range of

related issues, including the conditions of life in the Black community, the

role of the police in relation to that community, and the history and pattern

of similar abuses.

If we are to understand the phenomenon of police brutality, we must get beyond

particular cases. We can better understand the actions of individual police

officers if we understand the institution of which they are a part. That

institution, in turn, can best be examined if we have an understanding of its

origins, its social function, and its relation to larger systems like

capitalism and White supremacy.

Let’s begin with the basics: violence is an inherent part of policing. The

police represent the most direct means by which the state imposes its will on

the citizenry.[83] When persuasion, indoctrination, moral pressure, and

incentive measures all fail—there are the police. In the field of social

control, police are specialists in violence. They are armed, trained, and

authorized to use force. With varying degrees of subtlety, this colors their

every action. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is

implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they

represent.

Defining Brutality

The study of police brutality faces any number of methodological barriers, not

the least of which is the problem of defining it. There is no standard

definition, nor is there one way of measuring force and excessive force. As a

consequence, different studies produce very different results, and these

results are difficult to compare. Kenneth Adams, writing for the National

Institute of Justice, notes:

Because there is no standard methodology for measuring use of force, estimates

can vary considerably on strictly computational grounds. Different definitions

of force and different definitions of police-public interactions will yield

different rates.… In particular, broad definitions of use of force, such as

those that include grabbing or handcuffing a suspect, will produce higher rates

than more conservative definitions.… Broad definitions of police-public

“interactions,” such as calls for assistance, which capture variegated requests

for assistance, lead to low rates of use of force. Conversely, narrow

definitions of police-public interactions, such as arrests, which concentrate

squarely on suspects, lead to higher rates of use of force.[84]

Adams himself outlines multiple definitions for use-of-force violations,

focusing on different aspects of the misconduct.

For example, “deadly force” refers to situations in which force is likely to

have lethal consequences for the victim. [The victim need not necessarily die.]

… [T]he term “excessive force” is used to describe situations in which more

force is used than allowable when judged in terms of administrative or

professional guidelines or legal standards.… “Illegal” use of force refers to

situations in which use of force by police violated a law or statute.…

“Improper,” “abusive,” “illegitimate,” and “unnecessary” use of force are terms

that describe situations in which an officer’s authority to use force has been

mishandled in some general way, the suggestion being that administrative

procedure, societal expectations, ordinary concepts of lawfulness, and the

principle of last resort have been violated, respectively.[85]

Adding to the difficulty of comparing one set of figures with another, each of

these concepts refers to standards that vary according to the agency,

jurisdiction, and community involved. Even within a single agency, agreement on

the interpretation of the relevant standards may not be perfect. Bobby Lee

Cheatham, a Black cop in Miami, noted the different standards among the police:

“To [White officers], police brutality is going up and just hitting on someone

with no reason.… To me, it’s when a policeman gets in a situation where he’s

too aggressive or uses force when it isn’t needed. Most of the time the

policeman creates the situation himself.”[86]

Even where the facts of a case are agreed upon (which is rare enough), there

may yet be intense disagreement about the relevant standards of conduct and

their application to the particular circumstances. For example, in October

1997, sheriff’s deputies in Humboldt County, California, swabbed pepper-spray

fluid directly into the eyes of non-violent anti-logging demonstrators locked

together in an act of civil disobedience. Amnesty International called the

tactic “deliberately cruel and tantamount to torture.” A federal judge refused

to issue an injunction against the practice, however, claiming that it only

caused “transient pain.”[87]

This case highlights the disparate judgments possible, even given the same

facts. A great many people feel about police brutality as Justice Potter

Stewart felt about pornography: they can’t define it, but they know it when

they see it. Unfortunately, they might **not** know it when they see it.

Many police tactics—the use of pressure points, the fastening of handcuffs too

tightly, and the direct application of pepper spray, for example—really don’t

<em>look</em> anything like they feel. More to the point, in most cases, nobody

<em>sees</em> the brutality at all, except for the cops and their victims. The

rest of us have to rely on secondary information, usually taking one side or

the other at their word.

Things get even stickier when general patterns of violence are scrutinized,

even where no particular encounter rises to the level of official misconduct.

As one Justice Department study explains: “**Use of excessive force**

means that police applied too much force in a given incident, while

<em>excessive use of force</em> means that police apply force legally in too

many incidents.”[88] While the former is more likely to grab headlines, it is

the latter that makes the largest contribution to the community’s reservoir of

grievances against the police. But, since the force in question is within the

bounds of policy, the excessive use of force is more difficult to address from

the perspective of discipline and administration.

All of this controversy and confusion points to a very simple fact: police

brutality is a normative construction. It involves an evaluation, a judgment,

and not simply a collection of facts. David Bayley and Harold Mendelsohn

explain:

[P]olice brutality is not just a descriptive category. Rather it is a judgment

made about the propriety of police behavior.… Since the use of the phrase

implies a judgment, people may disagree profoundly about whether a particular

incident, even though it involves the obvious use of force, is a case of

brutality.

Any discussion of police brutality is therefore encumbered by confusion about

whether it applies to more than physical assaults and also by disagreement over

what circumstances absolve the police from blame.[89]

In short, the technical distinctions between, say, excessive force and illegal

force, while bringing some measure of precision to the discussion, lead us no

nearer to a resolution of these disputes. That’s because, at root, the

disagreement is not about whether a rule was broken, or a law violated. The

question—the real question—is one of legitimacy. The larger conflict is a

conflict of values.

Let’s consider this problem anew: the trouble, or part of it, comes in

discerning the legitimate and illegitimate uses of violence. Abuses of

authority may look very much like their less corrupt counterparts. Or, stated

from a different perspective, the application of legal force often

<em>feels</em> quite a lot like abuse. But there is no paradox here, not

really. The state, claiming a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, needs to

distinguish its own violence from other, allegedly less legitimate, uses of

force.[90] In non-totalitarian societies, authority exists within carefully

prescribed, if vague (one might suggest, intentionally vague), boundaries.

Action within these limits is “legitimate,” similar action outside of such

limits is “abuse.” But in the case of police violence, legitimate and excessive

force exist as part of the same continuum, rather than as distinct species of

action. (Even the term “excessive force” implies this.) Hence, where you or I

see brutality, the cop sees only a day’s work. The authorities—the other

authorities—more often than not side with the policeman, even where he has

violated some law or policy. That is, in a sense, only fair, since the police

officer—unless he engages in mutiny—nearly always sides with them. The main

difference, then, between policing and police abuse is a rule or law that

usually goes unenforced. The difference is the words.

Why We Know So Little about Police Brutality

The preceding observations provide a framework for understanding police

brutality, but tell us almost nothing about its prevalence, its forms, its

perpetrators, or its victims. Solid facts and hard numbers are very difficult

to come by.

This dearth of information may say something about how seriously the

authorities take the problem. Until very recently, nobody even bothered to keep

track of how often the police use force—at least not as part of any systematic,

national effort. In 1994, Congress decided to require the Justice Department to

collect and publish annual statistics on the police use of force. But this

effort has been fraught with difficulty. Unlike the Justice Department’s other

major data-collection projects—the Uniform Crime Reports provide a useful

contrast—the examination of police violence has never received adequate

funding, and the reports appear at irregular intervals. Furthermore, the data

on which the studies are based are surely incomplete. Many of the reports rely

on local police agencies to supply their numbers, and reporting is

voluntary.[91] Worse, the information, once collected and analyzed, is often

put to propagandistic uses; its presentation is sometimes heavily skewed to

support a law enforcement perspective. But despite their many flaws, the

Justice Department reports remain one of the most comprehensive sources of

information about the police use of force.

These reports represent various approaches to the issue. They measure the use

of force as it occurs in different circumstances, such as arrests and traffic

stops. They examine both the level of force used and the frequency with which

it is employed. And some studies collect data from victims as well as police.

Unfortunately, under-reporting handicaps every means of compiling the data. One

report states frankly: “<em>The incidence of wrongful use of force by police is

unknown</em>.… Current indicators of excessive force are all critically

flawed.”[92] The most commonly cited indicators are civilian complaints and

lawsuits. But few victims of police abuse feel comfortable complaining to the

same department under which they suffered the abuse, and lawyers usually only

want cases that will win—in other words, cases where the evidence is clear and

the harm substantial.[93] Many people fail to make a complaint of any kind,

either because they would like to put the unpleasant experience behind them,

because they fear retaliation, because they suspect that nothing can be done,

or because they feel they will not be believed.[94] One survey from the Bureau

of Justice Statistics found that “less than 5% of persons who believed the

police had not behaved properly filed a complaint.”[95] Hence, measures that

depend on victim reporting are likely to represent only a small fraction of the

overall incidence of brutality.

Naturally, the victim is not always the best judge as to whether force was

excessive, but in some cases, he or she may be the only source willing to admit

that force was used at all. This fact provides another reason to separate

questions concerning the legitimacy of violence from those concerning its

prevalence. One report notes:

The difficulties in measuring excessive and illegal force with complaint and

lawsuit records have led academics and practitioners to redirect their

attention to all use-of-force incidents. The focus then becomes one of

minimizing all instances of police use of force, without undue concern as to

whether force was excessive. From this perspective, other records, such as

use-of-force reports, arrest records, injury reports, and medical records,

become relevant to measuring the incidence of the problem.[96]

Of course, these indicators also have their shortcomings. Arrest records,

medical records, and the like will surely reveal uses of violence that have not

resulted in lawsuits or formal complaints. But they will still underestimate

the overall incidence of force, since not every case will be accurately

recorded. For example, attempts to assess the prevalence of force based on

arrest reports leave out those cases where force was used but no arrest was

made.[97] Like the victims (though for very different reasons), the

perpetrators of police violence are also likely to under-report its occurrence.

And they are likely to understate the level of force used and the seriousness

of resultant injuries when they do report it.[98] Individual medical records,

meanwhile, are not generally available for examination, except when presented

as evidence in a complaint hearing or civil trial. And even if emergency rooms

were to maintain statistics on police-related injuries, many victims of

violence, especially the uninsured, do not seek treatment except for the most

serious of injuries.

Other indicators, such as media reports and direct observation, are similarly

flawed. The media, of course, can only report on events if they know about

them. Furthermore, they are unlikely to report on routine uses of force

<em>because</em> it is routine.[99] Direct observation is limited by the

obvious fact that no one can observe everything, everywhere, all the time. And

observation can lead a subject (either the officer or the suspect) to change

his behavior while he is being observed. In humanitarian terms, such deterrence

is all for the good, but it doesn’t do much for the systematic study of police

activity or the measurement of police violence.

The sad fact is that nobody knows very much about the police use of force, much

less about the use of excessive force. Its prevalence, frequency, and

distribution remain, for the most part, unmeasured; and there is only limited

information available concerning its perpetrators, victims, forms, and causes.

Nevertheless, **some** information is available through the sources

mentioned above. And, imperfect though they are, the statistics they produce

may point to a reliable baseline, an estimated minimum to which we can refer

with a fair amount of certainty. With that aim in mind, and with more than a

little trepidation, we should turn our attention to the data that is available,

and consider what it indicates.[100]

A Look at the Numbers

According to a Justice Department survey, 19 percent of American adults (43.5

million people) had direct face-to-face contact with the police in 2005. Of

those surveyed, 1.6 percent reported the use of force or its threat. In other

words, out of every hundred people the police come into contact with, they will

threaten or hurt one or two of them. The rate is much higher for Blacks (4.4

percent) and Hispanics (2.3 percent) than for Whites (1.2 percent). The vast

majority of the victims (83 percent) characterized the force as excessive.[101]

“One and a half percent” is a polite way of saying “nearly a million.” An

estimated 991,930 people experienced some level of force (including threats);

more than half—55 percent, or 546,000 people—were subject to physical

force.[102] That latter group, if we got them all together, would make for a

fair-sized city, larger than Portland, Oregon (population 537,081).[103] And

when you orient yourself to the fact that this city could be reproduced

<em>every year</em>, you start to get some picture of how common police

violence really is.

Also in 2005, there were 57,546 officers assaulted in the course of their work,

the equivalent of 11.9 assaults per hundred officers. Most involved unarmed

assailants (80 percent) and resulted in no injuries (77 percent).[104] Comparing

the numbers, we find that the police use violence (546,000 times in 2005)

<em>nine times as often</em> as they face it (57,546 times that year).

There is a similar imbalance when it comes to fatalities. A study covering the

years 2003–2005 found that 380 police died on duty during that time. Only 159

of these deaths were homicides, and 221 were the result of accidents. During

the same period, 1,095 people were killed by police and other officials in the

process of arrest. That averages 365 each year, or one a day.[105] If we do the

math, we see that the police kill almost **seven times as often** as they

are killed. The fact is, the police produce far more casualties than they

suffer.

The available studies tell us very little about the prevalence of excessive

force, but they do indicate that the police use violence more often, at higher

levels, and with deadlier effects, than they encounter it. This disparity

should not be surprising, considering the nature of policing—the imperative to

maintain control at all times, in every situation (hardly a realistic goal),

the training to use escalating levels of force to gain compliance, and

authority unhindered by genuine oversight. Policing, as I said earlier, is

inherently violent; this violence, generally speaking, seems to be of an

offensive—rather than defensive—character.

Explaining Away the Abuse

In **Uprooting Racism**, Paul Kivel makes a useful comparison between the

rhetoric abusive men employ to justify beating up their girlfriends, wives, or

children and the publicly traded justifications for widespread racism. He

writes:

During the first few years that I worked with men who are violent I was

continually perplexed by their inability to see the effects of their actions

and their ability to deny the violence they had done to their partners or

children. I only slowly became aware of the complex set of tactics that men use

to make violence against women invisible and to avoid taking responsibility for

their actions. These tactics are listed below in the rough order that men

employ them.…

(1) Denial: “I didn’t hit her.”

(2) Minimization: “It was only a slap.”

(3) Blame: “She asked for it.”

(4) Redefinition: “It was mutual combat.”

(5) Unintentionality: “Things got out of hand.”

(6) It’s over now: “I’ll never do it again.”

(7) It’s only a few men: “Most men wouldn’t hurt a woman.”

(8) Counterattack: “She controls everything.”

(9) Competing victimization: “Everybody is against men.”[106]

Kivel goes on to detail the ways these nine tactics are used to excuse (or

deny) institutionalized racism. Each of these tactics also has its police

analogy, both as applied to individual cases and in regard to the general issue

of police brutality.[107]

Here are a few examples:

(1) Denial.

“The professionalism and restraint … was nothing short of outstanding.”[108]

“America does not have a human-rights problem.”[109]

(2) Minimization.

Injuries were “of a minor nature.”[110]

“Police use force infrequently.”[111]

(3) Blame.

“This guy isn’t Mr. Innocent Citizen, either. Not by a long shot.”[112]

“They died because they were criminals.”[113]

(4) Redefinition.

It was “mutual combat.”[114]

“Resisting arrest.”[115]

“The use of force is necessary to protect yourself.”[116]

(5) Unintentionality.

“[O]fficers have no choice but to use deadly force against an assailant who is

deliberately trying to kill them.…”[117]

(6) It’s over now.

“We’re making changes.”[118]

“We will change our training; we will do everything in our power to make sure

it never happens again.”[119]

(7) It’s only a few men.

“A small proportion of officers are disproportionately involved in use-of-force

incidents.”[120]

“Even if we determine that the officers were out of line … it is an

aberration.”[121]

(8) Counterattack.

“The only thing they understand is physical force and pain.”[122]

“People make complaints to get out of trouble.”[123]

(9) Competing victimization.

The police are “in constant danger.”[124]

“[L]iberals are prejudiced against police, much as many white police are biased

against Negroes.”[125]

The police are “the most downtrodden, oppressed, dislocated minority in

America.”[126]

Another commonly invoked rationale for justifying police violence is:

(10) The Hero Defense.

“These guys are heroes.”[127]

“The police routinely do what the rest of us don’t: They risk their lives to

keep the peace. For that selfless bravery, they deserve glory, laud and

honor.”[128]

“[W]ithout the police … anarchy would be rife in this country, and the

civilization now existing on this hemisphere would perish.”[129]

“[T]hey alone stand guard at the upstairs door of Hell.”[130]

This list is by no means exhaustive, but it should convey something of the tone

that these excuses can take. Many of these approaches overlap, and often

several are used in conjunction. For example, LAPD sergeant Stacey Koon offers

this explanation for the beating of Rodney King:

From our view, and based on what he had already done, Rodney King was trying to

assault an officer, maybe grab a gun. And when he was not moving, he seemed to

be looking for an opportunity to hurt somebody, his eyes darting this way and

that.…

So we’d had to use force to make him respond to our commands, to make him lie

still so we could neutralize this guy’s threat to other people and himself.

The force we used was well within the guidelines of the Los Angeles Police

Department; I’d made sure of that. And, I was proud of the professionalism [the

officers had] shown in subduing a really monster guy, a felony evader seen

committing numerous traffic violations.[131]

In three paragraphs, Koon employs minimization, blame, redefinition,

unintentionality, counterattacks, competing victimization, and the Hero

Defense. As is usual, his little story stresses the possible danger of the

situation, and elsewhere Koon emphasizes the generalizable sense of danger that

officers experience: “[W]e’d all thought that maybe we were getting lured into

something. It’s happened before. How many times have you read about a cop

getting killed after stopping somebody for a speeding violation?”[132]

The Dangers of the Job

The danger of the job is a constant theme in the defense of police violence. It

is implicit (or sometimes explicit) in about half of the excuses listed above.

By pointing to the dangers of the job, the excuse-makers don’t only defend

police actions in particular circumstances (which might actually have been

dangerous), but as often as not take the opportunity to mount a general defense

of the police. This is a clever bit of sophistry, as cynical as a Memorial Day

speech during wartime. It’s one thing to make a banner of the bloody uniform

when discussing a case where the cops actually **were** in danger, but

quite another to do so when they **might have been** in danger, or only

<em>thought</em> that they were.

The fact that policing is risky, by this view, seems to justify in advance

whatever measures the police feel necessary to employ. This point lies at the

center of the Hero Defense. Its genius is that it is so hard to answer. Few

people are indifferent to the death of a police officer, especially when they

feel (though only in some vague, patriotic kind of way) that it occurred

because the officer was selflessly working—as former Philadelphia city

solicitor Sheldon Albert put it—“so that you and I and our families and our

children can walk on the streets.”[133] The flaw of the Hero Defense, however,

is both simple and (if you’ll pardon the term) fatal: policing is not so

dangerous as we are led to believe.

A total of 105 patrol officers died on the job in 2012. Less half of those (51)

died as the result of violence, and another 48 died in traffic accidents.[134]

Between 1961 and 2012, 3,847 cops were murdered and 2,946 died in

accidents—averaging about 75 murders and 58 fatal accidents in a typical

year.[135]

Naturally it is not to be lost sight of that these numbers represent human

lives, not widgets or sacks of potatoes. But let’s also remember that there

were 4,383 fatal work injuries in 2012. As dangerous professions go, according

to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, policing is not even in the top ten. In

terms of total fatalities, more truck drivers are killed than any other kind of

worker (741 in 2012). A better measure of occupational risk, however, is the

rate of work-related deaths per 100,000 workers. In 2012, for example, it was

17.4 for truck drivers.[136] At 15.0 deaths per 100,000, policing is slightly

less dangerous than being a maintenance worker (15.7) and slightly more

dangerous than supervising the gardener (14.7).[137] The highest rate of

fatalities is among loggers at 127.8 per 100,000, just ahead of fishers at

117.0. The rate for all occupations, taken together, is 3.2 per 100,000

workers.[138]

Where are the headlines, the memorials, the honor guards, and the sorrowful

renderings of Taps for these workers? Where are the mayoral speeches, the

newspaper editorials, the sober reflections that these brave men and women

died, and that others risk their lives daily, so that we might continue to

enjoy the benefits of modern society?

Policing, it seems, is the only profession that both exaggerates and advertises

its dangers. It has done so at a high cost, and to great advantage, though (as

is so often the case) the costs are not borne by the same people who reap the

benefits.[139] The overblown image of police heroism, and the “obsession” with

officer safety (Rodney Stark’s term), do not only serve to justify police

violence after the fact; by providing such justification, they legitimize

violence, and thus make it more likely.[140]

Institutionalized Brutality

Given the pervasive nature of police violence, it is astonishing that the

public discourse so frequently focuses on the behavior of individual officers.

Commonly called the “Rotten Apple” theory, the explanation of misconduct

favored by police commanders and their ideological allies holds that abuse is

exceptional, that the officers who misuse their power are a tiny minority, and

that it is unfair to judge other cops (or the department as a whole) by the

misbehavior of the few.[141] This is a handy tool for diverting attention away

from the institution, its structure, practices, and social role, pushing the

blame, instead, onto some few of its agents.[142] It is, in other words, a means

of protecting the organization from scrutiny and of avoiding change.

Despite the official insistence to the contrary, it is clear that police

organizations, as well as individual officers, hold a large share of the

responsibility for the prevalence of police brutality.[143] Police agencies are

organizationally complex, and brutality may be promoted or accommodated within

any (or all) of its various dimensions. Both formal and informal aspects of an

organization can help create a climate in which unnecessary violence is

tolerated, or even encouraged. Among the formal aspects contributing to

violence are the organization’s official policies, its identified priorities,

the training it offers its personnel,[144] its allocation of resources, and its

system of promotions, awards, and other incentives.[145] When these aspects of

an organization encourage violence—whether or not they do so intentionally, or

even consciously—we can speak of brutality being promoted “from above.” This

understanding has been well applied to the regimes of certain openly thuggish

leaders—Bull Connor, Richard Daley, Frank Rizzo,[146] Daryl Gates, Rudolph

Giuliani, Joe Arpaio (to name just a few)—but it needn’t be so overt to have

the same effect.

On the other hand, when police culture and occupational norms support the use

of unnecessary violence, we can describe brutality as being supported “from

below.” Such informal conditions are a bit harder to pin down, but they

certainly have their consequences. We may count among their elements

insularity,[147] indifference to the problem of brutality,[148] generalized

suspicion,[149] and the intense demand for personal respect.[150] One of the

first sociologists to study the problem of police violence, William Westley,

described these as “basic occupational values,” more important than any other

determinant of police behavior:

[The policeman] regards the public as his enemy, feels his occupation to be in

conflict with the community and regards himself as a pariah. The experience and

the feeling give rise to a collective emphasis on secrecy, an attempt to coerce

respect from the public, and a belief that almost any means are legitimate in

completing an important arrest. These are for the policeman basic occupational

values. They arise from his experience, take precedence over his legal

responsibilities, are central to an understanding of his conduct, and form the

occupational contexts with which violence gains its meaning.[151]

Police violence is very frequently over-determined—promoted from above and

supported from below. But where it is not actually encouraged, sometimes even

where individuals (officers or administrators) disapprove of it, excessive and

illegal force are nevertheless nearly always **condoned**. Among police

administrators there is the persistent and well-documented refusal to

discipline violent officers; and among the cops themselves, there is the “code

of silence.”

In its 1998 report, Human Rights Watch noted the inaction of police commanders:

Most high-ranking police officials, whether at the level of commissioner,

chief, superintendent, or direct superiors, seem uninterested in vigorously

pursuing high standards for treatment of persons in custody. When reasonably

high standards are set, superior officers are often unwilling to require that

their subordinates consistently meet them.[152]

Even where officers are found guilty of misconduct, discipline rarely follows.

For example, in 1998 New York’s Civilian Complaint Review Board issued 300

findings against officers; fewer than half of these resulted in disciplinary

action.[153]

LAPD assistant chief Jesse Brewer told the Christopher Commission:

We know who the bad guys are. Reputations become well known, especially to the

sergeants and then of course to lieutenants and captains in the areas. But, I

don’t see anyone bringing these people up and saying, “Look, you are not

conforming, you are not measuring up. You need to take a look at yourself and

your conduct and the way you’re treating people” and so forth. I don’t see that

occurring.… The sergeants don’t, they’re not held accountable so why should

they be that much concerned[?] … I have a feeling that they don’t think that

much is going to happen to them anyway if they tried to take action and perhaps

not even be supported by the lieutenant or the captain all the way up the line

when they do take action against some individual.[154]

Rank-and-file cops, likewise, are extremely reluctant to report the abuses they

witness. Some of this reluctance, surely, is a reflection of their superiors’

indifference. (After all, if nothing’s going to come of it, why report it?) But

their peers also enforce this silence. A National Institute of Justice study on

police integrity discovered:

a large gap between attitudes and behavior. That is, even though officers do

not believe in protecting wrongdoers, they often do not turn them in. More than

80 percent of police surveyed reported that they do not accept the “code of

silence” (i.e., keeping quiet in the face of misconduct by others) as an

essential part of the mutual trust necessary to good policing.… However, about

one-quarter (24.9 percent) of the sample agreed or strongly agreed that whistle

blowing is not worth it, more than two thirds (67.4 percent) reported that

police officers who report incidents of misconduct are likely to be given a

“cold shoulder” by fellow officers, and a majority (52.4 percent) agreed or

strongly agreed that it is not unusual for police officers to “turn a blind

eye” to other officers’ improper conduct.… A surprising 6 in 10 (61 percent)

indicated that police officers do not always report even serious criminal

violations that involve the abuse of authority by fellow officers.[155]

We should remember that these numbers reflect the reluctance of police to

report misconduct **when they recognize it as such**. Given police

attitudes about the use of force (when nearly a quarter of officers—24.5

percent—think it acceptable to use illegal force against a suspect who assaults

an officer),[156] we can reasonably conclude that the police report their

colleagues’ excessive force only in the rarest of circumstances.

I have, to this point, concentrated on the means by which violence (and

excessive force in particular) is institutionalized by police agencies. That

is, I have discussed the ways police organizations produce and sanction

violence, even outside the bounds of their own rules and the law. This

examination has provided a brief sketch of the way the institution shapes

violence, but has not thus far considered the implications of this violence for

the institution. It seems paradoxical that an organization responsible for

enforcing the law would frequently rely on illegal practices. The police

resolve this tension between nominally lawful ends and illegal means by

substituting their own occupational and organizational norms for the legal

duties assigned to them. Westley suggests:

This process then results in a transfer in property from the state to the

colleague group. The means of violence which were originally a property of the

state, in loan to its law-enforcement agent, the police, are in a psychological

sense confiscated by the police, to be conceived of as a personal property to

be used at their discretion.[157]

From the officers’ perspective, the center of authority is shifted and the

relationship between the state and its agents is reversed. The police become a

law unto themselves.

This account reflects the attitudes of the officers, and explains many of the

institutional features already discussed. It also identifies an important

principle of police ideology, one that (as we shall see in later chapters) has

guided the development of the institution, especially in the last half-century.

But Westley’s theory also raises some important questions. Chief among these:

why would the state allow such a coup?

The Police, the State, and Social Conflict

We might also ask: To what degree is violence the “property” of the state to

begin with? At what point does the police co-optation of violence challenge the

state’s monopoly on it? When do the police, in themselves, become a genuine

rival of the state? Are they a rival to be used (as in a system of indirect

rule) or a rival to be suppressed? Is there a genuine danger of the police

becoming the dominant force in society, displacing the civilian authorities? Is

this a problem for the ruling class? Might such a development, under certain

conditions, be to their favor? These are important questions, and we will get

to them.

For now, let us concentrate on the question of why the state (meaning, here,

the civil authorities) would let the police claim the means of violence as

their own. Police brutality does not just happen; it is **allowed** to

happen. It is tolerated by the police themselves, those on the street and those

in command. It is tolerated by prosecutors, who seldom bring charges against

violent cops, and by juries, who rarely convict. It is tolerated by the civil

authorities, the mayors, and the city councils, who do not use their influence

to challenge police abuses. But why?

The answer is simple: police brutality is tolerated because it is what people

with power want.

This surely sounds conspiratorial, as though orders issued from a smoke-filled

room are circulated at roll call to the various patrol officers and result in a

certain number of arrests and a certain number of gratuitous beatings on a

given evening. But this isn’t what I mean. Rather than a conspiracy, it is

merely the normal functioning of the institution; it’s just that the apparent

conflict between the law and police practices may not be so important as we

tend to assume. The two may, at times, be at odds, but this is of little

concern so long as the interests they serve are essentially the same. The

police may violate the law, as long as they do so in the pursuit of ends that

people with power generally endorse, and from which such people profit.

When the police enforce the law, they do so unevenly, in ways that give

disproportionate attention to the activities of poor people, people of color,

and others near the bottom of the social pyramid.[158] And when the police

<em>violate</em> the law, these same people are their most frequent victims.

This is a coincidence too large to overlook. If we put aside, for the moment,

all questions of legality, it must become quite clear that the object of police

attention, and the target of police violence, is overwhelmingly that portion of

the population that lacks real power. And this is precisely the point: police

activities, legal or illegal, violent or nonviolent, tend to keep the people

who currently stand at the bottom of the social hierarchy in their “place,”

where they “belong”—at the bottom. This is why James Baldwin said that policing

was “oppressive” and “an insult.”

Put differently, we might say that the police act to defend the interests and

standing of those with power—those at the top. So long as they serve in this

role, they are likely to be given a free hand in pursuing these ends and a

great deal of leeway in pursuing other ends that they identify for themselves.

The laws may say otherwise, but laws can be ignored.

In theory, police authority is restricted by state and federal law, as well as

by the policies of individual departments. In reality, the police often exceed

the bounds of their lawful authority and rarely pay any price for doing so. The

rules are only as good as their enforcement, and they are seldom enforced. The

real limits to police power are established not by statutes and

regulations—since no rule is self-enforcing—but by their leadership and,

indirectly, by the balance of power in society.

So long as the police defend the status quo, so long as their actions promote

the stability of the existing system, their misbehavior is likely to be

overlooked. It is when their excesses threaten this stability that they begin

to face meaningful restraints. Laws and policies can be ignored and still

provide a cover of plausible deniability for those in authority. But when

misconduct reaches such a level as to prove embarrassing, or so as to provoke

unrest, the authorities may have to tighten the reins—for a while. Token

prosecutions, minimal reforms, and other half-measures may give the appearance

of change, and may even serve as some check against the worst abuses of

authority, but they carefully fail to affect the underlying causes of

brutality. It would be wrong to conclude that the police never change. But it

is important to notice the limits of these changes, to understand the

influences that direct them, and to recognize the interests that they serve.

Police brutality is pervasive, systemic, and inherent to the institution. It is

also anything but new.

2: The Origins of American Policing

In February 1826, Aziel Conklin, the captain of the watch in New York’s third

district, was suspended—but later reinstated—after a conviction for assault and

battery.[159] This incident was not especially unusual at the time. Even now, it

would only stand out because cops are so rarely convicted, regardless of the

evidence against them. Yet if the licensed use of violence is not new, the

system employing it today looks very different than that of the 1820s. And if

the abuse of authority is itself a constant feature of government, the nature

of that authority has undergone substantial changes.

Characteristics of Modern Police

Policing itself is not a distinctly modern activity.[160] It has existed in some

form, under numerous political systems, in disparate locations, for centuries.

Yet most of the institutions historically responsible for law enforcement would

not be recognizable to us **as police**. Colonial America, for example,

had nothing like our modern police departments. David Bayley writes:

The earliest specialized police were watchmen.… However, although their

function was certainly specialized, it is not always clear that it was

policing. Very often they acted only as sentinels, responsible for summoning

others to apprehend criminals, repel attack, or put out fires.[161]

It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that most American cities

had police organizations with roughly the same form and function as our

contemporary departments.

Though historians generally agree it was in the mid-1800s that police forces

throughout the United States converged into a single type, it has been

surprisingly difficult to enumerate the major features of a modern police

operation. Bayley defines the modern police in terms of their public auspices,

specialized function, and professionalism,[162] though he does also mention their

non-military character[163] and their authority to use force.[164] Richard Lundman

offers four criteria: full-time service, continuity in office, continuity in

procedure, and control by a central governmental authority.[165] Selden Bacon,

meanwhile, suggests six characteristics:

(1) citywide jurisdiction,

(2) twenty-four-hour responsibility,

(3) a single organization responsible for the greater part of formal

enforcement,

(4) paid personnel on a salary basis,

(5) a personnel occupied solely with police duties,

(6) general rather than specific functions.[166]

Raymond Fosdick argues that the defining mark of modern police departments is

their organization under a single commander.[167] And Eric Monkkonen takes as his

sole criterion the presence of uniforms.[168]

Three of these criteria are easily done away with. The use of uniforms is

neither a necessary nor a unique feature of modern policing. Some police

officers, especially detectives, do not wear uniforms, and are no less modern

for that fact. Furthermore, even within the history of law enforcement,

uniforms predate the modern institution. The London Watch, for example, was

uniformed in 1791.[169] Likewise, though most police agencies are headed by a

single police chief, that is not always the case, and has not always been the

case, even in departments that are distinctly modern. Police boards of various

kinds have moved in and out of fashion throughout the modern period, especially

at the cusp of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The civilian character of the police is more problematic, and, precisely

because it is problematic I will put it aside as a suggested criterion. The

relationship between policing and the military has always been complex and

controversial, and if current trends are any indication, it will remain so for

some time. Given the ambiguous and shifting character of the police, it seems

unwise to generalize about its essentially civilian (or military) nature, and I

do not wish to define away the problem at the expense of a more nuanced

analysis.[170]

Those characteristics remaining may be divided into two groups. The first are

the defining characteristics of **police**:

(1) the authority to use force,

(2) a public character and accountability (at least in principle) to some

central governmental authority, and

(3) general law enforcement duties (as opposed to limited, specified duties

such as parking enforcement or animal control).

These traits, I think, are essential to any organization that claims to be

engaged in policing. The second set comprises those criteria distinguishing

<em>modern</em> policing from earlier forms. These include:

(1) the investment of responsibility for law enforcement in a single

organization,

(2) citywide jurisdiction and centralization,

(3) an intended continuity in office and procedure,[171]

(4) a specialized policing function (meaning that the organization is only or

mainly responsible for policing, not for keeping the streets clean, putting out

fires, etc.),

(5) twenty-four-hour service, and

(6) personnel paid on a salary basis rather than by fee.

There is one final characteristic that deserves consideration. The development

of policing has been guided in large part by an emerging orientation toward

preventive rather than responsive activity. Though this idea was firmly

established by the time modern departments took the stage, it was not until

quite some time later that specific techniques of prevention entered into use,

and the degree to which the police do, or can, or should, act to prevent crime

remains even now a matter of intense debate.

[[k-w-kristian-williams-our-enemies-in-blue-1.png][Figure A. Characteristics of Modern Police]]

Rather than use

these factors to draw a sharp line demarcating the clearly identifiable modern

police (a line most police departments will have crossed and re-crossed), I

propose we use these criteria to place various organizations on a continuum as

being **more** or **less** modern depending on the degree to which

they display these characteristics.[172] (I have listed the traits here in order

of what I take to be their relative significance.) This approach may seem a bit

impressionistic, but I think the picture it offers is helpful in understanding

the evolution of police systems. For the most part, the creators of the new

police did not see themselves as marching inexorably toward an ideal of modern

policing. Instead, they adapted preexisting institutions to the demands of new

circumstances, evolving their systems slowly through a process of invention and

imitation, improvisation and experimentation, promise and compromise, trial and

error. The rate of progress was unsteady, its path wavering, its advances

frequently reversed, and its direction determined by a variety of factors

including political pressure, scandals, wars, riots, economics, immigration,

budget constraints, the law, and sometimes crime.

There is a further advantage to this approach: it acknowledges the fact of

continuing development and leaves open the possibility of further

modernization. Hence, rather than a revolution of modernity, occurring between

1829 and about 1860, we are faced with a much more protracted process. We find

police departments approaching their modern form quite a while earlier; and

yet, we can recognize that these same departments may not be fully modernized,

even now.[173] In short, this view avoids the tendency to treat our contemporary

institution as the final product of earlier progress, as an end-point marking

completion, and instead situates it as one stage in an ongoing process.

English Predecessors

Many people find it astonishing that the police have predecessors. They seem to

imagine that the cop has always been there, in something like his present

capacity, subject only to the periodic change of uniform or the occasional

technological advance. Quite to the contrary, the police have a rich and

complex history, if an ugly one. Our contemporary institution owes much of its

character to those that came before it, including those offices imported or

imposed during the colonial period. These in turn have their own stories,

closely linked to the creation of modern states. It is worth considering this

lineage and the forces that propelled change, from one form of control to

another.

During the time between the fall of Rome and the rise of modern states,

policing—like political authority—became quite decentralized.[174] Policing

initially took an informal mode, such as that of the frankpledge system in

England.[175] Under this system, families grouped themselves together in sets of

ten (called “tythings”) and collections of ten tythings (called “hundreds”).

The heads of these families pledged to one another to obey the law. Together

they were responsible for enforcing that pledge, apprehending any of their own

who violated it, and combining for mutual protection. If they failed in these

duties, they were fined by the sovereign.[176]

Under the frankpledge system, the responsibility for enforcing the law and

maintaining order fell to everyone in the community. Bruce Smith writes:

Our extremely modern concept of a specialized police force did not then exist.

Neither was there any public means for repressing or preventing crime, as

distinguished from its detection and the apprehension of offenders. The members

of each tything were simply bound to a mutual undertaking to apprehend, and

present for trial, any of their number who might commit an offense.[177]

This arrangement relied on the social conditions present in small communities,

especially the sense of interpersonal connection and interdependence. But we

should be careful of romanticizing this idyllic scenario. The frankpledge

system was imposed by the Norman conquerors as a means of maintaining colonial

rule. Essentially, they forced the conquered communities to enforce the Norman

law.[178]

Still, the system was rather limited in its authoritarian uses, as it depended

on a common acceptance of the law. Hence, English sovereigns later found it

necessary to supplement the frankpledge with the appointment of a shire reeve,

or sheriff, to act in local affairs as a general representative of the crown.

The sheriff was responsible for enforcing the monarch’s will in military,

fiscal, and judicial matters, and for maintaining the domestic peace. Sheriffs

were appointed by and directly accountable to the sovereign. They were

responsible for organizing the tythings and the hundreds, inspecting their

weapons, and, when necessary, calling together a group of men to serve as a

<em>posse comitatus</em>, pursuing and apprehending fugitives. The sheriffs

were paid a portion of the taxes they collected, which led to abuses and made

them rather unpopular figures. Eventually, following a series of scandals and

complaints, the sheriff’s powers were eroded and some of his responsibilities

were assigned to new offices, including the coroner, the justice of the peace,

and the constable.[179]

According to the 1285 Statute of Winchester, the constable was responsible for

acting as the sheriff’s agent. Two constables were appointed for every hundred,

thus providing more immediate supervision of the tythings and hundreds.[180] As

Smith describes:

[The constable’s] early history is closely intertwined with military affairs

and with martial law; for after the Conquest the Norman marshals, predecessors

of the modern constable, held positions of great dignity and were drawn for the

most part from the baronage. As leaders of the king’s army they seem to have

exercised a certain jurisdiction over military offenders, particularly when the

army was engaged on foreign soil, and therefore beyond the reach of the usual

institutions of justice. The disturbed conditions attending the Wars of the

Roses brought the constables further powers of summary justice, as in cases of

treason and similar state crimes. They therefore came to be a convenient means

by which the English kings from time to time overrode the ordinary safeguards

of English law. These special powers, originating in the “law marshal,” were

expanded until they came to represent what we know as “martial law.”[181]

Beyond his original military function, and the additional job of serving the

sheriff, the constable was also responsible for a host of other duties,

including the collection of taxes, the inspection of highways, and serving as

the local magistrate. Ironically, as the **posse comitatus** came

increasingly to act as a militia, the constable was without assistance in

policing.[182] By the end of the thirteenth century, the constable was no longer

connected to the tything; he acted instead as an agent of the manor and the

crown.[183] By the beginning of the sixteenth century, the constable’s function

was quite limited; constables only made arrests in cases where the justice of

the peace issued a warrant.[184]

Around the middle of the thirteenth century, towns of notable size were

directed by royal edict to institute a night watch.[185] This was usually an

unpaid, compulsory service borne by every adult male. Carrying only a staff

and lantern, the watch would walk the streets from late evening until dawn,

keeping an eye out for fire, crime, or other threats, sounding an alarm in the

event of emergency. “Charlies”—so called because they were created during the

reign of Charles II[186]—were unarmed, untrained, under-supervised, often

unwilling, and frequently drunk.

In 1727, Joseph Cotton, the Deputy Steward of Westminster, visited St.

Margaret’s Watchhouse and complained that there was “neither Constable, Beadle,

Watchman, or other person (save one who was so Drunk that he was not capable of

giving any Answer) Present in, or near the said Watchhouse.” A few years later,

in 1735, John Goland of Bond Street complained to the Burgesses that he had

been robbed three times in five years, noting that he “generally finds the

Watchmen drunk, and wandering about with lewd Women.”[187]

The watch thus represented neither a significant bulwark against crime nor a

major source of power for the state. Yet the watch continued in various forms

for 600 years.

During the eighteenth century, the London Watch underwent a long series of

reforms.[188] While neglect of duty and drunkenness remained major complaints,

most of the characteristics of modern police were introduced to the watch in

this period, first in one locale and then in the others. “The goal,” as

historian Elaine Reynolds notes, “was a system of street policing that was

honest, accountable, and impartial in its administration and operation.”[189]

Toward this end, several West End parishes began paying watchmen in 1735; most

other parishes adopted the practice within the next fifty years.[190] During

this same time, more men were hired, hours of operation were expanded, command

hierarchies and plans of supervision were drafted, minimum qualifications

established, record-keeping introduced, and pensions offered.[191] Reynolds

explains:

By 1775, Westminster and several neighboring parishes had a night watch system

that was both professional and hierarchical in structure, charged with

preventing crime and apprehending night walkers and vagabonds. While police

authority did remain divided between several local bodies and officials,

decentralization was not necessarily synonymous with defectiveness. These

parochial authorities put increasing numbers of constables, beadles [church

officials], watchmen, and [militia] patrols on the street, paid and equipped

them. They spent increased amounts of time disciplining them when they were

delinquent and increasing amounts of money on wages.[192]

Thus, during the eighteenth century the London Watch came very nearly to

resemble the modern police department that replaced it.

