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

emember that the available statistics reflect the officers' tendency to overstatethe dangers they face and understate their own use of force, both in terms ofdegree and frequency. The fact that police use more force than they face isincontrovertible; it is left for us to wonder how often the police use violence-insome cases, deadly force-that is out of all proportion to the danger they face.The available studies tell us very little about the prevalence of excessiveforce, but they do indicate that the police use violence more often, at higherlevels, and with deadlier effects, than they actually encounter it.121 Thisdisparity should not be surprising, considering the nature of policing-theimperative to maintain control at all times, in every situation (hardly a realisticgoal) , the training to use escalating levels of force to gain compliance,and authority unhindered by genuine oversight. Policing, as 1 said earlier,is inherently violent; this violence, generally speaking, seems to be of anoffensive-rather than defensive-character. In essence, the police areprofessional bullies. And like all bullies, the thing they most fear is an evenfight. As Kenneth Bradley, a Miami-Dade Metro officer sees it: "I don't getpaid to get hurt, and I don't get paid to fight fair ...."122 No wonder, then, thatthe violence used by the police far outstrips anything used against them.INSTITUTIONALIZED BRUTALITYGiven such pervasive violence, it is astonishing that discussions ofpolice brutality so frequently focus on the behavior of individual officers.Commonly called the "Rotten Apple" theory, the explanation of police misconductfavored by police commanders and their ideological allies holdsthat police abuse is exceptional, that the officers who misuse their powerare a tiny minority, and that it is unfair to judge other cops (or the departmentas a whole) by the misbehavior of the few. 123 This is a handy tool fordiverting attention away from the institution, its structure, practices, andsocial role, pushing the blame, instead, onto some few of its agents.124 It is,in other words, a means of protecting the organization from scrutiny, andof avoiding change.Despite the official insistence to the contrary, it is clear that policeorganizations, as well as individual officers, hold a large share of the responsibilityfor the prevalence of police brutality. 12> Police agencies are organizationallycomplex, and brutality may be promoted or accommodated withinany (or all) of its various dimensions. Both formal and informal aspects ofan organization can help create a climate in which unnecessary violence istolerated, or even encouraged. Among the formal aspects contributing toviolence are the organization's official policies, its identified priorities, thetraining it offers its personnel,126 its allocation of resources, and its systemof promotions, awards, and other incentives. I27 When these aspects of anorganization encourage violence-whether or not they do so intentionally,or even consciously-we can speak of brutality being promoted "fromabove." This understanding has been well applied to the regimes of certainopenly thuggish leaders-Bull Connor, Richard Daley, Frank Rizzo,128 DarylGates, Rudolph Giuliani (to name just a few)-but it needn't be so overt tohave the same effect.21