How cops see themselves
Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 16 years ago, in 2008, on the World Wide Web.
A few days ago I wrote a post that referenced a story in POLICE: The Law Enforcement Magazine. POLICE is a glossy journal of blue thug culture, which includes charming pieces like America Needs a Surge Against Gangs, How to Justify Officer Safety Searches, Working Informants. Here is a collage of cover photos from the past two years of POLICE.
This is a selective collage–but the selection includes the majority of the covers POLICE has printed over the past two years. That’s the way that a magazine staffed and written almost entirely by current or former police, and written for an audience of professional police, on the subject of policing, has chosen to brand itself and its contents for its prospective audience. What do you think that says about the way government cops see themselves these days? What sort of model do you suppose images like these suggest for police to use to understand the ethics and the attitude that they need to adopt in their professional lives? What do you think that a publication like this encourages them to think of when they think of what their job is all about, and what kind of posture they should adopt when they deal with non-police — with people like you and me and our neighbors — on the street or in our homes?
Do you feel safer now?
See also:
- GT 2008-09-19: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter… (#6)
- GT 2008-08-22: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter… (#5)
- GT 2008-07-12: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter... (#4)
- GT 2008-06-05: Neighborhood Safety Ghettoes in D.C.
- GT 2008-05-15: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter... (#3)
- GT 2008-05-12: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter... (#2)
- GT 2008-05-06: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter...
- GT 2008-04-28: Is it just me or is the water in this pot getting a little hotter?
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Sure it does–IF you accept the assumption that this force will never be directed at you, or at People Like Us, but only at those OTHER people over THERE with darker skin/funny accents/criminal records/violent tendencies who probably deserve it anyway.
And, sadly, quite a few people do accept that line of thinking.
Discussed at darianworden.com /#
DarianWorden.com » Blog Archive » This is What a Police State Thinks Like:
Damn scary.
No magazine tells people how to think. All magazines have an agenda and reflect editors opinions. Look at any security magazine and you will see similar images and fears on display.
As far as how cops see themselves, it’s up to the individual and how much of the official description they by into. As policing organizations see themselves as the “protectors of the people” it understandable their fears and concerns focus on separating those who would do harm from the rest. Until criminals and terrorists wear uniforms it’s them vs us.
The militarization of the police and the posse Comitatus being violated is of greater concern to me.
Why wouldn’t I feel safer? Maybe if you’re a criminal or someone doing something really stupid you wouldn’t like this. Don’t break the law, you won’t have a problem. Morons trying to make cops look bad, I don’t even really like cops at all, but they aren’t bad.
Bigtex, you have no idea what you are talking about. Why don’t you try telling your nonsense to Donald Scott or that 12 year old boy in LA? Oh, that’s right, you can’t. Because they are DEAD, killed by the police for no reason other than they wanted Mr. Scott’s ranch and they did a no knock raid on the boy’s home. With the boy handcuffed and lying on the floor of his bedroom, an officer shot him in the back with a 12 gauge shotgun. The fine officer then said the gun discharged “accidentally”. These are but two of thousands of stories of innocent people being murdered by the police. Get a grip on yourself and maybe you won’t look like an idiot.
There are rapists and murderers out there, I wasn’t condoning the actions of every police officer in the United States. There are plenty of bad seeds. Grouping every office together is the same as grouping all civilians together. Just because we have a few bad ones doesn’t make them all bad. I do know and read stories of unfortunate and horrible acts that have happened. It is still a rare occurrence in every day life. Are there those that take advantage of the power? Of course. Does they all? No.
BigAL,
Of course police organizations do not, as a rule, see themselves as just ask anyone on the business end of a nightstick, pepper spray, or taser how much they were getting protected. At the most, police organizations see themselves as protecting one group of the people from another group of the people. Which is something quite different, and which raises questions as to how they draw the line between the two groups. (On message boards frequented by cops there’s a popular metaphor of wolves and sheep, with the cops as the sheepdogs, of course. The fact that this is what they think of the people that they view themselves as is itself part of the problem.)
But, in any case, even that more selective form of protection is not the primary stated purpose of police organizations. Their primary purpose, and what they insist on when describing themselves internally and to others, is that they are enforcing the law. That’s quite a different goal and sometimes antagonistic with the goal of protecting people.
Very few U.S. police forces have any members who have ever had any interaction whatsoever with terrorists on American soil. It’s interesting that you would go out of your way to mention who play exactly no role whatsoever in the average cop’s working life, as a separate category that needs special mention apart from all the other criminals in the world. Why would you do that?
There are good reasons to believe that the in that involves a lot more people than just violent criminals and terrorists.