The watch was also supplemented by various private efforts, including a “river

police” created by local merchants and taken over by the government in

1800.[193] During the first three decades of the nineteenth century, London was

what one historian describes as “a patchwork of public and private police

forces,” dependent for their authority on a wide array of institutions and

officials, including “vestries, church wardens, boards of trustees,

commissioners, parishes, magistrates, and courts-leet.”[194] Among this mix, we

find one group worthy of special notice—the thieftakers, forerunners of the

modern detective. Despite their name, thieftakers were less interested in

catching thieves than in retrieving stolen property and collecting rewards. The

easiest way to do that was to act as a fence for the thieves, returning the

goods and splitting the fee. Until his execution in 1725, Jonathan Wild was

England’s most prominent thieftaker, controlling an international operation

that included warehouses in two countries and a ship for transport.[195]

Such was the state of policing when Robert Peel, the home secretary, proposed a

plan for a citywide police force. This body, the Metropolitan Police

Department—now nicknamed “Bobbies” after their creator, but commonly called

“crushers” by the public of the time[196]—adopted many of the innovations

previously introduced in the local watch, adding to these a new element of

centralization.[197] It thus fulfilled most of the criteria defining modern

policing.

Peel based this effort on his experiences in Ireland, where he had introduced

the Royal Irish Constabulary in 1818.[198] Hence both the traditional watch and

the police system that came to replace it were informed by the experience of

colonial rule. They were each created by foreign conquerors to control

rebellious populations. Peel had seen the difficulties of military occupation

and understood the need to establish some sort of legitimacy. He crafted his

police accordingly—first in Ireland, and then, with revisions, in England.[199]

In London the police uniforms and equipment were selected with an eye toward

avoiding a military appearance, though critics of the police idea still drew

such comparisons.[200]

In 1829, citing a rise in crime (especially property crime), Parliament

accepted Peel’s proposal with only a few adjustments.[201] The most important of

these compromises excluded the old City of London from the jurisdiction of the

Metropolitan Police. The old City of London (about one square mile,

geographically) retained its own police force, which in 1839 was reorganized on

the Metropolitan model.[202] Meanwhile, the watch and river police were

preserved and proved for some time more effective than the new

Metropolitans.[203] Still, though they lacked citywide jurisdiction and sole

policing authority, the London Metropolitan Police are generally credited as

the first modern police department.

Some historians treat the modern American police as a straightforward

application of Peel’s model. As we shall see, however, policing in the United

States followed a separate course, motivated by different concerns and

producing unique institutional arrangements. In fact, I shall argue that

American policing systems, especially those designed for slave control, neared

the modern type well before Peel’s reforms.

Colonial Forerunners

The American colonies mostly imported the British system of sheriffs,

constables, and watches, though with some important differences.

Sheriffs at first were appointed by governors, and made responsible for

apprehending suspects, guarding prisoners, executing civil processes,

overseeing elections, collecting taxes, and performing various fiscal

functions. Corruption in all of these duties was quite common, with sheriffs

accepting bribes from suspects and prisoners, neglecting their civil duties,

tampering with elections, and embezzling public funds.[204] The sheriff was

empowered to make arrests when issued a warrant, or without one in certain

circumstances, and was given additional duties during emergencies, but during

the colonial period the office was only tangentially concerned with criminal

law.[205]

The constable’s duties were similarly varied. He was charged with summoning

citizens to town meetings, collecting taxes, settling claims against the town,

preparing elections, impressing workers for road repair, serving warrants,

summoning juries, delivering fugitives to other jurisdictions, and overseeing

the night watch. In addition, he was, in theory, expected to enforce all laws

and maintain the Crown’s peace.[206] In practice, however, constables were paid

by a system of fees, and tended to concentrate on the better-paying tasks.[207]

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, both the sheriff and the constable

were elected positions.[208] Still, they were not popular jobs; many people

refused to serve when elected,[209] and the authority of each office was

commonly challenged, sometimes by violence. In 1756, for example, Sheriff John

Christie was killed when trying to make an arrest. James Wilkes was convicted,

but was soon pardoned by Governor Sir Charles Hardy, who reasoned that Wilkes had imbibed and strongly believed a common Error generally prevailing among the

Lower Class of Mankind in this part of the world that after warning the Officer

to desist and bidding him to stand off at his Peril, it was lawful to oppose

him by any means to prevent the arrest.[210]

The fact that such a view would be respected, despite its legal inaccuracy,

says a great deal about the weakness of the sheriff’s position.[211]

Neither of these offices was designed for what we now consider police work, and

neither ever fully adapted itself to that function.[212] Constables survived

into the twentieth century, though only as a kind of rural relic.[213] Sheriffs,

meanwhile, retained many of their original duties—especially those concerning

jails—and in some places still patrol the unincorporated areas of counties,

though even in this respect state police forces sometimes supersede them.

Rather than invest much authority in these offices, the colonial government

relied primarily on informal means of policing. As difficulties arose

concerning the behavior of slaves, the delivery of goods, sanitation, street

use, gambling, and the like, the local government responded by instituting

regulations, which were generally ignored. To remedy this deficiency, the civil

authorities called on the family and church to use their influence to bring

about compliance. Where that failed, they would institute a system of fines

(for violators) and rewards (for informers). They might then direct the

constable to enforce the laws, or else appoint special informers concerned only

with that particular law. Eventually towns began consolidating these positions

and appointing general officers called marshals.[214]

Citizens were further expected to participate in law enforcement through the

night watch. As Douglas Greenberg explains:

The character of the nightwatch varied from time to time. Sometimes it was

composed entirely of civilians forced to take their regular turn as watchmen or

pay for a substitute to replace them. At other times, especially during the

intercolonial wars, the militia took over the watch. At still other times, a

paid constable’s watch was used, or citizens themselves were paid to guard the

city.[215]

As in England, the watch was charged with keeping order, reporting fires,

sounding an alarm when crimes were discovered, detaining suspicious persons,

and sometimes suppressing riots and lighting street lamps.[216]

The Boston Watch was in many respects typical. All men over eighteen years old

were required to serve in person or provide a substitute (though clergy and

certain public officials were exempted from duty). The state legislature

ordered the watchmen to “see that all disturbances and disorders in the night

shall be prevented and suppressed” and gave them the authority to examine all persons, whom they have reason to suspect of any

unlawful design, and to demand of them their business abroad at such time, and

whither they are going; to enter any house of ill-fame for the purpose of

suppressing any riot or disturbance.[217]

They were further instructed to walk in rounds in and about the streets, wharves, lanes, and principal

inhabited parts, within each town, to prevent any danger by fire, and to see

that good order is kept, taking particular observation and inspection of all

houses and families of evil fame.[218]

New York City provided similar instruction in 1698. The watchmen were told to

go round the Citty Each Hour in the Night with a Bell and there to proclaime the

season of the weather and the Hour of the night and if they Meet in their

Rounds Any people disturbing the peace or lurking about Any persons house or

committing any theft they take the most prudent way they Can to Secure the said

persons.[219]

Like police, the colonial watch was public in character and accountable to a

central authority, usually either a town council or state legislature. Unlike

the modern police, however, the watch had only limited authority to use force,

with no training and usually no equipment for doing so. As far as “modern”

characteristics go, the watch shared responsibility for enforcement with the

constables, sheriffs, and sometimes other inspectors. Thus it was not the major

body responsible for law enforcement. Its personnel rotated with deliberate

frequency, and many places it only patrolled part of the year. Hence, it lacked

continuity in office and procedure. While the watch was concerned with crime,

it was often more concerned with other dangers, especially fire and military

attack; thus it lacked the specialized policing function. Except in times of

emergency, the watch only patrolled at night. And for the most part, its

personnel were not paid. In sum, by our criteria, the colonial watch may be

counted as a policing effort, but in no way did it constitute a modern police

agency.

The standard story in the history of policing, if we may speak of such a thing,

presents the modern American police force as a direct adaptation of the night

watch, following the English pattern.[220] But this story leaves out significant

stages in the development of American policing. Or, put differently, it omits

an entire branch of the American police family tree. As Dennis Rousey recounts:

[The] first major reform of the traditional system did not occur in any of the

big northwestern cities in the mid-1800s but in the cities of the Deep South in

a much earlier period. As early as the 1780s Charleston introduced a

paramilitary municipal police force primarily to control the city’s large

population of slaves. In later years, Savannah, New Orleans, and Mobile did the

same.[221]

These police forces, which I will refer to as City Guards, were distinct from

both the militia and the watch. They were armed, uniformed, and salaried; they

patrolled at night but kept a reserve force for daytime emergencies. In most

respects, they resembled modern American police departments to the same degree

as did the London Metropolitan Police of 1829—though much earlier.

Of course, these City Guards did not arise out of nothing. To understand their

origin, we should consider the peculiar institutions of Southern society, its

social and economic systems, and the police measures that arose to preserve

them.

Slave Codes, Slave Patrols

Relying on a slave economy, the American South faced unique problems of social

control, especially in areas where White people were in the minority.

Regardless of their own economic class or ethnic background, White people were

haunted by the prospect of a slave revolt. They became utterly obsessed with

controlling the lives of Black people, free and slave, and developed a deep and

terrible fear of any unsupervised activity in which Black people might

engage.[222] As a result, the South developed distinctive policing practices.

Called “slave patrols,” “alarm men,” or “searchers,” by the authorities who

appointed them, they were known as “paddyrollers,” “padaroles,” “padaroes,” and

“patterolers” by the populations they policed.[223]

Michael Hindus cites three related reasons why the criminal legal system in the

South developed along different lines than it did in the North: 1) tradition,

2) social and economic development, and 3) slavery.[224] Of these three, slavery

exerted the most powerful influence. It held a central place in Southern

society, in the social and political as well as the economic life of the

region. For many Southerners, a future without slavery was literally

inconceivable.[225] Thus the whole of Southern society was, at times, directed

to the defense of the “peculiar institution.” Where the demands of slavery

conflicted with the region’s traditions and social development—and to a lesser

extent when it interfered with economic development—the maintenance of the

slave system was nearly always preferred.[226]

Faced with the difficulties of keeping a major portion of the population

enslaved to a small elite, Southern society borrowed from the practices of the

Caribbean, especially Barbados. There, slave owners used professional slave

catchers and militias to capture runaways, while overseers were responsible for

maintaining order on the plantations. The weaknesses of this system led to the

creation of slave codes, laws directed specifically to the governing of slaves.

Beginning in 1661, the slave codes shifted the responsibilities of enforcement

from the overseers to the entire White population. Shortly thereafter, in the

1680s, the militia began making regular patrols to catch runaways, prevent

slave gatherings, search slave quarters, keep order at markets, funerals, and

festivals, and generally intimidate the Black population.[227] As Sally Hadden

writes in her authoritative study, **Slave Patrols**:

The final move in policing Barbadian slaves in the seventeenth century came

with the importation of two thousand professional English soldiers, who were

installed on plantations as intimidating “militia tenants.” Arriving between

1696 and 1702, they did not perform manual labor but instead functioned

exclusively as slave control forces. Their presence served the White colonists’

purposes well: throughout the eighteenth century only one slave rebellion

attempt was reported in Barbados.[228]

During the same period, South Carolina passed laws restricting the slaves’

ability to travel and trade, and created the Charleston Town Watch. Beginning

in 1671, this watch consisted of the regular constables and a rotation of six

citizens. It looked for any sign of trouble—fires, Indian attacks, or slave

gatherings. The laws also established a militia system, with every White man

between sixteen and sixty years old required to serve.[229] In 1686, South

Carolina passed a law enabling any White person to apprehend and punish runaway

slaves.[230] A few years later, the 1690 Act for the Better Ordering of Slaves

<em>required</em> “all persons under penalty of forty shillings to arrest and

chastise any slave out of his home plantation without a proper pass.”[231] Those

who captured runaways would receive a reward. In 1704, fears of a Spanish

invasion, combined with the ever-present threat of a slave revolt, led South

Carolina to form its first official slave patrols. The colony faced two types

of danger and divided its military capacity accordingly. Henceforth, the

militia would guard against outside attack, and the patrol would be left behind

to protect against insurrection.[232]

Patrollers would gather from time to time and, as instructed by the law,

ride from plantation to plantation, and into any plantation, within the limits

or precincts, as the General shall think fitt, and take up all slaves which

they shall meet without their master’s plantation which have not a permit or

ticket from their masters, and the same punish.[233]

In 1721, the law was revised to shift its focus from runaways to revolts. The

new law ordered the patrols to “prevent all caballings amongst negros

[**sic**], by dispersing of them when drumming or playing, and to search

all negro houses for arms or other offensive weapons.”[234] Books and paper were

often confiscated as well, education itself being deemed subversive. The

patrollers also seized other goods—especially linen, china, and horses—alleging

them to be stolen, and were permitted to keep for their own whatever they

took.[235]

Racist Contradictions

The patrol was essentially an institutionalized extension of the more informal

system described by the 1686 law. The law’s intention was, foremost, to divide

the means of protecting the city so that both internal and external threats

could be met simultaneously. It did not represent an effort to specialize slave

control, or to reduce the obligations of each White citizen, or to interfere

with the personal authority of the slave owner. But whatever the intention

behind it, the law did, or threatened to do, all three. Hadden explains:

Reform required increasing the amount of time each man devoted to protecting

the safety and property of others, which was repugnant to Southern White ideas

of individual freedom and, indirectly, their sense of personal honor. No White

man should have to cower before slaves, it was thought, and patrols were an

unequivocal manifestation of White fear. Southern honor required the individual

to protect his name and family without the assistance of courts or the

community; patrols, by their very nature, were communal, intrusive in the

master-slave relationship, and implied that the individual alone could not

adequately control his bondsmen.[236]

The slave patrols represented a departure from the traditional values of

Southern culture, and though the patrols were created to defend slavery, their

efficacy was limited by the same ideology that justified the slave system.

Rather than develop more formal means of control, Southern ideology encouraged

a reliance on informal systems rooted in racism.[237] While the rest of the

country developed systems of authority that were formal, legalistic, and

centered on the state, the South maintained a unique commitment to a system

that was informal, personalistic (characterized by deference and paternalism),

diffused, and in which the state was kept deliberately weak.

When compared to Northern cities of the nineteenth century, plantation life

seems positively feudal. As H.M. Henry described it, “the plantation was a sort

of governmental unit as to the police control of the slave, and to its head,

the slaveowner, was given in large measure the sovereign management of its

affairs under certain restrictions.”[238] The arrangement was, in the fullest,

traditional sense of the word, patriarchal; not only slaves, but also White

women and children were subject to the personal authority of male heads of

households.[239] Any intercession in these relationships was apt to be viewed

negatively. Slaveowners felt that any outside intervention—especially that of

the state—represented not only a usurpation of their authority but also a

personal slight, implying that the master was not up to the task of controlling

his slaves.[240]

This sentiment, an important aspect of Southern “honor,” created a major

impediment to the effective control of the Black population. It discouraged

White elites from enhancing the means of social control. Hadden writes:

[O]nly the state (through the agency of the courts, councils, and militia)

could force whites to act in concerted fashion to protect their own

self-interest. And some state legislatures, like South Carolina’s, simply

refused to reform patrol practices in order to coerce more public service from

their constituents.[241]

Slave patrols were both a product of White racism, vital to the survival of

slavery, and a manifest contradiction of the ideology and culture it was meant

to protect. As Hadden put it, “To admit that danger existed was to concede the

possibility of fear; to admit that slaves posed a threat could undermine

confidence in an entire way of life.”[242] Of course, to ignore the threat of

insurrection could prove equally as dangerous.

Thus, progress (if that is the word) came not as the result of continual

efforts at critique and improvement, but in a rush during times of crisis,

typically following real or rumored revolts. Aside from minor alterations in

1737 and 1740, the patrol system established in 1704 survived in rural areas,

virtually unaltered, until 1819. The 1737 and 1740 acts limited the personnel

of the patrols, first to landowners of fifty acres or more, and then to

slaveowners and overseers.[243] But in 1819, the South Carolina

legislature—spurred by two separate slave revolts shortly before—again made all

“free white males” aged eighteen to forty-five liable for patrol duty, without

compensation. Substitutes could be sent, for a fee, and discipline came in the

form of fines.[244] After this revision, the structure and activities of the

patrols remained relatively unchanged until the Civil War.[245]

Across the South

While the South Carolina patrols, in the estimation of Philip Reichel, were

“the oldest, most elaborate, and best documented,” other colonies followed

suit. Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi all had similar

arrangements, with variations. In Georgia, slave patrols were also responsible

for disciplining disorderly White people, especially vagrants.[246] In

Tennessee, the law required slaveowners to provide patrols on the plantations

themselves, in addition to those that rode between plantations. In Kentucky,

after a series of revolts, some cities established round-the-clock patrols. And

in Mississippi, the first patrols were federal troops; these were gradually

replaced by the militia, and then by groups appointed by county boards.[247]

Until 1660, Virginia relied more on indentured European servants than on

African slaves, though both groups sought to escape their bonds. Initially,

the colonists used the hue and cry to mobilize the community and recapture

runaways. In 1669, the colonial legislature began offering a reward (paid in

tobacco) to anyone who returned a runaway. And in 1680, as the slave population

grew, slaves were required to carry passes, as debtors and Native Americans

already had been. Slaves were singled out for special enforcement measures

beginning in 1691, when the legislature required sheriffs to raise posses for

their recapture. In 1727, this responsibility was transferred to the militia,

creating the colony’s first slave patrol. At first the militia only patrolled

as needed, but after a failed rebellion in 1730, it began regular patrols two

or three times each week. In 1754, county courts began paying patrollers and

requiring reports from their captains. After that point, Virginia’s patrols

remained essentially the same until the Civil War.[248]

North Carolina’s system developed along similar lines, driven by the same

concerns. The colony required passes for slaves, debtors, and Native Americans

beginning in 1669. In 1753, patrols were instituted. Called “searchers,” the

patrols were initially responsible for searching the slaves’ homes, but

couldn’t stop them between plantations. This function reflected the motives

behind their creation: the lawmakers were more afraid of revolts than escapes.

In 1779, paid patrols were established, with expanded powers for searching the

homes of White people and stopping slaves whenever they were off the

plantation.[249] With this they came to closely resemble the patrols already in

place elsewhere, and after 1802 they were placed under the auspices of the

county court, rather than the militia.[250]

Whether supervised by the militia or the courts, whether chiefly concerned with

escapes or revolts, whether paid or conscripted, whether slave-owners or poor

White people, the rural patrols all engaged in roughly the same activities and

served the same function. “Throughout all of the [Southern] states during the

antebellum period,” Robert Wintersmith writes, “roving armed police patrols

scoured the countryside day and night, intimidating, terrorizing, and

brutalizing slaves into submission and meekness.”[251] They patrolled together

in “beat companies,” on horseback and usually at night.[252] Along the roads

they would stop any Black person they encountered, demand his pass, beat him if

he was without one, and return him to the plantation or hold him in the jail.

For this, they carried guns, whips, and binding ropes.[253]

One patroller recalled that his company was instructed to “apprehend every

negro whom we found from his home; & if he made any resistance, or ran from us,

to fire on him immediately, unless he could be stopped by other means.” They

were also ordered to search “the negro cabins, & take every thing we found in

them, which bore a hostile aspect, such as powder, shot &c.”[254]

The patrols would break up any unsupervised gathering of slaves, especially

meetings of religious groups the patrollers themselves disliked. Baptist and

Methodist services were specifically targeted.[255] One former slave, Ida Henry,

recalled an assault against her mother:

De patrollers wouldn’t allow de slaves to hold night services, and one night

dey caught me mother out praying. Dey stripped her naked and tied her hands

together and wid a rope tied to de handcuffs and threw one end of de rope over

a limb and tied de other end to de pummel of a saddle on a horse. As me mother

weighed ’bout 200, dey pulled her up so dat her toes could barely touch de

ground and whipped her.[256]

Patrollers couldn’t legally interfere with a slave carrying a pass, but they

would often harass Black people whom they felt to be traveling too far or too

often.[257] Moses Grandy, a former slave, verified that the law did little to

restrain the patrollers:

If a negro has given offense to the patrol, even by so innocent a matter as

dressing tidily to go to a place of worship, he will be seized by one of them,

and another will tear up his pass; while one is flogging him, the others will

look another way; so when he or his master makes complaint of his having been

beaten without cause, and he points out the person who did it, the others will

swear they saw no one beat him.[258]

Other abuses were also common. Black women faced sexual abuse at the hands of

patrollers, both when they were found on the road and during searches of their

homes.[259] Patrollers sometimes kidnapped free Black people and sold them as

slaves.[260] They also frequently threatened Black people with mutilation,

sometimes with a basis in law: between 1712 and 1740, South Carolina law

required escalating tortures for captured runaways, from slitting the nose to

severing one foot.[261]

Masters sometimes complained about the abuses directed against the slaves, but

courts were generally reluctant to award damages or discipline the patrollers,

for fear of undermining the patrol system.[262] The main restraint on the

actions of patrollers was the economic value of the slave’s life; slaves were

rarely killed, since the local government would then have to compensate the

owner.[263] In general, however, the patrols were invested with vast authority

and wide discretion, as a North Carolina court explained in 1845:

[Patrols] partake of a judicial or quasi-judicial and executive character.

Judicial, so far as deciding upon each case of a slave taken up by them;

whether the law has been violated by him or not, and adjudging the punishment

to be inflicted. Is he off his master’s plantation without a proper permit or

pass? Of this the patrol must judge and decide. If punishment is to be

inflicted, they must adjudge, decide, as to the question: five stripes may in

some cases be sufficient, while others may demand the full penalty of the

law.[264]

To summarize, the state control of slave behavior advanced through three

stages. First, legislation was passed restricting the activities of slaves.

Second, this legislation was supplemented with requirements that every White

man enforce its demands. Third, over time this system of enforcement gradually

came to be regulated, either by the militia or by the courts. The transition

between these second and third steps was a slow one. Each colony tried to cope

with the unreliable nature of private enforcement, first by applying rewards

and penalties, and later by appointing particular individuals to take on the

duty. Volunteerism was eventually replaced with community-sanctioned authority

in the form of the slave patrols. Among the factors determining the rate of

this transition, and the eventual shape of the patrols, were the date of

settlement, the size of the slave population, the size of the White population,

threats of revolt, geography, and population density.[265] As this fact

suggests, slave patrols developed differently in the cities than in the

countryside.

City Guards

Slave control was no less a priority for White urbanites than for their country

kin. The growing numbers of Black people in cities were of obvious concern to

the White population, and their concentration in distinct neighborhoods

presented an unnerving reminder of the possibility of revolt.

In many respects, the cities followed the lead of the plantations. There, too,

Black people—slaves especially, but free Blacks as well—were singled out by the

law, and specialized enforcement mechanisms arose to ensure compliance.

According to Hadden, these agencies “went by a variety of names, including town

guard, city patrol, or night police, although their duties were the same: to

prevent slave gatherings and cut down on urban crime.”[266] (For the sake of

simplicity, I refer to the general type as “City Guards.”)

In the initial stage, enforcement would be entrusted to private individuals and

the existing watch, but after some period the town might petition the

legislature for the funds to form a permanent patrol, with the same group on

duty each night.[267] The urban patrols, then, did not evolve from the watch

system; rather, adapted from the rural slave patrols, they came to supplant the

watchmen. Charleston formed a City Guard in 1783. It wore uniforms, carried

muskets and swords, and maintained a substantial mounted division. Unlike the

watchmen, who walked their beats individually, the City Guard patrolled as a

company.[268]

Louis Tasistro, who traveled through Charleston in the 1840s, described the

patrol: “the city suddenly assumes the appearance of a great military garrison,

and all the principal streets become forthwith alive with patrolling parties of

twenties and thirties, headed by fife and drum, conveying the idea of a general

siege.”[269] A few years later, in the early 1850s, J. Benwell, an English

visitor to Charleston, described the reaction of the Black population to the

mounting of the guard: “It was a stirring scene, when the drums beat at the

Guard house in the public square … to witness the negroes scouring the streets

in all directions, to get to their places of abode, many of them in great

trepidation, uttering ejaculations of terror as they ran.”[270]

Throughout the first part of the nineteenth century, similar urban patrols were

created in Savannah, Mobile, and Richmond. The Savannah guard carried muskets

and wore uniforms as early as 1796. It was later equipped with horses and

pistols.[271] Richmond’s Public Guard was formed in 1800, after the discovery

of a planned rebellion. It was assigned to protect public buildings from

insurrections, and was made responsible for punishing any slaves it found out

after curfew.[272]

The urban patrols, and the laws they enforced, were modeled on the system

developed for the plantations. But cities with developing industries had

different needs than did the surrounding rural areas, with their plantation

economies. For one thing, the large numbers of Black people present in the city

often lived in one part of town, away from their masters, making it impossible

to maintain the sort of intimate knowledge of the slave’s comings and goings

essential to the plantation system. Furthermore, rigid restrictions on daily

travel were not even desirable, proving inconvenient for the budding

industries. As manufacturers sought cheap sources of labor, the practice of

“hiring out” slaves became increasingly common. Under this arrangement, slaves

paid the master a stipulated fee, and were then free to take other jobs at

wages. The regulations on travel, then, had to be more flexible for slaves to

do their work.[273]

As the masters “capitalize[d] their slaves,”[274] the bondsmen became,

literally, wage slaves.[275] Given the White population’s preoccupation with

controlling Black people, the practice of hiring out slaves was quite

controversial. As late as 1858 it was denounced in a grand jury “Report of

Colored Population.” Spelling out the concerns of the White community, the

report states:

The evil lies in the breaking down of the relation between master and slave—the

removal of the slave from the master’s discipline and control and the

assumption of freedom and independence on the part of the slave, the idleness,

disorder and crime which are consequential, and the necessity thereby created

for additional police regulations to keep them in subjection and order, and the

trouble and expense they involve.[276]

Industrialization in Southern cities thus not only created new demands for

social control, but threatened to alter the entire institution of slavery.

In short, economic changes related to industrialization and urban life relaxed

the master’s personal control over the slave but did not reduce the racist

obsession with slave control. Additional responsibilities thus fell to the

state.

Between 1712 and 1822 South Carolina banned the practice of hiring out slaves,

but these laws went almost entirely unenforced, and other means of control

emerged.[277] Beginning in 1804, Charleston established a nightly curfew for

the Black population—free and slave alike.[278] A few years later a statewide

nine o’clock curfew was established. Free Black people were required to carry a

pass from their employers, and patrols beat those who didn’t have their “free

papers.”[279] A stricter law was passed in Pendleton in 1835, instructing the

patrol to “apprehend and correct all slaves and free persons of color” on the

streets after nine at night, “whether such slave or free person of color have a

pass or not.”[280]

In Charleston the law requiring passes gradually gave way to a system of badges

for slaves being hired out. This procedure allowed the state the opportunity to

regulate the practice, and entitled it to a share of the master’s fee (that is,

really, of the slave’s wages).[281] Slowly, Charleston began to prefigure the

segregated South of the twentieth century: in 1848, the city limited the right

of Black people to use the public parks; in 1850, Black people were banned from

bars.[282]

Meanwhile, throughout South Carolina, town after town asked the state

legislature to transfer control of the slave patrols from the county courts or

state militia to the local government. Camden won that power in 1818. Columbia

followed in 1823.[283] Georgetown requested it in 1810, but was not allowed it

until 1829.[284] Ten years later, the legislature granted all incorporated

South Carolina towns the power to regulate patrol duty.[285]

Patrols in Perspective

The patrols’ work was not always popular. Soon after his appointment as the

head of the Georgetown Guards, Peter Cutting found his house burned to the

ground.[286] Around the same time “A Citizen” wrote in to the Charleston paper:

“I think it is dangerous for a person to send out his slave <em>even with a

pass</em>.…”[287] But the most common complaint was that the guards did not do

their jobs. Grand juries frequently cited them for “shameful neglect of patrol

duty,” a term covering absenteeism, drinking on the job, and patrolling in a

slipshod fashion.[288]

Whatever the faults of these patrols, the White citizens of the American South

relied on them to alleviate their anxieties about slave rebellions. These

anxieties changed with the growth of the urban population, and the patrols

changed with them, eventually approaching the model of a modern police force.

Still, though they provided a transition between the militia and the police,

and despite their resemblance to other functionaries responsible for slave

control, the patrols represented a distinct mode of policing. While originally

bound up with the militia system, the patrols served in a specialized capacity

distinguishing them from the rest of the militia. Furthermore, the authority

over the patrols came more and more to shift from the militia to the courts,

and then to the city government, implying that patrolling was regarded as a

civil rather than military activity.[289]

The patrols also, in certain respects, resembled the watch. The watch, even in

Northern cities, was issued specific instructions concerning the policing of

the Black population. Boston, for example, instituted a curfew for Black people

and Native Americans, beginning in 1703;[290] in 1736 the watch was

specifically ordered to “take up all Negro and Molatto [**sic**] servants,

that shall be unseasonably Absent from their Masters [**sic**] Families,

without giving sufficient reason therefore.”[291] But while the watch was told

to keep an eye on Black people along with numerous other potential sources for

trouble, the slave patrols (and later, the City Guards) were more specialized,

focusing almost exclusively on the Black population. In fact, it is this racist

specialization that—more than anything else—distinguished the slave patrols

from other police types and accelerated their rate of development. Hadden

writes:

The reliance upon race as a defining feature of this new colonial creation

reveals the singular difference that set slave patrols apart from their

European antecedents. Although slave patrols also supervised the activities of

free African Americans and suspicious whites who associated with slaves, the

main focus of their attention fell upon slaves. Bondsmen could easily be

distinguished by their race and thus became easy and immediate targets of

racial brutality. As a result, the new American innovation in law enforcement

during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the creation of

racially focused law enforcement groups in the American south.[292]

With this specialization came expanded powers—to search the homes of Black

people, to mete out summary punishment, and to confiscate a broad range of

valuables without need to demonstrate further suspicion. Moreover, their

relationship to the militia meant that patrols generally carried firearms,

whereas the watch did not.[293]

While the slave patrols did anticipate the creation of modern police, it must

still be remembered that they were not themselves modern police. Of the two

sets of criteria listed earlier, the slave patrols satisfy those of a police

endeavor: they were public, authorized (indeed, instructed) to use force, and

had general enforcement powers (if only over certain segments of the

population). They do not, however, seem very modern, by the second set of

criteria. They were certainly not the main law enforcement body, and they

usually only operated at night. Arrangements for pay and continuity of service

varied by location, but they were generally no more advanced than was typical

of the watch. The patrols did have citywide (and sometimes broader)

jurisdiction, and they were accountable to either the militias or the courts

(or later, to special committees).[294] And perhaps more than any police force

before them, the patrols had a preventive orientation. Rather than respond to

slave revolts (as the militia had done), or take off after runaways (like the

professional slave catchers), the patrol aimed to prevent rebellions and

sometimes endeavored to keep the slaves from even leaving the plantation.

The slave patrol, which began as an offshoot of the militia, and came to

resemble modern police, thus provides a transitional model in the development

of policing. As the militia adapted to the needs of a rural, agrarian, slave

society, it evolved into a new form that surpassed the original. The slave

patrols, when confronted with the conditions of a proto-industrialized city

(where slavery itself was facing obsolescence) underwent a similar

metamorphosis.

Charleston: “Keeping Down the Niggers”[295]

In 1671, South Carolina’s Grand Council created a watch for Charles Town,

consisting of the regular constables and a rotation of six citizens. They

guarded the city against fire, Indians, slave gatherings, and other signs of

trouble, and detained lawbreakers until the next day.[296] The law creating the

watch was renewed in 1698, with an addendum citing the increase in the Black

population:

And whereas, negroes frequently absent themselves from their masters or owners

[**sic**] houses, caballing, pilfering, stealing, and playing the rogue,

at unseasonable hours of the night **Bee it therefore enacted**, That any

Constable or his deputy, meeting with any negro or negros, belonging to Charles

Town, at such unseasonable times as aforesaid, and cannot give good and

satisfactory account of his business, the said constable or his deputy, is

required to keep the said negro or negros in safe custody till next

morning.[297]

For this work, the constable was to receive a fee from the owner of the

detained slaves. In 1701, the exact language of this law was repeated, though

the fee was increased and the constable was further instructed to administer a

severe beating.[298]

In 1703, as a wartime measure, the governor established a paid watch, and added

special duties related to sailors and bars. This experiment was short-lived,

however, and seventeen months after its creation it was replaced with a

volunteer patrol organized by the militia.[299] This organization was

essentially the slave patrol. In 1721, it again merged with the militia. Its

function was broadened, giving patrollers authority over a large part of the

working class besides the slaves. The new law instructed patrollers to use their utmost endeavor to prevent all caballings amongst negroes, by

dispersing of them when drumming or playing, and to search all negro houses for

arms or other offensive weapons; and farther, are hereby empowered to examine

all White servants they shall meet with, out of their master’s business, and

the same (if they suspect to be runaway, or upon any ill design) to carry such

servant immediately to be whipped, or punished as he shall think fit, and then

send him home to his master; and also, if they meet with any idle, loose or

vagrant fellow that cannot give good account of his business, shall also be

hereby empowered to carry such vagrant fellow to a magistrate.[300]

By 1734, this body was again removed from the militia, and was explicitly

referred to as a slave police. By this time the patrollers were all armed and

mounted, and were ordered to search the homes of all Black people, pursue and

capture escaped slaves, and kill any slave who used a weapon against them.

Until the end of the colonial period, the Parish of Saint Philip (which

includes Charleston) had two separate patrols—the two largest in the

state.[301]

By 1785, these patrols were incorporated into the Charleston Guard and Watch.

This body was responsible for arresting vagrants and other suspicious persons,

preventing felonies and disturbances, and warning of fires.[302] But one guard

described his job succinctly as “keeping down the niggers.”[303] Indeed, slave

control was the aspect of their work most emphasized by the public officials,

and given highest priority by the guard itself. As Selden Bacon put it: “With

very minor differences, their orders here were a summation of those given the

rural patrols in the preceding hundred years, with the major and natural

exception that they did not inspect plantations.”[304]

The organization of the Charleston Guard and Watch represented a significant

advance in the development of policing.[305] The force contained a developed

hierarchy and chain of command, consisting of a captain, a lieutenant, three

corporals, fifty-eight privates, and a drummer. Each was given a gun, bayonet,

rattle (for use as a signal), and uniform coat. Some acted as a standing guard;

the rest were divided into two patrols—one for St. Philip’s Parish, and the

other for St. Michael’s. The captain issued daily reports, and all the men

were paid.[306] The same group patrolled every night, and discipline and morale

received a level of attention unique at the time.[307]

By our earlier criteria, there can be no question that the Charleston Guard and

Watch were involved in policing. They were authorized to use force, had general

enforcement responsibilities, and were publicly controlled. They were also

exceptionally modern. The guard was the principal law enforcement agency in

Charleston, enjoyed a jurisdiction covering the entire city (and some of the

surrounding countryside), served a specialized police function, and had a

preventive orientation. It also established organizational continuity and paid

its personnel by salary. In fact, lacking only twenty-four-hour service, the

Charleston Guard and Watch may count as the first modern police department,

predating the London Metropolitan Police by more than thirty years.

Charleston, being subject to the pressures of maintaining a slave system in an

urban area with an industrializing economy, underwent an intense period of

innovation, just around the time of the American Revolution. Its efforts to

control the Black population put it in the lead in the development of modern

policing. But once policing mechanisms were in place, the authorities felt

little need to tamper with them. When change again appeared on the

agenda—following the discovery of a plan for insurrection in 1822—the

authorities instituted reforms that had been developed previously in other

cities.[308] During the intervening years, Charleston’s advances were surpassed

by those of another Southern city, facing similar but distinct social

pressures.

New Orleans: “Barbarism,” “Despotism,” and “A System of Violence”

Occupying a strategic position for both economic and military uses, the city of

New Orleans has changed hands numerous times. But, until the Civil War, each

subsequent regime agreed on one basic principle: the utter suppression of the

Black race. In succession, the French, Spanish, and American governments

enacted very nearly the same set of laws for this purpose, controlling the

social, economic, and political life of the Black community and regulating the

work, travel, education, and living arrangements of Black people in the city.

Louis XIV instituted a “Code Noir” in 1685, which Sieur de Bienville, the

founder of the French colony of Louisiana, copied; the Spanish retained it as

their own while they controlled the city; and the Americans re-enacted it as

the “Black Code.”[309]

In 1804, as the Black population nearly equaled that of the White,[310] New

Orleans sought out special mechanisms for enforcing these laws. At the time,

two separate night patrols were in effect—a militia guard to protect against

outside attack, and a watch, called the “seranos,” whose primary duty was

lighting the street lamps. But in 1804 the militia organized a mounted patrol

specifically to enforce the Black Codes.[311] This unit only survived a few

months, however. After repeated conflicts between the English-speaking militia

guard and the French-speaking army, the patrol was disbanded in 1805, replaced

with the Gendarmerie.

The Gendarmerie, while nominally a military unit, functioned more as a slave

patrol than anything else. The law establishing it made this purpose clear:

They will make rounds in suspected places where slaves can congregate,

particularly on Sundays. They will break up these assemblies, foresee and

prevent uproars and gambling, and declare confiscated all moneys found for

their own profit.… The officers accompanied by all or part of their troop, and

equipped with orders from the mayor, shall search negro huts on plantations,

but only after looking for and then notifying the overseer or owner of their

actions, as well as inviting them to be present at the search. And all

fire-arms, lances, swords, etc. that shall be found in the said cabins will be

confiscated and deposited in the City arsenal.[312]

The Gendarmerie also arrested slaves traveling without passes and maintained a

reserve of officers for daytime emergencies.[313]

While drawn from the military, this group was directed by the mayor,

magistrates, and other civil officials, and was paid through a combination of

salaries, fees, and rewards. Half mounted, half on foot, and all wearing blue

uniforms, the same men patrolled every night.[314] In many respects, then, the

New Orleans patrol closely resembled the Charleston Guard of the same period,

but it survived only briefly. In February 1806 the city council abolished the

Gendarmerie, citing the cost of horses and the poor quality of the men.[315]

That same year, the council created a City Guard, modeled after and performing

the same functions as the Gendarmerie, though less militaristic in demeanor and

lacking the horses.[316] Aside from two years when there was no patrol, this

body survived until 1836.[317]

In the 1830s the City Guard came under attack in the newspapers, courtrooms,

and among politicians. In 1834, the **Louisiana Advertiser** accused them

of “barbarism” and “despotism.” It urged the city council to dispense with the sword and pistol, the musket and bayonet, in our civil

administration of **republican** laws, and adopt or create a system more

congenial to our feelings, to the opinions and **interests** of a free and

prosperous people, and more in accordance with the spirit of the age we live

in.[318]

That same year a committee of the city council decried the Guard’s violent

treatment of suspects, saying that “the moment they lay hands on a prisoner

they at once commence a system of violence towards him.”[319] It was the

violence of the authorities, the committee argued, that caused the forceful

resistance of both prisoners and passers-by acting from “just

indignation.”[320]

In 1830, the death of the first person killed by a New Orleans cop prompted

much of this criticism,[321] but an underlying xenophobia was at work, and the

native-born population openly expressed distaste for the immigrant-dominated

Guard. Another important demographic shift may help explain this backlash:

during the 1830s and 1840s the White population increased by 180 percent, while

the Black population increased at a much slower rate (41 percent).[322] Hence,

with White people in the overwhelming majority, fears of a slave revolt were

less present, while ethnic tensions among White groups were increasingly

pronounced.[323] In short, both the initial militarization, and eventual

de-militarization of New Orleans’ police were the product of the ethnic fears

of the city’s ruling class.

In 1836, the city council did away with the military model of policing. In its

place they put a system of twenty-four-hour patrolling along distinct beats.

The blue uniforms were replaced with numbered leather caps like those worn by

watchmen in other cities. A Committee of Vigilance was elected to supervise

them. This revision brought New Orleans into line with the watch system as it

existed in Northern cities, and represented a substantial break from the

Charleston model.[324] Still, the new organization retained the most modern

features of the City Guard, and added to them twenty-four-hour service. Hence,

in 1836, the New Orleans city government approved the adoption of a public

body, accountable to a central authority, authorized to use force, and assigned

general law enforcement duties. This body would be the main agency of law

enforcement, with citywide jurisdiction, organizational continuity, a

specialized policing function, and twenty-four-hour operations. And, as its

inheritance from the slave patrol, it would be oriented toward the prevention

of various disorders. In short, it would have all the major features of a

modern police department.[325] As luck would have it, however, this

organization never materialized.

