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

dence between state and social actors. Each actor provides somethingthat the other cannot obtain on its own, and the power (or autonomy) ofeach is hence increased by the relationship.l-cIn the case of police officers, police administrators, police departments,and police unions, this dynamic is at work simultaneously on several levels.Individual officers share in the authority of the department, while the departmentmaintains its power through the concerted efforts of its individualmembers. By joining together in independent associations, the member officerscan effectively shape the policies and operations of the department, andcan sometimes influence the policies and priorities of the government morebroadly. When police unions and administrators make common cause, theycan pressure the civil authorities to increase the power, resources, and independenceof the department-because, to a certain extent, the civil authoritiesare always dependent on the cooperation of the police to defend theirpower and enforce their will.I-H Meanwhile, as the departments become moreprominent as institutions, the share of power controlled by administrators andthe unions increases proportionately-and the department finds itself wellplaced to form alliances with other government agencies (and sometimesprivate enterprises), enhancing the bargaining power of each.17 And, in theprocess, departmental administrators and union leaders alike can increasetheir personal influence.IB(IThis analysis is in keeping with the historical development of the state.Charles Tilly explains:Because no ruler or ruling coalition had absolute power and because classesoutside the ruling coalition always held day-to-day control over a significantshare of the resources rulers drew on for war, no state escaped the creationof some organizational burdens rulers would have preferred to avoid. A second,parallel process also generated unintended burdens for the state: asrulers created organizations either to make war or to draw the requisitesof war from the subject population-not only armies and navies but alsotax offices, customs services, treasuries, regional administrations, andarmed forces to forward their work among the civilian population-theydiscovered that the organizations themselves developed interests, rights,perquisites, needs. and demands requiring attention on their own.IBIWithin this theoretical framework, it is possible to briefly re-interpret the historyof policing. The use oflegitimate violence, which was originally the "property"of individual slaveholders, heads of households, and various secular and ecclesiasticauthorities, was slowly formalized and consolidated. On the local level, thisprocess produced slave patrols and then police. Initially, the police were highlydependent on local patrons and served as the instruments of political machines.As the capitalist class and its middle-class supporters took control of the government,the police were transformed to a tool of class rule. The destruction ofthe machines, however, required the creation of formal bureaucracies, whichquickly came to develop interests of their own and started to formulate their owndemands. The police were the prototypical bureaucracy, and the following waveof professionalization only further decreased their dependence on the municipaladministration while reinforcing the organization's loyalty to the ruling145