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.111 And when the police violate 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.1 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.2 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.3
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,4 though he does also mention their non-military character5 and their authority to use force.6 Richard Lundman offers four criteria: full-time service, continuity in office, continuity in procedure, and control by a central governmental authority.7 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.8
Raymond Fosdick argues that the defining mark of modern police departments is their organization under a single commander.9 And Eric Monkkonen takes as his sole criterion the presence of uniforms.10
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 1791.11 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.12
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