Mad props to fellow Anthropolitician Brian Lande (socdeputy to ya’ll) who, along with some former colleagues of the Lake County Sheriff’s Department, spoke out on KGO-TV (that’s ABC channel 7, to y’all in the Bay Area) against the systematic racial profiling practices that have become part of the department’s habitus…
You can see the full video after the break
If you haven’t heard the news yet, anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss passed away last week. his passing has sparked a considerable amount of reflection and commentary–including a couple of attempts to synthesize, or, on the other hand, separate out a particular aspect of his grand corpus.
One aspect of his thought that most reviewers emphasize is his consistent critique of modernity through a complicated anthropological lens which emphasized both a sensitivity to cultural diversity and universal human structures. One under-remarked element of his work, however, is the way that police and policing, as ethnographic figures, functioned within his critique so as to make it possible.
I think we’re all agreed that it’s one of our shared goals here at Anthropoliteia to point out the centrality of police and policing to the anthropological project, so as a supplement to the various orbituaries and syntheses mentioned above, I thought I’d highlight a passage from Tristes Tropiques which I think illustrates my point. Pay attention to the complicated ways in which police both illustrate and push forward his anthropological critique of modernity:
(The text is quoted, at length, after the break. I know it’s a bit lengthy for a blog post, but there really is no way to edit the twists and turns of his prose, in that the meandering juxtapositions are often the very point. Believe me, by the time you get to “The atmosphere thickens, everywhere” you’ll think every word has been worth it.)
In response to Kevin’s inquiry as to whether or not there was any reporting being done on the impact of the recession on policing, I have posted the following articles:
Budget cuts that are the result of the recession have lead to departments cutting training. The California Peace Officers Association (a bargaining collective) was receiving so many inquiries from departments about the consequences of cutting training that they put out the following memo (mjm-duty2train).
Policeone.com has a whole section of its webpage dedicated to policing in an economic crisis: http://www.policeone.com/law-enforcement-and-the-economy
including the following article: http://www.policeone.com/patrol-issues/articles/1834282-Recession-continues-to-limit-cut-police-services/
From the AP on cutbacks in the prison population intended to save dollars: http://www.policeone.com/corrections/articles/1642828-Mass-inmate-release-possible-in-Calif/
An article from correctionsone.com on the how competition between police departments, corrections, and parole affects incarceration: http://www.correctionsone.com/corrections/articles/1877665-Bridging-the-gap-between-police-and-parole/
From the Chicago Tribune on how the recession is leading to departments to cut positions, over time, and even how long officers run the engines of their cars: http://www.policeone.com/patrol-issues/articles/1813441-Police-feel-sting-of-recession-Departments-pare-programs-purchases-to-keep-cops-on-streets/
So I did a little bit of “exploratory ethnography” here in my new home of Worcester, MA by going to a Public Safety Commission Meeting. There’s plenty that could be said about it, even though it lasted all of ten minutes (has anybody else gone to these kinds of meetings? Have you noticed how existentially absurd they are? They don’t really do anything like that in France), but one thing in particular stuck out… It seems that the City of Worcester will need to lay off 24 officers by the end of September due to the city’s $1,300,000 (i like to leave in zeros) deficit. this is on top of the fact that they apparently graduated 32 new recruits in February and promptly proceeded to lay them off at the end of the month.
To me, that sounds like a lot. To put that in context, according to the WPD’s 2008 Annual report they had 381 budgeted police personnel, which amounted to $38,969,002 in Salary, Overtime and Holiday/Extras. So these cuts would mean anywhere from about a 6% (just subtracting the 24 officers from last year’s corps) to a 17% (adding together the 24, plus the 32 recruits, plus the 9 scheduled retirees) cut in the workforce and the $1.2 million would be about 3% of the money budgeted for salary. Now, that doesn’t sound like that much, but I have no idea to be honest. I really have only a general sense of what these kinds of cuts will mean–if they mean anything new at all.
Which got me wondering: does anyone know of any good work and/or reporting being done on the effects of the financial crisis on the practices of policing in American (or other) cities? If not, shouldn’t we be a part of that? What kinds of questions can we fruitfully ask about the situation?
Here’s the outline of one: if nothing else, what we’ve learned from the literature on neoliberalism is that it doesn’t make much sense to call it a “retreat of the state”–everyone from Loic Wacquant to Nikolas Rose & co. to the Cheney/Bush homeland security apparatus has shown us that. Even though that’s very much how the present crisis is being framed (“lack of government funds” etc.), the same truth still seems to hold–wither the stimulus money, for example?
How else to make sense of “financial crisis'” affect on municipal policing?
