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

vidual officer, perhaps it leads us to excuse him. Such thinking, derived asit is from legal reasoning, does not take us far beyond the case in question.And thus, such inquiries are rarely very illuminating.Of the instances of police violence I discussed above-the shooting ofTimothy Thomas, the beatings of Rodney King and Luis Milton Murrales,the arrest of Marquette Frye, the killing of Arthur McDuffie-any of thesemay be explained in terms of the actions and attitudes of the particular officersat the scene, the events preceding the violence (including the actions ofthe victims) , and the circumstances in which the officers found themselves.Indeed, juries and police administrators have frequently found it possible toexcuse police violence with such explanations.The unrest that followed these incidents, however, cannot be explainedin such narrow terms. To understand the rioting, one must consider a wholerange of related issues, including the conditions of life in the Black community,the role of the police in relation to that community, and the history andpattern of similar abuses.If we are to understand the phenomenon of police brutality, we must getbeyond particular cases. We can better understand the actions of individualpolice officers if we understand the institution of which they are a part. Thatinstitution, in turn, can best be examined if we have an understanding of itsorigins, its social function, and its relation to larger systems like capitalismand White supremacy. Each of these topics will be addressed in later chapters,while here, as a first course, I will focus on what is known about policeviolence per se.Let's begin with the basics: violence is an inherent part of policing. Thepolice represent the most direct means by which the state imposes its willon the citizenry.42 When persuasion, indoctrination, moral pressure, andincentive measures all fail-there are the police. In the field of social control,police are specialists in violence. They are armed, trained, and authorized touse force. With varying degrees of subtlety, this colors their every action.Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is implicit in every policeencounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they represent.DEFINING BRUTALITYThe study of police brutality faces any number of methodological barriers,not the least of which is the problem of defining it. There is no standarddefinition, nor is there one way of measuring force and excessive force. Asa consequence, different studies produce very different results, and theseresults are difficult to compare. Kenneth Adams, writing for the NationalInstitute of Justice, notes:Because there is no standard methodology for measuring use offorce, estimatescan vary considerably on strictly computational grounds. Differentdefinitions of force and different definitions of police-public interactionswill yield different rates.... In particular, broad definitions of use offorce, such as those that include grabbing or handcuffing a suspect, willproduce higher rates than more conservative definitions .... Broad definitionsof police-public "interactions," such as calls for assistance, which9