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

government, and local elites very quickly rediscovered their previous affinity. Inbringing the labor dispute to a close, the specially appointed Detroit PoliceDispute Panel noted: "Far more than the interests of the police officers themselvesis involved. As has become obvious in recent months ... the police forceis the first line of defense against civil disorder."43 The cops got their raises.44In contrast to the defeated strike of 1919, the labor skirmishes of the 1960sand 1970s solidified the positions of the police associations and had the somewhatparadoxical effect of buttressing the top-to-bottom unity of the departments.The unions asserted increasing levels of influence over departmentalpolicy, and the police management used the unions to win rank-and-file cooperation.45 Such management-union partnerships reinforced the institution'scohesion, allowed disparate parts of the organization to develop a community ofinterests, and provided a means for settling disputes and resolving grievances.But they retained traditional taboos against autonomous rank-and-file actionand meaningful expressions of solidarity with other labor organizations.46Whereas the Boston strike had been ignominiously defeated, the Detroit strikewas resolved in a way that strengthened both the department and the union.Clearly, a lot had changed during the intervening half-century. The relevantdifferences were not limited to shifts in policing and labor organizing, but alsoconcerned the overall character and function of municipal governmentTHE DEAT H OF THE MACHINESDuring the early-twentieth-century Progressive Era, police departments weresubject to a battery of reforms, changing the institution's structure, aims, andpersonnel. These reforms were not motivated by concerns about racism orbrutality so much as they constituted one part of a general effort to re-inventurban 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 benefitsof his office. Authority rested as much in the informal and decentralized wardnetworks as in the government itself or the offices of the various municipaldepartments. Positions were filled strictly along partisan lines or as personalfavors; there was no pretense of professionalism or impartiality. Disciplinewas lax, corruption was sanctified, and bribery was a major source of incomeat every level of the hierarchy. In this context, it was the job of the police toprotect illicit businesses, extort money from honest citizens, rig elections, andotherwise enforce the will of neighborhood bosses. So long as they were successfulin these central tasks, it made little difference to the machine bosseswhether the cops engaged in petty crime, neglected their legal duties, wererude in their encounters with the public, or used violence unnecessarily.47As a result, police legitimacy was sorely lacking. This problem was aggravated by a long series of scandals implicating departments around the countryin organized crime and other types of corruption. For example, at the turn of thecentury, Los Angeles mayor Arthur Harper, police chief Charles Sebastian, and alocal pimp formed a syndicate in order to monopolize prostitution in the city; thepolice were used to suppress competition and protect the syndicate's operations.125