As the city government was busy redesigning the police services, the state

government was redesigning the entire municipal administration. In March 1836,

the Louisiana state legislature divided New Orleans along the borders of its

ethnic neighborhoods, creating three distinct municipalities and preventing the

just-settled police reforms from taking effect. Motivated by ethnic and

economic rivalries, the plan maintained a common mayor and Grand Council, but

divided the administration of services—including the police. The city stayed so

divided until 1852.[326]

Each department adopted a new, non-military approach, and retained some

features of the old City Guard—namely, its public character, its authority to

use force, its general law-enforcement duties, twenty-four-hour patrols, the

goal of organizational continuity, its specialized police function, and its

preventive orientation. However, none of the three could be counted as the

chief law enforcement agency in the city because none had citywide

jurisdiction. Furthermore, while in theory each police force was accountable to

the General Council, in practice they were solely controlled by the district

government and little effort was made to coordinate among them.[327]

The General Council met only once each year, leaving the practical management

of the city’s affairs to municipal councils.[328] This arrangement actually

exacerbated the ethnic tensions that led to the city’s division in the first

place, and neighborhood rivalries now found official expression in the

structure of government.[329] In effect, the two sets of changes—fragmentation

of the city government and re-structuring of the police—laid the groundwork for

the development of neighborhood-based and ethnocentric political machines, with

the police taking a central role.[330] Even after formal consolidation in 1852,

the police functioned as separate, district-based organizations, controlled

more by local political bosses than the general city government.[331]

The machines’ influence was palpable. For example, when the American Party (the

“Know-Nothings”) gained control of the city in March 1855, they immediately

removed all immigrants from the police force, reducing it from 450 to 265

members. After that, the police stood aside while Know-Nothings prevented

immigrants from voting, and sometimes aided in the effort. Opposition parties

likewise fought for control of the polls. In the election of June 1858, a

Vigilance Committee seized the state arsenal and police headquarters, with the

stated purpose of ensuring a fair election.[332] Similar actions were taken in

1888 by the Young Men’s Democratic Club, who—armed with rifles—surrounded the

polls to prevent Know-Nothings and police from interfering with Democratic

party voters.[333]

Corruption didn’t end at the polls. Less politically driven misconduct was also

common. Naturally, vice laws created opportunities for corruption at all

levels, and throughout the nineteenth century scandals were common. In 1854, a

new chief, William James, began a vigorous campaign to enforce the laws against

gambling, liquor, and other vice crimes. As his reward, the Board of Police

fired him and eliminated his office.[334]

Meanwhile, though state law forbade carrying concealed weapons and made no

exception for police, many cops did begin carrying guns, especially revolvers,

illicitly. This practice was condoned and sometimes advocated by supervisors,

and eventually gained the mayor’s approval as well. Predictably, a lack of

training led to numerous accidents, often with police casualties.[335]

Brutality and violence were also common, and during the 1850s several New

Orleans cops were tried for murder. Most of these cases involved personal

disputes, and the victims were frequently cops themselves.[336] “Less severe

episodes of violence were legion,” Dennis Rousey notes:

In a sample of cases covering a twenty-one-month period during 1854–1856, the

Board of Police adjudicated forty-three cases of assault, assault and battery,

or brutality by policemen, dismissing thirteen of the accused from the force

and penalizing nine others with fines or loss of rank.[337]

Of course it is still worth noting that, of the 672 cases adjudicated by the

Board of Police during this same period, the majority of them—59.2

percent—dealt with the dereliction of duty. Abuses of authority came at a

distant second, comprising 17.4 percent of the cases.[338]

Ironically, both sorts of complaints may have resulted from the same features

of the job. Lack of discipline was certainly a factor of each. But the

complaints may also reflect public disagreement about what it was the police

were supposed to be doing. Respectable middle-class Protestants and temperance

crusaders were eager to have the cops enforce laws regulating gambling,

prostitution, drinking, and other vice and public order offenses. The

lower-class and immigrant communities were on the whole more tolerant of

disorder and thus apt to feel that the police were intruding where they weren’t

wanted or needed. The poor complained that they were treated unfairly or with

unnecessary force; the respectable classes felt that the police weren’t doing

their jobs so long as such vice persisted. This dispute directly reflects the

struggle for control over the municipal government, and in a different sense,

the debate about the nature of democracy—neither of which was resolved in the

nineteenth century.

New Orleans, in a sense, made the transition from Southern plantation politics

to Northern machine politics, with the police occupying a central role in the

process. Indeed, this transition was in many respects aided by the simultaneous

shift from a distinctly Southern model of policing (based on the slave patrol)

to a Northern style (resembling the watch).[339] This shift was significant,

but not absolute; as a result, New Orleans foreshadowed many of the qualities

of the modern police—qualities that finally crystallized in New York.

New York: “Almost Every Conceivable Crime”

In New York, as in New Orleans, the move toward modern policing was closely

tied to the reconstitution of city government. In 1830 the state legislature

divided the city’s common council into a board of aldermen and a board of

assistant aldermen, each elected annually by ward. Distinct executive

departments were formed, and the mayor was assigned the responsibility to see

that the laws were enforced. A year later, the council gave him some of the

authority he needed to meet that demand, putting him at the head of the

watch.[340]

In the spring of 1843, Mayor Richard H. Morris proposed another round of

reforms designed to reorganize the city government and consolidate the police.

The state legislature authorized the city to create and manage a single,

centralized police department—specifically a “Day and Night Police” consisting

of 800 officers. Under this plan, each ward would have its own patrol, and the

officers had to live in the wards where they worked. The councilors would

nominate officers from their ward, and the mayor would appoint them. This plan

was finally accepted in May 1845.[341]

The new police ranked as extremely modern by the criteria listed earlier: a

single organization was entrusted with the exclusive responsibility for law

enforcement, served a specialized police function, patrolled twenty-four hours

a day, and employed salaried personnel.[342] In fact, New York City is often

credited with having the first modern department in the United States. As we’ve

seen, its claim to this title is debatable. The Day and Night Police marked a

step forward in a nationwide progression, drawing from and solidifying ideas

already in circulation elsewhere. But if New York’s police did not invent the

model, they set the standard for the rest of the country. At the same time,

they also set a new standard for political interference.

The mayor’s power to appoint officers of all ranks made it clear that the new

police force would be politically driven. An officer’s job came as a reward for

his political loyalty, and to keep the job he needed to support the officials

who appointed him.[343] Even if the politicians themselves did not demand such

support, it was nevertheless built into the system. Since any incoming

councilman would be likely to replace the present police with those of his own

choosing, the cops understood that to keep their jobs they had to keep their

patrons in power. Thus the police came to represent not only a means of

securing political support through patronage, but also of ensuring influence

through more direct means. In 1894, the Lexow Commission concluded that in a very large number of the election districts in the city of New York,

almost every conceivable crime against the elective franchise was either

committed or permitted by the police, invariably in the interest of the

dominant Democratic organization of the city of New York, commonly called

Tammany Hall.

The Committee’s report goes on to document police involvement in the Arrest and brutal treatment of Republican voters, watchers, and workers; open

violations of the election laws; canvassing for Tammany Hall candidates;

invasion of election booths; forcing of Tammany Hall pasters upon Republican

voters; general intimidation of the voters by the police directly and by

Tammany Hall election district captains in the presence and with the

concurrence of the police; colonization of voters; illegal registration and

repeating, aided and knowingly permitted by the police; denial of Republican

voters and election district officers of their legal rights and privileges …

and on and on.[344]

Political corruption was not new to the city, and law enforcement had always

had a role in it. But the political use of the Day and Night Police extended

the established pattern and reached a new level of malfeasance. The watch had

previously been used as a source of patronage, as political parties filled its

ranks with their supporters.[345] But the watch offered only a hint of the

political uses to which the police could be put; a more developed example was

provided by the marshals. Marshals, who operated more or less like constables,

were created in the early nineteenth century to enforce laws that had

previously been left to the attention of civilian informants.[346] While the

watch was a resource for rewarding supporters with jobs, the marshals were

becoming an active force in local politics—a force that Tammany Hall would

harness and direct for its own ends. Placed under the mayor’s command, the

marshals provided one means of controlling the city council. As James

Richardson writes:

There were only one hundred marshals, but this force could exert great

influence upon the primary meetings at which candidates for the general

election were chosen. The marshals often had enough political influence in the

wards to block the nomination of a candidate for alderman or assistant

alderman, and sometimes they had sufficient power to ensure the nomination of

their favorites.[347]

The new Day and Night Police replaced the watch and the marshals, concentrating

police power (and its political potential) in a single agency.[348]

Predictably, the police expanded their political role in new directions,

becoming a tool for ambitious politicians to increase their influence. The

career of Fernando Wood gives some idea of the uses to which police could be

put.

Wood, a Democrat, ran for mayor on a reform platform and was elected in 1854.

He began his term by launching an ambitious campaign against vice crimes, but

quickly turned the effort to his own advantage. Saloons, gambling houses, and

brothels were shut down—unless their owners supported the mayor’s political

machine.[349] While declaring, “I know no party and recognize no political

obligation,”[350] Wood disciplined police along strictly partisan lines and was

willing to impose all sorts of political obligations on the officers under his

command. Police were required to make financial contributions to the mayor’s

re-election campaign, and many were ordered to canvass for him as well.[351]

Those on duty ignored irregularities in polling, and two officers—Petty and

Hanley—inspected all the ballots in the first ward, beating anyone who voted

against the mayor. When Wood was reelected, the **Tribune** estimated the

police had been worth 10,000 votes.[352]

But while the Democrats retained the mayoralty and controlled both boards of

the council, the Republicans held the governor’s mansion and the state

assembly, sharing the senate with the Know-Nothings. In 1857 the state

legislature passed the Metropolitan Police Bill, creating a new police force

with jurisdiction over Kings, Westchester, Richmond, and New York counties, and

dissolving the existing municipal police. A five-member board was established

to oversee the new department, and no Democrats were appointed to it.[353]

<em>Harper’s Weekly</em> noted: “Of this change the practical effect will be to

transfer the patronage of our city police to Albany.”[354]

Wood refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Metropolitan Police Law and

ordered the police to obey only his authority. Eight hundred officers and

fifteen captains sided with Wood, and about half as many joined the

Metropolitans. For two months the city had two competing police forces,

resulting in occasional street fights and brawls in the station houses. The

conflict reached its peak when fifty Metropolitans tried to arrest Wood; 500

municipal police came to his defense, attacking the Metropolitans with their

clubs and forcing a retreat. Finally, in July, after an appeals court ruled in

favor of the Metropolitans, Wood dissolved the municipal police.[355]

The Metropolitan Police Department lasted until 1870, when another series of

power struggles led to its reorganization. In the 1869 election the Democrats

won control of the mayor’s office, the governorship, and the majority of the

legislature. William M. Tweed proposed a new city charter and invested $600,000

in its passage. Under the new charter, the mayor appointed the police board,

and the police controlled the board of elections, they selected all inspectors

and clerks, guarded the polls, and supervised the counting of the ballots.[356]

In this, too, New York set the standard for the rest of the country. Political

machines arose throughout the East, and in a more subdued fashion, in the West

as well. In every case, the police department served as the strong arm of the

machine—regardless of which party held power, or whether the department

answered to the city or state government.

The police, as we know them, came into maturity at about the same time as the

urban political machine. And while the machine’s growth depended crucially on

the police, their relationship was not that of equals. The cops were the tools

of the machine. As tools they were used, as tools they were refined, and as

very important tools they were fought over. Neither the political machines nor

any part of them invented the police for this purpose, but they were well

adapted to it, and—without submitting to teleological reasoning—we should

consider the implications of this fact for policing, and for political

authority.

3: The Genesis of a Policed Society

In the context of nineteenth-century municipal government, New York’s Tammany

Hall was exceptional only in the level of its success. Similar machines

emerged in nearly every American city. Powerful neighborhood bosses arose and

affiliated, gaining control through a system of patronage and protection,

keeping it through increased application of the same means, and administering

civil affairs along lines that were not merely partisan, but personalistic as

well. Favoritism became the central principle of local government.[357]

Under the machines, the resources of the government were the spoils of victory,

belonging less to the public than to the reigning faction. Thus, quite removed

from the ideal of deliberative democracy, elections were neither contests of

principle nor gauges of the public will, but battles between rival

cliques—battles fought as often in the streets as at the polls. And these

battles determined the distribution of jobs, services, and graft. Elections

decided who made the law, who supplied public services, and who controlled the

city treasury. And more importantly, they decided whose friends would fill

public jobs, which neighborhoods would receive attention or suffer neglect,

which illicit businesses would continue operation, and whose palm would be

greased in the process.

Political Machines: The Gang and the Government

The gang and the government are no different.

—Jane’s Addiction[358]

Corruption was the foundation and the defining characteristic of the political

machine. Edward C. Banfield and James Q. Wilson offer a formal definition: “A

political ‘machine’ is a party organization that depends crucially upon

inducements that are both specific and material.”[359] Put more simply, “Machine

government is, essentially, a system of organized bribery.”[360] But perhaps even

that puts too pleasant a face on it, for machines did not use only bribery to

get what they wanted; they used whatever means were available to them,

including threats, fraud, blackmail, and actual violence. Machines were

concerned about power and resources, not principles—and certainly not

democracy.[361] Principles were espoused, of course, as justification for their

actions, to differentiate one party from another, and to gain and maintain the

allegiance of a constituency committed to such values. But it was typical of

machine politics that principles were always secondary to the demands of power.

The privileging of power over principle meant that every aspect of the

government’s activity was directed toward maintaining the ruling clique’s

control. By the same token, every resource at the city’s disposal was available

as a reward for the machine’s supporters. The police served in both capacities.

Hiring, discipline, transfers, and promotions were all governed by the

convenience of the machine organization. Hence, whenever control of the city

government changed hands, turnover in the police department was sure to follow.

Without regard for the qualifications of the individual officer, each party

dispensed with the supporters of the other and replaced them with their own.

Very nearly full turnover of police personnel followed the Los Angeles election

of 1889, the Kansas City election of 1895, and the Chicago and Baltimore

elections of 1897.[362]

In the 1907 Louisville election, when a Republican was unexpectedly elected

mayor, every captain was reduced to a patrolman, and Republicans (many lacking

in police experience) were appointed in their place. When the Democrats won in

the following election, the process was reversed. Again in 1917, the

Republicans gained control and fired 300 from a department of 429. Everyone

above the rank of sergeant was replaced.[363]

In New York, positions were so sought after that appointments relied on

political sponsorship or outright bribery, or sometimes both. Hence, from the

first moment, the importance of political influence and bribes was made clear

to new recruits.[364] A patrolman’s position typically sold for $300 and required

the approval of the district leader.[365] Higher positions cost more. In 1893,

Timothy Creeden paid a commissioner $15,000 to be promoted from sergeant to

captain. As a captain’s salary was only $3,000 each year, it is obvious that he

would need to rely on graft just to pay for his job.[366]

Even when civil service tests were instituted in the 1880s, conditions remained

largely the same. Politicians circumvented civil service requirements by

appointing partisan boards, administering the exams in essay style, or

requiring the civil service commission to provide three qualified candidates

for every open position and allowing police officials to choose among them.[367]

Experiments with state-level police boards proved equally unhelpful. The

creation of state boards, a partisan maneuver by design, only transferred the

control of patronage from one group to another—as indeed it was intended to do.

Likewise, bipartisan boards, rather than eliminating political spoils, merely

divided them between the two strongest parties, to mutual advantage.[368]

Nor did political interference end once an officer was hired. Police with

powerful friends proved nearly impossible to discipline, no matter how corrupt,

brutal, or negligent they might be. Even such routine matters as going on

patrol and wearing uniforms were difficult to enforce.[369]

Since each officer’s career was politically controlled from beginning to end,

the police became ardent supporters of their patrons. Police support was

central to the survival of the machines: for much of the nineteenth century New

York’s Board of Elections was under the supervision of the police board. The

commissioners chose the polling places, drew up the voting districts, had the

ballots and voter registration lists printed, and appointed the polling

inspectors and clerks. The police department itself verified the registration

lists, guarded the polls, and counted the votes. Mayor William R. Grace

described this system as “a standing menace to the safety and purity of the

ballot box, and tend[ing] to render the police of the city its masters rather

than its servants.” Tammany police commissioner John Sheehan once bluntly

stated that control of the police was more important than how the votes were

cast.[370]

This power tended to magnify the significance of the administrative branch, and

especially bolstered the influence of the mayor.[371] The career of Boston’s

Josiah Quincy anticipated the trend. Beginning in 1823, Quincy was elected

mayor six times. In 1829, he was dubbed “The Great Mayor,” a title which

probably reflected the extent of his power more than the quality of his

performance. During his term, Quincy chaired every important committee,

allowing him to build an efficient administration and, as importantly,

consolidate power under his personal leadership. At the same time, Quincy

maintained his influence in the wards with the assistance of the nascent police

apparatus. Central to this effort was the creation of a new office—marshal of

the city—which, lacking precedent and statutory limits, could be made to fit

whatever demands the mayor placed on it. The marshal served as head constable,

commanded the night watch, acted as the city’s chief health officer, prosecuted

minor cases—and took on additional responsibilities after the creation of a day

police in 1838.[372]

The marshal’s power reached its peak during the term of Francis Tukey, who took

office in 1846. Within the first year of Tukey’s command the number of officers

on the force was doubled, a detective division added, and a special night force

created.[373] But there were limits to how far this power would be allowed to

develop. In 1851, the police voted as a bloc for Benjamin Seaver in the mayoral

election, acting under the assumption that he would bar Irish immigrants from

joining the force. Seaver won, but did not ban Irish police. Apparently the

night police had crossed a line when they marched to the polls <em>en

masse</em>. Seaver responded by firing all the night duty officers, dissolving

that branch of the force, and leaving its patrols entirely in the hands of the

barely existent night watch. Over the course of the next year, power was

systematically moved away from the marshal and toward the mayor and the

aldermen. In April 1852, the aldermen limited the marshal’s tenure to one year.

Two months later, they replaced the position with that of chief of police.

While Tukey was not fired outright, neither was he named the new chief. The

<em>Boston Semi-Weekly Atlas</em> drew a comparison: “The Great Caesar fell for

his ambition.”[374] The lesson was clear: the police were a tool for the

political machine; they would not be allowed to develop as a political force in

their own right.

This balance could be difficult to maintain, though, since police were so

central to the functioning of the machines. The police served the interests of

political machines in three key ways: police jobs served as rewards for

supporters; police controlled the elections; and police regulated illicit

businesses, deciding which would be allowed to operate and under what

conditions.[375] As historian Robert Fogelson tells it,

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the police did not suppress vice; they

licensed it. From New York’s Tenderloin to San Francisco’s Barbary Coast and

from Chicago’s Levee to New Orleans’ French Quarter, they permitted gamblers,

prostitutes, and saloon keepers to do business under certain well-understood

conditions. These entrepreneurs were required to make regular payoffs, which

ranged, according to the enterprise and the community from a few dollars to a

few hundred dollars per month, and to stay inside the lower- and

lower-middle-class neighborhoods.…[376]

In this way vice laws, and liquor laws especially, proved a useful tool for

political machines to enhance their power. Protection money provided a source

of funding, and selective enforcement allowed political bosses to discipline

their supporters and put their competitors out of business.[377]

In New York, precinct captains used detectives to collect protection money.[378]

In other places, the landlord would collect it as a part of the rent, then pass

it on to the police. He would say to the proprietor of the saloon or brothel:

“You can have this house for two hundred dollars, with police protection, or

one hundred dollars if you take care of yourself.”[379]

Police detectives, like the thieftakers before them, were more interested in

retrieving stolen property and collecting rewards than in catching crooks. Of

course, the easiest way to get hold of stolen goods was to work with the

thieves. In exchange for immunity and a portion of the reward, thieves would

supply detectives with their loot. The detectives would return the stolen items

to the rightful owners—minus whatever sum they claimed as a reward. Many

professional criminals would not work outside of such a framework, and these

deals could be quite profitable for the cops. Between January 1, 1855, and

April 30, 1857, Robert Bowyer of the New York Police Department earned $4,700

in rewards—more than twice his salary for the same period.[380]

Sometimes, no effort would be made to retrieve the stolen property, or to

return it to the victim. Pickpockets and con artists were generally allowed to

go about their business unmolested so long as they cut the cops in on the

action. The profits then worked their way up the political food chain. The

Patrolmen were required to give a portion of their take to their commanders,

the local politicians, and their affiliates, thus avoiding any punishment.[381]

Shakedowns weren’t restricted to illicit enterprises, either. Legitimate

businesses could also be inconvenienced by strict enforcement of the law and

were vulnerable to the disruption caused by routine harassment. Builders,

bootblacks, produce merchants, and other peddlers had to pay off the beat cop,

or else they might be taken in for blocking the sidewalks.[382]

The system of bribery and extortion that was nineteenth-century policing far

surpassed anything that could be termed individual misconduct, or even

organizational deviance; it resembled nothing so much as institutionalized

corruption, state-sponsored crime. Graft and the abuse of power were not merely

allowed, they were expected, required, and enforced—within the police

department and throughout the city administration. The political machine may

best be understood as an exercise in government of, by, and for corruption.

This fusion of government and criminality follows a certain kind of logic. In

“War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” Charles Tilly argues:

Banditry, piracy, gangland rivalry, policing, and war making all belong on the

same continuum.… [C]onsider the definition of a racketeer as someone who

creates a threat and then charges for its reduction. Governments’ provision of

protection, by this standard, often qualifies as racketeering. To the extent

that the threats against which a given government protects its citizens are

imaginary or are the consequences of its own activities, the government has

organized a protection racket.[383]

The history of American cities gives concrete expression to Tilly’s theoretical

claim. In the classic political machines, government agencies and organized

criminal enterprises were not only moral equivalents, they often comprised

<em>the same people</em>. Nineteenth-century policing did not just resemble

racketeering, it was unmistakable gangsterism.

The police were a central component of this system. Both the protection schemes

that ensured the cooperation of the underworld and the brawling gangs that

controlled the polls on election day relied on—at the very least—the

acquiescence of the police. In many respects the development of the political

machines depended upon the simultaneous development of the modern police. At

the same time, the modernization of policing made possible important advances

in municipal government. In particular, the police provided the means by which

the power of local government could be consolidated into a single coherent

system. In this respect, the rise of political machines resembled the earlier

rise of the state itself. A brief comparison of these processes may tell us

something about the engineering of power and the uses of policing in

establishing its claims.

Machine Politics, State Power, and Monopolies of Violence

In general terms, we can discern a common principle underlying the creation of

local political machines and that of national states. As Tilly explains: “A

tendency to monopolize the means of violence makes a government’s claim to

provide protection, in either the comforting or ominous sense of the word, more

credible and more difficult to resist.”[384] He identifies four activities

characteristic of states:

(1) making war (defeating external rivals);

(2) making states (destroying internal rivals);

(3) protection (defending clients from their enemies); and,

(4) extraction (acquiring the resources to do the other three).[385]

Cities have not, since the colonial period, usually been forced to contend with

external rivals, and thus have not been concerned with making war. But the

other three tasks find clear analogies in the processes of municipal

government, especially during the machine period. And at both the national and

the municipal levels “all [these activities] depend on the state’s tendency to

monopolize the concentrated means of coercion.”[386]

Philadelphia’s history illustrates some more specific parallels. In the first

half of the nineteenth century, urban growth had spread beyond the city’s

jurisdiction, practically uniting it with nearby townships over which it had no

authority. The urban area was divided between several municipalities, and these

were themselves divided geographically into neighborhoods, politically into

wards, and socially along religious and ethnic lines—with a strong correlation

between these sets of divisions. It was nearly impossible to keep order.

Catholics and Protestants fought in the streets, White mobs attacked Black

people and abolitionist speakers, and the city government could do practically

nothing, even within the limited area of its authority.[387] The localized,

ward-based system of city politics inhibited the government’s ability to

enforce its will within the neighborhoods. Yet, in the course of a few years,

Philadelphia was transformed from a fragmented megalopolis with only a nominal

central authority to a modern city with a unified government, a citywide

political machine, and a police system to enforce the will of each.

Much of the disorder in nineteenth-century Philadelphia was perpetrated by the

city’s volunteer fire departments. Neighborhood-based fire companies adopted

the ethnic and religious identities of their members, and often saw themselves

as the champions of their neighborhood’s traditional culture and honor.

Firefighting became a source of neighborhood pride, and offered an opportunity

to settle scores against rival groups. Demographic shifts and overlapping

jurisdictions led to frequent turf wars; firemen would often fight one another

while a blaze continued unabated. When opportunities for battle did not present

themselves, they were sometimes created: fire companies would set fires in

other precincts and then ambush their rivals.[388]

These brawls became neighborhood affairs, involving large sections of the

community. Many of the fire companies affiliated with youth gangs, some with

names like “Killers,” “Rats,” and “Bouncers.”[389] As the police at the time

were also organized into separate ward organizations, they were ill-suited for

suppressing such riots. Not that they were eager to: the cops generally felt

little inclination to interfere with these battles, except in support of their

neighborhood company.

This situation put conflicting pressures on the political system. On the one

hand, it created demands for more centralization, such as government-run fire

departments and a single police force capable of suppressing disorder. On the

other hand, ward leaders saw the political potential of the fire companies and

were quick to avail themselves of this additional source of election-day

muscle.[390] The balkanized state of the city therefore left local political

bosses in a bit of a bind. Their personal fiefdoms were inextricably tied to

the ward-based structure of government; it allowed them a distinct realm of

influence and a base of support for pursuing their agenda in the citywide

political arena. But the exercise of this authority relied on a certain minimum

degree of public order—which this same ward structure, with its rivalries and

fragmentation, constantly threatened.

The outcome of this dilemma is revealing. In 1850, a “marshal’s” police force

was created for the entire city of Philadelphia. Police in the suburbs and the

four city districts continued to act independently, but were also called on to

cooperate with the marshal’s force. The first marshal, John Keyser, recruited

the new police directly from the youth gangs associated with Nativist fire

departments, reasoning that he could form a “strong-armed force prepared to

slug it out with fire gangs.”[391] By co-opting the most militant element of the

fire companies and consolidating them into a single, citywide force, the

marshal’s police organization afforded the new cops the opportunity to defeat

their traditional rivals and greatly enhanced the power of the city

government—as well as, for a time, that of the Nativist party machine.

Catholic gangs and fire companies, while overpowered, were not especially

impressed with their rivals’ new authority. One gang, the Bleeders, told in a

song of being attacked by “a band of ruffians … they called themselves Police.”

And when the Nativists lost control of the city government, Keyser’s

replacement—a Democrat—filled the force with Democrats, also recruited from

fire company gangs.[392]

In 1854, the legislature revised the city’s charter to cover the entire

contiguous urban area, incorporating outlying districts into the city.[393] The

new charter required a centralized police department and allowed for a

city-controlled fire department as well. The mayor was given the power to

appoint police officers and set the department’s rules, and the city council

was responsible for determining the size and organization of the force. The

council created an 820-man department, divided between fourteen precincts

corresponding to the ward districts. One alderman was elected to serve as

magistrate in each district, and a single marshal was appointed to oversee the

entire operation.[394] In effect, this arrangement put the new police directly

in the service of the reigning political machine.[395]

But the consolidation of power may not have been everything the ward leaders

had hoped for. In many respects, the beginnings of a central authority relied

on a corresponding decline in local power. The survival of the central power

structure demanded the eventual elimination of its potential rivals. So long as

local political bosses could command their own sources of power, the central

government as a whole was necessarily vulnerable. Again we find a parallel with

the creation of the nation-state:

In one way or another, [Tilly writes,] every European government before the

French Revolution relied on indirect rule via local magnates. The magnates

collaborated with the government without becoming officials in any strong sense

of the term, had some access to government-backed force, and exercised wide

discretion within their own territories.… Yet the same magnates were potential

rivals, possible allies of a rebellious people.

Eventually, European governments reduced their reliance on indirect rule by

means of two expensive but effective strategies: (a) extending their

officialdom to the local community and (b) encouraging the creation of police

forces that were subordinate to the government rather than to individual

patrons, distinct from war-making forces, and therefore less useful as the

tools of dissident magnates.[396]

So, too, in Philadelphia: so long as the central government was dependent upon

the cooperation of the ward bosses, the government’s influence was quite

limited and no one faction could be assured of permanent dominance. Faced with

difficulties resembling those of the early European states, Philadelphia’s

local government followed a similar course.

[In England,] Tudor demilitarization of the great lords entailed four

complementary campaigns: eliminating their personal bands of armed retainers,

razing their fortresses, taming their habitual resort to violence for the

settlement of disputes, and discouraging the cooperation of their dependents

and tenants.[397]

In Philadelphia, all four aims were accomplished with one masterstroke: the

creation of a citywide police force allowed the limited consolidation of the

city government. The ward-based militants were either co-opted into the police

or defeated by them. While no fortresses existed to be pulled down, the ward

leaders were made increasingly vulnerable politically; their position came to

depend as much on their status within the machine, citywide, as on their

influence in their own ward. Inter-ward battles were either avoided by the new

system or forcibly resolved by the new police. And the cooperation and loyalty

of ward residents, once owed to their local boss, became attached to the new

citywide machine.

Philadelphia did not become a nation-state, of course, or even a city-state.

But the authority of the city government was produced by very similar means,

and in this process the creation of modern policing played a central role. The

new police were not simply one aspect of a modernizing city government; they

also represented a means of consolidating power within the modernizing

government. But as the city consolidated power, it embarked on the first of a

series of adaptations that would strengthen the government itself at the

expense of the local leaders, eventually leading to the decline of the machine

system.[398]

Centralization, even in meager form, not only changed the distribution of

power, but also tended to transform the institutions that shared power. The

modernization of the police allowed for a major advance in the organization and

efficiency of the political machine, and with it the power of the municipal

government. With a single police force in place, power could be, if not quite

centralized, at least somewhat solidified. This step proved a major boon to the

reigning machine, and provided one means for the machine to exert influence in

wards where popular support was weak. As it did, however, it began the process

by which control was shifted both upward and toward the center.[399]

Inadvertently, the creation of a citywide police force both drew up the

blueprint and laid the groundwork for the creation of other municipal

bureaucracies, and for the eventual destruction of the ward-based machine

system.[400] While somewhat ironic, this turn of events represents a

continuation of the trends that had shaped the development of law enforcement

as it approached the modern period—specifically, the growing emphasis on

prevention, the tendency to expand police duties, and the move toward

specialized agencies. Each of these three factors contributed to the process of

modernization, but the ideal of prevention occupied a special place as a

guiding principle of police development.

The Preventive Ideal, Generalized Powers, and Specialization

The idea of preventing crime has long been the avowed aim of policing, but it

has undergone significant revision over time. In the London Night Watch Acts of

1737 and 1738, crime prevention was explicitly cited as the goal of the watch,

though it is unclear how the body was supposed to contribute to this aim.[401]

The instructions offered the Philadelphia Watch in 1791 were only slightly more

explicit:

[T]he said constable and watchmen, in their respective turns and courses of

watching, shall use their best endeavors to prevent murders, burglaries,

robberies and other outrages and disorders within the city, and to that end

shall, and they are hereby empowered and required to arrest and apprehend all

persons whom they shall find disturbing the peace, or shall have cause to

suspect of any unlawful and evil design.[402]

By 1800, the preventive rationale had been refined. The watch’s role was to

ensure that criminals would be punished.[403] To this end, in 1794, the St.

Marylebone Watch Committee resolved unanimously “that in case any Robbery be

committed within the Parish, the Watchmen in whose Walk the same shall happen

be absolutely discharged.” Several other London districts adopted a similar

standard, though eventually the limits of the system had to be admitted. A few

months later, St. Marylebone’s committee relented, acknowledging that “many

Robberies are committed within this Parish without the possible knowledge of

the Watchmen.”[404]

Watchmen were thought to deter crime by their mere presence and they could

detain people they suspected of criminal acts, but the watch was not a

detective force and had no means for discovering the culprits after a crime was

committed.[405] The odds, then, were against apprehension. While the idea behind

the watch was preventive, the watch’s methods were essentially reactive, and

even their reactive capabilities were quite limited.

When Robert Peel created the London Metropolitan Police in 1829, the prevention

of crime was singled out as the new body’s chief concern:

It should be understood, at the outset, that the principal object to be

attained is ‘**the Prevention of Crime.’**

To this great end every effort of the Police is to be directed. The security of

person and property, the preservation of the public tranquility, and all the

other objects of a Police Establishment, will thus be better effected than by

the detection and punishment of the offender, after he has succeeded in

committing the crime.[406]

Nevertheless, the Metropolitans remained unsure of **how** to prevent

crime. In the decades that followed, they essentially replicated the patrols of

the watch, with even less success.[407]

In the United States, historian James Richardson tells us, “the term

‘preventive police’ was used frequently and loosely. Preventive seemed to mean

that by their presence the police would inhibit the commission of crime and

that they would deal with potentially serious crimes before they reached the

crisis stage.”[408] This crude notion of prevention developed into a more

serious and ambitious program as time passed, and came to inform the expansion

of police powers. In Boston, for example, in 1850 the police were authorized to

order any group of three or more people to “move on” or suffer arrest.[409]

Of course, most of what the police did was still responsive, and most actual

crime-fighting still took place after the crimes had been committed. But the

preventive ideal was clearly gaining an articulation, and slowly techniques

were developed to bring the practice closer to the principle.

The preventive ideal both prompted the expansion of police power and helped

shape the specialized focus on crime. It is worth noting the tension between

these two trends: if police powers expand over too large a range of duties,

policing loses its character. The police come to resemble generalized

inspectors, and enforcement of the criminal law becomes a secondary matter.

But, if enforcement is overly specialized, the police are in effect replaced by

a series of guards, traffic wardens, thieftakers, bounty hunters, and whatnot.

Constables, sheriffs, and marshals, as servants of the court or sovereign, were

assigned general responsibilities. The slave patrols developed from the other

end of the spectrum, beginning with a few select duties and accumulating

responsibilities and power over time. This second path was the more

straightforward route toward modernization because, rather than serving

primarily as officers to the Crown or the court, the slave patrols existed

solely as a means of preserving the status quo through the enforcement of the

slave codes. As soon as they separated from the militia, they became law

enforcement bodies, and new duties were added accordingly.

The tension between specialization and generalization did not vanish with the

creation of the modern police. The police retained many duties that were quite

remote from their alleged purpose of preventing crime and enforcing the

criminal law. Robert Fogelson explains:

In the absence of other specialized public bureaucracies, the authorities found

the temptation almost irresistible to transform the police departments into

catchall health, welfare, and law enforcement agencies. Hence the police

cleaned streets and inspected boilers in New York, distributed supplies to the

poor in Baltimore, accommodated the homeless in Philadelphia, investigated

vegetable markets in St. Louis, operated emergency ambulances in Boston, and

attempted to curb crime in all these cities.[410]

In fact, even today, the police continue to hold duties quite removed from the

enforcement of the law and the prevention of crime. In many cities cops still

direct traffic, license parades, escort funerals, remove panhandlers, quiet

loud parties, find lost children, advise urban planners, make presentations to

civic groups and school children, sponsor youth sports leagues, respond to

mental health crises, and perform other tasks quite apart from any concern

about crime.

As Fogelson implies, this tendency developed in part because the police offered

a means for the local government to impose its will, regulate the behavior of

the citizens, and generally keep an eye on things with unprecedented efficiency

and regularity. It thus became a constant temptation to use this power in new

and expanding ways, often to the detriment of the specialized law enforcement

function.

Further specialization then relied on the development of additional

bureaucracies to take on these extraneous duties. As historian Roger Lane

writes:

The police were valued especially for the flexibility which made them adaptable

to new demands. But when better machinery was developed the government did not

hesitate to transfer their responsibilities. The creation of the sewer, health,

street, and building departments all diminished the role of the police in local

administration.[411]

Policing is thus tied to a more general trend in government

administration—namely, the rise of bureaucracies. The development of modern

police both depended on and promoted the creation of other municipal

bureaucracies. In the first place, the creation of other bureaucracies allowed

the police to specialize. Second, the consolidation of police forces

facilitated a more general move toward bureaucratization by providing a model

for these same bureaucracies to adopt. For both of these reasons, the

modernization of the police was a key component in the modernization of city

government.[412] But the impact of the new police was not restricted to its

effect on municipal administration. Policing was also closely connected to the

economic conditions attending widespread industrialization, and the consequent

expansion of the cities themselves.

Urbanization and Industrialization

When the modern police first appeared, East Coast cities were experiencing a

wave of expansion, fueled by industrialization. It is no accident that

industrial society produced new means of social control, since it also created

new risks for disorder. Put simply, in an increasingly complex society, there

was more that could go wrong. While the sheer numbers and diversity of the

population contributed to this complexity, specialization (especially in the

production and distribution of goods) and increased social stratification were

probably more important. These factors acted together to depress or reduce the

standard of living for the greatest portion of the cities’ residents, creating

conflict between economic classes and increasing friction between ethnic and

religious groups.[413] Seldon Bacon suggests:

These three factors of social change, the rise in specialization, the

stratification of classes, and the lowering of standards and consequent

limitation of activities brought about by increasing numbers, all created

problems in the maintenance of a harmonious and secure society; the techniques

of enforcement present in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries were unable to

meet these problems. The family, the local church, the neighborhood, and the

existing governmental agencies could not cope with the situation. In fact,

there is a good deal of evidence to show that the changes were weakening all

these institutions, especially as they helped bring about the mobility and

individualism so characteristic of American society.[414]

Cyril D. Robinson and Richard Scaglion argue along similar lines, placing the

advent of modern policing in the context of the emerging capitalist system.

They present four interdependent propositions:

(1) the origin of a specialized police function depends upon the division of

society into dominant and subordinate classes with antagonistic interests;

(2) specialized police agencies are generally characteristic only of societies

politically organized as states;

(3) in a period of transition, the crucial factor in delineating the modern

specialized police function is an ongoing attempt at conversion of the social

control (policing) mechanism from an integral part of the community structure

to an agent of an emerging dominant class; and

(4) the police institution is created by the emerging dominant class as an

instrument for the preservation of its control over restricted access to basic

resources, over the political apparatus governing this access, and over the

labor force necessary to provide the surplus upon which the dominant class

lives.[415]

There is much to recommend this as a general scheme, though it seems to

exaggerate the role of elite foresight and planning at the expense of

after-the-fact opportunism. It does more to characterize the result than the

process, assuming that the outcome corresponds with some original intention.

Robinson and Scaglion’s account offers a useful outline of the preconditions

necessary for the creation of the modern police, but the long and complex

process of transition from pre-modern to modern policing suggests a more

complicated picture than their theory would indicate, especially in regard to

the relationship between economic elites and the state. While it is certainly

true that the ruling class came to use the police as an instrument for the

expansion and preservation of their power, it seems like a stretch to say that

they **created** the institution for that end.

As we have seen, the first significant advances toward modern police appeared

in the South, where elite attitudes about the state were characteristically

ambivalent. The maintenance of slave laws originally relied upon informal,

universal enforcement requirements reminiscent of the frankpledge: every White

member of the community had the responsibility to uphold the law. The Southern

system of slave control underwent a full transition from this informal policing

system, through various stages of specialization, to its apex in the creation

of the quite modern Charleston police force.[416] Clearly this transformation

relied on social stratification, the existence of a political state, and the

use of the policing function to maintain the racial and economic status quo

(that is, to protect the interests of the slave-owners). However, while police

powers were intentionally divorced from the community and invested in a

specialized group, this change was not—as Robinson and Scaglion’s model might

imply—instigated at the behest of the slave-owners, but to some degree

accomplished over their objections and despite their resistance. It was instead

<em>political</em> elites who created slave patrols as a guard against the

(political) threat of revolt more than against the (economic) dangers of

escape. While the state functioned in the **interests** of the ruling

class, it was not yet an **agent** of the ruling class—but a competing

nexus of power, and a challenge to the aristocratic pretensions of the slave

owners.

In cities, industrialization and its accompanying entourage of social changes

led to the breakdown of the informal means of social control that had proved

(mostly) sufficient to that point.[417] Cities thus produced advances in social

control that the plantation system hadn’t needed and likely would have

eschewed. In Southern cities like Charleston, the City Guards picked up where

the patrols had fallen short, in the control of slaves (and free Black people)

on hire. In Northern cities, industrialization produced similar needs to

control the workforce. Rather than rely on personal authority and social

deference (as on the plantation), or on the influence of the family and church

(as in smaller New England towns), industrial cities of the North created

governmental systems that were universalistic and routinized.[418]

Faced with similar challenges relating to urbanization, industrialization, and

the rise of capitalism, elites in different cities responded in markedly

similar ways—sometimes consciously borrowing from each other and sometimes

unwittingly reproducing models and techniques that were in use elsewhere,

keeping what succeeded and discarding that which failed to suit their purposes.

And as this process advanced, they transformed the mechanisms of law

enforcement and created a new, distinctive institution.

The New York Municipal Police came to define the type. But it would be wrong to

think of the New York police as simply a modern watch, or as a Northern slave

patrol, or as a set of American Bobbies[419]—though it was somewhat analogous to

all three. In New York, as elsewhere, the police appeared when broad social

trends intersected with local crises and the particular needs of the city. Of

course, the authorities only responded to the crises on a rather shallow level,

never acknowledging the underlying causes that produced them. Instead, local

elites preferred to blame the problems of urbanization on the moral

shortcomings of the poor, and the idea of the “dangerous classes” was born.

In the years preceding the rise of police departments in London and in the

United States, [Richard Lundman notes,] middle-class and elite members of

society attributed crime, riot, and public drunkenness to the members of the

“dangerous classes.” The image was that of a convulsively and possibly

biologically criminal, riotous, and intemperate group of persons located at the

base of society. Their actions were seen as destroying the very fabric of

society.[420]

The particular population identified with the dangerous classes varied by

locale. In England, the dangerous classes consisted of the urban poor,

vagrants, and prostitutes in particular. In the northern United States, it was

the immigrant lower class; in Boston, the term was especially applied to Irish

Catholics.[421] The term was not used much in the South, but the dangerous

classes found an analogy in the Black population, and especially the slaves. In

addition to their association with crime and disorder, the dangerous classes

also represented an alien presence, a group with different values whose

behavior was therefore suspicious as if by definition.[422] The Boston Council

reported:

In former times the Night Watch with a small constabulary force, were quite

sufficient to keep the peace in a city proverbial for its love of order and

attachment to the laws and remarkable for the homogenous character of its

population. But the rapid development of the system of railroads and of the

means of communication, with all parts of Europe, together with other causes

have brought among us great numbers who have not had the benefit of a New

England training and who have heretofore been held in restraint rather by fear

of the lawgiver than respect for the law.[423]

Moreover, criminal behavior was understood as a threat to the social order, not

merely to its real or potential victims. Theft obviously challenged the

sanctity of private property, but more to the point, drunkenness and vagrancy

seemed to threaten the standards of diligence and self-control central to

Protestant morality and crucial to an economic system dependent on regularity,

predictability, and a disciplined workforce.[424]

Crime and criminality were thus constructed to reflect the ideological needs of

elites. Criminality was less a matter of what people **did** than of what

they **represented**.[425] The idea of the dangerous classes was intimately

tied to the prevailing economic order in each place, and had profound

implications for the systems of social control they adopted. As Michael Hindus

writes:

Slavery was not primarily a penal institution, though that was one of its

results. In addition to its role in the southern labor and social system, the

plantation kept under confinement and control the one class that was most

threatening to the social order. Similarly, the prison was not primarily a

labor system, but it mandated labor for rehabilitation, profit, and internal

order. The prison adopted many features of the factory system and justified

forced labor of convicts because of the moral uplift it provided.[426]

Both systems supplied large-scale, unpaid labor for the propertied classes,

deprived the workers of their most basic civil liberties and political rights,

and relied on corporal punishment and shaming for discipline.[427] Furthermore,

in both cases the economic systems **created** the class of people they

were then at such pains to control—the slaves in the plantation system, and the

immigrant working class in industrialized cities.

