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

On the tactical level, Stark notes:The incapacities and misconceptions of the police contribute to the occurrenceof police riots in a number of ways. First, simply massing the policetogether, given their lack of discipline and tactical competence, providesan opportunity for them to attack crowds. Second, massive displays ofpolice power provoke demonstrators and tend to produce confrontationsand deeper conflicts. Third, police tactics mislead policemen about whatis expected of them and increases [sic] their anxiety and hostility. Theobsession with officer safety leads to overpreparedness, overreaction,and a disregard for the general safety. HOAdd to this an habitual reliance on violence, and the production of a riot seemsquite predictable.HIThese difficulties are exacerbated by organizational weaknesses commonto police departments, namely the lack of internal discipline. The tactics of riotcontrol are generally derived from the military, but the police proved to be a verydifferent type of organization than the Army. 'To put it bluntly: the Americanpolice cannot perform at the minimum levels of teamwork, impersonality, anddiscipline which these military tactics take for granted."K2 For example, in theDetroit riot of 1967, the police and National Guard were responsible for establishingorder on one side of town; U.S. Army paratroopers were assigned tothe other side. Within a few hours, the Army had restored order in their area,having fired 201 rounds of ammunition and having killed one person. The policeand Guard, in contrast, fired thousands of rounds and killed twenty-eight people,while the disorder continued.These dramatic and critical differences seem to have stemmed from discipline.The paratroopers had it, the police and guardsmen did not. TheArmy ordered the lights back on and troopers to show themselVf's asconspicuously as possible; the police and the guardsmen continued shootingout all lights and crouched fearfully in the darkness. The trooperswere ordered to hold their fire, and did so. The police and guardsmenshot wildly and often at one another. The troopers were ordered to unloadtheir weapons, and did so. The guardsmen were so ordered, but did notcomply. 83The Guard, whose training approximates that of the Army, may have lostdiscipline in part because of how they were deployed. The police effectivelydisorganized the National Guard by converting it into a police force. OneNational Guard commander complained:They sliced us like baloney. The police wanted bodies. They grabed [sic]Guardsmen as soon as they reached the armories, before their unitswere made up, and sent them out-two on a firetruck, this one in a policecar, that one to guard some installation .... The Guard simply becamelost boys in the big town carrying guns. 84In the caSe of the 1968 Democratic Convention, other factors also came intoplay, in particular the attitudes of civil authorities. Walker mentions, "Chicagopolice [had been led] to expect that violence against demonstrators, as againstrioters, would be condoned by city officials."8) In fact, this expectation was188