Kristian Williams - Our Enemies in Blue - Police and Power in America

The practices surrounding the enforcement of these laws are often simplycruel, involving intimidation, violence, seizing (and never returning) identification,and the destruction of personal possessions. In the fall of 1993, I was witnessto an incident in which numerous police officers, all wearing latex gloves,moved methodically through Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., seizing thebelongings of the people who lived in the park-sleeping bags, backpacks, piecesof tarpaulin. With the White House in the background, the police carried theitems to a nearby garbage truck, where they were unceremoniously crushed.Similar incidents have been reported in Miami, where a court ruled the practiceillegal, II and in Detroit, where social service providers blamed the crackdown onpressure from area businesses.12In these cases the police put their energies toward attacking, rather thanprotecting, some of society's most vulnerable members. This use of resourcesonly makes sense when viewed in the context of vast disparities in wealth. Thecontinual harassment of the destitute reinforces their low social standing, stigmatizespoverty, keeps the poor under the supervision and control of the criminaljustice 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 POLICEThe role of the police as union-busters and strikebreakers was an outgrowth oftheir position in the class structure and their function regulating the behaviorof 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 oncompany property for the duration of the conflict In addition to attacking picketlinesand rallies, they increased patrols in working-class neighborhoods, steppedup enforcement of public order laws, and took pains to close the meeting hallsand bars where strikers gathered.13 Arbitrary arrests were common, and strikerswere sometimes held on minor charges (or without charges) until the strikewas over. The police also intercepted union organizers and radicals traveling toareas affected by strikes; the unionists and "reds" were usually interrogated,sometimes with third-degree methods, and released at the town line with a sternwarning to stay away. 14Writing in 1920, Raymond Fosdick described something of the range ofpolice tactics, and the uses to which they were put:The police are often used on behalf of employers as against employees incircumstances which do not justify their interference at all. This has beenespecially true in the handling of strikes. Lawful picketing has been brokenup, the peaceful meetings of strikers have been brutally dispersed,their publicity has been suppressed, and infractions of ordinances whichwould have gone unnoticed had the violators been engaged in anothercause, have been ruthlessly punished. Sometimes, too, arrests have beenmade on charges whose baselessness the police confidentially admit. "Welock them up for disorderly conduct," a chief of police told me when Iasked him about his policy in regard to strikes and strikers. "Obstructing107