I’m confused. What difference do you think it would make if were wearing uniforms? Is this supposed to reduce the use of heavy weaponry, paramilitary tactics, and military hardware shown on these covers, or in the aggressiveness of the posture that cops assume towards people who fall under the category of ? Or towards people who don’t fall under that category? Or towards people who cops don’t yet know how to categorize?
If the former, why would it reduce that? If anything, it seems like it would increase that, since clearly knowing who posed a danger of violence would mean that cops could act with less doubt.
If the latter, then I think that that attitude is part of the problem, and closely connected with the problems you claim to be concerned about. It’s a more or less explicit use of counterinsurgency doctrine, applied to a domestic populace that the cops are supposedly there to in order to justify treating everyone as a presumptive threat unless and until and only to the extent that the cop feels that they’ve proven they are not. I certainly would say that many cops have that attitude, but the question is whether they ought to have that attitude, and whose needs the attitude ultimately serves, and who tends to get hurt, or worse, by it.
I’m confused. Did you look at the hardware, postures, tactics, weapons, etc. being depicted on those covers? Do you think that cover stories like or (the actual story is headlined (!)) or don’t have something to do with ? Really?
As for Posse Comitatus restrictions on the use of military within the U.S., I’m actually much less concerned about that than many people I know. Not because I think it would be O.K. or even tolerable to have U.S. military swarming around within the U.S., but because I think that the political safeguard that Posse Comitatus is claimed to establish has long since been completely destroyed. Precisely because there is so little difference between straight-up military and the paramilitary police forces and gang units and SWAT units that exist in every U.S. city, and because they are so closely connected with the U.S. federal government already in terms of supply chains, training, joint operations, grants, etc. etc. etc., I think there’s more or less no operational difference between having a major urban police force patrol the streets and having the Army patrol them, except perhaps for the color of the uniforms. Things are already much worse than some people would like to realize.
Bigtex,
Non-police officers are not properly referred to as unless the police are a military force. This has not traditionally been the position of police in free societies. Do you think that police ought to be treated like a military force? If so, why?
In any case, I don’t think that anyone was denying that there are rapists and murderers out there. The question is what that has to do with the present discussion.
Do you think that the existence of rapists and murderers somehow justifies this kind of hyperaggressive, militarized posture on the part of government police? If so, why? The purpose of all that miltary hardware, SWAT training, etc., very rarely has anything to do with dealing with cases of murder or rape. The most violent examples of that kind of policing — e.g. no-knock SWAT raids — are most commonly used in order to serve drug warrants.
As for the argument, I don’t know how familiar you are with my website, or with other websites that discuss issues like police brutality or the militarization of policing. But you should know that this is nothing we haven’t heard before. Phrases like and are subjects of mockery among police watchdogs because of the ways in which they are used to cover up the existence or the scale systematic problems. Please take a look at this map, and at the frequency of new posts on a website like GangstersInBlue.org. As I said in another post:
Simple analogy.
An any good grocer, they watch their stock to make suer they do not HAVE any bad apples.
A “few bad apples” in a display stand ruins the grocers entire display and causes doubt in the minds of customers as to the quality of not only the apples, but everything else in the store.
“Bad apples” should be removed before they hit the shelves, and certainly before they hit the table.
Oh, as for the general militarization of police? If you doubt the lack of servile attitude in general, all you need to do is visit some places like NYC or some of the smaller towns surrounding it. Hoboken would be an excellent example.
Some of these guys are a real trip. They do not work to “serve and protect” anything. They act like bouncers and enforcers, not as mediators and conflict resolution specialists.
No, I do not mean they should start a round table discussion with a perpetrator, but they should treat things with a bit of moderation when dealing with “civilians” on the street.
Their job is to try to make the community feel safe, not make people fearful of doing anything wrong.
You might find this piece from BoingBoing interesting:
There is a pic at the link.
Posse Comitatus has been circumscribed, not totally destroyed. But it appears to be heading that direction. Machiavelli, the Italian political scientists of the early 15th century, claimed that “there has never been a case where a new prince has come to power and disarmed his people. Instead when a prince comes to power and finds his people have been previously disarmed, he arms them, and in arming them, make those weapons his own.”
Well, we don’t have princes today, but his solution would be far better than those we’re actually employing. Department of Homeland Security. Huummmph. WE THE PEOPLE are supposed to BE the “department” of homeland security.
But they keep trying to take ourguns ……
Not sure who first made this observation, but it’s true: office friendly on the street corner has been replaced with office decidedly unfriendly in a riot helmet, flack jacket, and combat boots.