While elite anxieties about the dangerous classes supplied the impetus for new

forms of social control, other concerns also helped to shape the emerging

institutions. The modern police system, unlike less formal means of control,

actually required very little of ordinary citizens in the way of enforcement,

and exposed the respectable classes to almost no personal danger. And, though

supplying an organized force under control of the government, it avoided the

unseemly image of a military occupation, since police (in the North, at least)

patrolled alone or in pairs, and were sparingly armed. Furthermore, an

impersonal system was to be preferred over either a military model or a more

informal arrangement because—ironically—it was less obviously a tool of the

ruling classes.[428]

To the degree that industrialization and urbanization created changes related

to the diversity of the urban population, economic specialization, and social

stratification, they certainly produced new challenges of social control. But

the question remains, what did those difficulties have to do with

<em>crime?</em> Put differently, it might be asked: Were the dangerous classes

criminal? Or were they criminalized?

The Demand for Order

It is generally assumed that the police were created to deal with rising levels

of crime caused by urbanization and the increasing numbers of immigrants. John

Schneider describes the typical accounts:

The first studies were legal and administrative in their focus, confined mostly

to narrative descriptions of the step-by-step demise of the old constabulary

and the steady, but often controversial evolution of the professionals.

Scholars seemed preoccupied with the politics of police reform. Its causes, on

the other hand, were considered only in cursory fashion, more often assumed

than proved. Cities, it would seem, moved inevitably toward modern policing as

a consequence of soaring levels of crime and disorder in an era of phenomenal

growth and profound social change.[429]

I will refer to this as the “crime and disorder” theory.

Despite its initial plausibility, the idea that the police were invented in

response to an epidemic of crime is, to be blunt, exactly wrong. Furthermore,

it is not much of an explanation. It assumes that “when crime reaches a certain

level, the ‘natural’ social response is to create a uniformed police force.”

But, as Eric Monkkonen notes, that “is not an explanation but an assertion of a

natural law for which there is little evidence.”[430]

It may be that slave revolts, riots, and other instances of collective violence

precipitated the creation of modern police, but we should remember that neither

crime nor disorder were unique to nineteenth-century cities, and therefore

cannot on their own account for a change such as the rise of a new institution.

Riotous mobs controlled much of London during the summer of 1780, but the

Metropolitan Police did not appear until 1829. Public drunkenness was a serious

problem in Boston as early as 1775, but a modern police force was not created

there until 1838.[431] So the crime-and-disorder theory fails to explain why

earlier crime waves didn’t produce modern police. It also fails to explain why

crime in the nineteenth century led to **policing**, and not to some other

arrangement.[432]

Furthermore, it is not at all clear that crime was on the rise. In Boston, for

example, crime went **down** between 1820 and 1830,[433] and continued to

drop for the rest of the nineteenth century.[434] In fact, crime was such a

minor concern that it was not even mentioned in the marshal’s report of

1824.[435] The city suffered only a single murder between 1822 and 1834.[436]

Whatever the real crime rate, after the introduction of modern policing the

number of **arrests** increased.[437] The majority of these arrests were

for misdemeanors, and most were related to victimless crimes or crimes against

the public order. They did not generally involve violence or the loss of

property, but instead concerned public drunkenness, vagrancy, loitering,

disorderly conduct, or being a “suspicious person.”[438] In other words, the

greatest portion of the actual business of law enforcement did not concern the

protection of life and property, but the controlling of poor people, their

habits, and their manners.[439] The suppression of such disorderly conduct was

only made possible by the introduction of the modern police. For the first

time, more arrests were made on the initiative of the officer than in response

to specific complaints.[440] Though the charges were generally minor, the

implications were not: the change from privately initiated to police-initiated

prosecutions greatly shifted the balance of power between the citizenry and the

state.

A critic of this view might suggest that the rise in public order arrests

reflected an increase in public order offenses, rather than a shift in official

priorities. Unfortunately, there is no way to verify this claim. (The increase

in arrests does not provide very good evidence, since it is precisely this

increase the hypothesis seeks to explain.) However, if the tolerance for

disorder was in decline, this fact, coupled with the existence of the new

police, would be sufficient to explain the increase in arrests of this

type.[441]

The Cleveland police offered a limited test of this hypothesis. In December

1907, they adopted a “Golden Rule” policy. Rather than arrest drunks and other

public order offenders, the police walked them home or issued a warning. In the

year before the policy was established, Cleveland police made 30,418 arrests,

only 938 of which were for felonies. In the year after the Golden Rule was

instituted, the police made 10,095 arrests, 1,000 of which were for

felonies.[442] Other cities implemented similar policies—in some cases, reducing

the number of arrests by 75 percent.[443]

Cleveland’s example demonstrates that official tolerance can reduce arrest

rates. This fact suggests an explanation for the sudden rise in misdemeanor

arrests during the previous century: if official tolerance can reduce arrest

rates, it makes sense that official intolerance could increase the number of

arrests. In other words, during the nineteenth century crime was down, but the

demand for order was up—at least among those people who could influence the

administration of the law.[444]

New York City’s campaign against prostitution certainly followed this pattern.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the official view on

prostitution transformed from one of complacency to one of moral panic.

Beginning in the 1830s, when reform societies took an interest in the issue, it

was widely claimed that prostitution was approaching epidemic proportions.

Probably the number of prostitutes did increase: the watch estimated that there

were 600 prostitutes working in 1806, and 1,200 in 1818. In 1856, Police Chief

George Matsell set the figure at 5,000. But given that the population of the

city increased by more than six times between 1820 and 1860, the official

estimates actually showed a decrease in the number of prostitutes relative to

the population.[445]

Enforcement activities, however, increased markedly during the same period. In

1860, ninety people were committed to the First District Prison for keeping a

“disorderly house.” This figure was five times that of 1849, when seventeen

people were imprisoned for the offense. Likewise, prison sentences for

vagrancy rose from 3,173 for the entire period covering 1820–1830, to 3,552 in

1850 and 6,552 in 1860. As prostitutes were generally cited for vagrancy (since

prostitution itself was not a statutory offense), the proportion of female

“vagrants” steadily rose: women comprised 62 percent of those imprisoned for

vagrancy in 1850 and 72 percent in 1860.[446]

This analysis does not solve the problem, but merely relocates it. If it was

not crime but the standards of order that were rising, what caused the higher

standards of public order? For one thing, the relative absence of serious crime

may have facilitated the rise in social standards and the demand for order.

Lane observes:

A fall in the real crime rate allows officially accepted standards of conduct

to rise; as standards rise, the penal machinery is extended and refined; the

result is that an increase in the total number of cases brought in accompanies

a decrease in their relative severity.[447]

Once established, the police themselves may have helped to raise expectations.

In New York, Chief Matsell actively promoted the panic over public disorder, in

part to quiet criticism of the new police.[448] More subtly, the very existence

of the police may have suggested the possibility of urban peace and made it

seem feasible that most laws would be enforced—not indirectly by the citizenry,

but directly by the state.[449] And the new emphasis on public order

corresponded with the morality of the dominant Protestant class and the demands

of the new industrialized economy, ensuring elite support for policing.

This intersection of class bias and rigid moralism was particularly clear

concerning, and had special implications for, the status of women. In many

ways, the sudden furor over prostitution was typical. As the social mores of

the Protestant ruling class came to define legal notions of “public order” and

“vice,” the role of women was re-defined and increasingly restricted. As

Stephanie Coontz remarks, “Fond paternalistic indulgence of women who conformed

to domestic ideals was intimately connected with extreme condemnation of those

who were outside the bonds of patronage and dependence on which the relations

of men and women were based.” As a result, women were held to higher standards

and subject to harsher treatment when they stepped outside the bounds of their

role. Women were arrested less frequently than men, but were more likely to be

jailed and served longer sentences than men convicted of the same crimes.[450]

Enforcement practices surrounding the demand for order thus weighed doubly on

working-class women, who faced gender-based as well as class-based restrictions

on their public behavior.

At the same time, the increased demand for order came to shape not only the

enforcement of the law, but the law itself. In the early nineteenth century,

Boston’s laws only prohibited habitual drunkenness, but in 1835 public

drunkenness was also banned. Alcohol-related arrests increased from a few

hundred each year to several thousand.[451] In 1878, police powers were extended

even further, as they were authorized to arrest people for loitering or using

profanity.[452] In Philadelphia, “after the new police law took effect,” as

historian Allen Steinberg has documented, “the doctrine of arrest on suspicion

was tacitly extended to the arrest and surveillance of people in advance of a

crime.”[453]

Police scrutiny of the dangerous classes was at least partly an outgrowth of

the preventive orientation of the new police. Built into the idea that the cops

could prevent crime is the notion that they can predict criminal behavior. This

preventive focus shifted their attention from actual to potential crimes, and

then from the crime to the criminal, and finally to the potential criminal.[454]

Profiling became an inherent element of modern policing.

So, contrary to the crime-and-disorder explanation, the new police system was

not created in response to escalating crime rates, but developed as a means of

social control by which an emerging dominant class could impose their values on

the larger population.

This shift can only be understood against a backdrop of much broader social

changes. Industrialization and urbanization produced a new class of workers

and, with it, new challenges for social control; they also produced

opportunities for social control at a level previously unknown. The police

represented one aspect of this growing apparatus, as did the prison, and

sometime later, the public school. Furthermore, the police, by forming a major

source of power for emerging city governments (and for those who would control

them), also contributed to the development of other bureaucracies and increased

the possibilities for rational administration. The reasons for these

developments have been made fairly clear, but the means by which the police

idea evolved and spread deserves further explication.

Imitation, Experimentation, Evolution

Studies of police history that focus on the experience of a particular city

often inadvertently imply that the police in New York, for example, (or

Philadelphia, or Boston) developed independently based on the unique needs and

specific circumstances of that city.[455] This perspective obscures a very

important aspect of police development, namely the degree to which city

administrators consciously watched the innovations of other cities, drawing

from them as suited their needs. This system of communication and imitation

explains the sudden appearance of very similar police organizations in cities

all across the country, in a relatively short period of time. For though it

took a very long time for the characteristics of modern policing to develop,

once they crystallized into a coherent form, the idea spread very quickly.[456]

Of course, the practice of borrowing police models from elsewhere was not

itself new. American cities borrowed their earliest law enforcement mechanisms

from European cities, especially London and Paris.[457] Georgia modeled its

slave patrols on those already established in South Carolina, which were

themselves copied from similar systems in Barbados; later it became common for

towns to copy the patrolling techniques of others nearby.[458] Thus it is not

especially surprising that New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, and

Washington, D.C., all took inspiration from the Metropolitan Police of

London.[459]

But, the English influence on American policing should not be overstated.

Imitation occurred, but it was not total. Instead, Richardson argues,

“America’s borrowing from England was selective. The general form of innovation

came from England, although Americans modified and transformed English patterns

to fit their particular culture.”[460] Hence, the two countries prescribed very

different relationships between the officers and the communities they

patrolled. In England, the Bobbies were recruited from the countryside and from

the lower ranks of the army. They were housed in barracks, denied the vote,

and made accountable to Parliament rather than to the local authorities. In the

United States, the police were expected to be a part of the communities they

served. They were to act not only as police, but as citizens and neighbors as

well.[461] A more telling difference lay in the extent—and nature—of local

political influence in policing. In America, Richardson writes, “Political

parties contested vigorously to control police patronage and power, which …

precluded American departments from following exactly their supposed model, the

London Metropolitan Police.”[462]

American cities also looked to each other for ideas. When Boston resolved “to

imitate, as far as may be, the system of London,” it also mentioned the reforms

of New York and Philadelphia, and noted that Baltimore, Brooklyn, and other

cities were moving in the same direction.[463] And in 1843, the legislative

committee investigating better means of policing riots in Philadelphia spent

two months collecting ideas from other cities.[464]

While less well documented, innovations originating in particular districts, or

in the countryside, came to be incorporated into the practices of city police.

This certainly occurred in Charleston, where the police had a direct lineage

from the rural slave patrols. A similar process took place in London, where the

use of full-time officers, the system of beat patrols, the focus on crime

prevention, and even a bureaucratic structure were all developed in the

parishes under the watch system, and then consolidated in 1829.[465]

If the practice of imitation shows how cities came to create police departments

that closely resembled one another’s, the process of experimentation helps to

explain why they settled on the particular model they did. Because each city

adjusted its organization in a number of ways, either in response to local

pressures or based on innovations of its own, variations emerged that could

then be tested by experience. Those judged to be successful were retained, and

those that failed were abandoned. A kind of natural selection took place. Only

the ideas deemed successful in one city survived to be reproduced elsewhere. In

principle, this process could result in a diversity of policing mechanisms, and

at times has done so (witness the contrast between the seventeenth-century

plantation system and that of New York during the same period). But as cities

faced similar pressures related to population growth, industrialization,

increased stratification, and the like, they came to adopt shared measures of

success. As a result, older models, which had survived in some places for a

very long time, were suddenly outmoded and replaced.

When social changes caused the traditional means of control to fail, variations

of enforcement were adopted. Generally these were aimed at particular

populations (slaves, the poor, immigrants) or trouble spots (ghettos,

plantations, saloons, etc.). Specialists in enforcement arose, and then unified

into general enforcement bodies.[466] The move from informal systems of racial

dominance to slave patrol, to police, may be understood as following this

pattern. In New York, policing developed along similar lines: the watch was

expanded, the constable’s duties extended, the marshal’s office created, and

eventually a modern police force replaced them all.

The new agencies drew heavily from their predecessors in matters related to

organizational structure, methods, and purpose. By incorporating the best of

the recent innovations, the new types out-competed the disparate organizations

they first imitated and then replaced. But it would be wrong to think of such

changes as only ever representing real progress. In fact the nature of

experimentation practically guaranteed otherwise. Innumerable innovations were

introduced, only to be abandoned a short time later. Reforms were implemented,

and quickly reversed.[467]

It would be tedious to trace out every dead branch on this family tree, but to

only consider the successes would run the risk of distorting the picture of

development, presenting a circuitous route as a straight-away for the sake of

preserving the neatness of our map. To make the point briefly, I will borrow

Bacon’s taxonomy of the abandoned types:

Some of the variations in enforcement brought about by the failure of the

primary groups, particularly the failure of the family, to maintain order and

security may be noted: the use of religious officers, such as the tythingman

and warden; the use of the military; the attempt to secure order by having

legislators and justices act as police; the trial of policing by posse, by

citizen watch, by citizen informer; the practice of employing special men paid

by fee; the experiments with private police and substitutes … for the most

part, these all failed.[468]

Experimentation moved cities from one type of law enforcement to the next, but

we should not exaggerate the empiricist nature of the process. Far from

following a carefully controlled program and employing the scientific method,

progress occurred on an improvisational basis in response to short-term

political considerations. Many adaptations were accepted, or abandoned, not on

their practical merits but for strictly partisan reasons.

Americans have rarely if ever agreed on the proper scope and function of the

police and … [Richardson notes] such conflicts have molded police performance

in a variety of ways. Most police administrators have responded to whichever

group was making the most noise at the moment rather than following a

consistent and thought-out line of policy.[469]

These political conflicts helped to shape the institution, just as the practice

of imitation and the process of constant revision did. But behind it all is the

simple fact that institutions, like organism species, must adapt to their

environment or die. Policing, as an institution, did a great deal better than

just survive. As it adapted to the social conditions of the early- and

mid-nineteenth century, it became not only the product, but also the producer

of social change.

The Policed Society

As policing changed, it grew in importance, and in turn changed the society

that had created it. The development of modern police facilitated further

industrialization, it consolidated the influence of political machines, it led

to the creation of new bureaucracies and advances in municipal government, and

it made possible the imposition of Protestant moral values on the urban

population. Also, and more basically, it allowed the state to impose on the

lives of individuals in an unprecedented manner.

Sovereignty—and even states—are older than the police. “European kingdoms in

the Middle Ages became ‘law states’ before they became ‘police states,’” David

Bayley writes, meaning that they made laws and adjudicated claims before they

established an independent mechanism for enforcing them. Organized police

forces only emerged when traditional, informal, or community-maintained means

of social control broke down. This breakdown was in each case prompted by a

larger social change, often a change that some part of the community resisted

with violence, such as the creation of a national state, colonization, or the

enslavement of a subject people.[470] It is at the point where authority is met

with resistance that the organized application of force becomes necessary.[471]

Each development detailed here has conformed to this general pattern—the

creation of the offices of the sheriff and the constable, the establishment of

the watch, the deployment of slave patrols, the transition to City Guards, and

finally the rise of the modern police.

The aims and means of social control always approximately reflect the anxieties

of elites. In times of crisis or pronounced social change, as the concerns of

elites shift, the mechanisms of social control are adapted accordingly. In the

South, the institution of the slave patrol developed in stages following real

or rumored insurrections. Later, complex factors conspired to produce the

modern police force. Industrialization changed the system of social

stratification and added a new threat, or set of threats, subsumed under the

title of the “dangerous classes.” Moreover, while serious crime was on the

decline, the demand for order was on the rise owing to the needs of the new

economic regime and the Protestant morality that supported it. In response to

these conditions, American cities created a distinctive brand of police. They

borrowed heavily from the English model already in place, but also took ideas

from the existing night watch, the office of the constable, the militia, and

the slave patrols.

At the same time, the drift toward modern policing fit nicely with the larger

movement toward modern municipal government—best understood in terms of the

emerging political machines, and later tied to the rise of bureaucracies. The

extensive interrelation between these various factors—industrialization,

increasing demands for order, fear of the dangerous classes, pre-existing

models of policing, and the development of citywide political machines—makes it

obvious that no single item can be identified as the sole cause for the move

toward policing. History is not propelled by a single engine, though historical

accounts often are. Scholars have generally relied on one or one set of these

factors in crafting their explanations, with most emphasizing those surrounding

the sudden and rapid expansion of the urban population, especially immigrant

communities.

Urbanization certainly had a role, but not the role it is usually assumed to

have had. Rather than producing widespread criminality, cities actually

produced civility; as the population rose, the rate of serious crimes

dropped.[472] The crisis of the time was not one of law, but of

order—specifically the order required by the new industrial economy and the

Protestant moralism that supplied, in large part, its ideological expression.

The police provided a mechanism by which the power of the state, and eventually

that of the emerging ruling class, could be brought to bear on the lives and

habits of individual members of society. Lane reflects:

The new organization of police made it possible for the first time in

generations to attempt a wide enforcement of the criminal code, especially the

vice laws. But while the earlier lack of execution was largely the result of

weakness, it had served a useful function also, as part of the system of

compromise which made the law tolerable.[473]

In other words, the much-decried inefficiency and inadequacy of the night watch

in fact corresponded with the practical limitations on the power of the

state.[474] With these limits removed or overcome, the state at once cast

itself in a more active role. Public safety was no longer in the hands of

amateur watchmen, but had been transferred to a full-time professional body,

directed by and accountable to the city authorities. The enforcement of the law

no longer relied on the complaints of aggrieved citizens, but on the initiative

of officers whose mission was to **prevent** offenses. Hence, crimes

without victims need not be ignored, and potential offenders needn’t be given

the opportunity to act. In both instances the new police were doing what would

have been nearly inconceivable just a few years before.

It was in this way that the United States became what Allan Silver calls “a

policed society.”

A policed society is unique in that central power exercises potentially violent

supervision over the population by bureaucratic means widely diffused

throughout civil society in small and discretionary operations that are capable

of rapid concentration.[475]

The police organization allowed the state to establish a constant presence in a

wide geographic area and exercise routinized control by the use of patrols and

other surveillance. Through the same organization, the state retained the

ability to concentrate its power in the event of a riot or other emergency,

without having to resort to the use of troops or the maintenance of a military

presence. Silver argues that the significance of this advance “lay not only in

its narrow application to crime and violence. In a broader sense, it

represented the penetration and continual presence of central political

authority throughout daily life.”[476] The populace as a whole, even if not

every individual person, was to be put under constant surveillance.

The police represent the point of contact between the coercive apparatus of the

state and the lives of its citizens. Put this way, the characteristics of

modern policing may come to sound more ominous—the specialized function, the

concentration of power in a centralized organization, the constant application

of that power over the entire city, the separation of the police from the

community, and a preventive aim. While in some ways a more rational application

of traditional means, the organizations that developed in this direction were

fundamentally different from the ones they replaced. With the birth of modern

policing, the state acquired a new means of controlling the citizenry—one based

on its experiences, not only with crime and domestic disorder, but with

colonialism and slavery as well. If policing was not in its inception a

totalitarian enterprise, the modern development of the institution has at least

been a major step in that direction.

4: Cops and Klan, Hand in Hand

And the police are simply the hired enemies of this population. They are

present to keep the Negro in his place and to protect white business interests,

and they have no other function.

—James Baldwin[477]

In the later nineteenth century, as political machines, industrialization, and

the modern police reshaped urban society, politics in the South faced

additional complexities in the aftermath of the Civil War. There, many of the

trappings of machine politics were present—corruption, abuses of power,

favoritism, and street brawls—but with a difference. The status of the newly

freed Black population became **the** political question. The Republican

Party, dominant following the war, developed a constituency among Black voters

eager to assert themselves, and relied on the occupying Union army to suppress

opposition. The Democratic Party aligned itself with disenfranchised

Confederate veterans, deposed planters, former slave-owners, and the other

reactionary remnants of the **status quo ante**, including many poor White

people ideologically attached to the old order.[478] The coercive force of the

Democratic Party was embodied in secret terrorist societies and vigilante

groups including the Black Cavalry, the Men of Justice, the Young Mens’

Democratic Clubs, the Knights of the White Camellia, and the Ku Klux Klan.[479]

As the Klan gained a prominence in 1868, it concentrated on discouraging Black

voters, intimidating Republican candidates, and defeating proposed radical

constitutions.[480] But the Klan’s defense of White supremacy quickly expanded

beyond such narrow political goals.

Reconstruction and Redemption: Who Won the War?

During Reconstruction, vigilante actions and policing were often

indistinguishable. The Klan—which saw itself as a force for order, especially

against Black criminality[481]—took up night-riding, at times in regular patrols.

Its members stopped Black people on the roads, searched their homes, seized

weapons and valuables, interrogated them about their voting plans, and often

brutalized them.[482] In many places, the Klan totally regulated the social lives

of the Black population, breaking up worship services, opposing the creation of

Black schools (often with success), and establishing and enforcing a system of

passes for Black workers.[483]

In less routine actions, White mobs sometimes attacked individual Black people,

Black political assemblies, and White Republicans. These attacks often involved

the police as participants, or even leaders. For example, in April 1866, after

a crowd of African American Union Army veterans prevented the Memphis police

from arresting two of their comrades, the cops led White mobs through the

streets attacking Black people at random. Mounted squads headed by police rode

through Black neighborhoods, beating anyone they found on the streets and

setting fire to schools, churches, and homes. The attack lasted four days,

until martial law was declared. Forty-six Black and two White people died;

ninety-one houses, twelve schools, and four churches were burned.[484]

That July in New Orleans, the police led a military-style attack against a

majority-Black convention of Union loyalists. On July 30, as the delegates

gathered at the Mechanics Institute, crowds of White men collected on the

streets, many cops and firefighters among them. As a procession of a hundred or

so Black delegates approached the Mechanics Institute, a fight broke out. It is

disputed what, precisely, led to the fight, but it is generally agreed that a

White policeman fired the first shot. The delegates returned fire and hurried

into the building. The mob, more than a thousand White people, surged in after

them, breaking down doors, firing into the assembly hall, and clubbing those

inside.[485]

A **New Orleans Times** reporter described the scene following the

massacre:

Out of the Senate Chamber, once more in the cross passage, pass through the

hall, here is the last step of the main stairway. Blood is on it. The white

wall is smeared with blood in the track of what had been a live man’s shoulder

leaning up against it. Blood on the next step. Blood marks higher up on the

walls, blood and marks of sanguinary struggle from the top to the bottom.… A

door opens outward on the stairway leading down into the vaults. The first

thing noticed is a bloody handmark, blood-spots line the white walls on the

side, and blood spots the steps.… It is with a sensation of sickening horror

that you leave all the scenes and respectfully picking your way through cast

off hats and shoes that are all over every floor of the building, find yourself

in the open street, the sidewalk of which ran with blood.[486]

With the convention in ruins, the police led bands of White vigilantes around

the city, beating any Black people they encountered and shooting at those who

fled. The majority of the victims had no connection to the convention. At least

thirty-eight people were killed, and many times that number wounded.

Overwhelmingly, the victims were Black.[487]

That afternoon, bodies were piled into baggage cars. Many of the wounded were

loaded in with the dead, and witnesses later swore to seeing police

systematically shooting those who stirred.[488] No one was prosecuted for the

massacre, though a Congressional committee concluded that it had been planned

by a group of police—mostly Confederate veterans.[489] They were assisted by a

Know-Nothing group called (appropriately) “the Thugs” and a vigilante regiment

named “Hays’ Brigade,” acting under the leadership of police Sergeant Lucien

Adams and Sheriff Harry T. Hays, respectively.[490]

These two examples, especially the Mechanics Institute massacre, illustrate the

character of such attacks. As historian Melinda Hennessey explains,

The actions of whites in many of the Reconstruction riots … had less in common

with mob rule than with the organized character of paramilitary units.…

Antebellum militias and slave patrols gave southern whites experience in local

military organization, and this trend continued in the locally based

Confederate military units.[491]

White people adhered not only to the values of the slave system, but to its

methods as well.

The central role of the police in these two disturbances was unfortunately

typical of the period. In her comprehensive study of Reconstruction-era unrest,

Hennessey finds, “In only three riots, including Mobile in 1867, Vicksburg in

1875, and Charleston in 1867, did the police or sheriff try to quell the

disturbance, and in a third of the riots, the police or sheriff’s posse led the

violence.”[492] Examples of police-led violence include the election riots in

Savannah in 1868, Baton Rouge in 1870, and Barbour County, Alabama, in

1874.[493] Perhaps the starkest case occurred in Camilla, Georgia, where in 1868

Sheriff Munford J. Poore deputized the town’s entire adult White male

population to prevent a Black political procession;[494] a military

investigation found that the sheriff made no effort to control the posse and

“was a party to the wanton and unnecessary destruction of life which

subsequently ensued.”[495]

Where legal authorities were not themselves complicit with the terrorists, they

found themselves among the terrorized; they were powerless to stop Klan

activity, prosecute offenders, protect their own constituents, or, in some

cases, defend themselves. For officers sincere in their duties, the situation

was desperate. In Warren County, Georgia, Sheriff John C. Norris faced constant

harassment for his efforts to enforce the law; eventually he was crippled in a

Klan ambush. The weakness of his position might be indicated by the fact that,

though he could identify his attackers, he did not press charges.[496] The

impotence of local authorities was particularly felt in areas where they were

dependent on the national government for their power. As the federal

authorities became increasingly reluctant to insert themselves—especially

militarily—into local affairs, city and county officials were left vulnerable.

Sheriff Joseph P. Doyle of Madison County, Alabama, worried, “I have nobody to

protect me.”[497]

When Klan-type violence occurred, arrests were unusual, prosecutions rare, and

convictions almost unknown. The attitudes (and sometimes, involvement) of

police officers and sheriffs certainly impeded the enforcement of the law, but

this was only one of many obstacles standing in the way of convictions.

Prosecutors were unwilling to press such cases, and magistrates were often glad

to dismiss them. Klansmen frequently dominated juries—including grand juries

and coroners’ juries. Witnesses and victims, like Sheriff Norris, were

intimidated and refused to testify, while Klan members were eager to swear

false alibis on one another’s behalf.[498]

The law, when it did oppose Klan activity, did so in times and places where the

Klan was politically weak. As Allen Trelease notes:

Wherever Union men were numerous and sufficiently well organized to sustain the

local authorities … [Arkansas Governor Powell] Clayton encouraged sheriffs to

mobilize them as posses, and they were used to good effect. Thus the sheriff of

Carroll County managed to quell the small-scale terror there, even if he failed

to catch the criminals. In Fulton County, where the governor had to send in

reinforcements from other counties and make use of Monk’s Missouri volunteers,

the policy contributed to a mutual escalation but was ultimately

successful.[499]

Even then, the usual form of conflict was not open warfare or even vigorous

enforcement of the law, but a kind of rivalry or dual power. The police and

the Klan became counterbalancing forces rather than outright antagonists. Under

such conditions, police may have limited the Klan’s worst atrocities, but they

did little to protect Black people from routine abuse and intimidation.[500]

Likewise, the Klan, while not usually driving the sheriff out of town or making

good on their threats against him, limited the scope of his authority and

greatly restricted his agenda (especially where the sheriff was a Republican).

In Homer, Louisiana, the sheriff gave up policing whole areas of the parish

where the Klan was strongest.[501] One Texas sheriff found it impossible to

raise a posse against Klan activity; White citizens told him derisively to

“Call on your nigger friends.”[502]

But usually, law enforcement agents were unwilling to move against the Klan,

even when they were backed by federal military force.[503] And they were almost

never willing to avail themselves of the one source of power that may have been

most readily mobilized against Klan activity—the Black population. Even when

faced with widespread lawlessness, White officials proved unwilling to arm and

rally their Black constituency.[504] It may be that they worried such a move

would create a panic among Whites and provoke further violence, or it may be

that they feared creating a Black resistance that they could not then

control.[505] Whatever the reasons, the result was disastrous for African

Americans.

As renegade states were reincorporated into the Union and the federal

commitment to Reconstruction waned, Black people were returned to something

very much like their previous status. When Democrats attained control of state

legislatures and local governments, they passed a series of “Black Codes”

designed to regulate the former slaves and reconstitute the system of White

supremacy—based not on the private institution of slavery, but on publicly

established segregation.[506] Black people were, whether by law, custom, or Klan

intimidation, commonly forbidden to own land, run businesses, work on

railroads, change employers, travel, or vote.[507] Those convicted of crimes,

even nominal offenses such as “vagrancy,”[508] could be imprisoned and returned

to involuntary servitude, leased to wealthy Whites to work in their fields,

factories, or mines.[509] This was termed, in the parlance of Southern Whites,

“Redemption.” For Black people, it was more like damnation.

Slave Patrols Revisited

During the Reconstruction period, the line between legal and extra-legal

authority became extremely hazy. The Klan took on criminal violence in the

defense of an archaic view of law and order, and the local authorities were

either incapable or unwilling to challenge them. In many cases, the police were

actually complicit with Klan violence, and it seemed that the two organizations

pursued the same ends, sometimes using the same means. These common features

were not arrived at by chance. Both the police and the Klan were adaptations of

an earlier and deeply entrenched Southern institution—the slave patrols.[510] As

Sally Hadden recounts:

In the new regime of Reconstruction, Southern whites were forced to adopt laws

and policing methods that appeared racially unbiased, but they relied upon

practices derived from slave patrols and their old laws that had traditionally

targeted blacks for violence. To resolve this apparent contradiction, the more

random and ruthless aspects of slave patrolling passed into the hands of

vigilante groups like the Klan.… Meanwhile, policemen in Southern towns

continued to carry out those aspects of urban slave patrolling that seemed

race-neutral but that in reality were applied selectively. Police saw that

nightly curfews and vagrancy laws kept blacks off city streets, just as

patrollers had done in the colonial and antebellum eras.[511]

The slave patrols helped form the character of both the police and the Klan.

Like the slave patrols, the Klan was organized locally, operated mostly at

night, drew its members from every class of White society, enforced a pass

system and curfew, broke up Black social gatherings and meetings, searched

homes, seized weapons, and enforced its demands through violence and

intimidation.[512] A former slave, J.T. Tims, remarked, “There wasn’t no

difference between the patrols and the Ku Klux that I know of. If th’d ketch

you, they all would whip you.”[513]

As a part of this same tradition, racial minorities (especially Black people)

became the objects of police control,[514] the targets of brutality, and the

victims of neglect.[515] Perhaps the clearest inheritance from this tradition is

the racial characterization of criminality—the criminalizing of people of

color, and Black people especially. Presently understood in terms of

“profiling,” the practice is much older than the current controversy. Under

slavery, “Bondsmen could easily be distinguished by their race and thus became

easy and immediate targets of racial brutality.”[516] The only thing new about

racial profiling is the term, which makes prejudicial harassment seem

procedural, technical, even scientific.

Profiles and Prejudice

One critic of racial profiling, David Harris, defines the concept in terms of

more general police techniques. He writes:

<em>Racial</em> profiling grew out of a law enforcement tactic called

<em>criminal</em> profiling.

<em>Criminal</em> profiling has come into increasing use over the last twenty

years, not just as a way to solve particular crimes police know about but also

as a way to predict who may be involved in as-yet-undiscovered crimes,

especially drug offenses. **Criminal** profiling is designed to help

police spot criminals by developing sets of personal and behavioral

characteristics associated with particular offenses. By comparing individuals

they observe with profiles, officers should have a better basis for deciding

which people to treat as suspects. Officers may see no direct evidence of

crime, but they can rely on noncriminal but observable characteristics

associated with crime to decide whether someone seems suspicious and therefore

deserving of greater police scrutiny.

When these characteristics include race or ethnicity as a factor in predicting

crimes, **criminal** profiling can become **racial** profiling.

<em>Racial</em> profiling is a crime-fighting strategy—a government policy that

treats African Americans, Latinos, and members of other minority groups as

criminal suspects on the assumption that doing so will increase the odds of

catching criminals.[517]

Harris is right that racial profiling is a subset of criminal profiling, but he

has the genealogy reversed. As we saw in previous chapters, long before the

police used high-discretion tactics and vice laws to regulate the lives of the

immigrant working class, their predecessors in law enforcement were using race

as the sole factor directing their activities. Harris overlooks a crucial

feature of this history: both the slave patrols and the laws they enforced

existed for the express purpose of controlling the Black population. There was

no pretense of racial neutrality, and so there was less concern with the

abstract aim of controlling “crime” than with the very concrete task of

controlling Black people. Black people were, in a sense, criminalized—but more

importantly, they were permanently deemed objects for control.

As cities industrialized, White workers formed another troublesome group.

Efforts to control these new “dangerous classes” were more legalistic and

impartial (in form, if not in application) than those directed against the

slaves. Laws against vagrancy, gambling, prostitution, loitering, cursing, and

drinking (the nineteenth-century equivalent of our current war on drugs)

brought the habits of the poor into the jurisdiction of the police, and the

police directed their suspicions accordingly. Thus, contrary to Harris’s

account, racial profiling gave birth to the broader category of “criminal

profiling”—not the other way around.

What may distinguish our contemporary notion of “profiling” from simple

prejudice is the idea that suspicious characteristics can somehow be

scientifically identified and formulated into a general type in order to

rationally direct police suspicions. It is the war on drugs that has most

recently popularized profiling, initially because of the work of Florida

Highway Patrol officer, and later Volusia County sheriff, Bob Vogel. Vogel

formulated a list of “cumulative similarities” that he used in deciding whether

to search a vehicle. These included factors like demeanor, discrepancies in the

vehicle’s paperwork, over-cautious driving, the model of the car, and the time

of the trip. In the mid-1980s, after Vogel made several particularly impressive

arrests, the DEA adopted similar techniques in its training of local law

enforcement.[518]

The scientific basis of Vogel’s system is questionable—his “cumulative

similarities” were based on a sample of thirty cases—and its application even

more worrisome.[519] While Vogel claims that race was never a factor in his

approach, his deputies’ behavior tells a different story.[520] Black people and

Latinos represented 5 percent of the drivers on the roads his department

patrolled. But according to a review of 148 hours of videotape from cameras

mounted in squad cars, minorities made up 70 percent of the people stopped and

80 percent of those searched. Of the 1,100 drivers appearing on the tapes, only

nine were issued tickets.[521]

Likewise, under “Operation Pipeline” the DEA told the police **not** to

consider race as a factor, while continuously referencing the race of suspected

drug dealers.[522] Pipeline emphasized the use of pretext stops and “consent”

searches (that is, searches lacking probable cause).[523] The results were

predictable. According to a 1999 report by the California legislature’s Task

Force on Government Oversight, two-thirds of those stopped as part of Operation

Pipeline were Latinos. The report noted the systematic nature of this bias:

It should be emphasized that this program has been conducted with the support

of CHP [California Highway Patrol] management. Individual officers involved in

these operations and training programs have been carrying out what they

perceived to be the policy of the CHP, the Department of Justice, and the

Deukmejian and Wilson Administrations. Thus we are not faced with “rogue”

officers or individual, isolated instances of wrongdoing. The officers involved

in these operations have been told repeatedly by their supervisors that they

were doing their jobs exactly right.[524]

By 2000, the DEA had trained over 25,000 cops working for more than 300

agencies in forty-eight states.[525]

The Flawed Logic of Racial Profiling

The theoretical groundwork for racial profiling was in place long before the

DEA popularized its current form. Writing in the middle of the twentieth

century, LAPD Chief of Police William H. Parker defended the police saturation

of minority neighborhoods. His views anticipate those supporting the use of

other race-based police tactics. They are worth quoting at length:

Deployment is often heaviest in so-called minority sections of the city. The

reason is statistical—it is a fact that certain racial groups, at the present

time, commit a disproportionate share of the total crime. Let me make one

point clear in that regard—a competent police administrator is fully aware of

the multiple conditions which create this problem. There is no inherent

physical or mental weakness in any racial stock which tends its [**sic**]

toward crime. But—and this is a “but” which must be borne constantly in

mind—**police field deployment is not social agency activity**. In

deploying to suppress crime, we are not interested in why a certain group tends

toward crime, we are interested in maintaining order. The fact that the group

would not be a crime problem under different socio-economic conditions and

might not be a crime problem tomorrow, does not alter today’s tactical

necessities. Police deployment is concerned with **effect**, not cause.…

At the present time, race, color, and creed are useful statistical and tactical

devices. So are age groupings, sex, and employment. If persons of one

occupation, for some reason, commit more theft than average, then increased

police attention is given to persons of that occupation. Discrimination is not

a factor there. If persons of Mexican, Negro, or Anglo-Saxon ancestry, for some

reason, contribute heavily to other forms of crime, police deployment must take

that into account. From an ethnological point of view, Negro, Mexican, and

Anglo-Saxon are unscientific breakdowns; they are a fiction. From a police

point of view, they are a useful fiction and should be used as long as they

remain useful.

The demand that the police cease to consider race, color, and creed is an

unrealistic demand. <em>Identification is a police tool, not a police

attitude</em>. If traffic violations run heavily in favor of lavender colored

automobiles, you may be certain, whatever the sociological reasons for that

condition, we would give lavender automobiles more than average attention. And

if these vehicles were predominantly found in one area of the city, we would

give that area more than average attention.[526]

These remarks clearly outline the logic of racial profiling, and reflect the

flaws of such logic. Parker tries to deny police bias by relocating it from the

individual to the institutional level; he then defends institutional bias by

denying individual prejudice. He also attempts to justify institutionalized

racism by casting it in “statistical” terms. Hence, we’re reassured that

race-based police tactics are not based on “a police attitude” or on a belief

in the inherent criminality of people of color, while at the same time we are

urged to accept practices designed to target specific populations.

Parker explains unequal police attention with reference to variations in crime

rates among different groups. No evidence is offered concerning these

variations, but they are said to be the product of unidentified “multiple

conditions,” which we are informed are not the business of the police. The

possibility that policing may preserve or contribute to these “socio-economic

conditions” is not discussed, though the function of policing is identified as

“maintaining order.”

Put differently, Parker tries to justify the police department’s discrimination

with reference to **other discrimination**. If this line of reasoning is

accepted, then so long as an overall system of White supremacy exists, no

particular aspect of it can be faulted. Landlords could justify discrimination

in housing, or bankers in lending, just by noting that “the reason is

statistical,” that “for some reason” unemployment is higher among “certain

racial groups.” Employers could justify discrimination in hiring by explaining

that, statistically speaking, certain groups tend to be less qualified. And so

on. The moral and political faults of such reasoning are obvious, but there is

a logical fallacy as well. An individual’s ability to pay the rent, to perform

a job, or to obey the law, cannot be judged on the basis of the statistical

performance of a group to which she belongs.[527]

In the end, Parker’s argument is circular; the premises assume the conclusion.

It calls for intensive scrutiny of people of color based on a “disproportionate

share of the total crime” committed by them. And how do we know they commit

more crimes? Because of their contact with the criminal justice system,

obviously![528] David Harris explains the problem simply:

In the case of consensual crimes such as drug activity and weapons offenses,

arrest and incarceration rates are particularly poor measures of criminal

activity. They are much better measures of **law enforcement activity**.…

Arrest statistics tell us that police arrest disproportionate numbers of

African American males for drug crimes. This reflects decisions made by someone

in the police department—the chief, lieutenants, street-level supervisors, or

even individual officers themselves—to concentrate enforcement activity on

these individuals.[529]

While admitting that the very categories of race are “unscientific” and “a

fiction,” Parker argues that race is a “useful fiction” and so should be

maintained. But we should ask, useful for what? Presumably for identifying

criminals, or rather—for identifying **suspects**. That is, race is a

“useful fiction” for delineating groups of people to be <em>treated as

suspects</em> by the police.

The analogy to the color of the car implies that the use of race as an

indicator is something of an accident. Of course, it is nothing of the

sort.[530] It is more paradigmatic than fortuitous, a matter of design rather

than happenstance. Race—unlike car color—is used as a profiling tool because

society as a whole uses race as a marker of privilege or privation. And

according to Parker’s theory, race-based tactics are useful in crime control

for just that reason.

