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

nity. But the dilemma here is illusory. The demands of solidarity--ethical solidarity-arewith the oppressed, and against the police. Working people cannot affordto extend solidarity to the police, and we cannot let the reactionary goals of policeunions restrain us in our attacks on injustice. Confusion in this matter representsa set of related misconceptions; these can be resolved by clearly examining theclass status of the police and the nature of their organizations.WAGE SLAVES AND OvERSEERSThe class position of the police is complex, and even contradictory.Individual officers may consider themselves ''working class" for any of avariety of reasons. First, there is the fact that, even after the period of professionalization,most officers are still drawn from working-class backgrounds.There is also the persistent sense that, regardless of income, the job has littlesocial status attached to it. And finally, there is the nature of the work itself."After all, police work is often physical, sometimes dirty, involves shift-work,and brings officers into contact with undesirable elements of society."141The police have certainly faced their share of uncomfortable and unfairworking conditions. In the nineteenth century, police received low pay (unlessone counts graft), worked long shifts, were given no vacations, enjoyed little jobsecurity, and had no guarantee of income if they were injured (or of support fortheir families if they were killed).142 Such standards are appalling, for certain,but most workers were no better off.143 In the twentieth century, the pressuresof bureaucratization and professionalization were often resented by the officersat the lowest levels. Bureaucratization increased discipline, eliminated politicalpatronage and protection, and supplied rule-bound prescriptions for police action.Professionalization represented, from the perspective of the old-school cops, anunnecessary intrusion of elitist organizational goals at the expense of a traditionalhard-nosed approach. Both reform movements created structural tensions withinthe police departments that later motivated the drive toward unionization.But the proletarian aspects of policing are only half the equation. Thoughindividually they receive just a meager portion of capitalism's benefits, thepolice represent both the interests and the power of the ruling class. Likemanagers, police control those who do the work, and they actively maintain theconditions that allow for profitable exploitation.144The police thus occupy a dual position as workers and overseers, but thisis not a fatal contradiction: a worker can be made to discern "his own" interests,apart from the interests of the working class as a whole. This is the nature of theso-called "middle class," which is really a section of the working class bought offby the capitalists to manage their affairs.145 Class status, in this regard, is determinedneither by income nor by ownership, but by power relations:Since the authority and expertise of the middle ranks in the capitalist corporationrepresent an unavoidable delegation of responsibility, the positionof such functionaries may best be judged by their relation to the power andwealth that commands them from above, and to the mass of labor beneaththem which they in turn help to control, command, and organize.146The peculiar distinction of this middle stratum is that its members share in both137