The Black, the White, and the Bluish Grey: Barriers to progress in restructuring the US policing system.
Cancel Culture has its critics, and with good reason. Often the arguments against cancel culture are used for deplorable Devil’s Advocate Reasoning, for the privileged to explain to the oppressed that their oppression is, in fact, not as they see it. It’s certainly not my place as a white woman of privilege to tell anyone how to feel about a group historically designed to oppress them, with which they have generations of contentions and pain.
Nevertheless, effective change requires understanding every facet. This is a diplomatic plea for consideration from all sides. As someone who lives in the Balkans, it has been reaffirmed daily; we cannot move forward while still seeking retribution for the past.
We have to think about why and how the present power systems were created in the first place, and what duties the policing system was assigned over time, (e.g. what became socially accepted in terms of digital monitoring of citizens’ private lives?) and how those in power developed that policing system for those purposes.
Michel Foucault’s classic work, Discipline and Punish is very handy for understanding this. He points out that the contemporary prison system was created when the ruling classes decided that public torture and execution were not practical, viable, or safe ways of enforcing the message that you should not cross them. The thing which elites did not understand about trying to make an example of criminals who were being executed for trying to overthrow a tyrannical and oppressive government, was that people who also felt unfairly oppressed by that government tended to make the victims into heroes and martyrs, which garnered more sympathy than standing as a warning. So the ruling classes established a better system to punish those who dared to endanger or destroy their property. This has always been a product of an inherently classist (and therefore in the US, an inherently racist) system. [https://monoskop.org/images/4/43/Foucault_Michel_Discipline_and_Punish_The_Birth_of_the_Prison_1977_1995.pdf]
In the United States this has exploded far beyond the boundaries of its beginnings. The US has a collective culture of independence, violence and individualism. The collective norms dictate that the natural approach to dealing with antisocial behaviours must be carceral; the founding Puritanical culture was one of guilt, discipline, and punishment, which in conjunction with the artfully cultivated culture of fear that governing leaders use to divide and control the populace, have created today’s prison-centric culture. Institutions from children’s schools to hospitals, to immigration and refugee centres have increasingly adopted elements from prisons into their structure, breeding feelings of unfounded guilt, docility, and obedience into those who must endure their processing. This most often falls heaviest on those in the most impoverished part of the class divide. Those marginalised by race, gender, economic class, and/or ethnicity, who already haven’t got the resources to defend themselves against it. This mass-culture of punishment and cruelty must be the first thing that is addressed before real change can take place. Instead, worryingly, this has begun to globalise as populist leaders abroad see its usefulness and follow the lead of the USA’s empathy-killing policies.
African Americans understand this systemic inequity, as in the United States, policing systems grew to replace the role of Overseers over the enslaved during the 18th and 19th centuries. The deadly combination of the unfettered greed of Late Capitalism and the nation’s historically-ingrained racism were responsible for not only allowing, but encouraging the exponential growth of the planet’s most gluttonous system of for-profit prisons.
There ARE people within law enforcement who are aware they are part of a purposefully-built racist system of carceral control over society. Even those who join the field with a wish to change it remain keepers of the racist class system. But pushing from the outside alone will not be effective for true change. The structure of policing must be changed from within. Replacing a problematic structure requires the expertise of those with an intimate knowledge of how the systems work in both theory and practice, in order to avoid — or better, iron out the internal conflicts which have been preventing change (e.g. such as legal immunity on one level, and on another, the classic strongman image creating a magnet for toxic masculinity).