Color by Numbers

Today’s law enforcement administrators still seek to justify police practices

by appealing to racist conceptions of crime and criminality. In 1999, the New

Jersey Attorney General’s office issued a report showing that during the two

previous years (1997 and 1998), 40 percent of motorists stopped on the New

Jersey Turnpike and 80 percent of those searched were minorities. According to

Carl Williams, the superintendent of the New Jersey state police, that’s

because “The drug problem is mostly cocaine and marijuana. It is most likely a

minority group that’s involved with that.”[531]

Studies in other states reveal a common pattern. Following a 1995 lawsuit, the

Maryland State Police were required to keep data on every traffic stop that led

to a search. Temple University’s John Lamberth analyzed the data from 1995 and

1996. He found that while Black people represent 17 percent of Maryland’s

driving population and can be observed to drive no differently than White

people, 72 percent of those stopped and searched were Black. Fully one-half of

the Maryland State Police traffic officers stopped Black people in at least 80

percent of their stops. One officer stopped Blacks in 95 percent of his stops,

and two **only** stopped Black people.[532]

Likewise, a 1999 Ohio state legislator’s review of 1996 and 1997 court records

revealed that Black drivers in Akron were 2.04 times as likely as all other

drivers to receive tickets. In Toledo, they were 2.02 times as likely; and in

Columbus and Dayton, 1.8 times.[533] Researchers with North Carolina State

University found that in 1998, Black people were 68 percent more likely than

White people to be searched by the North Carolina Highway Patrol.[534] The

<em>Boston Globe</em> analyzed 764,065 traffic tickets from the period April

2001 to November 2002 and found that Black people and Latinos were ticketed at

a rate twice that of their portion of the Massachusetts population. And once

ticketed, Blacks were 50 percent more likely than Whites to have their cars

searched.[535] The LAPD’s statistics from July to November 2002 show that Black

motorists were stopped at rates far outstripping their portion of the local

population: 18 percent of the drivers pulled over were Black, while Black

people make up only 10.9 percent of the city’s populace. Of those pulled over,

Black people and Latinos were significantly more likely to be removed from the

car than were White drivers: 22 percent of Black people and 22 percent of

Latinos were removed from the vehicle, as opposed to 7 percent of White people.

And once out of their cars, Blacks and Latinos were more likely to be searched:

85 percent of Black people and 84 percent of Latinos were searched, as compared

to 71 percent of White people.[536]

In Omaha, Nebraska, during the year 2011, Blacks represented 21.6 percent of

traffic stops, but only 12.2 percent of the local population. They were almost

three times as likely to be searched as Whites (2 percent of Black stops, as

opposed to 0.7 percent of White). In Lincoln, Blacks were 3.3 percent of the

population, but 7.7 percent of the drivers stopped by police; and they were

searched more than twice as often as Whites (3.5 and 1.7 percent,

respectively). Hispanics in Lincoln were not particularly likely to be pulled

over (5 percent of population, 4.6 percent of traffic stops), but they were

searched with disproportionate frequency (2.7 percent, Hispanic drivers; 1.7

percent, White drivers). The Nebraska State Patrol (NSP) pulled over Blacks and

Hispanics at rates **below** their share of the population, but searched

both groups more frequently than Whites (1.4 percent for Black and Hispanic

drivers; 0.8 percent for White drivers).[537]

Interestingly, Native Americans were stopped below their population level in

Omaha and Lincoln, and above it in State Patrol stops (1.1 percent of stops;

0.8 percent of state population), but all three agencies searched them at much

higher rates than any other group. Native Americans were searched by the NSP

2.9 percent of the time (almost twice the rate of Blacks and Hispanics, and

more than three times the rate of Whites). They were searched by police in

Omaha in 4.2 percent of traffic stops (more than twice the rate of Blacks, and

six times the rate of Whites). And they were searched by the Lincoln police in

an astonishing 7.1 percent of stops (twice as often as Blacks, more than

two-and-a-half times as often as Hispanics, and more than four times as often

was Whites). Similar disparities were apparent in the arrests that sometimes

follow from traffic stops. The State Patrol arrested 1.8 percent of the White

drivers they stopped, 3.7 percent of Hispanics, 4 percent of African Americans,

and 5.7 percent of Native Americans. The Lincoln police arrested 0.8 percent of

Whites, 2.1 percent of Hispanics, 4.1 percent of Blacks, and 9.7 percent of

Native Americans. The handcuff-happy Omaha police, meanwhile, arrested 11.9

percent of Whites, 23.9 percent of Hispanics, 29.8 percent of Blacks, and 31.4

percent of the Native American drivers they stopped.[538]

Nationally, the most recent Justice Department study found that in 2011,

“Relatively more black drivers (13%) than white (10%) and Hispanic (10%)

drivers were pulled over,”[539] and Blacks (7 percent) and Hispanics (6 percent)

were ticketed at a higher rate than whites (5 percent). More telling, cops were

also twice as likely to end the stop without taking further action—writing a

ticket, or even issuing a warning—if the driver was Black (2 percent) than if

he or she was White or Hispanic (1 percent each), suggesting that Blacks are

more subject to arbitrary pretext stops. Likewise, while police only searched 2

percent of White drivers, they searched 6 percent of Blacks and 7 percent of

Hispanics.[540]

The studies show that people of color are more likely than White people to be

pulled over, removed from the car, and searched. But they reveal something else

as well: Race is useless as an indicator of criminality. While Blacks and

Latinos accounted for 78 percent of those searched at the south end of the New

Jersey Turnpike during the year 2000, evidence was more reliably found by

searching White people: 25 percent of White people searched had contraband, as

compared to 13 percent of Black people and 5 percent of Latinos. According to

the North Carolina study, 26 percent of those Black people searched and 33

percent of the White people searched were found to possess contraband.[541] In

Massachusetts, 16 percent of White people searched were found to possess drugs,

as compared to 12 percent of Black people and 10 percent of Latinos.[542]

In Portland, in 2011, African Americans were the subject of 11.8 percent of all

traffic stops and 19.5 percent of all pedestrian stops, though they are only

6.3 percent of the local population. They were searched in 12.6 percent of

these stops, which is 3.7 times the rate at which White people were searched.

Latinos were stopped at a rate below their portion of the population (6.2

percent of traffic and 6 percent of pedestrian stops, as opposed to 9.2 percent

of the census total), but they were searched 8 percent of the time (2.7 times

the White rate). Again, police were more likely to find contraband on Whites

(42.7 percent of searches) than Blacks (30.5 percent) or Latinos (29.8

percent).[543]

Crackdown in Seattle

Of course, these biases aren’t limited to traffic and pedestrian stops. In her

study of drug arrests in Seattle over a four-month period in 2005 and 2006,

University of Washington sociologist Katherine Beckett found that, though

Blacks represent only 8 percent of the city’s population, they make up 67

percent of drug arrests. This placed the arrest rate (per 100,000 population)

for Blacks at 13.6 times that of Whites, and the arrest rate for

<em>selling</em> drugs at 21 times that for whites.[544] Even adjusting for

different patterns of consuming and distributing narcotics, the disparity

remains: Depending on the source, empirical studies suggest that Blacks

represent between 11 and 28 percent of Seattle’s drug consumers and between 14

and 28 percent of the city’s drug dealers.[545] Direct observation of outdoor

drug markets in the Downtown and Capital Hill areas support these estimates:

African Americans were 33.3 percent of sellers observed Downtown and 9.1

percent in Capitol Hill, but represented 85.3 and 27.2 percent of arrests in

these areas, respectively. In other words, Blacks delivering drugs in Capital

Hill were 3.9 times more likely to be arrested, and those Downtown were 13.6

times more likely than “<em>whites engaged in the same behavior in the same

geographic area</em>” during the same period of time.[546]

Beckett’s study considers, tests, and eliminates a variety of possible

explanations for the disparity, including different rates of drug use and

participation in the drug economy, higher arrest rates for outdoor sales, the

geographic concentration of enforcement activity in the Downtown area, and the

police focus on crack cocaine.[547] Of these, only crack was a statistically

significant factor. Of all the city’s drug arrests, 72.9 percent were for

crack, and 73.4 percent of those arrested for crack were African American.[548]

Thus, if one recalculates leaving out crack-related arrests, the Black rate

drops from 21 times the White rate to a more modest 2.8.[549] This correlation

offers some support to the idea that the excessive focus on crack is driving

the disproportionate arrest rate.

But then the question arises, why the focus on crack? Looking at data

concerning the frequency of crack sales, calls to police reporting drug

dealers, public health considerations, and gun violence, Beckett could find

<em>no rational reason</em> for the crack obsession.[550] She concludes:

“Although colorblind on its face, the focus on crack cocaine does not appear to

be a function of race-neutral considerations, and continues to produce an

extraordinarily high degree of racial disparity in Seattle drug arrests.” She

also notes that “it is not possible” to rule out the theory that “the SPD’s

focus on black suspects explains the preponderance of crack cocaine arrests,”

rather than the other way around.[551] In fact, even just looking at crack

cases, Blacks are still over-represented, making up 72.9 percent of arrests but

(according to drug user surveys) 49.4 percent of dealers.[552]

Whichever comes first—the focus on Blacks or the focus on crack—it amounts to

much the same thing. The result is a disproportionate number of African

Americans in police custody. And the impulse behind each approach turns out to

be a racist one. In an earlier study, looking at arrests from 1999 to 2001,

Beckett drew a sharp conclusion: “the focus on crack,” like the

overrepresentation of people of color among those arrested, “reflect[s] a

racialized conception of ‘the drug problem.’” The obsession with “the drug most

strongly associated with ‘blackness’ suggests that law enforcement policies and

practices are predicated on the assumption that the drug problem is, in fact, a

black and Latino one, and that crack, the drug most strongly associated with

urban blacks, is ‘the worst.’”[553] A kind of double profiling takes place. By

virtue of their association, the drug is racialized and Blacks are

criminalized.

Stop and Frisk: Racial Profiling on Trial

On April 20, 2007, as David Floyd was walking home, three New York police

officers approached and asked, “Excuse me, may I speak with you?” Floyd

stopped, and the officers demanded to see his ID. He gave it to them, and then,

though he explicitly told them he did not consent to a search, they patted him

down and looked in his pockets. Finding nothing of interest, they gave him back

his driver’s license, warned him to get it updated, and left.[554] On the

spectrum of police encounters, this incident hardly registers. It was

completely banal, entirely routine, the sort of thing that happens all of the

time—which is precisely the point.

Between January 2004 and July 2012, the New York City police made 4.4 million

stops just like David Floyd’s. In 52 percent of those stops, they frisked the

subject; 8 percent of those 2.3 million searches were more extensive—opening

jackets, looking in pockets. Eighty-six percent of searches, like Floyd’s,

produced no contraband. Also like David Floyd, 52 percent of the people stopped

were Black.[555]

That’s more than twice the African American portion of the local population (23

percent). Altogether, 90 percent of those stopped were people of color.

(Hispanics, at 31 percent, were the second-largest group; New York City’s

population is 29 percent Hispanic.) Weapons—which are nominally the point of

this exercise—were discovered in just 1.5 percent of searches. And as we’ve

seen elsewhere, they were more often found on Whites: 1.4 percent of Whites had

weapons, while 1.1 percent of Hispanics and 1 percent of Blacks did. Whites

were more likely to be carrying drugs or other contraband as well: 2.3 percent,

compared to 1.8 percent of Blacks and 1.7 percent of Hispanics. On the other

hand, police report using force more often against people of color: in 24

percent of Hispanic stops, 23 percent of Black stops, and 17 percent of White

stops. Put differently, Blacks were 30 percent more likely than Whites to have

force used against them, and Hispanics were 9 percent more likely.[556]

Six percent of these stops led to arrest, and another 6 percent led to

citations.[557] The arrest and citation rates were actually 8 percent

<em>lower</em> for Blacks than for Whites (and lower still in majority-Black

neighborhoods), suggesting (as a court later found) “that blacks are likely

targeted for stops based on a lesser degree of objectively founded suspicion

than whites.”[558] However, when accused of the same offenses, Blacks were 30

percent more likely than Whites to be arrested rather than cited.[559] The most

common charges were public consumption of alcohol and disorderly conduct (both

violations, the legal equivalent of a parking ticket), and 42 percent of the

citations were later dismissed.[560]

The most common cause for arrest was possession of marijuana, which is

troubling for separate reasons: Marijuana has been decriminalized in New York;

simple possession is treated as a violation unless it is in public view. In

many of these cases, the “public view” only occurred because of the search.

Police order a suspect to empty his pockets, the joint that was in his jacket

is now in his hand, and a violation-level charge becomes a misdemeanor. The

search, in other words, literally produces the crime.[561]

David Floyd, along with eleven other people—all Blacks and Hispanics—sued. They

argued that in nineteen separate incidents they had been unfairly targeted

because of their race and searched without any legal justification, thus

violating their rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S.

Constitution.[562]

In the spring of 2013, over the course of a nine-week trial, the City of New

York and the New York Police Department tried to defend their “stop and frisk”

policy. They argued that the focus on Blacks and Hispanics was justified

because “blacks and Hispanics account for a disproportionate share of … crime

perpetrators.”[563] One of the City’s expert witnesses testified:

Obviously, if particular racial or ethnic groups in New York participate in

crime at a rate disproportionate to their share of the population, we would

expect officers to conduct … stops for such groups at rates higher than each

group’s respective share of the City’s population.[564]

The judge, Shira Scheindlin, was unsparing in her assessment of the City’s

case:

The City and its highest officials believe that blacks and Hispanics should be

stopped at the same rate as their proportion of the local criminal suspect

population. But this reasoning is flawed because the stopped population is

overwhelmingly innocent—not criminal.… [T]here is no basis for assuming that

the racial distribution of stopped pedestrians will resemble the racial

distribution of the local criminal population <em>if the people stopped are not

criminals</em>.…

If the police are stopping people in a race-neutral way, the racial composition

of the innocent people stopped should more or less mirror the racial

composition of the areas where they are stopped, all things being equal.[565]

She goes on to argue that even if one demographic group or another is more

involved with criminal activity, it in no way follows that **innocent**

people from the same group are more likely to behave suspiciously, giving

police grounds to stop them. The use of race as a proxy, it seems, has been

substituted for the legal standard of reasonable suspicion and led the police

to search for suspects “from the pool of **non**-criminals **not**

exhibiting suspicious behavior”[566]—which is, very nearly, the definition of

racial profiling. As Judge Scheindlin explains, “To say that black people in

general are somehow more suspicious-looking, or criminal in appearance, than

white people is not a race-neutral explanation for racial disparities in NYPD

stops: it is itself a **racially biased explanation.**” In other words,

“Rather than a defense **against** the charge of racial profiling, … this

reasoning is a defense **of** racial profiling.”[567]

Judge Scheindlin ruled that nine of the nineteen stops discussed in court were

unconstitutional and, of the remaining ten, five involved unconstitutional

searches.[568] Moreover, she found that, at an absolute minimum, the police had

engaged in 200,000 stops that fail the test of constitutionality.[569] She

blamed police leaders for their “deliberate indifference” to the rights of

minorities, noted the pressure they put on their subordinates to aggressively

stop and search people of color, and pointed to shortcomings in record-keeping,

supervision, training, and discipline.[570] She did not, however, order an end

to the stop-and-frisk **per se**, but only prescribed policy reforms and

increased monitoring to change how it is done.[571] Such half-measures may

reduce the scale of the practice, but they will not stop the police from

viewing people of color with suspicion, arbitrarily stopping them, rifling

through their pockets, arresting them—and worse.

Consequences of Profiling

On February 4, 1999, a twenty-two-year-old West African immigrant named Amadou

Diallo was killed by New York City police officers while standing in front of

his own home. Four cops—Sean Carrol, Edward McMellon, Kenneth Boss, and Richard

Murphy—fired a total of forty-one shots. Nineteen hit him. Diallo was unarmed,

and had committed no crime.[572] He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong

time, and Black.

Stephen Worth, a lawyer for the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association, explained

the shooting: “He is acting strange, he fits the rapist’s description in a

generic way.… The reason they are shooting him is they think he has a gun.”[573]

Worth refused to elaborate on Diallo’s “strange” behavior, the “description” he

matched, or why the police would think he was armed. But witnesses later helped

to fit the shooting into a broader pattern; they told the <em>Village

Voice</em> that earlier in the evening the same officers—members of the elite

Street Crimes Unit—were stopping and searching numerous Black men, seemingly at

random. Such behavior fit the unit’s established **modus operandi**. In

1997 and 1998 the Street Crimes Unit stopped and searched 45,000 men, mostly

Blacks and Latinos; it made 9,000 arrests.[574]

Amadou Diallo was not a criminal. He was not, in any real sense, a suspect. He

matched a “generic” description. He fit the profile. He was a young Black man,

and that was enough. He became, quite literally, a target. The police gunned

him down as he stood in his doorway. They fired forty-one shots.

Diallo’s shooting represents only one cost of racial profiling—the losses

calculated in terms of bodies, bullet holes, scars, and stitches. But there

are other victims, other costs, counted in years, marked off in cell blocks,

ringed with razor wire.[575] Race-based policing contributes to the

overrepresentation of minorities (especially Black people) at every stage of

the criminal legal process. Statistics from mid-sized cities across the country

show startling disparities in the drug arrest rates for Whites and Blacks.

[[k-w-kristian-williams-our-enemies-in-blue-2.png][Figure B. Drug Arrests, 2006 (per 100,000 population)]][576]

If we look specifically at the rates for drug sales (excluding marijuana), the

gap is even more striking:

[[k-w-kristian-williams-our-enemies-in-blue-3.png][Figure C. Arrests for Drug Sales, 2006 (per 100,000 population)]][577]

Arrest leads to court, and court leads to prison, and the disparities continue at each

step.[578] According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, at the end of 2010

there were 2,226,832 people in jail or prison in the United States, another

4,887,900 on probation or parole—for a total of 7.1 million in some way under

the supervision of the correctional authorities. That means that 3 percent of

adults were under correctional supervision, including 1 in 48 on probation or

parole and 1 in 104 in jail or prison. Put differently: almost 1 percent of the

adult population is behind bars (962 per 100,000).[579] Of those, in 2010,

Blacks were 13 percent of the national population but 40 percent of the prison

population; Hispanics were 16 percent of the U.S. population and 19 percent in

prison; and Whites were 64 percent nationally, but only 39 percent

carcerally.[580] For every 100,000 Black women in the U.S., 260 were in prison;

for every 100,000 Latina women, 133; for White women, 91. More startling still,

for every 100,000 Black men, 4,347 were in prison; for Latino men, 1,775; for

White men, 678.[581] Doing the math, we see that Black women are almost three

times as likely to go to prison as White women (2.8): Latina women are almost

half again as likely (1.45). Black men are 6.4 times as likely to be imprisoned

as White men, and Hispanic men nearly three times as likely (2.6). By some

estimates, one in every three Black men will go to jail at some point in his

life.[582]

Taken together, the numbers on police stops, searches, arrests, and

incarceration, show a persistent bias in the criminal legal system, one neither

explained nor justified by any considerations related to crime. The evidence

absolutely contradicts the idea that racial profiling is useful in getting

drugs, or guns, or criminals, off the streets. If we insist on viewing the

police as crime-fighters, profiling can only be seen as a mistake, a persistent

disaster. But if we suspend or surrender this noble view of police work, and

look instead at the actual consequences of what the cops do, profiling does

make a certain kind of sense; it follows a sinister logic. Racial profiling is

not about crime at all; it’s about controlling people of color.

Racial profiling doesn’t only label certain groups as the objects of official

control, it also limits the mobility of people of color, and thus restricts

their access to resources and opportunities. Harris notes:

It may cause many people of color to plan their driving and travel routes in

certain ways, to take (or not take) particular jobs.… They may simply stay out

of places and neighborhoods where they will “stand out”—where police may feel

they don’t “belong”.… [And thus,] these tactics help to reinforce existing

segregation in housing and employment.[583]

Race-based policing, and especially the fear of Black criminality, has a more

subtle function as well—maintaining the ideological basis of White unity and

indirectly controlling the political allegiances of White people. While people

of color are the targets of racial profiling, there are actually two audiences.

Profiling serves to humiliate and threaten those who are targeted; even when it

does not lead to criminal sanctioning, it serves as a not-very-subtle reminder

of their “place.” And it helps to align White people with the power structure

by convincing them that the state protects them from purportedly criminal

people of color.[584]

In all these respects, police and prisons have replaced patrols and plantations

as the means by which White society maintains its dominance over Black

people.[585]

Racial Lines, National Borders

Of course the racial politics of policing are not simply Black and White. Over

the last two decades immigration, like crime, has increasingly served as a

coded proxy for race, a way of talking about it without saying it. Immigration

enforcement, then, has operated as an ostensibly color-blind means of

maintaining White supremacy, which has directed police attention toward those

groups with a sizeable proportion of immigrants—the Latino community most of

all.[586]

Until the mid-1990s immigration was treated as a strictly federal matter. Aside

from notifying the Immigration and Naturalization Service when taking foreign

nationals into custody, local and state police had little role to play in

enforcement. In the last two decades, and especially since the terrorist

attacks of September 11, 2001, local cops have increasingly been

enlisted—sometimes eagerly, sometimes over their objections—to enforce

immigration law.[587] The new police duties came as a result of several major

shifts occurring simultaneously, or in quick succession. Border enforcement has

been increasingly militarized, incorporating the use of helicopters and drones,

and sometimes involving marines and Army Special Forces.[588] At the same time

many immigration violations, which had previously been treated as

administrative or civil matters, have now been criminalized; and the remaining

administrative elements have become increasingly punitive.[589] Enforcement has

also come to focus more and more on the interior of the country, in cities and

farm towns far from the border.[590]

The implications for civil liberties have been serious, and bad: Because

immigration has historically been an administrative and civil (rather than

criminal) matter, it has weaker safeguards and suspects enjoy fewer rights. For

example, the courts have been more flexible in search and seizure requirements

and often allow illegally obtained evidence to be presented in deportation

hearings; Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has

thus been aggressive in testing the limits of the Fourth Amendment, a habit

that police will likely carry with them into criminal investigations as well.

Police may also take advantage of the lower standards and decide to treat

immigration enforcement as a cover for criminal investigations, using ICE

databases, civil warrants, and immigration holds for other purposes.[591]

Police involvement began in earnest in 2002, when Florida entered into an

agreement with the federal authorities under which local cops would be trained

and deputized as immigration officers. Such arrangements had been authorized by

the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, but

the provision, section 287(g), had never been used before. Soon others followed

suit—Alabama in 2003, six more jurisdictions over the next three years; by

2013, thirty-five agencies in eighteen states had some 287(g) agreement.[592]

At the same time, other federally-driven programs, such as the Criminal Alien

Program and Secure Communities, have greatly increased the flow of information

between agencies. When local police make an arrest, they now run the suspect’s

fingerprints, not only through federal criminal databases, but immigration

databases as well.[593] In the first year of the Secure Communities program’s

implementation in California, it resulted in 19,109 deportations, 25 percent of

which occurred without a conviction.[594]

All of that has meant a great deal more scrutiny on the Latino community,

including checkpoints, neighborhood sweeps, and workplace raids—as well as

armed vigilante patrols along the U.S./Mexico border.[595] Undoubtedly the man

who has personified the worst of these practices—or, as he would have it, the

“toughest”—is Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona. Arpaio, who has

served as sheriff since 1993, has always courted controversy and regularly

shrugged off concerns about constitutionality. He first came to national

notice when he erected an outdoor tent city to hold the county’s prisoners and

subjected them to a host of petty deprivations—no cigarettes, no coffee, no

movies, no pornography, no hot lunches, no salt. He instituted chain gangs

(even for juvenile offenders), dressed inmates in cartoonish black-and-white

striped uniforms, and outfitted everything in the men’s prisons—towels, sheets,

underwear, handcuffs—in Pepto-Bismol pink.[596] (Ostensibly the pink was to

deter theft, but Arpaio admits “there was the matter of embarrassing the

prisoners.”)[597] His jail guards, meanwhile, gained a reputation for strapping

inmates into restraint chairs and torturing them with tasers.[598]

Beginning in 2006, Sheriff Joe (as he likes to be called) turned his attention

to immigration. He started arresting immigrants as co-conspirators in human

trafficking. He led deputies, as well as his 3,000-strong volunteer posse, on

raids of workplaces looking for undocumented immigrants—including an

after-hours raid to arrest the cleaning staff at the Mesa City Hall. It’s

always **the staff**, too; in only three cases has he arrested their White

employers. And in the City Hall case, the workers turned out to be legal

residents. Sometimes his raids target entire towns, as when deputies besieged

the hamlet of Guadalupe with mounted patrols, a mobile command center, and

helicopter coverage for two days in 2008.[599]

A 2012 Justice Department investigation found that in Maricopa County “Latino

drivers were between four to nine times more likely to be stopped than

similarly situated non-Latino drivers,” with 20 percent of traffic stops

failing to meet the legal standard of reasonable suspicion. It represented, in

the estimation of one consultant, “the most egregious racial profiling in the

United States.”[600] The Justice Department also expressed concern about the

“pervasive culture of discriminatory bias” in the sheriff’s office, including

not just racial profiling, but racial slurs and racist jokes.[601]

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon was blunt in expressing his views on Arpaio:

The sheriff’s method is to profile people with brown skin and to ignore the

civil rights we should all be enjoying. It is unconstitutional and wrong.…

<em>Citizens</em> are being stopped because they are brown. Immigrants here

quite legally, carrying their paperwork, are detained.… These stories have

nothing to do with green cards. They have everything to do with brown skin.

They were about racism and nothing else.[602]

Of course, it’s not just Arpaio.[603] Police across Arizona search Blacks and

Latinos more than twice as often as Whites, and search Native Americans three

times as often. Likewise, in 2006, two thirds of the law enforcement agencies

in Texas reported searching the vehicles of Latino drivers at a higher rate

than those of Whites; more than a quarter searched Latinos at twice the rate of

Whites.[604] Racial profiling—blessed by the Supreme Court[605]—is an

inevitable result of proactive immigrant-hunting. As Nancy Morawetz and Alina

Das observed, writing for the Police Foundation:

Local officers will not be able to “observe” an immigration violation the way

they might observe a violation of criminal law. Under such circumstances, there

is a serious risk that the grounds for suspicion will in fact be nothing more

than a series of assumptions that begin with a profile about people who speak

another language or have a particular racial or ethnic profile.… Such tactics

may well be ingrained in certain federal immigration enforcement efforts.[606]

Raymond Dolourtch, a St. Louis attorney, describes a pattern he has seen in

recent cases: Police pull over Latino drivers, usually on some pretext. Since

undocumented immigrants cannot apply for a driver’s license, they will be

arrested for operating a vehicle without one. In jail, then, police will run

their prints and check their status—leading to criminal charges or

deportation.[607] In towns like Waukegan, Illinois and Rogers, Arkansas, police

set up checkpoints for the same purpose.[608] Obviously traffic safety is just

a pretext in these operations, a seemingly race-neutral rationale for rounding

up members of a target population. But then, some Rogers cops have dispensed

with the pretext altogether, asking people directly about their status without

making an arrest.[609] Likewise, in Irving, Texas, once the jail started

reporting to ICE, the police began arresting greater numbers of Hispanics for

low-level public order offenses.[610]

The Department of Homeland Security (which manages both Immigration and Customs

Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection) captured 517,000 foreign

nationals in 2010, 83 percent from Mexico. Of those half-million visitors,

363,000 were held in jail while waiting for a hearing.[611] That same year,

29,016 were charged with immigration violations in federal court (twelve times

the 1994 level, 2,453);[612] and immigration violations accounted for 12

percent of the federal prison population—approximately 260,000 people.[613]

Additionally, 387,000 immigrants were deported under a judicial order, and

another 476,000 were “returned” without a hearing.[614]

The result is that immigrants are increasingly isolated, fearful, and

powerless.[615] That is likely part of the point. As Christian Parenti argues,

American capitalism needs a steady supply of immigrant labor, but it needs it

<em>cheap</em>. By criminalizing the workers, the state helps to keep them

uncertain, uneasy, disorganized, and docile. The attack on immigrants,

therefore, is both “[p]olitically…an organic expression of nativist hostility

and a very useful, rational system of elite-inspired class control”—“the

primary product” of which “is … fear.”[616]

It is hardly surprising, then, that when immigrants amass to demand respect,

they are met with police violence. On May 1, 2006—International Workers

Day—tens of thousands of workers, mostly Latino, marched in cities across the

country, opposing a bill that would make it a felony to be in the country

without official authorization. In the process demonstrators also, not

incidentally, collectively withdrew their labor from the economy for the day.

Among other things, the protest was the most widespread agricultural strike in

California history.[617] And it worked: the criminalization bill was withdrawn.

When the demonstrations were over, though, repression began anew. Raids and

roundups followed, led by ICE but often supported by local police. Sometimes

they targeted factories, restaurants, or other workplaces, sometimes individual

homes, and sometimes entire neighborhoods. Over the next couple years,

approximately 900,000 people were deported, three times the previous

level.[618]

The following May, Los Angeles police, allegedly responding to rock-throwing

youths, attacked an immigrants rights demonstration. Helmeted cops pushed

through the crowd at MacArthur Park, firing 146 rubber bullets and beating

journalists and protestors alike. More than 250 people were injured, including

eighteen officers.[619] The police chief later apologized, and the city paid

out $13 million to settle lawsuits.[620] But it is hard not to feel that the

cops were offering a lesson in real-world civics, reminding the activists of

the limits to their rights and the risks of resistance.

White and Wealthy Criminals (an Aside)

Black people have been stereotyped as criminals, Latinos as “illegals.” And

activities associated with these groups have been increasingly criminalized as

a result—hyper-criminalized, in the case of crack cocaine.

What about the crimes of rich white people? Rather than producing profiles and

leading to concentrated enforcement, these offenses are downplayed,

legitimized, treated leniently, or even decriminalized.[621] Thus, the

possession of powder cocaine elicits a fraction of the penalty for possessing

crack—literally: mandatory sentences for yuppie-style coke are 1/18 those for

the ghetto brand.[622]

Or consider drunk driving: In the mid-80s, at about the same time legislators

were establishing draconian sentences for small amounts of crack cocaine, they

were also setting minimum sentences for driving under the influence. The

juxtaposition is revealing. At the time, drunk driving killed about 22,000

people each year, which was more than **all** other drug-related deaths

<em>combined</em>. But while crack was tagged with a five year minimum

sentence, the penalty for drunk driving was typically two days for a first

offense, up to ten days for a second. The difference is that, while 93 percent

of those convicted of possessing crack are Black, 78 percent of those arrested

for drunk driving were White men.[623]

And let’s not forget the enormous range of corporate crimes that are

essentially handled as violations of administrative rules or as civil matters

rather than as criminal conspiracies.[624] As journalist Matt Taibbi recalls in

his book **The Divide**:

It’s become cliché by now, but since 2008, no high-ranking executive from any

financial institution has gone to jail, not one, for any of the systemic crimes

that wiped out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. Even now, after JP Morgan

Chase agreed to a settlement north of $13 billion for a variety of offenses.…

the basic principle held true: nobody went to jail. Not one person.[625]

Taibbi helpfully contrasts white-collar corporate fraud—the kind that produced

a global financial crisis—with a paradigmatic poverty crime, welfare fraud. On

the one hand, he finds, “Twenty-six billion dollars of fraud: no charges”; on

the other, the San Diego County District Attorney’s office conducts 26,000

warrantless, preemptive searches every year to make sure that welfare

recipients really are exactly as poor as the poverty bureaucracy demands that

they be.[626] The operative principle of American justice, he concludes, is

that “rights aren’t absolute but are enjoyed on a kind of sliding scale.”[627]

At the bottom of that scale, “it is literally a crime to be poor,” while at the

top, rich people “literally cannot be prosecuted.”[628]

This double-standard follows the same pattern as nineteenth-century public

order arrests, and may be presumed to fulfill a similar function.[629] It’s not

about justice. It isn’t even really about money. What it’s about, as Taibbi

puts it, is this: “It’s about fucking with people.”[630] Specifically, it’s

about which kinds of people get fucked with.

Secret Societies, Public Terror

Laws have been passed, and interpreted, and enforced in ways designed to

maximize the control White people exercise over people of color. But they have

also been broken, and ignored, and under-enforced with the same aim in mind.

When the demands of White supremacy and the requirements of the law have

conflicted, the maintenance of White supremacy has almost always appeared

higher on the police agenda. Police illegality and complicity in White terror

continue in an unbroken sequence from Reconstruction to today.

In the early twentieth century, police re-established their ties to the newly

revived Klan. During the 1920s, Klansmen were enlisted to aid the authorities

in their fight against the evils of alcohol and Communism. In 1930, John G.

Murphy, a member of the Alabama Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, testified before

the House Special Committee to Investigate Communist Activities (also called

the Fish Committee) that the Klan helped the Birmingham police and the FBI keep

track of Communists by following Communist Party organizers, identifying people

at their meetings, and so on.[631] In other places, whole Klaverns were

deputized for Prohibition raids, and many cops signed up in the “Invisible

Empire.”[632]

The extent of joint membership was often startling. In 1922, when Los Angeles

District Attorney Thomas Lee Woolwine raided the area Klan headquarters and

seized their records, he discovered that Los Angeles Chief of Police Louis D.

Oaks, Sheriff William I. Trager, and U.S. Attorney Joseph Burke were all

connected to the Klan. The police chief and police judge in nearby Bakersfield

were both members, as were seven Fresno officers, twenty-five cops in San

Francisco, and about a tenth of the public officials and police in the rest of

California’s cities.[633]

Further north, in Portland, Oregon, the connection between the police and the

Klan was public knowledge. In 1923, the **Portland Telegram** reported

that the police bureau was “full to the brink with Klansmen.” At times, this

relationship was officially sanctioned, as when the police bureau deputized one

hundred Klansmen specially selected by Grand Dragon Fred Gifford, designating

them “Portland Police Vigilantes.” Of course, Klan membership was not limited

to policemen. The Portland-based Klan No. 1 boasted 15,000 members, and on

March 3, 1923, it hosted a banquet featuring Governor Walter Pierce and Mayor

George L. Baker.[634]

When the Klan was at the peak of its power in Colorado, it counted among its

members many prominent businessmen, state representatives and senators, the

Colorado secretary of state, four judges, two federal narcotics agents, and

scores of police. In Denver, the mayor, city attorney, manager of public

safety, two deputy sheriffs, the chief of police, and a police inspector were

all Klan members.[635] Former mayor George D. Begole claimed that the Klan

controlled the civil service commission, fire department, and police.[636]

During the 1930s, about 100 Michigan cops—including the chief of police in

Pontiac—joined either the Klan or its successor organization, the Black Legion.

The Black Legion, in addition to attacking racial minorities, embarked on a

deliberate campaign targeting the left; they beat and sometimes murdered

suspected radicals, bombed their offices, and burned their homes.[637]

In his memoirs, Atlanta Police Chief Herbert Jenkins described the Klan’s

influence in Southern police departments:

In the thirties in Atlanta and throughout the South it was helpful to join the

Ku Klux Klan to be an accepted member of the force. This was your ID card, the

badge of honor with the in group, and it was unfortunately often an allegiance

stronger than the policeman’s oath to society.

Not every member of the Atlanta force belonged to the Klan but those who did

not had very little authority or influence. The Klan was powerful in that it

worked behind the scenes with certain members of the Police Committee and the

City Council. A well-liked and respected member of the department who was not a

Klan member could still get promoted through the ranks if supported by the

Klan. But as he owed his rank to the Klan he could never defy them for fear of

his job—and his life. The Klan was like a kind of Mafia in dirty sheets.[638]

Also during the early part of the twentieth century, the police again played a

significant role in the nation’s numerous race riots. Starting the century out

badly, on August 15, 1900, a fight between Black residents and New York City

police escalated into a riot, with Irish mobs in the streets attacking Black

passers-by. Police refused to protect Black citizens, and in many cases joined

in on the attacks. Despite considerable evidence, the police commissioners

refused to discipline their officers, noting that Black witnesses “displayed a

strong and bitter feeling while under examination.”[639]

The police took a more active role in the Detroit riot of 1943. The disorder

began on June 20, with a short-lived skirmish between Black and White patrons

at the Belle Isle amusement park. More of a brawl than a riot (really, more of

a fight than a brawl), the initial conflict was over nearly as soon as it

began. The police interposed, arresting several Black people and sending the

rest away. But a rumor spread that a Black man had raped a White woman during

the encounter, and soon White mobs were attacking Black patrons at the Roxy

Theater. The disorder spread throughout the (White) Woodward neighborhood, and

crowds beat, stabbed, and shot Black people, and stoned their cars. Around the

same time, a rumor spread through the Black neighborhoods of Hastings and Adams

that White sailors had thrown a Black woman and her baby into a lake. Black

people began attacking Whites in the area and breaking the windows in

White-owned businesses.[640]

The police attacked Black crowds with clubs and, where looting was most

prevalent, shot at anyone inside the stores. Black bystanders were ordered to

“run and not look back;” many were shot as they did. Police also used

hit-and-run tactics against small groups of Black people quite removed from the

riot area: they would pull up in a squad car near a group of Black people;

several officers would then jump out, beat them, get back in the car, and drive

away.[641] That night, a cop was shot in a vacant lot near Vernor Highway; he

returned fire and the assailant was killed. Nevertheless, the police retaliated

against the entire neighborhood. They laid siege to an apartment building at

290 East Vernor, shining searchlights on the building and firing into it with

revolvers, rifles, and machine guns. They eventually forced the residents out

with tear gas and beat them as they fled. Then the apartments were ransacked,

doors kicked in, locks broken, furniture overturned. Money, jewelry, and liquor

were stolen.[642]

In an article titled “The Gestapo in Detroit,” NAACP attorney and later Supreme

Court Justice Thurgood Marshall reported, “They used ‘persuasion’ rather than

firm action with white rioters, while against Negroes they used the ultimate in

force: night sticks, revolvers, riot guns, sub-machine guns, and deer

guns.”[643] He concluded:

This record of the Detroit police demonstrates once more what all Negroes know

only too well: that nearly all police departments limit their conception of

checking racial disorders to surrounding, arresting, maltreating, and shooting

Negroes. Little attempt is made to check the activities of whites.[644]

Of the thirty-four people killed, twenty-five were Black and nine were White;

the police killed seventeen Black people and none who were White.[645] Judge

George Edwards of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit,

described the riot as “open warfare between the Detroit Negroes and the Detroit

Police Department.”[646]

Birmingham: Bull Connor and the Law

Shortly after World War II, resistance to White supremacy began to accumulate a

critical mass. Nearly a century after the Civil War, Black people had had

enough—more than enough—of empty promises and the thin simulacrum of freedom

that had been their lot since the end of slavery. Tired of being excluded and

exploited, sick of segregation and second-class citizenship, they determined

to—as James Forman put it—either “sit at the table,” or “knock the fuckin’ legs

off” of it.[647] First in the South, but soon throughout the country, Black

people were demanding their due of White society. And White people, as usual,

were serious about not giving it to them.

The police occupied their traditional place, standing firmly in the way of

African Americans’ efforts to win their rights. The situation demanded nothing

new of the police, though in times of crisis their function may have been a bit

clearer than usual, as the rhetoric of legal impartiality slipped further and

further away from them. Birmingham’s police chief, Bull Connor, put it

plainly: “We don’t give a damn about the law. Down here we make our own

law.”[648] It was a startling admission, but undoubtedly true.[649]

In 1963, Birmingham became the shame of the nation when television footage

showed demonstrators with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference being

beaten by Connor’s officers, attacked with police dogs, and sprayed with fire

hoses. Reverend Fred Shuttleworth had to be taken away in an ambulance. Connor

expressed his disappointment: “It should have been a hearse.”[650] Connor’s

disdain for Shuttleworth had a long history. In 1958, when the reverend’s home

had been bombed, Connor publicly accused Shuttleworth of doing it himself. The

accusation, made without evidence, came in the midst of a bombing campaign

commonly known to be the work of the Klan. Black homes and Jewish synagogues

were attacked so often that one part of the city was nicknamed “Dynamite Hill.”

The fire department (which was also under Connor’s control) generally let the

buildings burn down entirely, and the police made no serious efforts to

investigate the attacks.[651] Connor preferred to blame civil rights workers

for stirring up trouble.

Connor expressed special animosity for “out-of-town meddlers” like the Freedom

Riders—Black and White people traveling together to desegregate interstate bus

lines.[652] In 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Freedom Rides came

through Birmingham. Connor had the Riders arrested, drove them to the Tennessee

line, and left them stranded on the highway.[653] When they returned, on

Mother’s Day 1961, they were beaten by a group of Klansmen while Connor watched

from a nearby office building.[654]

As we shall see, the Mother’s Day incident illustrates not only the extent to

which the police shared the aims of organized racist groups (perhaps I should

say, **other** organized racist groups), but also actively cooperated with

them. This connection was not incidental. Nor was it an isolated occurrence. To

understand something of its depth, we should turn briefly to examine the career

of Gary Rowe.

The Strange Career of Gary Rowe

Gary Rowe was an FBI infiltrator in the Ku Klux Klan, working in that capacity

from 1959 to 1965.[655] Though not personally sympathetic to the Klan, he had,

by his own admission, “beaten people severely, had boarded buses and kicked

people, had [gone] into restaurants and beaten them with blackjacks, chains,

pistols.”[656] All this he did while on the FBI payroll. Rowe reported,

sometimes in advance, about attacks on Black people at a county fair, at

sit-ins, and on Freedom Rides—including advanced warning about the Mother’s Day

attack of 1961. When he asked why nothing was done to stop the assault, his FBI

handler told him, “Who the hell are we going to report to?… The police

department helped set [it] up.”[657]

And indeed they had. In April 1961, Detective Sergeant Tom Cook, the commander

of the Birmingham Police Department red squad, provided the Klan with a list of

civil rights groups, the locations of their meetings, and the names of their

members; he went on to offer them full access to the red squad’s files. As it

happened, the man Cook passed the information to was Gary Rowe. Ironically,

Cook told Rowe that the Eastview Klavern had been infiltrated by the feds, and

promised to help them learn the identity of the snitch.[658] (Further irony:

Rowe was actually a triple agent, assigned by the Klan to attend civil rights

meetings and report back. He also gave these reports to the FBI.)[659]

Together, Cook and Rowe organized a series of meetings between Birmingham Klan

leader Hubert Pape, Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton, Bull Connor, and

themselves. At these meetings, they planned a response to the Freedom Rides.

The Klan would meet the bus at the terminal, and the police would wait at least

fifteen minutes before arriving. Connor recommended beating and stripping any

Black people who entered the restroom. “[Make] them look like a bulldog got

hold of them,” he said. Cook added: “I don’t give a damn if you beat them,

bomb them, murder or kill them. I don’t give a shit. I don’t want them in

Alabama when you’re through with them.”[660]

The plan was executed as agreed. By the time the police showed up, the Freedom

Riders had been beaten with iron bars, and most of the Klansmen had gone. Those

remaining were sent away rather than arrested.[661]

Rowe had informed the FBI of the plan, and the FBI dutifully put it in their

files while allowing the Klan to move ahead. Rowe’s handler claimed that there

was nothing they could do, because of the involvement of the local police. But

the FBI had played a further role in the Mother’s Day attack: government

documents released during a 1978 lawsuit revealed that the FBI had provided the

Birmingham police with the details of the Freedom Riders’ plan, knowing that

the information would reach the Ku Klux Klan.[662] Thus the Birmingham police

provided a conduit for information to pass between the FBI and the KKK, while

maintaining the federal government’s shield of plausible deniability. And Rowe,

by monitoring Klan activity and reporting to the feds, served to confirm that

the information they provided reached its intended audience.

