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

equipment to go into a neighborhood and clear the neighborhood and holdit; allowing community policing officers to come in and start turning theneighborhood around.JS8This is a direct adaptation of military thinking, intended to address the shortcomingsof the traditional law enforcement approach. Former Army intelligenceofficer Thomas Marks explains:Police are relatively ineffective in dealing with hard-hit areas, of course,because they violate the most elementary rules of counter-insurgency. Theydo not systematically seize and clear areas, leaving behind "militia." Rather,they chase the guerrilla "main forces" over hill and dale.l59Since the early 1990s the police have been actively trying to correct for this tendency.What we are seeing, as a result, is neighborhood safety transformed in theimage of national security.Understood in terms of counter-insurgency, community policing represents anapproach to establishing and maintaining police control over the community-anapproach enhanced by the insights of military experiences in restless colonies.Organizationally, militarization provides the model by which the police can work inteams, enhance officer discretion, and maintain tight command and control;community policing efforts, meanwhile, create the infrastructure for intelligencegathering and c(}{)ptation. Strategically, community policing strives toward directed,proactive action, with a geographic focus and attention to the causes of disorder;military planning gives a central role to intelligence work and takes an aggressiveapproach to confronting the enemy. Hence, military tactics are used to clear andhold contested areas, while community policing programs seek to createpartnerships that bring the police legitimacy, information, and access to communityresources. Ideologically, community policing serves to legitimize military-typeefforts, while the rhetoric of a "war on crime" can be used to mobilize the communityto aid the police. And of course, the threats of a militarized "Bad Cop" encouragecooperation with the "Good Cop's" community policing projects.MEE T THE NEW COP, SAME AS THE OLD COPModern policing has a dual nature-going back to its origins. The twin developments of community policing and militarization are an extension of the initialadvantages of policing identified by Allan Silver: 1) widespread surveillanceand discretionary action penetrating the community; and, 2) the capacity forrapid concentration and swift, forceful action.160 The state has sought to developits potential in each of these directions while maintaining a single organizationresponsible for enforcementThe form of discretionary action has changed-from foot patrols to vehiclepatrols, to a combination of the two. And thanks to technological advances and organizationalinnovations, the rapid concentration of police once reserved for emergenciesis becoming a standard response to crime and disorder. The discrete and discretionaryaspects are likewise available for increasing coordination. All the while, the penetration of the community increases--not only through patrol and surveillance, butalso by the c(}{)ptation of community institutions.These developments are, in one sense, quite new. But they come as the latest221