Some people become law enforcement officers out of desire to right the wrongs that they see hurting themselves, or others in their lives. They may enter policing with this earnestness, but then become desensitised by the absolute normality of the brutal attitudes and practices which are common within the field. Yet one of the great caveats that many already understand, is that the career of policing also attracts those who may feel that they want to control the aspects of society which they personally dislike. Those who already feel that they have little control at the street level, and are prone to insecure feelings. Toxic Masculinity is one of the strongest breeders of this. To be enculturated to believe that the fact of your genitalia grant you a duty to exhibit traits that equate to “strength” in humans (which are in fact unhealthy, such as repression of emotion and emotional intelligence). This is steeped in the uniquely American culture which has spent an entire century psychologically training its citizens to become hyperfocused on their individual wants, emphasising selfishness, self-sufficiency as self-worth, and bottomless consumption, [Adam Curtis’s Century of the Self https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s]. To compound this, in the past 20 years, this culture has now begun to purposefully cultivate a fear of people with any difference to oneself (a long-used common method of controlling masses among populist leaders, which documentarian Adam Curtis also illustrates clearly in his work The Power of Nightmares (2004)). All of this combined leads exactly to the culture of policing we have today — explosively destructive and fearful — which is counterproductive to any of those who are aware trying to make changes in the structure, even from within. Even when agents who desire change are aware that the system was created for racist, classist reasons of control, the endless infiltration of law enforcement forces by the sort of toxic and dangerous people who are perpetuating the system-wide problem, is imminent. These problems need to be addressed before any further recruiting or hiring takes place. Those are just the problems at the individual level.
At the other end of the power spectrum (the problematic, elite end, which still seeks to control the masses and maintain their convenient status quo of inequality), control is no longer just limited to domestic populations. Capitalism and the US government, the most enduring celebrity couple of the 21st century, have assured that regardless of any microscopic performative gestures, there is the fact that the United States is weaponising its prisons, as Julian Assange is only one of many who can confirm.
In order to disassemble this system, we must first place the value all human life above inanimate property. Much of the modern world has already deconstructed these traditions and made some changes. Or else it never had the resources dedicated to a post-war consumer push that the US had. Because Capitalism, of course, remains in the USA to keep the majority of people from willingly consenting to restructuring? A rejection of the capitalist elite ruling class is necessary. Obviously, this requires more structural change than the law enforcement and carceral systems alone. All oppression is connected because all power is connected. Julian Assange’s story has showed us that the United States’ is not only not giving up this forceful system of population control, but that its military might will allow it to expand the use of the threat of this punishment into a weapon for international manipulation.
It must be understood that if those at the top who wield the power do not wish for change, then change will not happen (from within or without) without a revolution. But those within the police force who do wish to change, cannot do so while still telling themselves that they can serve the elites in power. At this juncture, that is the root of the main barrier against change. With the trending rise of abusive governing elites dividing the populations for control, it doesn’t matter how many of those who consider themselves progressive fly BLM or rainbow flags; people who mean well will continue to be serving a system that crushes others. This is consideration is particularly emphasised after seeing how excited such a large portion of the American population is that they have managed to select a new set of leaders who were among the American For-Profit Prison System’s founders and champions.
We must not rebuild the same system with a different appearance. This is why more value should be placed on advice from the sector of the population who experiences the most oppression. [https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/]
For the criminal justice system, the advice on restructuring must come from the bottom classes upwards. Not the other way around. Those with the experience of being mercilessly and systemically trod upon have the first hand knowledge of what needs to change. This includes the restructuring of the legal and justice systems as well, down to the taxation and voting systems- everything that is already in place which is run by the wealthier classes in order to keep them rich and the poor subdued. This is the carefully manufactured flaw in the structure.
There are a treasured few who seem to understand this, and who are really working from within to help that ‘police force’ become a better servant to the most vulnerable part of the population. Chief Erika Shields of Louisville Metro Police, formerly Chief of the Atlanta Police Department, had been working hard to change the APD through new approaches to the concepts of policing. These changes had seen quantitatively verifiable results. Shields’ uniquely empathetic tactics in both Atlanta and Louisville have focused on community-lead resolutions to recurring social problems, and making the effort to understand a community’s needs. As much as she strives to incorporate more diverse voices in her departments, she also places emphasis on the importance of stepping outside one’s comfort zone, or native socioeconomic and cultural circles, to better understand parts of the community one serves with which one may not be familiar, as personal connections are crucial to helping and serving others.