The FBI finally used Rowe against the Klan in 1965, after the murder of Viola

Liuzzo. Rowe and three others shot Liuzzo as she drove demonstrators back to

Selma after a march to Montgomery.[663] Leroy Moton, who was traveling with

Liuzzo, described the shooting:

I looked at my watch. It was like eight o’clock, and I reached over for the

radio and that’s when I felt this glass and everything hit me in the face, and

the car goin’ off the road. Mrs. Liuzzo, last thing she said was, “I was just

thinkin’ of this song, ‘Before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave.’”

By the time she got “grave” out, that’s when she was shot. That’s when the

glass started hittin’ me in the face. We ran into an embankment, a ditch, came

out of it, and ran into a fence. And I reached over and called her, shook her.

She didn’t say anything. That’s when I turned the motor off and the lights.

This other car came back, stopped, and I looked over my left shoulder and I

seen it, and I saw the door open and I passed out for about a half hour. I

understand they thought I was dead, too. Because the blood was on my face from

the glass hittin’ me. They figured I was dead. Only the good Lord saved

me.[664]

The FBI had seventy agents in the area at the time of the attack, but made no

move to prevent the violence.[665] Worse, the police may have had a role in

marking Liuzzo as a target: at a press conference after the murder, a Klan

spokesman cited details of her life drawn from the files of the Detroit Police

Department’s Special Investigations Bureau.[666]

The Klansmen were eventually arrested for murder, and acquitted. The Justice

Department then prosecuted them for civil rights violations. Based on Rowe’s

testimony, they were convicted and sentenced to the maximum of ten years.[667]

A Senate Committee later summed up his career:

Rowe provided the FBI with a great deal of information on planned and actual

violence by the Klan throughout his years as an informant.… Only rarely,

however, did Rowe’s information lead to the prevention of violence or arrests

of Klan members. There were several reasons for this, including the difficulty

of relying on local police to enforce the law against the Klan in the early

1960s, the failure of the Federal Government to initially mobilize its own

resources, and the role of the FBI as an investigative rather than police

organization.[668]

The “investigative” rather than “police” mission of the FBI was a political

fiction popular at the time, providing a technical excuse for federal inaction.

Actually, Section 3052, Title 18 of the U.S. Administrative Code empowered the

FBI to make arrests without warrants “for any offense against the United States

committed in their presence.”[669] The availability of federal marshals for law

enforcement purposes also remained conveniently forgotten.[670] Whatever Rowe’s

own intentions, the inaction of his superiors was certainly culpable, and their

explanations disingenuous.

Mississippi: “Underneath Her Borders the Devil Draws No Line”[671]

Even where White violence was at its most extreme, even where Black people were

most oppressed, the federal government was loath to act. Its position, for most

of a century, had been that Black people were on their own; or, put

differently, that local officials were free to treat them in whatever way they

saw fit. When the federal government **was** moved to act, it was usually

because some particular atrocity created a national uproar. One such event was

the 1964 disappearance of three civil rights workers in the Mississippi back

country.

On June 21, 1964, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman traveled

to Philadelphia, Mississippi, to investigate a fire at a Black church. They

never returned. That was just one of many instances of violence and

intimidation visited upon the participants of the Mississippi Summer Project

organized by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition

including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), CORE, the

National Council of Churches, and the NAACP.

The violence used against civil rights workers was audacious and severe. But

more staggering was the violence against the Black community at large. Chaney,

Goodman, and Schwerner weren’t the only three men to disappear in Mississippi

that summer. They’re just the three who made headlines; they’re just the three

we remember. When White people disappeared, people noticed. And Schwerner and

Goodman were White. When Black people disappeared, who cared? Who took notice?

Black folks could vanish—Black folks could **hang**—without stirring even

a mutter from the nation’s newspapers, without so much as a report from the

FBI.[672]

Dave Dennis, a field secretary for CORE, draws out the point:

During the time they were looking for the bodies of Chaney, Schwerner, and

Goodman, they found other bodies throughout the state. They found torsos in

the Mississippi River, they found people who were burned, they even found a few

bodies of people on the side of the roads. As soon as it was determined that

these bodies were not the three missing workers, or one of the three, these

deaths were forgotten. That’s what we were talking about in terms of what the

Freedom Summer was all about, in terms of why it was necessary to bring that

attention there. Because people forget, and if it had just been blacks there,

they would have forgotten again. It would just have been three black people

missing.[673]

Following the disappearances, COFO collected 257 affidavits for use in a

lawsuit against Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey, among others.

Fifty-seven of these were selected as typical and printed as the

<em>Mississippi Black Paper</em>.[674] The lawsuit, <em>Council of Federated

Organizations et al. v. L.A. Rainey et al.</em>, was filed on July 19, 1964. It

alleged:

Murders, bombings, burnings, beatings, terrorization and intimidation continue

throughout the state at a steadily increasing tempo without any attempts by

state or local authorities to prevent them. In many instances, the police

themselves were—and are—directly involved or [have] tacitly or openly

encouraged—and encourage—the form of brutalization being employed.

As documentation, COFO provided:

Approximately 90 affidavits as to illegal acts of Mississippi law enforcement

officers against civil rights workers and the Negro citizens of Mississippi,

including physical violence, intimidation, harassments, unprovoked arrests, and

prolonged unjustified incarceration which are daily continuing.…

Approximately 35 affidavits as to the failure of Mississippi law enforcement

officers to take any or adequate steps to safeguard civil rights workers and

Negro citizens against physical violence and property destruction although

fully warned in advance of the possibility of their occurrence, all of which is

daily continuing.…

Approximately 35 affidavits as to the failure of the law enforcement officers

of Mississippi to prosecute known perpetrators of violence, destruction and

terrorism against the persons and property of civil rights workers and Negro

citizens, all of which is daily continuing.[675]

The **Black Paper** makes for disturbing reading. At times, it is

distinctly reminiscent of the statements former slaves made about the patrols.

One young woman testifies:

On February 6, 1962, when I was 19, I was walking with a young man down a

Clarksdale street when Clarksdale police officers _________ and _________

stopped us and accused me of having been involved in a theft. I was taken to

jail by the officers and they forced me to unclothe and lie on my back. One of

the officers beat me between my legs with a belt. A few minutes later, the

other officer began to beat me across my naked breasts.[676]

The range of abuses described is astonishing, sometimes within even a single

deposition. Douglas MacArthur Cotton, for example, tells of being followed by

the McComb police as he canvassed for a mock election: “Police followed me

wherever I went, stood beside me on the front porch of people, photographing

them and taking their names while I was talking to them.” More terrifying, he

also attests to the abuse of prisoners: “On approximately July 20, Willie

Carnell was hung by his hands to the cell bars for 30 hours. Guards accused him

of ‘singing.’”[677] These documents help to situate Goodman, Schwerner, and

Chaney’s disappearance—their murder—within a broader pattern of ongoing

violence.

In her deposition Rita Schwerner, the wife of one of the missing men, tells of

the numerous threats they received, and the constant harassment by police

officers. She remembers one occasion, when her husband went to bail out

picketers who had been arrested. The desk sergeant told him: “If you get any

more of these damn kids arrested, Schwerner, I’m going to get you, and that’s a

promise.”[678] Such threats were not made, or taken, lightly. Someone did “get”

Michael Schwerner. And Andrew Goodman. And James Chaney.

After a long investigation, the FBI found an informant who was willing to talk.

He led them to an earthen dam where the three men were buried and told

investigators what happened on the night they disappeared: Deputy Cecil Price

arrested Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney. He released them in the middle of the

night, and then pulled them over again. This time, Price put them in his car

and drove them to a deserted area, where Klansmen shot and killed them.[679]

Nineteen men were charged with conspiracy to deprive the activists of their

civil rights. Among them were Sheriff Rainey, Deputy Price, and a Philadelphia,

Mississippi, police officer.[680] As Seth Cagin and Philip Dray observe in

<em>We Are Not Afraid,</em> their history of the case:

The participation of a law officer was evidently considered vital to the

conspiracy. Not only would the civil rights workers be more likely to stop for

a marked police car, southern lynch mobs had traditionally had their victims

handed over to them by the police, a convenience that lent the proceeding a

shade of social legitimacy.[681]

In October 1967, a jury of White Mississippians convicted Price and six

Klansmen. Price was sentenced to six years, and served four.[682]

Rainey, who was not part of the original conspiracy but aided in the cover-up,

was acquitted. However, he was removed from his position as sheriff, and never

regained the office.[683] Though Rainey remained free and racist violence

continued, the trial ended a terrible reign in Neshoba County. During his time

in law enforcement, Rainey—who voiced open support for the Klan[684]—had been

involved in a great many beatings, arbitrary arrests, and incidents of

harassment directed against Black people and civil rights workers. He had also

been a party to at least two suspicious shootings, in addition to those of

Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman. In one case, he had—gun drawn—approached a

Black couple sitting in a parked car, and ordered them out. When the man

complied, Rainey shot and killed him. That was in October, 1959; Rainey had

been a Philadelphia, Mississippi, police officer. Shortly thereafter he became

a Neshoba County sheriff’s deputy, and was party to a second shooting. He and

Sheriff Hop Barnett were transporting a handcuffed Black man to the state

mental hospital when, they say, he reached for one of their guns. Barnett shot

him, fatally.[685]

In 2014, fifty years after their murders, President Barack Obama posthumously

awarded James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner the presidential

Medal of Freedom, the highest non-military honor presented by our government.

“[W]hile they are often remembered for how they died,” the President intoned,

“we honor them today for how they lived—with the idealism and the courage of

youth.”[686] It is true that their sacrifice cannot be understood apart from

their idealism and their courage; yet it also cannot be separated from the

injustice they were fighting, a system of oppression animated by personal

hatred and enforced with violence. The fact remains that three good men lay in

their graves, needlessly, and others—unnamed, uncounted—were left to rot in

riverbeds, ditches, and swamps. There would be more after them. A torch had

been passed, Barnett to Rainey, Rainey to Price—just as, a century before,

other torches were passed, from slave patrol to police, from slave patrol to

Klan.

Selma, Alabama: Bloody Sunday

As the civil rights movement advanced, violence continued—with police in the

vanguard and the Klan in the wings. Birmingham was, unfortunately, only the

most notorious example. Throughout the South, cops followed Bull Connor’s

example.

Albert Turner described a march in Marion, Alabama, near Selma:

As we went out of the church to begin the actual march—we got about half a

block from the door—the sheriff and several troopers halted us. We were told

that we was an unlawful assembly and that we had to disband the demonstration

and go back to the church. We had planned already to have a prayer at that

point. We had Reverend [James] Dobynes who got down to pray. And they took

Reverend Dobynes, who was on his knees immediately behind me, and they just

started beating him right there on the ground. That was probably the viciousest

thing I have ever seen. They beat him, and they took him by his heels and drug

him to jail. At that point, they had state troopers all over the city, and

plainclothes people, a lot of citizens really was involved. They beat black

people wherever they found them.[687]

One man, Jimmy Lee Jackson, was severely beaten by state troopers and then shot

at close range. He died as a result on February 26, 1965.[688]

Jackson’s death served to mobilize increasing numbers of people and inspired

civil rights groups to escalate their actions. A march was planned in response

to Jackson’s murder—from Selma to Montgomery, on Sunday, March 7. Governor

George Wallace prohibited the march, saying that it would be impossible to

protect the demonstrators. Ignoring or defying him, 600 people gathered in

Brown’s Chapel in Selma. As the crowd moved out of the church building and

through the town, they were attacked by state police under the command of John

Cloud, and by the deputies of Sheriff Jim Clark. The police used clubs, tear

gas, cattle prods, horses, and dogs. Seventeen people were hospitalized as a

result, including an eight-year-old child. Forty others were treated at Good

Samaritan Hospital and released.[689] March 7, 1965, became known as “Bloody

Sunday.”

The violence in Selma forced President Johnson’s hand on the civil rights

issue. On March 15, in a televised address to Congress, he announced that he

would introduce voter registration legislation, underscoring his intentions

with the movement’s slogan, “We shall overcome.”[690] Historian Howard Zinn

explains the change in policy: “Selma became a national scandal, and an

international embarrassment for the Johnson administration.”[691] But the

nation’s sheriffs were not embarrassed by the violence; even less were they

moved by Johnson’s speech. Barely a year after he led the attack at Selma, they

elected Sheriff Jim Clark to head their national association.[692]

Panthers and Police

The country’s sheriffs weren’t the only ones unimpressed by LBJ’s gesture.

While the White establishment was wringing its hands over integration, voter

registration, and the free speech rights of Black people, the civil rights

movement was transforming itself, redefining its goals to keep pace with its

successes, rethinking its tactics in light of its defeats. A new militancy

emerged. The sweet tune of “We shall overcome” gradually faded into the

background, replaced by the more forceful cries of “Black Power!”[693]

Emblematic of the new militancy, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense

appeared in Oakland in 1966. Formed by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the

Panthers offered a comprehensive ten-point program for addressing the

injustices facing the Black community.[694] In keeping with the principles of

their program, the Panthers provided free breakfasts for school children, ran

free medical clinics, gave away shoes and clothing, and, most famously,

organized armed patrols against police brutality.[695]

The Panthers’ politics were surely enough to raise the ire of White elites, and

the sight of Black people with guns created something of a panic among

government officials. The Panthers posed a challenge to White society and, in

the form of the patrols, to the police in particular. Of course some response

was expected, but the viciousness of the government attack was remarkable, even

by the standards of the time. Harassment, arrests, and violence were constant

threats.[696]

In 1969 alone, police raided Panther offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles

(twice), Chicago (three times), Denver, Sacramento, and San Diego. In nearly

every case, several Panthers were arrested. In at least two of the raids,

office equipment and food (for distribution in the community) were destroyed.

One Panther was killed in L.A., two in Chicago. By the end of the year, thirty

Panthers were charged with capital offenses, forty faced life imprisonment,

fifty-five faced sentences of up to thirty years, and another 155 were either

in jail or in hiding.[697]

Not all the attacks on Panthers involved raids, arrests, or gun battles. In

Los Angeles, cops pulled Panthers over on sight and often tore out their dash

boards, door panels, and upholstery when conducting searches. Many Party

members simply stopped driving as a result.[698] Furthermore, supporters with

Black Panther bumper stickers complained of routine police harassment. In 1969,

a professor at California State College decided to test their claims. He

assembled a group of fifteen student volunteers—five Black, five White, five

Mexican; three men and two women in each group—all with perfect driving

records. They affixed to their vehicles orange and black bumper stickers

featuring a picture of a panther and the words “Black Panthers.” Within two

hours one of the students had received a ticket for an “incorrect lane change.”

On the fourth day of the experiment, one student was forced to quit because he

had received three tickets and was in danger of losing his license. Three

others reached the three-ticket limit within a week. After seventeen days, the

$500 fund to pay for tickets hit zero, and the experiment officially ended. All

the participants removed the stickers from their cars. A total of thirty-three

citations had been issued, with no variation according to race, sex, style of

dress, or type of vehicle. Some of the cars were searched, and a White woman

was questioned at length about her reasons for supporting “criminal

activity.”[699]

Police tactics were not always so overt. Disinformation, the use of informants

to create rifts within the Party, and the promotion of violent rivalries

between the Black Panthers and similar organizations also hampered the

Panthers’ efforts. That was, of course, precisely the point. The Panthers

personified everything that White society most feared—Black people, armed and

smart, militant, radical, and organized. In attacks on the Panthers, the

racist undertones of police actions often came to the surface. In 1968, members

of a New York police organization, the Law Enforcement Group, packed a

courtroom where Panthers were being tried and beat Panther supporters with

blackjacks in the hallway outside.[700] They shouted slogans such as “Win with

Wallace!” and “White Power!”[701]

Greensboro: Death and the Klan

A decade later, on November 3, 1979, in Greensboro, North Carolina, Klansmen

and members of the American Nazi Party (acting together as the United Racist

Front) gunned down demonstrators assembled for a “Death to the Klan” rally

organized by the Communist Workers Party. Five labor leaders and community

organizers—Jim Waller, Sandi Smith, Bill Sampson, Cesar Cauce, and Mike

Nathan—were killed, and ten other people were wounded.[702] At the time of the

attack, the Greensboro Police Department tactical squad was, literally, out to

lunch, and routine patrols were mysteriously absent.[703] Afterward, while slow

to move against the Nazis, the police were quick to arrest eight anti-Klan

demonstrators, charging them with planning a riot.[704]

One of the Klansmen, Eddie Dawson, was a paid informant for the Greensboro

Police Department (and, previously, for the FBI). Dawson later stated that he

was “in charge” of the attack. He recruited the Klansmen and arranged the

meeting with the Nazis. But he had a great deal of assistance in planning the

massacre. The police supplied him with a copy of the parade permit, which noted

the starting place and route of the march. And an ATF agent, Bernard Butkovich,

had infiltrated the Nazi Party, urging them to join the Klan’s attack and

providing them with guns.[705]

Let me say that again clearly: an agent of the Greensboro Police Department

assembled this band of assassins, drew up the plan, and saw the mission through

to completion. Meanwhile, an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and

Firearms brought reinforcements and provided them weapons. And both agencies

stood aside while a bloodbath ensued.[706]

The killers were tried twice—first for murder, then for civil rights

violations. Both times they were acquitted by all-White juries, despite video

evidence provided by local television stations.[707] The district attorney

blithely suggested that most Greensboro residents “felt the communists got …

‘about what they deserved.’”[708] Finally, in 1985, a lawsuit awarded three

plaintiffs $390,000. The jury found three Nazis, two Klansmen, a police

informant, and two cops liable for the wrongful death of Michael Nathan,

but—strangely—insisted that there had been no conspiracy.[709]

Since the Seventies

While it’s uncommon these days to hear police chiefs publicly ranting like Bull

Connor (Joe Arpaio being the exception), and while police departments have

added increasing numbers of minorities to their ranks, the use of the police to

control people of color and guard White supremacy continues in a refined form.

Race-based tactics remain in prominent use, racist ideology still exercises a

strong pull on individual officers, and racist organizing within law

enforcement has entered a new phase.

Michael Novick of People Against Racist Terror documented more than fifty

incidents of police involvement in racist organizing between 1976 and 1994. His

chronology listed occurrences across the country and described the involvement

of police, prison guards, and federal agents in building racist organizations,

attacking minorities, and ignoring (or engaging in) Klan-style terrorism.[710]

To give just a brief sample, from Novick’s list and elsewhere: In 1978, the

Klan publicly revealed its penetration of police agencies in northern

Mississippi.[711] In 1980, the San Diego Police Department assigned a reserve

officer to infiltrate the Klan. Through him, the department provided funding,

equipment, and other assistance to a petition drive to place noted White

supremacist Tom Metzger on the ballot for Congress. In Chicago’s 1983 mayoral

race, members of “Police for Epton” sided with a White Republican against Black

candidate Harold Washington. Police decorated their uniforms with plain white

buttons, or buttons with a circle and slash around a picture of a watermelon.

The media also uncovered a plot to target Black neighborhoods for mass arrests

on the eve of the election; the idea was subsequently abandoned.[712]

A few years later, in 1987, Alex Young was fired from the Jefferson County,

Kentucky, police force after passing data from police files to the KKK. Young

had earlier founded the department’s chapter of Confederate Officers Patriot

Squad (COPS). He claimed to know at least twenty other Klansmen working as

police.[713] In 1988, former Youngstown, Pennsylvania, police chief David

Gardner was indicted for providing armed guards to protect a counterfeiting

operation run by the White supremacist group Posse Comitatus.[714] Two White

LAPD homicide detectives were reprimanded in 1989 for displaying the flag of

apartheid South Africa on their squad car.[715] Around the same time, two Black

cops complained that Nazi and Klan literature was being circulated in the

stationhouses. Soon thereafter, one of the whistle-blowers, Donald Jackson, was

attacked by Long Beach officers. They threw him through a plate-glass

window.[716]

In June 1991, Indianapolis police officer Wayne Sharpe shot and killed Edmund

Powell, a Black man suspected of shoplifting. Sharpe claimed Powell attacked

him with a nail-studded board, but witnesses said that Powell was lying on the

ground when Sharpe shot him. It was soon learned that Sharpe had killed a Black

burglary suspect ten years before and had briefly been involved with the

National Socialist White People’s Party. A jury awarded Powell’s family

$456,000, but Sharpe was never disciplined.[717]

That same year, a Klan group was found to be operating in the LAPD’s Foothill

Division—home of the officers who beat Rodney King. A few months later, as the

King case went to trial, the Klan organized rallies in Simi Valley with the

slogan “Support the Police.” Neither the Simi Valley police chief nor the

Ventura County sheriff ever repudiated this support, though they were called on

to do so by members of the local community. Also in the wake of the Rodney King

beating, police officers—especially Black officers—who agreed to testify before

the Christopher Commission found themselves ostracized and sometimes threatened

by their colleagues. One Black cop, Garland Hardeman, discovered a chalk

outline in front of his locker, marked to indicate two bullet wounds in the

head.[718] After testifying before the Commission, another officer found a

hangman’s noose tied to his telephone.[719]

More recently, in March 2003, FBI Special Agent Joseph Thompson acknowledged

ties between police, the Klan, and—probably the largest Nazi organization in

the country at the time—the National Alliance. When Chester James Doles, the

Georgia organizer for the National Alliance and a longtime Klan member, was

arrested on gun charges, Agent Thompson testified at his bail hearing: “Mr.

Doles has a support network including law enforcement.” Thompson explained that

the involvement of police “vastly increase[s] the capacity of the network”

because cops “can look the other way.”[720]

During the course of a 2003 lawsuit addressing police violence against anti-war

protestors, it came to light that one of the accused Portland police officers,

Mark Kruger, had been photographed (off-duty) dressed in an historical Nazi

uniform, complete with swastika. Further, he had built a shrine to five Nazi

soldiers, including a Waffen SS Obersturmfuhrer and the commander of a regiment

that massacred thousands of POWs.[721] Two of Kruger’s high school friends

later told the press that as teenagers the three of them liked to drive around

town listening to recordings of Hitler’s speeches, tagging buildings with Nazi

graffiti, and harassing people of color on the street.[722] Kruger is now a

captain in the Portland Police Bureau.[723]

In Florida, James Elkins was forced to resign from the Fruitland Park police in

2009, after the publication of photos showing him wearing a Klan robe over his

police uniform.[724] Elkins, who describes himself as “very much a National

Socialist” says that “My quote-unquote politically incorrect beliefs were no

secret,” and estimates that at least ten of the town’s dozen full-time officers

were sympathetic. Indeed, two years later, the new chief, Terry Isaacs, said

that he was “shocked” by the racist remarks he heard from his staff; he fired

nine of the town’s thirteen cops and the department secretary. And again, in

July 2014, a deputy chief and a police corporal were likewise fired for their

involvement in the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux

Klan.[725]

Perhaps most notably, in 2013, two L.A. County deputies filed suit alleging an

“inappropriate relationship” between jail guards and “various inmate gangs,

especially white supremacists.” The suit accuses Sheriff’s Department officials

of violating the constitutional rights of both prisoners and guards by (among

other things) using select inmates as “proxies” to enact violence, obstructing

a federal investigation into corruption and brutality, and retaliating against

whistleblowers. The plaintiffs complain of death threats, vandalism, and White

Power fliers being left at their homes. They put part of the blame on the

Vikings, a group of deputies once characterized by a federal judge as a

“neo-Nazi, white supremacist gang.”[726] The Vikings had been the subject of a

1991 class action lawsuit, which listed 130 abuses, mostly against Black or

Latino victims—among them: sixty-nine warrantless searches, thirty-one uses of

excessive force, and sixteen incidents described by attorney James Foster as

“outright torture, meaning interrogations with stun guns, beating victims into

unconsciousness, holding a gun in a victim’s mouth and pulling the trigger on

an empty chamber.”[727] The more recent suit names Lt. Greg Thompson and

Undersheriff Paul Tanaka as defendants. Both men were Vikings in the late

eighties and have the tattoos to prove it; Tanaka went on to become the second

most powerful officer in the department, overseeing the jails and answerable

only to the sheriff himself.[728]

A Storm in New Orleans

No single episode from the opening years of the twenty-first century has

symbolized the continued legacy of racism in American society, and the role of

the police within it, so well—or so terribly—as the events surrounding the

devastation of New Orleans, physical and then social, in the late summer of

2005.

On August 29, Hurricane Katrina, a storm of incredible force and apocalyptic

effect, reached the Louisiana coast. Soon thereafter, the levees protecting New

Orleans failed—the result of years of infrastructure neglect in the name of

fiscal conservatism[729]—and the city flooded. Eighty percent of New Orleans

was underwater.[730] The wind and the rain were only part of the disaster.

Indifference, incompetence, and racial hostility also had a role to play.

As the storm approached, the city was placed under a mandatory evacuation

order, but an order was all there was: no organized transport or other

meaningful assistance was forthcoming. Those who were too poor, too old, too

sick, or too disorganized to arrange their own exit were abandoned in a city

that essentially shut itself down, lacking commerce and basic government

services, and then, too, lacking clean water and electricity. Similarly

stranded were those people who felt themselves responsible for the care of

elders, invalids, or neighbors, and were unwilling to leave them to face the

storm alone. At least 1,580 people died as a result of Katrina, 70 percent of

them senior citizens.[731]

The truth of this situation was bad enough—people trapped in attics, homes

destroyed, bodies floating in the street—but the fearful imaginings of a racist

culture were far worse. Rumors spread, echoed and amplified by an over-eager

media, describing violence on a massive scale—senseless, vicious, and random.

Tales circulated about piles of corpses at the Superdome (where 20,000 people

sought shelter), widespread sexual assault, children with their throats slit,

snipers firing at rescue workers, hospitals being looted, gangs running amok.

Many of these stories were little more than grotesque stereotypes of Black

criminality—rapists, looters, and gangsters—dropped into a terrifying new

setting, a ruin of a city, a swamp overtaking civilization.[732] Police and

other officials both heard and propagated these stories. Mayor Ray Nagin

appeared on **Oprah**, speaking in ominous tones about “hundreds of gang

members” in the Superdome, “hooligans killing people, raping people,” while

Police Chief Eddie Compass broke down in tears, describing “little babies

getting raped.”[733]

In the end, nearly all the horror stories were shown to be, at the very least,

perverse exaggerations. Most were simply false. Between the Air Force, Coast

Guard, and Homeland Security, no one could authenticate reports of helicopters

taking sniper fire.[734] And the death toll at the Superdome was

<em>six</em>—one drug overdose, one suicide, and four from natural causes. No

children had their throats cut.[735]

Racist fables of Black savagery in an ungoverned city had direct and deadly

consequences. Two days into the disaster, on August 31, Mayor Nagin ordered

police to cease rescue operations and concentrate on ending looting—in effect,

announcing that private property was a higher priority than human life.[736]

Presumably he was unaware that some officers had been conscientiously

facilitating the looting of survival goods like food, water, and clothing, or

that others had opportunistically stolen jewelry and electronics, as well as

the entire inventory of a local Cadillac dealership (almost 200 cars). Some of

the vehicles were used to flee the city—by precisely the people under orders

<em>not</em> to evacuate. Following Katrina, 228 officers were investigated for

deserting during the emergency and ninety-one others resigned. One cop, Officer

Lawrence Celestine, told his commander that the behavior of his peers pushed

him past the point of despair; he killed himself moments later. The NOPD public

information officer, Paul Accardo, committed suicide as well.[737]

The sheriff’s department performed no better. As the city jail, the Orleans

Parish Prison (OPP), began to flood, guards simply fled and left their 8,500

charges locked in their cells, with water quickly rising. “They left us to die

there,” one prisoner recalled. Those inmates who got out—as most, by working

together, did—were met at the gate by guards who beat and maced them, then held

them on a highway overpass without food, water, or shelter for days. In the

end, prisoners were scattered to other jails around the state, usually without

the paperwork identifying their charges. People arrested for very minor

offenses—the cops had orders to “clear the streets” before the storm—spent

months in jail, far from home, sometimes literally lost in the system. Most of

the prisoners at OPP were not even convicts, but were being held for trial;

they were, therefore, “presumed innocent” by law. Nevertheless, under the

declaration of emergency, Governor Kathleen Blanco suspended the right to a

speedy trial. The average stay for an inmate arrested during the Katrina

period, before trial, was more than a year (385 days); one man was held 1,289

days.[738]

Those outside the jail’s walls were hardly more free. At an evacuation camp on

Interstate 10, thousands of people, 95 percent of them Black, were held for

days behind metal barricades, surrounded by the National Guard, with no shelter

from the sun.[739] Outside the camps, people were similarly trapped. Those who

tried walking across the bridge to the suburb of Gretna, which was not flooded,

found their way barred by a Sheriff’s posse, firing guns over their heads.[740]

Larry Bradshaw, a White paramedic who attempted to negotiate one group’s

passage, reported that the cops told him, “This is not New Orleans.… We’re not

going to have any Superdomes here.” Bradshaw comments, “To me, that was code …

for ‘We’re not having black people coming into our neighborhood.’”[741]

Worse, investigative journalist A.C. Thompson has documented ten police

shootings in the days after the storm.[742] The most notorious was the incident

on the Danziger Bridge, when plainclothes cops attacked a crowd without

warning, killing two and wounding four. The barrage of gunfire blew one woman’s

arm off, killed a teenage boy, and struck a developmentally disabled man in the

back. Police then proceeded to kick him to death.[743]

The cops weren’t the only trigger-happy yahoos patrolling the disaster area.

Governor Blanco mobilized 40,000 National Guard troops, and announced: “They

have M16s, and they’re locked and loaded.… These troops know how to shoot and

kill, and they are more than willing to do so if necessary, and I expect they

will.”[744] At the same time, mercenaries from a dozen companies—including

DynCorp, Intercon, American Security Group, Blackhawk, Wackenhut, Instinctive

Shooting International, and Blackwater—were busy “securing neighborhoods” and

“confronting criminals.”[745] As a couple of the hired guns told Jeremy

Scahill, “We’re on contract with the Department of Homeland Security.… We can

make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary.” Indeed, Bodyguard

and Tactical Security’s Michael Montgomery recounted a gunfight with some

“black gangbangers,” who were injured in the exchange: “[A]ll I heard was

moaning and screaming, and the shooting stopped.” A moment later the army

arrived. “I told them what happened,” Montgomery recalls, “and they didn’t even

care. They just left.”[746]

More troubling still was the sudden reemergence of organized vigilantism,

harkening back to the Klan days, or even those of the slave patrols. scott

crow, an anarchist organizer and a founder of one of the most successful

grassroots relief efforts, Common Ground, described the “white militias” as

“barely more than an organized lynch mob.”[747] Most of the vigilantes were

middle-class, middle-aged, White men, and their activity took an expressly

racist form. Patrolling in pick-up trucks and staffing roadblocks, they stopped

and turned back Black people trying to cross through the Algiers Point

neighborhood, harassed and intimidated Blacks who lived nearby, and sometimes,

it seems, just shot people without warning. One patroller confessed to a

journalist that his group had shot three Black men in one day, tagging them as

looters because they were carrying tote bags. “People think it’s a myth,” he

said. “But we killed people.”[748] Another told a neighbor they shot anyone

“darker than a brown paper bag.”[749] A third boasted to a documentary

filmmaker, “I’d be walking down the streets of New Orleans with two .38s and a

shotgun over my shoulder. It was great. It was like pheasant season in South

Dakota. If it moved, you shot it.”[750]

Malik Rahim, a former Black Panther and another founder of Common Ground,

estimates that eighteen young black men were murdered in the Algiers

neighborhood in the days following the storm. “It was either the police or by

vigilantes that was allowed to run amok,” he says.[751] It was sometimes hard

to tell them apart. One of the militia’s victims, a Black man named Henry

Glover, went to the police station seeking help after being shot. Witnesses

saw a cop drive away with him. Days later, his car was found, torched and

abandoned with Glover’s burned corpse inside.[752]

Rahim recalls another incident: He was confronting a group of the patrollers

when a New Orleans police officer pulled up. “These guys are acting like

vigilantes,” Rahim told him, but the cop only said that they had the right to

defend their neighborhood. “We all have a right?” Rahim asked. “They have a

right,” the cop said, pointedly.[753]

White Sheets, Blue Uniforms

The police did not create the racism in American society. If anything, it’s the

other way around. But the police have, since their inception, enforced and

defended the racist status quo—by controlling slaves, maintaining segregation,

resisting civil rights efforts, and generally terrorizing the Black community

and other people of color.

This function has remained constant even when the laws have changed. That is,

even when it has conflicted with their official duties, the police have acted

as a repressive force against the interests of people of color.

It will surely be objected that I have singled out the police unfairly. It

will be pointed out—by critics at both ends of the political spectrum—that all

of Southern society (perhaps, all of American society) has been implicated in

racist violence. It is hardly surprising that policemen were also involved.

Were my point simply that individual police officers were complicit, this

complaint would be well grounded. But it overlooks two major features of my

argument: first, that the involvement of the police is different than the

involvement of, say, dentists or auto mechanics; second, and more importantly,

the cop-Klan connection is institutional, not merely individual.

The participation of police officers in White supremacist organizations and

racist violence is different than the involvement of other people because the

police are often professionally as well as personally involved. They use their

professional position to advance the aims of the group, they use their standing

in the community to legitimize vigilante violence, and they are often

considered attractive recruits for just these reasons. The same may be true of

certain other occupational groups as well—journalists, clergy, politicians—but

cops engage in these crimes when they have sworn to stop them. To understand

this contradiction we must view it, not only in terms of personal prejudice and

individual action, but as a sustained institutional relationship.

Historically, the police and the Klan have operated as parallel and, in

general, mutually reinforcing types of organizations. Cops (like other

officials) have sometimes drawn on the political support of the Klan to

buttress their own authority. Conversely, the police can offer some degree of

validation to Klan activity by lending it their support, or less directly, by

refusing to treat racist violence as crime. At times the police have supplied

the institutional nucleus around which vigilante activity could orbit.

The police, as an institution, have shared many of the aims, methods, and

values of Klan-type groups. During the Reconstruction period, for example,

police authority and vigilante activity neatly paralleled one another. In part,

the similarities may be understood in terms of a family resemblance: both the

police and their young cousins, the night-riders, were still chronologically

very near to their common ancestor, the slave patrols. But more importantly, in

the South during this period, the very basis and constitution of authority, and

the nature of legality itself (as well as the particular laws), were hotly

contested. Local elites remained loyal to the vanquished Confederacy, mourned

their lost cause, and held dear the values that had so long supported the

racial and economic system of slavery, while the new status quo, amorphous and

exhilarating, often relied for its preservation on the presence of federal

troops. Under such conditions, it could be expected that the categories of

legality and illegality, legitimate authority and illegitimate force, and order

and disorder, would become confused.

What is remarkable is the degree to which the resemblance between the police

and the Klan has persisted. It may tell us a great deal about the real function

and fundamental character of the police that, after more than a century of

institutional development, legalism, bureaucratization, professionalization—and

more than one hundred years since the death of the Confederacy—they would

continue to behave like racist terrorists. The police have persisted in denying

people of color the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution, have

actively sought to frustrate their efforts to exercise such rights or become in

a real sense full citizens, and have resorted to the most vicious, brutal, and

often patently unlawful means to do so. These facts can leave no doubt as to

the institution’s priorities when the demands of White supremacy clash with

those of the law. The police cannot be considered simply the custodians of the

legal order, but must be seen as the guardians of the social order as well.

That they defend it wearing blue uniforms rather than white sheets is a matter

of only minor importance.

5: The Natural Enemy of the Working Class

I have no particular love for the idealized “worker” as he appears in the

bourgeois Communist’s mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in

conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself

which side I am on.

—George Orwell[754]

The Greensboro massacre of 1979 represented a racist assault against people of

color, but it also marked an attack on the rights of working people. The “Death

to the Klan” rally was organized as part of an effort to end the harassment of

poultry workers as they fought to form a union, and most of those killed were

union organizers.[755] Such pairings of racist oppression and class exploitation

have been the historical norm; slavery, for example, was a system of production

as well as a system of race control.

Though there are divergences between race and class, the means for control in

each area have always been very closely linked. This connection is perhaps

never clearer than when racist means are used to suppress the resistance

workers mount against capitalism—as in Greensboro, or, to take an earlier

example, as in 1885, when Mayor Joseph Guillote of New Orleans responded to a

levee workers’ strike by ordering the police to arrest any Black man who “did

not want to work.”[756]

Control of the lower classes has been a function of policing at every point

since the institution’s birth, and has served as one of the major determinants

of its development. In the South, the police first approached their modern form

after a long process of adaptation and experimentation in the official means of

controlling the slave population. This mandate was over-determined, required

both by the demands of White supremacy and by the economic needs of the

plantation system. The mechanisms developed to control slaves eventually

expanded in each direction, as slave patrols were charged additionally with

regulating the behavior of free Black people and that of poor White people,

especially indentured servants. As modern capitalism took shape, the new

industrial working class posed new challenges to the social order, and the

police institution evolved to meet them. Like the slaves, these “dangerous

classes” were marked as permanent objects for police control, and their lives

became increasingly regulated by specially designed laws, selective

enforcement, and heightened scrutiny.

The Majestic Equality of the Law

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under

bridges, beg in the streets, or steal bread.

—Anatole France[757]

In 1876, the Report of the General Superintendent of Police in Chicago warned:

“There is in every large city, a dangerous class of idle, vicious persons,

eager to band themselves together, for purposes subversive to the public peace

and good government.”[758] The police, in Chicago and elsewhere, took as their

main task the control of this dangerous class, especially when the poor “banded

themselves together,” but also in the course of daily life. The police

concentrated their enforcement activities in poor neighborhoods, armed with the

tools of physical violence and a variety of laws prohibiting public order

offenses, vice crimes, and a great deal of other activities associated with the

working class.[759]

It was a short step from selective enforcement to the criminalization of

poverty itself and of poor people as a group. While the wealthy were treated

leniently by the courts, the poor were sometimes convicted where no crime was

even alleged. (In Philadelphia, 1839, Sarah Hays and Thomas Firth were jailed

for the non-offense of kissing in public. The mayor admitted that there was no

law prohibiting such behavior, but based on the reputation of the neighborhood

where they were arrested, he ordered them jailed just the same.)[760] In short,

the laws themselves targeted the poor, the courts issued harsher judgments

against poor defendants, and the police treated poor people with intense

suspicion. The instructions to the Philadelphia police explained: “As a general

thing, any idle, able-bodied poor man has no right to complain if the eye of

the police follows him wherever he roams or rests. His very idleness is an

offense against all social laws.”[761]

This tradition of class control continues today, in many forms, including urban

“quality-of-life” and “zero-tolerance” policies, the war on drugs, and “gang

suppression” efforts that seem aimed at disrupting the normal course of

neighborhood life.[762] One of the clearest examples of class bias in law

enforcement, in the nineteenth century and today, is the persecution of the

homeless. Beginning in the 1870s, cities around the country began vigorously

enforcing laws against “vagrancy,” and mounted special efforts to limit the

mobility of migrant workers (in the parlance of the day, “tramps”). For nothing

other than the crime of being poor, vagrants and tramps were forced out of

town, subjected to violence, and oftentimes imprisoned for as long as six

months.[763] While contemporary laws are careful to proscribe certain

<em>behavior</em> (rather than poverty <em>per se</em>), statutes prohibiting

trespassing under bridges, sleeping on sidewalks, and panhandling clearly have

the same effect as the vagrancy laws of the earlier period.[764]

The practices surrounding the enforcement of these laws are often simply cruel,

involving intimidation, violence, seizing (and never returning) identification,

and the destruction of personal possessions. In the fall of 1993, I was witness

to an incident in which numerous police officers, all wearing latex gloves,

moved methodically through Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., seizing the

belongings of the people who lived in the park—sleeping bags, backpacks, pieces

of tarpaulin. With the White House in the background, the police carried the

items to a nearby garbage truck, where they were unceremoniously crushed.

Similar incidents have been reported in Miami, where a court ruled the practice

illegal,[765] and in Detroit, where social service providers blamed the

crackdown on pressure from area businesses.[766]

In these cases the police put their energies toward attacking, rather than

protecting, some of society’s most vulnerable members. This use of resources

only makes sense when viewed in the context of vast disparities in wealth. The

continual harassment of the destitute reinforces their low social standing,

stigmatizes poverty, keeps the poor under the supervision and control of the

criminal justice system, and—in all these ways—serves to preserve existing

inequalities. Given this perspective, routine attacks against the poor seem

ruthlessly rational, and the suppression of organized labor becomes altogether

too predictable.

Strikebreakers, Pinkertons, and Police

The role of the police as union-busters and strikebreakers was an outgrowth of

their position in the class structure and their function regulating the

behavior of workers for the convenience of the new capitalist economy. After

about 1880, whenever strikes were anticipated, the police made special

preparations to control, and thereby defeat, the workers’ efforts. Police were

sometimes housed on company property for the duration of the conflict. In

addition to attacking picket lines and rallies, they increased patrols in

working-class neighborhoods, stepped up enforcement of public order laws, and

took pains to close the meeting halls and bars where strikers gathered.[767]

Arbitrary arrests were common, and strikers were sometimes held on minor

charges (or without charges) until the strike was over. The police also

intercepted union organizers and radicals traveling to areas affected by

strikes; the unionists and “reds” were usually interrogated, sometimes under

torture, and released at the town line with a stern warning to stay away.[768]

Writing in 1920, Raymond Fosdick described something of the range of police

tactics, and the uses to which they were put:

The police are often used on behalf of employers as against employees in

circumstances which do not justify their interference at all. This has been

especially true in the handling of strikes. Lawful picketing has been broken

up, the peaceful meetings of strikers have been brutally dispersed, their

publicity has been suppressed, and infractions of ordinances which would have

gone unnoticed had the violators been engaged in another cause, have been

ruthlessly punished. Sometimes, too, arrests have been made on charges whose

baselessness the police confidentially admit. “We lock them up for disorderly

conduct,” a chief of police told me when I asked him about his policy in regard

to strikes and strikers. “Obstructing the streets” is another elastic charge

often used on such occasions. Sometimes the arbitrary conduct of the police

passes belief.

