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

Such force took different forms. Sometimes, arrests immediately followed evenminor violations of the law, or were used to target and remove "agitators," whetheror not a law had been broken. Other times, police used force instead of makingarrests, either to break up the crowd or to punish those who disobeyed them."'THE APPLICATIONS AN D IMPLICATIONS OF ESCALATED FORCEAccording to the Escalated Force theory, violence is only used in proportion tothe threat posed by the crowd. The reality is often quite different. The policeresponse to protests is determined by something more than the behavior ofprotesters. In fact, the actions of the crowd may not even be the most importantfactor. Others may include police preparedness and discipline, the presence ofcounter-demonstrators, the number of participants, media coverage, and thepolitical calculus surrounding the event-that is, what people with power, andthe police leaders in particular, stand to gain or lose by attacking the event orletting it alone. These factors can be classed into six groups:(1) the organizational features of the police;(2) the configuration of political power;(3) public opinion:(4) the occupational culture of the police;(5) the interaction between police and protesters; and,(6) police knowledge.'"Even when the police do respond in proportion to the threat, their victimsoften include peaceable demonstrators and innocent bystanders, alongwith the hooligans. Widespread violence is by its nature imprecise. Andquestions of "guilt" or "innocence," like those pertaining to constitutionalliglib, are of secondary concern, if indeed they are considered relevant atall. Dispersal operations are not designed to uphold the law or to protectpublic safety; often the police action itself will represent the most seriousviolation of the 1m'! and constitute the greatest threat to the safety of thecommunity. Instead of the law or public safety, the police are concerned withestablishing control, maintaining power.47Well-known demonstrations in which police used the escalated forceapproach include those in the Birmingham civil rights campaign (May1963), the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention, and the confrontationbetween student protesters and National Guard soldiers atKent State University (May 1970). During each ofthese demonstrations,police or soldiers used force in an attempt to disperse demonstrators,even demonstrators who were peacefully attempting to exercise theirFirst Amendment rights-as the vast majority of them were.4eThese events, while large in scope and attracting a great deal of media attention,were not uncharacteristic of Escalated Force operations. In many ways,they were sadly typical. While Kent State-where the victims were White-hascome to symbolize the murder of student protesters, it was not the first or lasttime that students were shot in the name of keeping order. In May 1967 -threeyears before Kent State-a Black student was killed at Jackson State College184