To handle a police force for a metropolitan area the size of a small Balkan country with as much success as she had in her short mandate requires massive amounts of integrity, compassion, leadership skills, and dedication. Chief Shields was making a very important start to the changes needed, by making the point to engage with the community, face to face, and to listen to the concerns of the people who are being policed. When the NAACP asked her to resign after an APD officer killed Rayshard Brooks, she did so, honouring her word. However, her leaving the job sadly lead to damaged morale — and performance — across her department. However, she has recently taken up a new position as the Chief of Louisville Metro PD in Kentucky, and immediately began effective reforms and recentering the focus of her new department in a very community-focused manner. She has actually opened up dialogues to listen to the reform suggestions from the black community in a town with a heretofore terrible record of equal racial representation — and treatment — in law enforcement. With a dearth of qualified African American officers in the upper ranks, Shields immediately hired an experienced African-American colleague from Atlanta, Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel, who had decades of experience in bringing together diverse communities. [https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-police-training-commander-named-louisvilles-deputy-chief/QUAGKEEJDZBWXCJ3WTTBGH4LKU/ ] Shields has also already taken into account the restructuring advice which has been proposed in dialogues for change since last year: proposing that social workers and community centres take on a larger role in sorting out domestic and neighbourhood problems.
There are a multitude of other such good individuals within the police forces of the world. All change starts with one. Another person who has been monitoring change within the Law Enforcement field, and who knows the value of strong leadership there, is former officer Julie Callahan, who is the founder of TCOPS International, a support group for trans law enforcement officers. Callahan spoke in one interview about the importance of having such leaders within the hierarchical law enforcement system: ‘The success of a department’s ability to evolve with its employees usually comes from the high-ranking officers. “If command staff are supportive, usually that filters down through the ranks pretty quickly,” [http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/10/10/transgender-law-enforcement/]
Each side of a conflict must work to understand the other. Vibrant constable Bee Bailey, motivational speaker and founder of the UK’s National Trans Police Association, has a beautifully simple way of explaining the invisible pressures we ourselves face which are often unseen by others. Having someone poke you rather hard is generally not even a nuisance, merely a curiosity. However, if you find yourself prodded unexpectedly by 99 other people, then the 100th person who even approaches you with an extended finger will likely find themselves on the receiving end of your ire before they can reach you.
Looking at the USSR’s example of Glasnost and Perestroika, if the entire US defunds its police departments, even if these funds go to other programmes which should be handling social issues regardless, departments which feel the tightening of their belts will seek outside (privatised) funding. And as we have seen with the prison system this is exactly where capitalism’s boot falls on society’s throat. Whether we are speaking of the police, the two party system, the military, or the judicial branch; the problem is that corruption keeps recurring no matter how we restructure our societies. Changing it isn’t simply a matter of putting new people in control and in the system. Complacency, complicity, and fear drive new forms of corruption. To add fuel to the fire, there is the corruptive power of.. Power. Regardless of someone’s class, being given just a bit of power reinforces the human urge to remain complicit in maintaining the status quo. Even before 1865 some of the most brutal overseers were black.
Unions are important, but Police unions have been a source of trouble with racist hierarchies (Kroll in MN) and uphold the wealthy classes. They cannot be a source of guidance for redesign when they themselves need restructuring. The entire police force itself celebrates the idea that rising through the ranks of social class is easy, but in many places, success still has more to do with favouritism within the department. This explains why it has been very hard to rid these systems of people who belong to in-groups like the Ku Klux Klan (where in many southern towns, dual membership within the police force is almost guaranteed -practically a requirement for the job).
A more separated system of checks and balances is needed — but one of those parties must be DIRECTLY representative of the actual local populations who are served. Vienna, Austria, is home to the International Anti-Corruption Academy, an entire institution dedicated to studying, understanding, and preventing corruption. Of course US law enforcement officials would be the most practical choice to understand how to apply the information and learning in order to dismantle corruption within their own areas. But they must be carefully chosen, and they must not only be chosen by those within their own closed law-enforcement system. This was the essence of Chief Shields’ work and ultimately, her sacrifice. There must be equal parts law enforcement and civilian input. This is why building trust and communication between the police and their communities is crucial.
On a hopeful note, since the protests of the summer of 2020, one educator in Iowa has reached out to the APD, with questions on the complexities of being black in a field traditionally designed to oppress them. African American APD officer Watson and Sgt. C.J. Murphy spent over an hour and a half via Zoom, answering relevant questions for Jeff Erickson’s high school social studies class.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU4ZhJDFRHk] This is an excellent step in the right direction. This kind of transparency and involvement with the community is exactly what is needed, but across the entire nation, in order to further the conversation on restructuring.