Newspapers favoring the strikers’ cause have been confiscated and printing

establishments closed on the supposition that they would “incite to riot.”

Meetings of workingmen have been prohibited or broken up on the theory that the

men were **planning** a strike, and specific individuals have been denied

the right to speak for the reason that they were “labor organizers.”

“I have this strike broken and I mean to keep it broken,” a director of public

safety told me, as if breaking strikes were one of the regular functions of the

police.[769]

Such coercive activity is now generally considered the exclusive domain of

governments, but the use of violence to break strikes was at first the right

and responsibility of private employers. In the period immediately following

the Civil War, company guards were sometimes relied on to perform this

function, while in other cases the company reimbursed the city government for

expenses incurred during strikes.[770] Either way, capitalists facing unruly

workers were caught between the desire to directly control strikebreaking

activity, and the expense and difficulty of maintaining security forces at the

necessary level. It was under these conditions that the Pinkerton Detective

Agency grew to national prominence, achieving special notoriety for its use of

an **agent provocateur** against the radical miner’s organization, the

Molly Maguires.[771] By the mid-1880s, the Pinkertons had become part of the

standard response to labor trouble, and their dual roles as spies and

leg-breakers were often sanctified by deputization into local police

departments.[772]

In the coal fields of Pennsylvania, recurring unrest led the coal companies to

dispense with the Pinkerton middle-men and maintain an industry police of their

own, the “Coal and Iron Police.” For a fee of $1 per officer, the state

conferred police powers upon these company-controlled guards.[773] In 1915, the

Commission on Industrial Relations noted with disapproval that one of the greatest functions of the State, that of policing, [was] virtually

turned over to the employers or arrogantly assumed by them … [and by] criminals

employed by detective agencies clothed, by the process of deputization, with

arbitrary power and relieved of criminal liability for their acts.[774]

During the early-twentieth-century Progressive Era, such civic-minded concerns,

matched with the employers’ unwillingness to bear the full cost of

strikebreaking, shifted responsibility for these duties to the public police.

The creation of the state police illustrates this process clearly. After the

1902 Great Anthracite Strike, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed a body to

investigate the conflict and make recommendations concerning the unresolved

disputes. The Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, as it was called, took this

task a step further, recommending thoroughgoing changes in the policing of

strikes. After quite a few damning words about the strikers,[775] the commission

concluded: “Peace and order … should be maintained at any cost, but should be

maintained by regularly appointed and responsible officers … at the expense of

the public.”[776] In May 1905, Pennsylvania Governor Samuel Pennypacker signed

into law an act creating a state police force.[777]

The Pennsylvania State Constabulary proved an effective force against strikes,

since it recruited from across the state, thus minimizing the influence of any

particular officer’s ties to the local community.[778] The Pennsylvania State

Federation of Labor called for the organization’s elimination and published a

volume of evidence against the state police. Titled <em>The American

Cossack</em>, the book collects witness statements, newspaper accounts,

legislative debate, and other material. A typical story comes from S. P. Bridge

of New Alexandria, Pennsylvania, dated February 21, 1911:

Gentlemen:

State Police came to New Alexandria July 31, 1910, Sunday. The State

Constabulary are of no use in this country to farmers or workingmen. They make

all efforts to oppress labor.

Six of them were stationed at this town for a period of two months for the

benefit of the coal company. Their duty was in and around the works.

At the time they were here there was trouble between them and the miners. There

was a camp located within two hundred feet of my house. There were three State

Constabulary and two deputy sheriffs went into camp. They rode their horses

over men, women, and children. They used their riot clubs freely on the miners

without cause or provocation.

One of the men had to be sent to the hospital, one received a broken arm, one

woman was clubbed until she was laid up for two weeks.… They used their clubs

on everyone that protested against their conduct and I was an eye-witness to

the affair.

There were no lives lost and no one hurt before their arrival.

The majority of citizens are not in favor of the Constabulary.

I cannot see that anyone but the coal company is benefited by the Constabulary.

Yours truly,

S. P. Bridge.[779]

Another statement is unusual only for its source. Hugh Kelley, the chief of

police in South Bethlehem, wrote:

When the constabulary arrived here, February 26, 1910, neither the burgess nor

myself, as chief of police, were informed of their arrival. They were in

charge of the sheriff.… They beat people standing peaceably on the street; men

were arrested and taken to the plant of the Steel Company and there confined.

They started out on our streets, beat down our people without any reason,

whatever, and they shot down an innocent man, Joseph Zambo, who was not on the

street, but was in the Majestic Hotel. One of the troopers rode up on the

pavement at the hotel door and fired two shots into the room, shooting one man

in the mouth and another (Zambo) through the head.… There was no disturbance of

any kind at this hotel, the Majestic was the headquarters of the leaders who

were conducting the strike.… Troopers went into the houses of people without

warrant and searched the inmates, drove people from their own doorsteps. They

beat an old man, at least, sixty years of age. Struck him with a riot stick and

left him in a very bad condition.

This is only one of a dozen similar cases.[780]

The law creating the Pennsylvania State Constabulary intended the new body “as

far as possible, to take the place of the police now appointed at the request

of various companies.”[781] It is hard to think of a more literal description of

their role. Whereas strikers had previously had their heads cracked by guards

in private employ (or police leased to the company, which comes to much the

same thing), they increasingly had the honor of having their heads cracked by

impartial public servants, authorized by the government and funded by the tax.

By investing this responsibility in the state itself, the ruling class made

provision for the more regular and predictable service of its needs, with the

costs shared—in a sense, socialized—and, for that matter, at least some portion

of the costs borne by the workers themselves.[782]

Though Pennsylvania did not boast the first state police force, it did pioneer

the current type. Earlier state forces were either military organizations, vice

squads, or short-lived civil rights agencies.[783] But following the success of

the Pennsylvania State Constabulary, the idea of a state police force took hold

across the country. By 1919, of the six existing state police departments, all

but one were modeled after Pennsylvania’s. Ten years later, there were

twenty-five such departments. And by 1940, every state had one.[784]

However, with or without a state police force, the independence of the police

in relation to the larger companies was somewhat illusory. And in the 1920s,

following the federally directed Red Scare, distinctions between union-busting

and law enforcement practically dissolved. In Philadelphia, the police issued a

proclamation on March 21, 1921, that they would not interfere with union

meetings “so long as the meeting is orderly and not of radical character, but

all meetings of radical character will be prohibited or broken up.”[785] The

policy offered the police license to attack any union meeting, since it was

assumed all labor organizing was Communist in nature.

At times, anti-union campaigns drew on a practice familiar from the efforts to

control African Americans; police formed alliances with, actively cooperated

with, and provided official cover for right-wing vigilante groups. In Los

Angeles, for example, the police joined in a partnership with the American

Legion, deputizing members of its “law and order committee.” The American

Legion then commenced a series of raids against meetings of the Industrial

Workers of the World (the IWW, or the “Wobblies”). In the first such raid, four

Wobblies were hospitalized and five were arrested for “inciting a riot.” A few

months later, in April 1921, the IWW’s offices and meeting halls were again

raided, its supporters arrested, and men, women, and children beaten with ax

handles. Those identified as leaders were driven to the desert, beaten

unconscious, and abandoned. Though many of the victims could identify their

attackers, no charges were ever filed. The pattern continued for years. In June

1924, a vigilante mob, organized in part by the police, attacked the IWW hall

with clubs and guns. They destroyed the furniture in the building, beat many of

the men and women present, tarred and feathered the leaders, and deliberately

scalded several children with hot coffee.[786] While the police ignored these

offenses, and sometimes actively protected the perpetrators, they

simultaneously engaged in aggressive enforcement practices against the

unionists. Between 1919 and 1925 the LAPD arrested 504 union organizers; 124

were convicted of “criminal syndicalism,” a charge designed to stifle union

activity and specifically targeting the IWW.[787]

While union-busting remained a joint venture between public and private forces,

during the Progressive Era the authority to use or license violence slowly

moved out of private hands, solidifying the state’s theoretical monopoly on it.

Over the coming decades, as we’ll see, the balance between private security and

public police, between corporate funding and government authority, would shift

back and forth repeatedly according to the demands of the moment and

ideological trends. Despite this continual re-configuration, the police mission

during strikes remained fairly stable: to defend the company’s interests, to

preserve the status quo.

Where conflicts arise between workers and bosses, between the rights of one

class and the interests of the other, the machinery of the law is typically

used as a weapon against the workers. Even where the law is contrary to the

demands of powerful corporations, the police often act not from principle or

legal obligation, but according to the needs of the ruling class. This tendency

shouldn’t surprise us, if we remember the lengths to which the cops have gone

in the defense of White supremacy, even as laws and policies have changed.[788]

With class, as with race, it is the status quo that the police act to preserve

and the interests of the powerful that they seek to defend, not the rule of law

or public safety. The law, in fact, has been a rather weak guide for those who

are meant to enforce it.

To take just one of many examples, the Interchurch World Movement’s Commission

of Inquiry reported that:

During the [1919 Steel Strike] violations of personal rights and personal

liberty were wholesale; men were arrested without warrants, imprisoned without

charges, their homes invaded without legal process, magistrates’ verdicts were

rendered frankly on the basis of whether the striker would go back to work or

not.[789]

Thus, in a time of crisis, the pretense of law enforcement was given up in

favor of naked repression and class warfare. The police, the jails, and the

courts acted to serve, not the law, but the interests of business.

Moments of Ambivalence[790]

There have been exceptions, times when the police briefly departed from their

usual role, typically because the local government’s agenda conflicted with the

immediate interests of the company.

During a 1902 streetcar strike, the mayor of the Providence suburb Pawtucket

openly sided with the striking workers, and the police did almost nothing to

impede their activities.[791] During the 1919 Steel Strike, Cleveland Mayor

Harry Davis ordered police to treat scabs as suspicious persons and run them

out of town.[792] Likewise, during the 1934 Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light

Company strike, Mayor Daniel Hoan ordered the arrest of 150 strikebreakers.[793]

“In grappling with the dilemmas posed by community polarization,” historian

James Richardson explains,

the police tended to follow the lines of power and influence.… If the

authorities favored the workers or were at least neutral, the police remained

neutral. If on the other hand, political leaders and newspapers viewed the

strikers as un-American radicals or a threat to the town’s prosperity by making

industry reluctant to locate there, then the police acted as agents of

employers in their strikebreaking activities.[794]

In general, then, such instances should be understood not as the cops siding

with labor in the context of class struggle, but following the direction of

their superiors in a dispute between elites.

However, there were also occasions when the police supported strikers despite

their orders, sometimes facing discipline as a result. Cops refused to break

strikes in Paterson (1877), Chicago (1894), and Cleveland (1896). About a

quarter of the force in Columbus was suspended when they refused strike duty in

1910. In 1916, five New York cops were fired when they refused to guard trains

during a transit strike. And in 1929, several New Orleans officers resigned

rather than work as strikebreakers.[795]

Most recently, in February 2011, when unionists occupied the Wisconsin capitol

building and tens of thousands more filled the streets surrounding it in

opposition to a bill that would strip public employees of most of their

collective bargaining rights, they were joined by a small contingent of

off-duty police, wearing shirts reading “Cops for Labor” and “Deputies for

Democracy.” When the governor threatened to end the sit-in by force, cops

showed up with sleeping bags and stayed the night, engaging in an act of civil

disobedience precisely when confrontation seemed most likely. Solidarity did

not extend to their working hours, however. Within a few days, police cleared

out the protestors and removed the barricades around the capital, arresting 59

people in the process. Wisconsin Law Enforcement Association executive board

president Tracy Fuller confessed that the notion of resisting orders “hasn’t

even come up.” He said: “I’m not able to even fathom that any of those police

officers would not carry out whatever orders were given.” Fuller went on: “I

guess that’s the one ironic thing about this.… I could be down there

confronting my wife with the protest sign that I made.… That’s my job.”[796]

Wherever the sympathies of individual officers may lie, the institution’s

imperatives are always in the service of power. Even where police do not

deliberately side with the employers—even, and maybe especially, when they

present themselves as neutral—class bias is nevertheless built into their

position. Bruce Smith, an early scholar of policing, makes the point clearly:

The substitution of non-union labor for union labor is perfectly legal, and the

police are bound to give protection against any and all interference with the

right to work. The effective performance of this duty … frequently “breaks the

strike,” and the police, whether local or state, are charged with conducting a

strike-breaking operation. At such times, evenhanded justice almost necessarily

operates to the ultimate advantage of vested property rights.[797]

Those occasions when police side with strikers are notable precisely because

they are so rare—increasingly so over time.[798] The authorities noticed when

police disobeyed, and took steps to prevent future mutinies. Sometimes they

shifted strikebreaking responsibility away from local cops (who may have

divided loyalties) and relied instead on State Police or Pinkertons. Commanders

also instituted changes designed to improve discipline in the ranks and reduce

the cops’ concern for the workers’ cause. In his book <em>Policing a Class

Society</em>, Sidney Harring lists several mechanisms that serve to maintain

officer discipline during strikes. These include racism and ethnic divisions,

disdain for unskilled or low-wage workers, organizational norms and penalties,

the law-and-order ideology, the criminalization of strike activity, and

financial and professional incentives. Most work by using the personal biases

and institutional culture of the police to undercut any sympathy for

disobedient workers—especially when those workers are immigrants or people of

color. Furthermore, those officers who participate in strike duty may earn

overtime pay or bonuses, while those who avoid strike duty may lose the respect

of their peers or face punishment.[799] This combination of coercion,

compensation, and ideological justification has mostly worked to keep the cops

following orders, controlling workers, and breaking strikes. As Tracy Fuller

put it so succinctly: “That’s [the] job.”

An exhaustive recounting of labor battles, police attacks on picket lines, and

unlawful arrests cannot be supplied here, but a few case studies may offer some

sense of the usual police role.

Bread and Roses, Bayonets and Cloth

In 1912, Massachusetts law reduced the workweek for women and children, from

fifty-six hours to fifty-four. The American Woolen Company complied with the

letter of the law, if not the spirit; it reduced the workweek, but made

corresponding cuts in pay. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, where 60,000 people

depended on the earnings of the 25,000 textile workers, and where the average

wage was $8.76 per week, 25 cents more or less made an enormous difference in

the workers’ ability to feed their families. Thus, on January 11, when the

workers received their paychecks and discovered the reduction, they walked

out—first at the Everett cotton mill, and the following day at the Washington

mill. The Washington workers marched to the Wood mill, shut off the power, and

called out the workers there. By that evening, 10,000 were on strike. By the

end of the month, the strike had spread to other industries, and 50,000 people

(in a town of 86,000) were striking.[800] One picket sign expressed the workers’

position clearly, capturing both the desperation of the moment and the hope for

a better future: “We want bread and roses too.”[801]

The repression of the strike was immediate and intense. Arbitrary arrests and

summary judgments became the order of the day, and many strikers were sentenced

to one-year prison terms without ever having the opportunity to put forth a

defense. Leaders were marked for more serious charges, and extreme measures

were taken to discredit the union. When dynamite was discovered in a cobbler’s

shop, police and press alike were quick to blame the strikers, though there was

no evidence to support such a conclusion. The tactic backfired. First, a school

board member, John C. Breen, was arrested, tried, convicted, and fined $500 for

planting the dynamite. Then, Ernest W. Pitman, president of Pitman Construction

Company, implicated himself and several other business leaders in a confession

to the district attorney. Pitman revealed that the incident had been planned by

one of the textile companies, leading to conspiracy charges against Fred E.

Atteaux, the president of the Atteaux Supply Company, and William M. Wood, the

president of the American Woolen Company.[802]

Regardless of the scandal, union leaders were generally blamed for any

violence—not only the violence of the strikers, but that used against them as

well. On January 29, when striking workers attempted to block the mill gates,

the police and the militia attacked, and a riot ensued. An Italian striker,

Anna Lo Pizzo, was shot and killed. Witnesses identified the culprit as officer

Oscar Bemoit, but two IWW leaders were arrested instead. Neither Joseph Ettor

nor Arturo Giovannitti had been present when the shooting occurred, but the

complaint alleged that “before said murder was committed, as aforesaid, Joseph

J. Ettor and Antonio [**sic**] Giovannitti did incite, procure, and

counsel or command the said person whose name is not known, as aforesaid, to

commit the said murder.…”[803] The police later named Joseph Caruso as an

accomplice and “Salvatore Scuito” as the gunman, though no one of that name was

ever located.[804]

Martial law was declared on January 30, the day after the shooting. Colonel E.

LeRoy Sweetser was given charge of twelve companies of infantry, two cavalry

troops, fifty cops from the Metropolitan Park Force, and twenty-two companies

of militia. Citizens were forbidden to meet or talk in the streets, and Lo

Pizzo’s funeral was broken up by a cavalry charge. Mass arrests became common,

and strikers were rousted from their homes and taken to jail. A Syrian striker,

John Ramy, was stabbed with a bayonet and subsequently died. But the strike

grew. The textile companies kept the looms running, but only as a kind of

propaganda; they had no workers to operate them, and thus no product.[805]

Joseph Ettor commented from jail: “Bayonets cannot weave cloth.”[806]

On February 5, the Italian Socialist Federation proposed evacuating the

strikers’ children. Supplies could thus be saved and the children decently

cared for by sympathetic families. In the three days following, the union

received 400 offers to take in the children. The Socialist Women’s Committee

and a committee of the IWW took applications and inspected the homes. On

February 10, 119 children were sent to New York under the supervision of four

women, two of them nurses. A week later, 103 more were sent to New York, and

thirty-five others to Barre, Vermont. This exodus was embarrassing for both the

government and the mill owners, and on February 17, Colonel Sweetser announced

that no more children would be allowed to leave.[807] But if the socialist

foster-care system was embarrassing, the attempt to disrupt it was absolutely

scandalous. On February 24, when forty children tried to leave for

Philadelphia, they found the train station full of police. A member of the

Women’s Committee of Philadelphia later testified about what happened next:

When the time approached to depart, the children arranged in a long line, two

by two, in orderly procession, with their parents near to hand, were about to

make their way to the train when the police closed in on us with their clubs,

beating right and left, with no thought of children, who were in the most

desperate danger of being trampled to death. The mothers and children were thus

hurled in a mass and bodily dragged to a military truck, and even then clubbed,

irrespective of the cries of the panic stricken women and children.[808]

No further effort was made to interfere with the children, and on March 12, the

American Woolen Company agreed to a new pay rate.

The workers voted to end the strike, but the struggle was not over. New slogans

appeared: “Open the jail doors or we will close the mill gates.” As the

September 30 trial date for Ettor, Giovannitti, and Caruso approached, textile

workers in Lawrence, Haverhill, Lowell, Lynn, and elsewhere threatened to

strike if they were convicted. As a demonstration of their seriousness, 15,000

staged a one-day strike a few days before the trial was set to start. The

police attacked the strikers, arresting fourteen, and almost 2,000 were fired

and blacklisted. But the strikers had already seen worse, and knew something of

their own strength. Amid threats of further strikes, the mill owners were

forced to back down, and after a fifty-eight-day trial, all three defendants

were acquitted.[809]

General Strike and Reign of Terror

In 1934, the West Coast witnessed an extended, and at times bloody, conflict

between dockworkers represented by the International Longshore Association

(ILA) and the business interests represented by the Waterfront Employers Union

and the Industrial Association. Principally, the conflict concerned the control

of the longshore hiring hall and related issues of scheduling, seniority, and,

of course, wages. The bosses preferred to arbitrate the dispute, and the union

leadership was willing to compromise, but the workers had other ideas. A strike

began on May 9 among longshore workers in San Francisco, and quickly spread to

maritime and related industries, reaching up and down the coast.[810] It stalled

the economy of the entire country, but the center of conflict remained in San

Francisco, where it escalated through a series of bloody battles to become a

general strike.[811]

Violence was a major feature of the San Francisco strike, a tool used by both

sides. Strikers commonly beat up scabs, and sent “sanitary” or “clean-up” crews

to patrol the waterfront with bats.[812] The bosses, however, mostly relied on

the violence of the state, especially the police. This was a convenient

relationship, as it legitimized anti-strike violence and shifted the target of

public outrage away from the employers and onto the police. Historian David

Selvin emphasizes the point:

[T]he police even more than the strikebreakers became the strikers’ chief

antagonist. The role of the strikebreaker was soon stabilized and contained,

while police came to serve, day by day, as the employers’ virtual private

assault force. When the clashes came, as they did, the police—not the

strikebreakers—were pitted against the strikers.[813]

The violence started early, and escalated throughout the strike. On the first

day, the police dispersed 500 picketers with relative ease. By the end of the

month, however, the pickets were fighting back, hurling bricks at the cops. The

police then used clubs, gas, and eventually shotguns to break up groups of

strikers.[814]

The most serious violence accompanied efforts to operate the docks, especially

attempts to move goods to or from the ports.[815] On July 3, 1934, the police

created a corridor down King Street to Pier 38, guarded by a police line on one

side and a row of box cars on the other. As trucks approached, the cops sought

to break up the crowd of strike supporters. They attacked with clubs, tear gas,

and gunfire, injuring many in the crowd as well as numerous bystanders. (A

stray bullet wounded a teller in the nearby American Trust Company.) Strikers

retaliated by throwing rocks, bricks, and tear gas containers back at the

police. At least two strikers were shot, one killed, and eleven hospitalized;

nine cops were injured.[816] The ILA issued a statement on the encounter:

“Striking pickets were clubbed down and rode over by the police who a short

time ago were supposed to be the friends of these same workers. The strike

cannot and will not be settled by force.”[817]

But force seemed to be the authorities’ preferred means of convincing the

workers to return to their jobs. On July 5, the entire San Francisco Police

Department was put on strike duty.[818] The fighting was concentrated in the

area surrounding Pier 38 and Rincon Hill. But the police also moved in on a

crowd at Steuart and Mission, near the ILA hall. Suddenly a car carrying two

police inspectors appeared in the intersection. The inspectors stepped out of

the car, fired their pistols into the crowd, and then fled as the crowd hurled

rocks and bricks at them.[819] Two men died in the attack—Howard S. Sperry, a

longshoreman, and Nick Counderakis (a.k.a. Nick Bordoise), a Communist. A third

man, Charles Olsen, was also shot, but survived.[820] When the injured were

taken to the ILA’s clinic, the police fired into the building and filled it

with tear gas. As the unionists barricaded themselves in the hall, the

telephone rang: “Are you willing to arbitrate now?”[821]

That evening 1,700 National Guard troops were deployed and armored cars

patrolled the streets. The Embarcadero, the street nearest the waterfront, was

enclosed in barbed wire and guarded with machine guns. But the military

fortifications fell short of their objective: the work remained undone. Two

hundred fifty ships sat idle along the coast. Even when a military guard made

it possible for scabs to unload and move cargo, it just sat in the warehouses,

where Teamster truckers refused to touch it.[822] As in Lawrence, the state was

reminded of the practical limits of its reliance on force.

By the end of the day, in addition to Sperry and Bordoise, one other worker had

been killed, and at least 115 hospitalized.[823] Thus July 5 came to be known as

“Bloody Thursday.” Strike leader Harry Bridges called it a “reign of terror.”

He said: “It was an attack by armed men against unarmed peaceful pickets. It

was a massacre of workers by the shipowners through the police.”[824] The next

day, the corner of Steuart and Mission was covered with flowers. Chalked on

the street were the words: “Two men killed here, murdered by police.”[825]

One week later, 4,000 truck drivers walked out, marking the move toward a

general strike. They were quickly joined by butchers, machinists, welders,

laundry workers, culinary workers, cleaners and dyers, and boilermakers:

thirteen unions, representing 32,000 workers, joined the strike. The Teamsters

picketed the city’s southern limits, guarding the only vehicular route to the

city. There they turned back—and sometimes turned **over**—non-union

trucks. A strike committee issued permits for hospital supplies, food, and

other necessary services, but the city could not function as usual.[826] Signs

began appearing in shop windows: “Closed, Out of Supplies,” “No Gas, Due to the

Strike,” “Closed for the duration,” and “Closed till the boys win.”[827]

The next day the authorities declared an emergency. The police began

stockpiling weapons, swore in 500 special officers, and created an

“anti-radical and crime prevention bureau.”[828] Eighteen hundred cops and 4,500

National Guard troops were now on strike duty, reinforced with machine guns,

tanks, and artillery.[829] Meanwhile, across the bay in Oakland, 15,000

building-trades workers laid down their tools and walked off their jobs. They

were joined by 27,000 workers affiliated with the Central Labor Council.[830]

On July 17, the second day of the general strike, the police launched a

coordinated attack. That morning a group of uniformed officers and plainclothes

detectives raided the Maritime Workers Industrial Union office, breaking down

the door, destroying office equipment and furniture, smashing windows, seizing

records, and arresting everyone present, often delivering a beating in the

process. This was the first of a daylong series of similar raids, not only in

San Francisco, but throughout the state. Police, National Guard troops, and

vigilantes attacked radical hangouts, strike kitchens, newspapers offices, and

even a school. About 300 people were arrested.[831]

Shortly thereafter, on July 20, the strike committee voted to end the general

strike, though the longshore and maritime workers continued striking on their

own.[832] The announcement was met with another wave of police raids and

vigilante attacks.[833] Eleven days later, the last strikers returned to work.

The strike had lasted eighty-two days and involved 30,000 dock workers. Seven

were killed, hundreds were hospitalized, and thousands were treated at the ILA

clinic. There were 938 arrests in San Francisco alone.[834]

In arbitration, the workers won a raise and a thirty-hour week, but were only

granted partial control of the hiring hall—falling short of their most

important demand.[835] The strike delivered real gains, but not the decisive

victory the workers wanted. In this case, they proved unwilling to accept even

a partial defeat, and the class war shifted from a campaign of massive, often

deadly, battles to one of quick, bloodless, guerrilla attacks. Both the

longshore and the ship workers immediately instigated a series of on-the-job

actions against unfair and dangerous conditions.[836] The small-scale strike

quickly became the workers’ most powerful weapon. Between January 1, 1937, and

August 1, 1938, the West Coast docks were the site of 350 strikes, mostly brief

and localized “quickies.”[837]

“Bought and Paid For”

From the past two decades, the most famous example of police-managed

union-busting is probably that of the Detroit Newspaper Strike (and later,

lockout). In July 1995, when 2,600 employees of the **Detroit News** and

the **Detroit Free Press** went on strike, the newspapers (together, the

Detroit News Agency) responded by hiring 2,000 private security guards supplied

by Vance International, and by giving money to police in the suburb of Sterling

Heights, where the papers’ production plants are located. Police initially

confiscated clubs and other weapons from Vance guards, but after the Detroit

News Agency’s first donation—a sum of $115,921—the cops’ attitudes changed.[838]

Police ignored harassment and violence on the part of the guards—even when

several Vance agents beat a striker so severely they split his skull.[839]

Meanwhile, union sympathizers were arrested for even minor infractions, such as

blowing the horns of their cars to show support for the strike.[840]

The cops also perpetrated their own violence against the workers. Most

notoriously, on August 19, 1995, a picketer named Frank Brabenec was beaten by

the Sterling Heights police. A widely published photograph showed a uniformed

officer dragging Brabenec along the ground while a plainclothes cop—later

identified as Lieutenant Jack Severance—kicked him.[841] A couple weeks later,

on Saturday, September 2, the police attacked picket lines with pepper spray.

The unions happened to be holding a rally nearby, and 4,000 supporters rushed

to the site of the conflict. The cops called for reinforcements from twenty-two

police agencies, and a sixteen-hour stand-off ensued, during which time trucks

could not enter or leave the plant. Two days later, on Labor Day, a smaller

crowd fought with the security guards.[842] Those first few weeks set the tone

for the next five-and-a-half years, until December 2001, when the unions

finally gave in. Only a third of the striking workers were rehired—at lower

wages, of course.[843]

It is hard to know how much of the blame for this defeat really falls to the

police, especially given the poor planning of the unions, media hostility, and

court orders limiting the number of strikers on picket lines. But it is easy to

see what the cooperation of the police was worth to the Detroit News Agency.

During the course of the strike, the company donated nearly a million dollars

to the Sterling Heights police. Police violence escalated accordingly, and

crowds took to chanting “Bought and paid for!” when the cops arrived.[844] Mayor

Dennis Archer explained that riot police helped to preserve “a good business

climate.”[845]

Policing the Abattoir

Where the Detroit News Agency hired private guards and more or less rented the

local police department, Smithfield Foods has gone further and formed its own

private state-certified police agency, “Smithfield Foods Special Police.”

Smithfield, the largest pork processor in the country, runs the largest hog

slaughterhouse in the world, which employs more than 5,000 workers and kills

30,000 pigs a day. It was at that plant, located in Tar Heel, North Carolina,

that the company was embroiled in a fifteen-year fight with the United Food and

Commercial Workers union, and where it created its private police force.[846]

The Tar Heel plant opened in 1992, and UFCW began organizing there in 1993. By

2008 the plant had seen three separate union votes. The first two were

defeated, largely owing to what a federal court later called “intense and

widespread coercion.”[847] In addition to the normal sort of anti-union

abuses—spying on workers, confiscating union literature, and threats of firing

employees or shutting down the plant[848]—the company also used law enforcement

to intimidate workers and interfere with their organizing.

Acting under the leadership of Daniel Priest—a former police officer and then,

simultaneously, a sheriff’s deputy and director of plant security—teams of cops

prevented union organizers from flyering workers; uniformed officers later

lingered menacingly in the company parking lot the week before the 1997

vote.[849] During the election itself, the polling station was packed with cops

and security guards, as well as dozens of managers. As the ballots were

collected, Smithfield managers taunted union organizers, sometimes using racial

slurs. (The organizers were Black.) Then, when it was clear the union had lost,

the cops pushed UFCW supporters through the exits, gratuitously beating several

and arresting one.[850]

Since 2000, Priest’s goon squad has been designated a “special police agency”

under the state’s Company Police Act of 1991, thus empowering them to carry

firearms and make arrests. By 2003 the Smithfield Specials were stationing

armed guards throughout the plant, and placing plainclothes agents on the shop

floor, among the workers. “It’s all part of the anti-union campaign,” one UFCW

supporter said, “to intimidate us and turn the plant into an armed camp. For

those of us from Central America it is especially frightening because where we

come from the police shoot trade unionists.”[851]

In 2006, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement also got involved. In the fall

of that year, Smithfield sent letters to 640 workers threatening to fire them

if their papers did not match government records. Some of the letters went to

U.S. citizens; but in November, Smithfield started to make good on its threats,

firing fifty workers. In response, on November 16, at least 500

employees—mostly Latinos and Latinas—walked off the job. But the pressure only

continued to build. After a call from Smithfield managers, ICE started making

arrests in January, often at workers’ homes in the middle of the night.

Approximately 1,500 workers fled rather than risk arrest. The union accused

Smithfield of using ICE to undermine their organizing. The company said that

they were merely following the law and the union campaign was not a factor—a

claim that might be more credible if supervisors hadn’t been threatening to use

ICE against union supporters for more than a decade.[852]

In any case, the immigration ploy backfired. The vacancies left by the raids

were mostly filled with African Americans, who on the whole strongly supported

the union drive. And the November walk-out showed that the Latina and Latino

workers who remained were willing to fight. In December 2008, after fifteen

years of organizing, two failed votes, and lawsuits from each side, Tar Heel

workers voted 2,041 to 1,879 in a court-supervised election to affiliate with

the UFCW. “It was close,” said Smithfield Foods media representative Dennis

Pittman, but: “As we said all along, we will respect their decision.”[853]

Class Conflict, Continuity, and Change: The Long View

Smithfield and Sterling Heights show how little has changed over the course of

a century. Naturally, strikes and other labor actions still focus on many of

the same issues, since there is a permanent conflict of interest between

workers and their employers when it comes to matters of pay, hours, and

control. And in the clashes between workers and capital, the police continue to

line up on the side of capital. But the differences between these later

disputes and those of the early twentieth century are also clear enough.

Violence persists, but at lower levels. Battles between police and workers are

sometimes bloody, but rarely deadly.[854]

These reduced levels of violence are the result of a shift in the form of class

conflict: unionization, collective bargaining, and even strikes have been

formalized, institutionalized, and subject to legal regulation. Increasingly,

this development has taken the struggles of workers out of the factories and

the streets and placed them instead in courthouses and government offices.[855]

Companies, then, have come to rely less on police or Pinkerton thuggery to keep

the workers in line. At the same time, the militancy of the labor movement

overall has suffered a sustained decline, and the power within unions has

shifted away from the rank and file and toward the official leadership, the

paid staff, and their legal advisors.[856]

This process was already taking hold at the time of the San Francisco General

Strike of 1934. In fact, the strike may be seen as the workers’ direct

resistance to the institutionalization of class conflict on two fronts: first,

in their refusal to submit substantive issues to arbitration; and second, in

following the leadership of rank-and-file members like Harry Bridges, rather

than obeying the orders of union officials.[857] The depth of this

resistance—the degree to which workers refused to play by the prescribed rules,

and rejected the given definitions of victory and defeat—is evident in the

continuation of the struggle even after they had returned to work. The strike

ended, but the workers did not surrender. They, in effect, moved the conflict

to an arena where the influence of the union officials, the courts, and the

police could be minimized, and where the strength of the workers was

greatest—on the shop floor.

More than seventy years later, these tensions were still present in the

longshore unions. Beginning in the summer of 2011, dockworkers in Longview,

Washington engaged in a series of increasingly militant actions in an effort to

force Export Grain Terminal (EGT) to bargain with their union, the

International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). On July 11, more than 100

workers were arrested when they tore down a fence, briefly occupied EGT’s yard,

and sabotaged machinery. A few days later, 600 people, including members of

other unions, blocked rail lines leading to EGT’s terminal, forcing trains to

return to their point of departure without unloading their cargo. That

September, a judge issued an injunction against blocking trains and limited

picket lines to eight people at each gate. But the actions continued. Four

hundred blocked the train tracks for four hours on September 7, until police

with shotguns cleared them away. The next day, 500 union supporters returned

and stormed the property, breaking windows in the guardhouse, sabotaging

equipment, and dumping approximately 10,000 tons of grain. In the weeks that

followed, police started arresting longshore workers, often roughly, at their

homes, in their cars, and at church. In response to the arrests—and other

harassment, such as police shining spotlights into homes in the middle of the

night—the union organized a silent march from their meeting hall to the

courthouse, where all 200 members offered to turn themselves in. The sheriff

refused, saying he wasn’t prepared to take so many people into custody, but

piecemeal arrests continued.[858]

On September 21, as eighty cops escorted a train into the EGT yard, nine

members of ILWU Women’s Auxiliary #14 peacefully sat on

the tracks in an act of civil disobedience.[859] The police response was not as

peaceful. Arresting the women, they broke the arm of fifty-seven-year-old

grandmother Phoebe West, wrenching it far behind her back. ILWU Executive Board

member Kelly Muller and some other longshore workers ran over to help the

women, and were immediately attacked themselves. “They hit us,” Muller said.

“They didn’t even give us a warning. Here comes four or five cops. They take us

to the ground and are on my back. I hit my head on the railroad track.” Other

witnesses confirm that, while Muller was on the ground, the cops kicked him,

cuffed him, and then got out their pepper spray. “The cops pried both my eyes

open,” he recalls. “They spray into my face and into my mouth while I’m

handcuffed.”[860]

“We have a city government here,” Local 21 president Dan Coffman observed,

“that’s basically EGT’s security force.”[861]

In the end, however, the workers were not defeated by the police, but by their

own union leaders. Fearing a confrontation they could not control, the ILWU’s

international officers cut off support for the strike, interposed politically

and sometimes violently to disrupt solidarity actions, took direct control of

negotiations, and ultimately imposed a contract without a vote of the

membership. It was a bad bargain: the union lost control of the hiring process,

the company gained the right to use scabs, and workers were assigned

twelve-hour shifts without overtime pay. The defeat was widely viewed as a

precedent—less democracy in the union, fewer demands on the boss, worse

conditions on the docks.[862]

The institutionalization of class conflict has changed unions and strikes,

certainly; it has also changed the means of controlling the working class, and

the role of the police in particular. Police tactics, strategies, and

organization have all shifted and developed as the forms of conflict have. All

the while, the basic aims of policing—control of the powerless, defense of the

powerful—have remained essentially the same. The relationship between these

changes and continuities will be examined in the chapters that follow.

6: Police Autonomy and Blue Power

The ongoing history of police anti-labor action seems at odds with the growth

of militant police unions in the latter part of the twentieth century.[863]

Nevertheless, the police have organized unions, and in many cases their unions

occupy a central place in the constellations of local political power. In

addition to advocating improved wages and working conditions, prosecuting

grievances, and obstructing (or sometimes preventing) discipline against

individual officers, the unions also have a strong hand in setting public

policy, inside and outside their respective departments. Few changes in public

safety or security policies can be made without the tacit approval of the

police unions, and the officers’ associations are routinely consulted on

changes in the criminal code, or in city policies that might indirectly affect

police work. When controversies arise concerning the police, their actions, or

their role in society, it often falls to the unions to detail the “law and

order” perspective. The organization’s agenda may then dominate the debate, or

even define its terms.

This influence has been hard-won and always controversial. The police union’s

development, between the end of the nineteenth century and today, has been

tightly braided with changes concerning standards of public morality, the shape

of municipal government, race relations, and, of course, class conflict.

Embedded within every strand of this cord, exposed with every tangle and snare,

lies a question about the nature of democracy, and about the role of police

power in a democratic society.

From Strikebreakers to Strikers (and Back Again)

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, police in many cities belonged to

social organizations, called either “Patrolmen’s Benevolent Associations”

(PBAs) or “Fraternal Orders of Police” (FOPs). The two types of organizations

functioned along similar lines, providing their members insurance and promoting

their overall health and well-being. The main differences were that, whereas

the PBAs were only open to patrolmen and were strictly independent, the FOPs

were open to any officer and were affiliated nationally.[864] Both groups

petitioned for better working conditions, efforts that the authorities

tolerated so long as there was no move toward unionization.[865] The rank and

file crossed that line during World War I, when a steep rise in the cost of

living pushed several organizations to apply for charters from the American

Federation of Labor. In a break with its previous position, the AFL granted the

charters, and the police unionized in numerous cities, including Cincinnati,

Washington, Los Angeles, St. Paul, Fort Worth, and, most famously, Boston.[866]

Unhappy with long hours, low pay, favoritism, and the sorry condition of their

stationhouses, on August 15, 1919, members of the existing police association,

the Boston Social Club, voted to affiliate with the AFL.[867] They thus created

the Boston Police Union Number 16 of the American Federation of Labor.[868] Less

than a month later, on September 8, Police Commissioner Edwin Upton Curtis

responded by suspending nineteen union supporters. A strike began the next

day.[869]

Approximately three-quarters of the Boston Police Department joined the strike,

creating a politically uncomfortable situation made worse by rampant crime and

widespread disorder.[870] Almost immediately, small crowds gathered around craps

games on the Boston Common. By the evening of September 9, the disorder had

escalated to the point of looting. Rioters overturned parked cars, and numerous

gang rapes were reported. Some rowdies took the opportunity to settle scores

with striking police. Crowds gathered at stationhouses and pelted the strikers

with mud, rocks, bottles, and rotten fruit as they left the building. A South

Boston Vigilance Committee was formed and tried to keep order, but its

volunteers were savagely beaten.[871]

The rioting ended when 3,000 State Guard troops, scab police, and a provost

navy guard unit broke up the crowds. The State Guard killed three people in the

process—including one bystander and one person who was fleeing. A fourth was

killed as the soldiers broke up the craps games on the Common, and two more

died when the militia attacked a group of boys trying to steal a manhole cover.

By September 11, eight were dead and more than seventy injured—twenty-one

seriously, several of them children. More than $300,000 in property had been

damaged or stolen. On September 12, the striking patrolmen voted unanimously to

end the strike if only their suspended colleagues would be reinstated. Instead,

Curtis fired all the striking police.[872] The State Guard patrolled until

December 12.[873]

Following the strike’s defeat, many states passed laws forbidding police

unions, and the AFL revoked the charters of all its police locals.[874] Isolated

from the rest of the labor movement and lacking political support, the new

unions were crushed in city after city. Local governments then raised wages so

as to remove any incentive for re-forming the unions. Immediately after the

strike, the starting salary for Boston police was increased to $1,400 per year.

(Only a few months before it had been as low as $730).[875] Between 1919 and

1929, police wages increased by 30 percent in Detroit, 50 percent in Chicago,

70 percent in Los Angeles, and 100 percent in Oakland. By 1929, patrolmen

earned between $1,500 (in Cincinnati) and $2,500 (in New York), which put them

on par with most skilled laborers.[876]

This strategy worked to neutralize rank-and-file organizing throughout the

1930s, restricting their activity to the lobbying tactics of the early

PBAs.[877] But in the 1940s, unionization was again on the agenda, and by 1944

the AFL had police unions in 168 cities.[878] In the name of preserving their

neutrality, police departments generally responded to this new wave of

organizing in the same way they had before—barring the organizations and firing

union supporters.[879]

In the 1950s, after the NYPD defeated a Transport Worker’s Union drive by

offering the officers concessions, Commissioner George Monaghan established

Rule 225: “No member of the police force of the city of New York shall become a

member of any labor union.” He reasoned that the rule was necessary to protect the policemen from influences or commitments which might impair

their ability to perform their duties impartially and without fear or favor, or

might tend to weaken or undermine the discipline and authority to which they

must necessarily be subjected.[880]

Appeals to the “neutrality” of the police are questionable, given their

historical use against strikes and unions. Monaghan’s second reason probably

comes closer to the truth: unionization was seen as a threat to the authority

of police commanders.

