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

them to increase their power, they create what Martin ]. Smith calls a "policycommunity."Policy communities increase state autonomy by establishing the means throughwhich state actors can intervene in society without using force. By integratingstate and society actors, they increase the capabilities of the state to makeand implement policy. They create state powers that would not otherwise existand, more importantly, they increase the autonomy of actors in a policy areaby excluding other actors from the policy process ... . It is state actors whodetermine the rules of the games, the parameters of policy and the actorswho will have access to the policy community.l9Hence, what may be presented in terms of democratic engagement and greaterinclusion tends overall to favor the state's interests and reinforce state power.Negotiation and co-optation provide the means for the state to extend its influence.Thus potential sources of resistance can be neutralizedr even turnedto the state's advantage-by their incorporation into a policy community, in thiscase one centered around and dominated by the police department.Bo In somesense, the client groups become incorporated into the state itself. It makes littledifference whether the client organization is a police union,S! a social serviceagency, a church, a school, another governmental body, or a neighborhoodwatch group. By organizing on a sufficient scale the police can greatly enhancetheir own power-not only over these agencies, but through them-whileacquiring relatively few additional burdens for themselves. So long as the policemaintain control over the network as a whole, no one component of it is likely tomake demands that cannot be easily accommodated (or safely ignored) .This is the secret to a friendly police state: as the police more fully penetratecivil society, and as they gain the cooperation of the citizenry and its variousorganizations, they become less reliant on their own access to violence.Or do they? Do they instead, perhaps, become ever less tolerant of resistanceand disorder, ever more forceful in their own demands?THE HARD EDGE OF COMMUNITY POLICINGIn the wake of the Rodney King beating, the Christopher Commission noted withalarm that distrust of the police was commonplace, especially among Black peopleand Latinos. As a remedy, the commission issued a broad slate of recommendations,many centering on the full adoption of a community policing perspective as theguiding philosophy of the IAPD. Giving credit where it was due, the Commission'sreport listed already-existing LArD programs that made use of community policingstrategies. 1be report specifically mentioned DARE, the short-lived CommunityMobilization Project (m which police attended block meetings and arranged forBoy Scout troops to remove graffiti) , and Operation Cul-de-Sac.In "Operation Cul-de-Sac," police erect barriers on streets in high crimeareas so that motorists cannot drive through a neighborhood. The mostambitious use of this program occurred in a 3D-block area of the Newtondistrict of South-Central Los Angeles. The LAPD set up two cul-de-sacs inthe section and erected small barriers on other streets. The zone was saturatedwith officers on foot, horse, and bicycle. "Open to Residents Only" and209