Whatever the justification, restrictions against unionization proved

ineffectual, and some commanders were forced to try other approaches in order

to preserve their control. In 1941, the AFL supported an FOP organizing drive

in the Detroit Police Department. The department harassed officers who

supported the drive, fired its leaders, and procured court orders barring

unionization, but half of the patrolmen joined the organization anyway. The

next year, however, the FOP lost ground when the Detroit Police Officers

Association (DPOA) was formed with the backing of police commanders. Carl

Parsell, who served as the DPOA president in the late sixties, explained: “It

started out basically a company union under their guidance, under their

control. They gave you the rights at their pleasure.”[881]

Things took a different turn in New York, though a similar strategy was in

evidence. The PBA sued to protect itself from Rule 225, and won. The court

found that the department could bar “organizations of policemen affiliated with

non-police labor associations or officered by non-policemen,” but could not

interfere with the PBA’s activities.[882]

The distinction became relevant in June 1958, when the Teamsters publicly

announced an effort to unionize the police. The announcement put pressure on

the PBA leadership to produce results, and it also gave police managers an

incentive to cooperate with the PBA rather than face the stronger muscle of the

Teamsters.[883] A **Journal-American** editorial suggested:

The surest way of slapping down Hoffa would be for Mayor Wagner, Commissioner

Kennedy, and the representatives of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association to

begin exploring methods by which such grievance machinery would be set up with

proper safeguards all around.[884]

That is, more or less, what occurred. After the Teamsters’ drive was defeated,

PBA president John Cassese set about winning gains for his organization’s

members. By 1961, lobbying, lawsuits, and job actions (including ticket

speed-ups and slowdowns) had won the PBA a dues check-off, protections against

management retaliation, and a formal grievance system. Two years later, Mayor

Robert Wagner (whose father had authored the National Labor Relations Act)

extended collective bargaining rights to police officers, and the PBA won

better wages and retirement benefits as a result. In exchange, the PBA agreed

to a no-strike clause and a bar from affiliating with other unions.[885]

The leaders of the police associations (PBA and FOP alike) were only too glad

to protect their positions from the competition of the Teamsters or American

Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), but no-strike

provisions proved more difficult to enforce. The authorities learned this the

hard way in 1967 when the Detroit police staged a sick-out (nicknamed the “Blue

Flu”). A year later, the Newark police did the same, and the Chicago cops

threatened their own Blue Flu epidemic.[886] In 1969, the Atlanta FOP organized

“Operation No Case,” in which the police issued fewer tickets and overlooked

minor offenses.[887] The next year, Atlanta officers repeated the tactic without

union approval, initiating a ten-week slowdown.[888] The trend continued

throughout the seventies, with strikes in Baltimore, Cleveland, Memphis, and

New Orleans.[889] When faced with a walkout or slowdown, the authorities usually

decided that the pragmatic need to get the cops back to work trumped the city

government’s long-term interest in diminishing the rank and file’s power.[890]

The Detroit sick-out provides an interesting illustration of the forces at work

in these conflicts. The action began on May 16, 1967, with a ticket slowdown.

The police continued to pull over speeding motorists, thus technically

enforcing the law, but they issued warnings rather than citations.[891]

Overnight the number of traffic tickets dropped to one-half its previous level.

Between May 16 and June 14, the number of tickets was down 66.9 percent

compared to the previous thirty days, and 71.5 percent relative to the same

period a year before. It’s estimated that the effort cost the city about

$15,000 each day. On June 6, the DPOA escalated the conflict when its members

voted to stop volunteering for overtime. The following week, police commanders

responded to the disruption by suspending sixty-one officers. Then, on June 15,

323 cops called in sick.[892]

DPOA president Carl Parsell denied that the action constituted a strike, but

said: “Policemen for the first time are joining the labor movement. They are

beginning to think and act like a trade union.” The city filed a lawsuit

against the DPOA, instituted emergency twelve-hour shifts, and alerted the

National Guard. The strike not only continued, but grew. On June 17, 800 of the

city’s 2,700 officers were absent. Of these, 170 had been suspended, 459 were

“sick,” and fifteen cited family emergencies. As the conflict escalated, each

side grew increasingly eager to find a resolution, and on June 20, a tentative

agreement was reached. The next day, the police returned to work.[893]

The proposed agreement granted the DPOA changes in policy and discipline, and established a grievance procedure, but it

was not at all clear that the fight was over, or which side would prevail. All

“non-economic” issues were settled, but there was still the matter of wages,

and the deal had to be approved by the city council.[894] The tension persisted.

Commanders had only a tenuous grasp on the loyalties of their subordinates. But

then a funny thing happened—the Detroit riot of 1967. With the Black community

in open revolt, the cops, the city government, and local elites very quickly

rediscovered their previous affinity. In bringing the labor dispute to a close,

the specially appointed Detroit Police Dispute Panel noted: “Far more than the

interests of the police officers themselves is involved. As has become obvious

in recent months … the police force is the first line of defense against civil

disorder.”[895] The cops got their raises.[896]

In contrast to the defeated strike of 1919, the labor skirmishes of the 1960s

and 1970s solidified the positions of the police associations and had the

somewhat paradoxical effect of buttressing the top-to-bottom unity of the

departments. The unions asserted increasing levels of influence over

departmental policy, and the police management used the unions to win

rank-and-file cooperation.[897] Such management-union partnerships reinforced

the institution’s cohesion, allowed disparate parts of the organization to

develop a community of interests, and provided a means for settling disputes

and resolving grievances. But they retained traditional taboos against

autonomous rank-and-file action and meaningful expressions of solidarity with

other labor organizations.[898]

Whereas the Boston strike had been ignominiously defeated, the Detroit strike

was resolved in a way that strengthened both the department and the union.

Clearly, a lot had changed during the intervening half-century. The relevant

differences were not limited to shifts in policing and labor organizing, but

also concerned the overall character and function of municipal government.

The Death of the Machines

During the early twentieth century, police departments were subject to a

battery of reforms, changing the institution’s structure, aims, and personnel.

These changes were not motivated by concerns about racism or brutality so much

as they constituted one part of the Progressive movement’s general effort to

re-invent urban government.

It is not hard to see why reform was needed. Under political machines, there

was little to distinguish an official’s personal attachments, interests,

loyalties, and obligations from the duties, responsibilities, powers, and

benefits of his office. Authority rested as much in the informal and

decentralized ward networks as in the government itself or the offices of the

various municipal departments. Positions were filled strictly along partisan

lines or as personal favors; there was no pretense of professionalism or

impartiality. Discipline was lax, corruption was sanctified, and bribery was a

major source of income at every level of the hierarchy. In this context, it was

the job of the police to protect illicit businesses, extort money from honest

citizens, rig elections, and otherwise enforce the will of neighborhood bosses.

So long as they were successful in these central tasks, it made little

difference to the machine bosses whether the cops engaged in petty crime,

neglected their legal duties, were rude in their encounters with the public, or

used violence unnecessarily.[899]

As a result, police legitimacy was sorely

lacking. This problem was aggravated by a long series of scandals implicating

departments around the country in organized crime and other types of

corruption. For example, at the turn of the century, Los Angeles mayor Arthur

Harper, police chief Charles Sebastian, and a local pimp formed a syndicate in

order to monopolize prostitution in the city; the police were used to suppress

competition and protect the syndicate’s operations. In 1912, Herman Rosenthal,

a professional gambler, accused the New York City Police of protecting gambling houses; he was

murdered on his way to meet with the district attorney. The next year, San

Francisco papers revealed that a group of detectives had recruited a gang of

con men, offering protection in return for 15 percent of the total take (an

estimated gross of $300,000 annually). And during Prohibition, dozens of

Cincinnati cops sold confiscated liquor and offered protection to bootleggers

in return for a share of the profits.[900] Such scandals largely discredited the

police departments and the machines to which they were attached.[901] The

Progressive agenda offered a map toward legitimacy.

Seeking to replace the machine system, Progressive reformers looked to business

and the military for organizational models. Schools, for instance, were

reorganized on a corporate model, whereas the police were structured along

military lines.[902] This military analogy provided a positive ideal of what the

police could be—a disciplined, hierarchically organized force, with the chief

holding nearly absolute power. More specifically, the reformers offered three

recommendations for change: departments should be centralized; the quality of

personnel should be improved; and police operations should be narrowly focused

on crime control, with an emphasis on prevention.[903]

Toward these ends, police departments were divided, as far as possible, into

specialized units with a streamlined chain of command and an articulated

hierarchy. Chiefs were given more control and discipline was moved from

external boards, which were deemed “political,” to internal “professional”

mechanisms. Civil service procedures were instituted, age and education

requirements were established, and character checks and psychological exams

were introduced.[904]

But the success of the Progressive movement was uneven overall. Despite the

trend toward centralization and rationalized management, little changed in the

areas of policy or procedure, and neighborhood precinct stations retained much

of their autonomy.[905] Police chiefs did not, on the whole, receive the

lifetime tenure Progressives proposed.[906] And the police still had a broad

range of duties, even after specialization. In fact, contrary to the rhetoric

of the time, the police function did not so much narrow, as it shifted to meet

new demands for social order.[907]

Yet modest successes had a profound effect on the character of government.

Around the country, political machines were beginning to decay. The localized,

personalistic, and unabashedly corrupt machine system was giving way to a new

kind of public administration. In theory, the new system was very nearly the

opposite of the old—it operated legalistically, acting according to general

principles and enforcing rules impersonally. City government was becoming

bureaucratized.[908]

Bureaucratization and Bourgeois Control

Police reforms contributed in several ways to the rise of bureaucracy. The

narrowing of the police function promoted bureaucratic development, not only

within police departments, but throughout the city government. As elections,

health regulations, licensing, and welfare duties were removed from the list of

police responsibilities, other municipal departments—other bureaucracies—were

created to take over these tasks. A similar process occurred within

departments, as civilians began performing clerical, technical, and

administrative work.[909]

The efforts to improve personnel also resulted in increased bureaucratization.

Cops were assigned civil service status or military rank, barred from accepting

rewards, paid higher salaries, provided better training, and hired and promoted

on the basis of exams.[910] By rationalizing the selection of personnel and the

delivery of services, the new procedures reduced the opportunities for personal

favors and patronage, thus cutting machine bosses off from their means of

securing support.[911]

Centralization, likewise, reduced the importance of the local precincts and

undercut a strategic base of the ward organizations.[912] It also made it

possible for such specialized functions as vice control, record-keeping,

internal investigations, and detective work to be removed from the precincts

and assigned to squads controlled by headquarters.[913] This reorganization

limited the opportunities for corruption and, again, put power in the hands of

the police chief rather than ward bosses or precinct commanders.[914]

But despite the specialization, civil service procedures, and administrative

centralization, the ideal of bureaucratic control proved incompatible with the

dispersed and highly discretionary activities that characterized police work

and made policing a source of power for the state.[915] Rules were crafted,

records kept, promotions and assignments somewhat rationalized—but the cop on

the beat was expected and required to exercise just the sort of individual

discretion and situational judgment denied to his counterpart on the lower

rungs of proper bureaucracies. This situation allowed corruption, prejudice,

favoritism, and political influences some amount of latitude on the

street—where the police did their work—while limiting these factors in the

offices of management, where policy was set.[916] The military aspects of reform

were just as limited. Some departments adopted military ranks, instituted

drilling, and began requiring target practice, but discipline was not

established along military lines (in part because of the resistance of

patrolmen’s associations).[917] In short, cops became neither soldiers nor

bureaucrats; they did, however, cease acting as the pawns of the political

machines.

Reformers quickly learned that this administrative independence cut both ways.

Historian James Richardson writes:

While civil service procedures reduced some of the politician’s power over the

policemen’s working life, they also reduced policemen’s receptivity to reform

leadership. Increasingly, the police could follow their own lead, independent

both of the party organizations and the innovative administrations.[918]

Hence, while the new system of administration diminished the influence of

machine bosses, it did so by bolstering the position of municipal bureaucracies

as independent seats of power. While sometimes frustrating reformers, this

arrangement was not wholly disadvantageous for the city administrators, mayors,

and politicians, as it let them disavow the police department’s excesses

without needing to do anything to stop them. If authority was invested

exclusively in the police chiefs, then the chiefs would also incur whatever

blame was directed at the department, though they faced few consequences of

public disfavor.[919] But even the position of the chief of police was not

necessarily as strong as it appeared, and discipline was generally limited by

the need to maintain the loyalty of those in his command. Egon Bittner

observes:

It is exceedingly rare that a ranking police officer can take positive charge

of police action, and even in the cases where this is possible, his power to

determine the course of action is limited to giving the most general kinds of

directions. But like all superiors, police superiors do depend on the good will

of the subordinates.… Thus, they are forced to resort to the only means

available to insure a modicum of loyalty, namely, covering mistakes. The more

blatantly an officer’s transgression violates an explicit departmental

regulation the less likely it is that his superior will be able to conceal it.

Therefore, to be helpful, as they must try to be, superiors must confine

themselves to white-washing bad practices involving relatively unregulated

conduct, that is, those dealings with citizens that lead up to arrests.[920]

The protection that the individual policeman once received from his political

patron now came from his superior officers. In a formal sense, the police faced

more discipline, while in practice they continued to engage the public—or

certain parts of it—according to their own judgment. Hence, bureaucratization

increased the autonomy of the department as a whole and, ironically, preserved

the discretion enjoyed by officers at the lowest ranks.

Yet this gap in accountability was not particularly worrisome to reformers of

the time. The Progressive movement, while often credited with improving the

quality of public services and reducing corruption, was not especially

concerned with protecting the rights of the poor. Reform efforts were not led

by Black and immigrant workers, who constituted the usual victims of the police

abuse, but by businessmen and professionals.[921] The Progressive agenda

reflected the ideology and interests of this constituency.[922] By promoting

bureaucratic reform, these “respectable” classes sought to ensure their own

control over the workings of the local governments. J.W. Hill, an influential

reformer in Des Moines, wrote: “The professional politician must be ousted and

in his place capable business men chosen to conduct the affairs of the city.”

Likewise, I.M. Earle, the general counsel of the Bankers Life Association and a

reform advocate, explained, “When the plan [for a commission government] was

adopted, it was the intention to get businessmen to run it.”[923]

Put simply, the reformers hoped to break the machines and, at the same time,

push working-class immigrants out of politics. Because immigrants generally

lived together in distinct neighborhoods, they had been well placed to

influence the ward-based machines. So Progressive reforms replaced districted

elections with city-wide contests and strengthened the mayor’s office to the

detriment of the ward councilors.[924] The reforms thus practically limited

popular access to government.[925] Meanwhile, other efforts were underway to

restrict suffrage, assimilate immigrant children, and regulate the numbers of

new immigrants.[926]

Progressive efforts encouraged legalistic administration and promoted

transparency, but these gains were only really extended to the White,

Protestant, native-born, English-speaking middle and upper classes. The

transition, then, was from a populist gangsterism to an elitist republicanism.

The Progressive movement replaced machine politics with class rule.

Edward C. Banfield and James Q. Wilson explain this transformation:

The machine provided the politician with a base of influence deriving from its

control of lower-income voters. As this base shrinks, he becomes more dependent

on other sources of influence—especially newspapers, civic associates, labor

unions, business groups, and churches. “Nonpolitical” (read nonparty) lines of

access to the city administration are substituted for “political” ones.

Campaign funds come not from salary kickbacks and the sale of favors, but from

rich men and from companies doing business with the city. Department heads and

other administrators who are able to command the support of professional

associations and civic groups become indispensable to the mayor and are

therefore harder for him to control. Whereas the spoils of office formerly went

to “the boys” in the [vote-]delivery wards in the form of jobs and favors, they

now go in the form of urban renewal projects, street cleaning, and better

police protection to [public opinion-producing] newspaper wards.[927]

The poor did not control, or especially benefit from, the political machines.

But the machines required their participation and offered them something in

return. The emerging bureaucracies of the Progressive Era, in contrast, were

designed to limit their participation. The poor did not control these either,

and the new system offered them terribly little.

Machine rule was replaced with the more subtle power of the capitalist class.

Where local government had been administered according to strictly material

incentives, it was now guided by administrative norms and the formal rules of

bureaucracy, backed with the moral standards and political ideology of the

Protestant bourgeoisie. This victory was ironic, in a sense, because

Progressive rhetoric centered on “taking the police out of politics,” and

conversely, “taking the politics out of policing.” Though the reforms

<em>did</em> grant police commanders a fresh independence from the demands of

politicians, the idea of taking the politics out of policing was doomed at the

outset—as ridiculous a notion as taking the politics out of government. As

Robert Fogelson argues:

Far from being mere administrative bodies

that enforced the law, kept the peace, and served the public, the police

departments were policy-making agencies that helped to decide which laws were

enforced, whose peace was kept, and which public was served.… [The] police

thereby exercised a great deal of influence over the process of mobility, the

distribution of power, and the struggle for status in urban America. To put it

bluntly, no institution which had so great an impact on the lives and livelihoods of so many citizens could have been

separated from the political process. Nor, so long as the nation was committed

to democracy and pluralism, should it have been. None of the reform

proposals—neither the schemes to centralize the police forces, upgrade their

personnel, and narrow their function nor the appeals to transform them along

the lines of a military organization—could have changed this situation.[928]

In effect, the city government was wrested from the grip of the political

machines, and the police were removed from the control of the city government,

but the business and professional classes exercised a high level of influence

over both the city government and the police. The Progressive Era saw

simultaneously an increase in state autonomy and the full rise of capitalist

class hegemony.

To understand this concurrence, we must recognize that “hegemony” is not

synonymous with dictatorial rule.[929] It is more subtle, more flexible, and

therefore also more insidious and more resilient. It is characterized less by

the direct issuing of orders than by the setting of agendas, the framing of

debate, the articulation of standards, the valuation of alternatives, and the

delineation of available options.[930] It is through hegemony that the ruling

class creates a bounded sphere of institutional autonomy. Without need of

conspiracies or actual censorship, its ideological ascendancy determines in

advance which issues will be raised, which debates will be aired, and

ultimately, whose interests will be considered and whose rights respected.

Professionalization: A Conspiracy Against the Laity[931]

Despite the limitations of their actual reforms, the Progressives’ ideology

prevailed, and a perspective that was both Nativist and bureaucratic became the

accepted view of newspapers, churches, commercial organizations, civic

associations, universities, and other opinion-makers.[932] It also, predictably,

found an audience among police administrators.

A second wave of police reform originated from within law enforcement.[933] More

specifically, it was brought to policing by newcomers to the field. During the

1930s, depressed economic conditions made police work attractive to the large

numbers of men seeking steady employment. Police departments became more

selective,[934] and the sudden influx of middle-class officers—many of whom

shared the values of the Progressive reformers—changed the character of the

institution. This “new breed” of officer found their backgrounds and ideals in

conflict with the lowly status of their jobs and the ideology of the

departments, but thanks to the civil service procedures, they soon moved

through the ranks and into command positions.[935]

The new police reformers retained Progressive assumptions about the purpose of the police, the need for its

leaders to be autonomous, and the nature of political legitimacy, but were

motivated by their own immediate frustration with the low level of respect

accorded the occupation. Despite the previous wave of reforms, the police had

remained ineffective and often corrupt. Departments were badly managed, with

little forward planning, poor supervision, and no rational division of labor.

Though formal standards and bureaucratic civil service procedures did exist,

the personnel were poorly trained and generally undisciplined.[936]

Faced with these conditions, the “new breed” sought to professionalize

policing, and thereby raise their social standing. Beginning in the late 1920s

and early 1930s, they developed a model of professionalism that achieved

prominence in police circles by mid-century. This model emphasized strict

admission standards, extensive training, a high level of technical knowledge,

and a devotion to service and a commitment to the public interest.[937] By

becoming a profession, the reasoning went, police could improve the quality of

their work, raise their own status, and further insulate themselves from

outside interference.[938]

The professional movement overlapped chronologically with the latter part of

the Progressive Era, and the new reforms continued some of the efforts begun by

the Progressives. For example, they continued the project of reorganizing

departments along functional lines and managed to close more precincts,

extending the reliance on special squads and streamlining the hierarchy. While

these changes did further diminish the influence of neighborhood bosses (whose

power was already in decline), they often just shifted corruption from the

wards to the squads. In a textbook case of failed reform, Chicago mayor Richard

Daley responded to a 1960 burglary-ring scandal by replacing Police

Commissioner Timothy J. O’Connor with reform luminary O.W. Wilson. Wilson set

about professionalizing the department, removing corrupt or incompetent

commanders, instituting a system of promotions based on seniority and

competitive exams, and closing seventeen of the thirty-eight district

stations—but corruption continued unabated. A 1964 Justice Department report

revealed that a score of Chicago cops, including an internal affairs

investigator, were running a protection racket.[939]

Reformers took steps to regulate the quality of the personnel, using physical

examinations, education requirements, character checks, and the civil service

process to weed out undesirable applicants.[940] Whether these measures

succeeded in “improving” the quality of recruits is another matter. Critics at

the time denounced the professional ideology as elitist,[941] and in many

cities, the new requirements were used to prevent racial minorities from

joining the force.[942]

The reform commanders seemed to want to fill departments with recruits whose

backgrounds and values resembled their own, but the practical consequences of

these changes were not what their advocates had intended. When the economy

recovered from the Depression, the “professionalized” departments had trouble

attracting and keeping recruits. The pay had not kept pace with that of other

occupations, prestige was still lacking, and new officers could only enter the

department at the lowest level.[943] Since the best cops did not always advance

through the ranks, and the worst were seldom removed, stagnation set in. The

quality of leadership suffered, and the police became increasingly

isolated.[944]

Compared to the Progressives, the

advocates of professionalization had more success in instituting their

prescribed reforms, but they did no better in achieving their ultimate aims.

The status of the police did not come to equal that of doctors and lawyers, and

the departments were only mildly cleaner than before. The main effect of

professionalization was to increase police autonomy. And professionalization,

like bureaucratization, not only institutionalized that autonomy, but helped to

legitimize it.[945] The discourse

surrounding professionalization encouraged institutional problems to be thought

of in technical terms, and thus referred to the “experts”—the police. Issues

of accountability and oversight were thus framed as professional matters with

which the uninitiated should not be trusted to interfere.

The move toward professionalization embodied both a continuation of and a

reaction against the bureaucratization of policing. The advocates of

professionalization, usually police administrators, envisioned their project as

an extension of the bureaucratic reforms, with an increased emphasis on the

quality of recruits and higher public esteem for the occupation.[946] The

rank-and-file officer, on the other hand, had a very different notion of what

professionalization implied: “The professionally-minded patrolman,” James

Richardson explains, “wants to act according to his evaluation of the situation

and not according to some bureaucratic directive.”[947] Professionalization very

clearly promoted police autonomy, but it was deeply ambivalent about what this

meant for the management of departments. Did professionalization only require

the autonomy of the institution relative to the civilian authorities, or did it

also demand the autonomy of the patrolman relative to departmental control? In

practice the second followed from the first, as commanders sought to protect

themselves from criticism. Rather than exposing abuses and disciplining the

officers, internal affairs investigators and unit commanders took their task as

the defense of the department as a whole, and especially of the officers under

their command.[948] Professionalization, again like the earlier reform effort,

continued to put supervisors in the position of covering for their

subordinates.[949]

At the same time as the “professional” police were asserting a new

independence, they also adopted strategies that increased their presence in the

lives of the urban poor and people of color. The professional model encouraged

police leaders to take seriously the elusive goal of preventing crime. Making the most of the new squad structure,

the police sought to reduce the opportunity for crime, experimenting with

vehicular patrols, saturation tactics, and high-discretion techniques like

“stop-and-search” or “field interrogation.” For example, in the late 1950s, the

San Francisco police used each of these approaches in tandem. Chief Thomas

Cahill created an “S Squad” (“S” standing for “saturation”) to be deployed in

high-crime areas, with instructions to stop, question, and search suspicious

characters. During its first year, the S Squad stopped 20,000 people, filed

11,000 reports, and made 1,000 arrests. Most of those they stopped were Black

and/or young people.[950] The preventive aims of the professionals led the police to intervene in situations that they

would have previously ignored, or which were not even (legally speaking)

criminal matters. This new, more intensive scrutiny promoted a generalized

distrust on both sides, as police grew ever more suspicious of the public and

the public (especially the Black community) grew increasingly resentful of the

police.[951] As we have seen, this antipathy bore bitter fruit in the years that

followed.

Unionization and Blue Power

Today’s police unions are the bastard children of the mid-century

professionals. Though earlier union efforts had met with little success, the

fissures and contradictions of the professional agenda helped create conditions

that made unionization possible. While the rhetoric of professionalization lent

legitimacy to demands for higher pay and greater autonomy, the prescriptions of

the reformers alienated the regular officers and produced additional strife

with the public. This situation created new tensions within police departments

and brought the idea of unionization back to the fore.

Though coming as a direct result of the attempts to professionalize policing,

union organizing efforts were of a quite different character. The movement for

police unions reflected a working-class labor perspective rather than a

middle-class professional agenda, and found its support with the mass of patrol

officers rather than with commanders. The International Association of Chiefs

of Police recognized this difference as crucial, and described unionization as

sounding “the death knell of **professionalization**.”[952]

The influence of unionization has extended far beyond such basic matters as

wages, working conditions, and grievances. Unionization, like the previous two

waves of reform, had the general effect of increasing the institutional

autonomy of the department[953] and the autonomy of individual officers.[954] But

unionization took the latter as one of its principle aims, and for that matter,

sought to provide the lowest-level officers collective power over the

institution as a whole.[955]

As the police unions grew, they set about negotiating policy matters, including

those governing patrols, deployment, and discipline.[956] As Jerome Skolnick

noted, the agenda quickly broadened to include “questions of social policy,

including which type of conduct should be criminal, societal attitudes toward

protest, the procedural rights of defendants, and the sufficiency of resources

allocated to the enforcement of the criminal law.”[957] These efforts

represented what sociologist Rodney Stark recognized as “a phenomenon new to

American society: the emergence of the police as a self-conscious, organized,

and militant political constituency, bidding for far-reaching political power

in their own right.”[958]

The police also returned to open electioneering—like in the machine days, but

with a difference. Rather than owing allegiance to their patrons and taking

orders from the ward bosses, the police had developed into a constituency for

the politicians to wow and woo. Police support could make or break a candidate,

and once in office the politician owed his allegiance to the cops, rather than

the other way around.[959]

Some politicians made the most of the new balance of power. Philadelphia police

commissioner, and later mayor, Frank Rizzo deftly exploited the political

potential of the department, building himself a career while at the same time

amplifying the power of the police and increasing their independence. Under

Rizzo’s guidance, the police department became the unrivaled foundation of his

power.[960]

It wasn’t long before police unions started producing their own candidates, and

served in some places as a ladder into office. In 1969, Wayne Larking, who had

served as head of the Police Officer’s Guild, was elected to the Seattle City

Council. That same year, Charles Stenvig, a former police detective and the

business manager of the Minneapolis Police Officer’s Federation, was elected

mayor, having run solely on a law-and-order platform.[961] Stenvig convinced

patrolmen to campaign for him. When an interviewer asked one officer, “Did you

introduce yourself as a patrolman?” the officer responded: “Sure. That was the

whole point. The idea was to convince people that a cop would know how to bring

peace back to the community.”[962]

At times, such political efforts—especially electioneering—crossed lines of

decorum. In 1964, many departments had to issue special orders to prevent

officers from wearing Goldwater or Wallace buttons on their uniforms, or from

putting campaign stickers on squad cars. Some cops even handed out campaign

literature while on duty.[963]

In each arena, whether their efforts involved electioneering, lobbying, or

strikes, the police pursued a conservative agenda—specifically one that

increased the power, autonomy, and central role of law enforcement. L.A.’s

Firemen’s and Policemen’s Protective League (“Fi-Po”) represented the direction

of the new activism; it lobbied for counter-subversive laws, promoted

right-wing rallies, sponsored conservative speakers, and sold businesses a

blacklist naming union organizers and radicals.[964]

“No justice! No police!”

In July 1966, New York supplied the first real test of this newfound power.

Mayor John Lindsay made good on one of his campaign promises, restructuring the

city’s police complaint board to include a civilian majority. The Police

Benevolent Association immediately and vigorously attacked the plan, eventually

forcing the issue to the ballot. The PBA then sponsored an extensive ad

campaign and individual officers put anti–review board signs on their cars,

distributed literature, and harassed those who campaigned in favor of the

board—often while on duty.[965]

The anti-review board propaganda openly appealed to public anxieties about

civil unrest and crime—two issues, in the context of the time, with obvious

racial overtones. One poster showed a young girl at the entrance to a subway;

its text read: “The Civilian Review Board must be stopped. Her life, your life,

may depend on it.”[966] Another poster showed a riot-torn street, cluttered

with rubble and lined with damaged storefronts. The caption stated: “This is

the aftermath of a riot in a city that **had** a civilian review

board.”[967] An August 18, 1966, **Reporter** editorial titled “License to

Riot” worked from the same theme:

Did you see the pictures of those Cleveland riots, of Negro thieves running

wild, in and out of wrecked establishments, arms loaded? And did you see the

cops standing by, idly watching the debauchery? That was the result of a Police

Review Board.[968]

As the November election approached, police tactics became more brazen. The

PBA and their supporters packed a meeting about the review board, chaired by

Councilman Theodore S. Weiss. Former FBI agent William Turner described the

scene:

Thousands of off-duty policemen in uniform, with service revolvers strapped on

and wearing PBA buttons (the buttons were later removed at the request of the

police commissioner) tightly ringed City Hall and packed its corridors. Many

carried signs with such slogans as “What About Civil Rights For Cops,” [and]

“Don’t Let The Reds Frame The Police.” Adding to the spectacle were dozens of

American Nazis and John Birch Society members toting American flags and

shouting encouragement to the police.[969]

The New York review board was defeated by a two-to-one margin—1,313,161 to

765,468.[970] Elsewhere during the same period, similar battles were fought

more quietly, with police associations convincing city councils or mayors to

refuse proposals for review boards—sometimes even dismantling existing boards.

Such was the story in Los Angeles, Denver, Cincinnati, Seattle, Detroit,

Newark, San Diego, Hartford, Baltimore, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.[971]

But it is worth noting that the police were not univocal in their opposition to

civilian review. In many cases, associations of Black officers openly favored

the review proposals.[972] In New York, when one such group, the Guardians,

released a statement expressing their support of the mayor’s proposal, a PBA

spokesman protested, “they put their color before their duties and their oath

as policemen.”[973] It seems that the PBA saw its own political agenda as

defining the scope and content of police duty.

This view was given a fuller expression in August 1968, when PBA president John

Cassese issued his own orders concerning police behavior during demonstrations.

Cassese instructed PBA members, “If a superior tells a man to ignore a

violation of the law, the policeman will take action notwithstanding that

order.”[974] When the PBA finally published its full guidelines they turned out

to be more bark than bite, as they mostly just paraphrased existing laws and

policies, but the episode demonstrated something of the PBA’s aims.[975] In

particular, it suggested an emerging system of dual power within police

agencies, with commanders and union-leaders sometimes sharing and sometimes

competing for control. This situation was a natural outgrowth of earlier

struggles for departmental autonomy, like that against the Civilian Review

Board.

In the course of these conflicts, the

political ambitions of police became more aggressive: they not only sought to

insulate themselves from all outside control, but also wanted to exercise

control over other areas of the government and public policy. Henry Wise, the

lawyer for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, was very optimistic about the organization’s

potential: “We could elect governors, or at least knock ’em off. I’ve told them

[the police] if you get out and organize, you could become one [of] the

strongest political units in the commonwealth.”[976]

By the end of the 1960s, the trajectory of these developments was clear, and

elites started to worry. The **New York Times** opined, “[A] city cannot

be ruled by its police force, any more than a free nation can be ruled by its

military establishment.”[977] The police, both in their departments and in

their unions, were coming to represent a force that could rival the civil

authorities. In 1968, Boston mayor Kevin White confessed, “Are the police

governable? Yes. Do I control the police, right now? No.”[978] In 1972 L.A.

city administrative officer C. Erwin Piper said Fi-Po had “more political clout

than any other group in city government.”[979]

Unfortunately, the period of police militancy has outlasted many of the social

conditions that produced its rise, and police activism continues to have major

political consequences. In 1992, when New York mayor David Dinkins proposed a

civilian review committee, the PBA mounted a protest-cum-riot, which Acting

Commissioner Raymond Kelly described as “unruly, mean-spirited and perhaps

criminal.” According to Kelly’s report, 10,000 off-duty cops took over the

steps of City Hall, blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, damaged property,

and assaulted passersby. The response of the on-duty officers was “lethargic at

best.”[980] Several officers, including one captain and two sergeants, failed

to hold police lines, and a uniformed officer—Michael P. Abitabile—waved

protestors through the police barricades while shouting racial slurs.[981]

Police Chief David W. Scott later said, “I’m disappointed in the fact that

police officers would violate the law.”[982]

The demonstration carried obvious racial overtones. Signs read, “Dinkins, we

know your true color—yellow bellied,” and “Dear Mayor, have you hugged a drug

dealer today?” T-shirts urged, “Dinkins must go!” Demonstrators chanted, “The

mayor’s on crack” and “No justice! No police!”[983] Kelly’s report suggests

that the demonstration was self-defeating, as “the inability of the on-duty

personnel assigned to police the demonstration has raised serious questions

about the department’s willingness and ability to police itself.”[984] I would

actually say that it **answered** those questions, but the demonstration

had greater practical consequences, helping to launch the candidacy of Rudolph

Giuliani. Giuliani, who spoke at the rally, was elected mayor following Dinkins

and immediately set about expanding police power.[985] In retrospect, the

September 16 rally has all the flavor of a municipal-level coup.

Police activism, especially in the guise of union activity, remains somewhat

perplexing. The historical development is clear enough, but politically it is

troublesome—especially for the left. The whole issue presents a nest of

paradoxes: the police have unionized and gone on strike—but continue in their

role as strikebreakers.[986] They have pitted themselves against their bosses

and the government, but represent a threat to democracy rather than an

expression of it. They have resisted authority for the sake of authoritarian

aims, have broken laws in the name of law and order, and have demanded rights

that they consistently deny to others.

This situation is sometimes thought to create a bind for those who both support

the rights of workers **and** demand that police be accountable to the

community. But the dilemma here is illusory. The ethical demands of solidarity

are with the oppressed, and against the police. Working people cannot afford to

extend solidarity to the police, and we cannot let the reactionary goals of

police unions restrain us in our attacks on injustice. Confusion in this matter

represents a set of related misconceptions; these can be resolved by clearly

examining the class status of the police and the nature of their organizations.

Wage Slaves and Overseers

The class position of the police is complex, and even contradictory.

Individual officers may consider themselves “working class” for any of a

variety of reasons. First, there is the fact that, even after the period of

professionalization, most officers are still drawn from working-class

backgrounds. There is also the persistent sense that, regardless of income, the

job has little social status attached to it. And finally, there is the nature

of the work itself. “After all,” as David Bayley and Harold Mendelsohn remind

us, “police work is often physical, sometimes dirty, involves shift-work, and

brings officers into contact with undesirable elements of society.”[987]

The police have certainly faced their share of uncomfortable and unfair working

conditions. In the nineteenth century, police received low pay (unless one

counts graft), worked long shifts, were given no vacations, enjoyed little job

security, and had no guarantee of income if they were injured (or of support

for their families if they were killed).[988] Such standards are appalling, for

certain, but most workers were no better off.[989] In the twentieth century,

the pressures of bureaucratization and professionalization were often resented

by the officers at the lowest levels. Bureaucratization increased discipline,

eliminated political patronage and protection, and supplied rule-bound

prescriptions for police action. Professionalization represented, from the

perspective of the old-school cops, an unnecessary intrusion of elitist

organizational goals at the expense of a traditional hard-nosed approach. Both

reform movements created structural tensions within the police departments that

later motivated the drive toward unionization.

But the proletarian aspects of policing are only half the equation. Though

individually they receive just a meager portion of capitalism’s benefits, the

police represent both the interests and the power of the ruling class. Like

managers, police control those who do the work, and they actively maintain the

conditions that allow for profitable exploitation.[990]

The police thus occupy a dual position as workers and overseers, but this is

not a fatal contradiction: a worker can be made to discern “his own” interests,

apart from the interests of the working class as a whole. Such is the nature of

the so-called “middle class,” which is really a section of the working class

bought off by the capitalists to act on their behalf and manage their

affairs.[991] Class status, as economist Harry Braverman argues, is determined

neither by income nor by ownership, but by power relations:

Since the authority and expertise of the middle ranks in the capitalist

corporation represent an unavoidable delegation of responsibility, the position

of such functionaries may best be judged by their relation to the power and

wealth that commands them from above, and to the mass of labor beneath them

which they in turn help to control, command, and organize.[992]

The peculiar distinction of this middle stratum is that its members share in

both the power and rewards of the upper classes and in the alienation of the

workers they control.[993] This basic fact requires elites to treat police differently than other workers, seeking through

ideology and material incentives to separate them from the mass of workers (and

the labor movement especially), tying the interests of the police to those of

capitalism and the state. This trick is accomplished through peculiar means,

using what is ostensibly a labor organization—the police union.

Police Unions Aren’t Unions

The status of police unions, and their relationship to the labor movement as a

whole, has always been troublesome. When the NYPD challenged the legality of

the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association in 1951, the court ruled that the PBA

could organize police and could negotiate contracts precisely because it was

<em>not</em> a union. According to the court, the police could join

“associations” like the PBA and FOP, but not any organization that had either

non-police leadership or affiliation with non-police unions.[994] This ruling

represented something of a compromise position, seeking both to preserve the

“neutrality” of police action against strikes and to respect the officers’

right to free association.

As legal reasoning goes, that’s not very impressive. New York City Police

Commissioner Stephen P. Kennedy, who strongly resisted the PBA’s demands for

recognition in the late 1950s, argued that the distinction between an

independent association and a union was meaningless: “When an organization acts

like a union, talks like a union, makes demands like a union and conducts

itself like a union, it cannot be heard to say that it is not a union.”[995]

But the legal status of police associations is at most a secondary matter. The

practical effect of the ruling was to privilege the PBAs and FOPs over the

Teamsters and AFSCME. Police managers were then quick to recognize (in some

cases, to create) associations—especially when facing a Teamsters organizing

drive. The associations gave police management a means of establishing

agreed-upon conditions while still discouraging autonomous rank-and-file action

and solidarity with other workers.[996]

Police associations thus developed in relative isolation from the rest of the

labor movement, while building close ties with the command hierarchy within the

departments. This fact points to two related reasons why police unions are not

legitimate labor unions. First, as is discussed above, the police are clearly

part of the managerial machinery of capitalism. Their status as “workers” is

therefore problematic.[997] Second, the agendas of police unions mostly reflect

the interests of the institution (the police department) rather than those of

the working class.[998]

When the PBA organized in New York, collective bargaining rights were traded

for no-strike agreements and a bar from affiliating with other unions. During

the same period, police unions around the country were defecting from AFSCME to

form police-only locals.[999] Almost twenty years later, in 1970, the NY PBA

took this dissociation further than the law required, moving to break parity

with other city employees, including firefighters, corrections deputies, and

sanitation workers.[1000] That move is telling, and not just because it shows

the lack of solidarity between police associations and the rest of the working

class. It indicates that police associations organize more along institutional

rather than class lines—that is, they organize police **as police**, not

as workers.

The police exhibit an institutional unity that is fundamentally different than

the class consciousness underlying union activity. The chief difference is

that—despite fissures along race lines, disputes between superiors and

subordinates, and intra-departmental rivalries—a sense of shared identity

extends to every branch of police organizations and is felt at every level,

from the highest commander to the rookie on the beat. This solidarity helps the

commanders maintain the loyalty of their troops and, as mentioned before, it

also leads cops of all ranks to cover up for each other. Not only do street

cops hide one another’s mistakes from those above them, but superiors shield

subordinates from outside scrutiny.[1001]

Such managerial complicity reinforces the sense of identity and group cohesion,

thus reducing the possibilities for conflict within the department. And as the

rank and file have become a more vocal, and more powerful, political

constituency, some commanders have extended this strategy in order to share in

the benefits of militancy.[1002] A savvy commander can secure the loyalty of his

troops by participating in their revolt, providing himself with the platform

for leadership and at the same time retaining a militant force prepared to back

him up in clashes with civil authorities.

Police unions exercise influence over departments in ways other unions can only

envy. However, apart from localized (usually individual) grievances, the

officers and their managers share interests, perspectives, and a sense of

identity. In the end, their institutional identification is superior to their

class consciousness. To a very large extent, police departments achieve

internal peace by subsuming the interests of both workers and managers to those

of the institution. Even economic issues, like wages and hours, become common

ground for cops and their bosses: both want increases in department budgets.

The officers, of course, enjoy a higher standard of living as a result, and

police administrators can look forward to more funding, larger departments,

better morale, and an easier time attracting recruits. For this reason some

scholars describe police contract negotiations as exercises in “collusive

bargaining.”

Margaret Levi explains:

As the literature on private labor unions so often illustrates, collective

bargaining often serves as a device of social control. It channels conflict and

sets its terms. But collusive bargaining goes one step further: it enables

management and labor negotiators to cooperate actively with each other. (In

order to convince their constituencies of their motives the bargaining teams

fight publicly, but privately they compromise.) By engaging in collusive

bargaining, city leaders gain credibility with the public for being tough, gain

some assurance of relatively uninterrupted service delivery, and regain some

power to make programmatic innovations. Of course, in return, they must grant

some of the union’s demands.[1003]

Union leaders, meanwhile, put on a similar act for the benefit of their

constituency. As a result, they are able to deliver gains to the union members

and retain their positions of influence—all without the risks of genuine

conflict.

As an example of this collusive approach, Levi cites the relationship between

the Fraternal Order of Police and Atlanta Police Chief John Inman: “The chief

found the FOP was sympathetic enough to his policies to become a much-needed

ally, and the FOP discovered it could gain promotions and respect.… However,

this alliance also contributed to the racism of the police labor

organization.”[1004] In this way, antagonisms between labor and management become secondary to their common,

institutional aims. As both press to increase the power, resources, and

autonomy of the institution, they form a community of interests, an alliance

against the meddling of city officials or the competing demands of other

government agencies.

Such an alliance bears the markings of “a corporatist arrangement,” defined by

Colin Crouch and Ronald Dore as:

An institutional pattern which involves an explicit or implicit bargain (or

recurring bargaining) between some organ of government and private interest

groups (including those promoting “ideal interests”—“causes”), one element in

the bargain being that the groups receive certain institutionalized or <em>ad