Wacquant, L. (2008). The Body, the Ghetto and the Penal State Qualitative Sociology, 32 (1), 101-129 DOI: 10.1007/s11133-008-9112-2
Wacquant, L. (2001). The Penalisation of Poverty and the rise of Neo-Liberalism European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 9 (4), 401-412 DOI: 10.1023/A:1013147404519
Rose, N., O’Malley, P., & Valverde, M. (2006). Governmentality Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 2 (1), 83-104 DOI: 10.1146/annurev.lawsocsci.2.081805.105900
“Documents and Disguises: Transgender Politics, Travel, and U.S. State Surveillance,” Toby Beauchamp, UC Davis
“The Face of Gays in the Military: Neoliberalism, Multiculturalism, and the ‘Right to Fight,'” Liz Montegary, UC Davis
Thursday, September 10, 2009 – 4:00pm – 5:30pm
691 Barrows Hall
via Queering Race, Policing Bodies: Militarization & Resistance | Center For Race Gender | CRG.
(poster after the break)
It’s becoming clear that “the taser” will have to be one of the things we think through… Another incident, this time right here in the East Bay:
According to Oakland Police spokesman Jeff Thomason, the unidentified man was allegedly drunk and yelling profanities, prompting A’s security to ask the cops to have him removed. Police say he appeared to be intoxicated, refused to leave and took a swipe at one of the cops. “Given his size and his condition the officer thought it appropriate to taser him,” Thomason said. The tased fan was hospitalized and held on a “5150” crazy hold.
What’s more, the tasing officer has himself been the object of much scrutiny over the last several months, including some of the corollary incidents that occurred in the wake of the Oscar Grant shooting.
Now, I don’t think it’s very helpful if this blog serves just to document the many tasing incidents that occur–as our own socdeputy points out, by many important measures the use of these non-lethal implements is rather paltry. On the other hand, and I think Brian would agree with me here as well, the fact that these incidents captures the public imagination is inself something that we probably need to reflect on.
Now, some of you may have read an article that I’ve been preparing (and finally submitted!) which argues that paying attention to the figure of the taser in the French banlieue riots of 2005 and 2007 offers insights into the very form of political action at stake in France today. I call this emergent space, briefly, the “problem of a post-social police”– a pervasive set of open questions (ethical, social, political, technical) that are being negotiated around the goals, orientations and forms of legitimacy associated with the police once one of its founding objects, The Social, has lost its sway.
Now, from that perspective, one of the interesting aspects of the video (which can be seen below, after the break) is the way that, even as the incident is unfolding, there is a high degree of quite public negotiation of the scene: you can hear people off-camera debating the police action (“i can’t believe you guys tased him!” “He was being belligerent!”); some people move away, while one man tried to move forward, causing a minor incident of its own; and, if I’m not mistaken, you can see some uncertainty among the police themselves as to how to move forward–after the man is (literally) done thumbing his nose at the cops, he appears to actually be putting out his hands to be cuffed. One of the officers in physical contact with the man actually jumps back, apparently surprised by the second “tase”. To add to everything a foul ball happens to be hit right into the middle of the fracas.
At the very least, I would hope that an anthropology of policing would be able to account for the complex levels at which incidents like this occur…
I don’t know how useful this is, but after seeing it last night I can’t help myself:
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Michel Foucault, discussing Louis Turquet de Mayerne’s 1611 treatise on the police Aristo-democratic Monarchy:
- The “police” appears as an administration heading the state, together with the judiciary, the army, and the exchequer. True. yet in fact, it embraces everything else. Turquet says so: “It branches out into all the people’s conditions, everything they do or undertake. Its field comprises justice, finance, and the army.”
- The police includes everything. But from an extremely particular point of view. Men and things are envisioned as to their relationships: men’s coexistence n a territory; their relationships as to property; what they produce; what is exchanged on the market. It also considers how they live, the diseases and accidents that can befall them. What the police sees to is a live, active, productive man. Turquet employs a remarkable expression: “The police’s true object is man.”
- …What are the aims pursued? they fall into two categories. First, the police has to do with everything providing the city with adornment, form and splendor. Splendor denotes not only the beauty of the state ordered to perfection but also to its strength, its vigor…. Second… to foster working and trading relations between men…. There again, the word Turquet uses is important: the police must ensure “communication” among men, in the broad sense of the word–otherwise, men wouldn’t be able to live, or their lives would be precarious, poverty-stricken, and perpetually threatened…. And here, we can make out what is, I think, an important idea. As a form of rational intervention wielding political power over men, the role of the police is to supply them with a little extra life–and, by so doing, supply the state with a little extra strength. This is done by controlling “communication,” that is, the common activities of individuals (work, production, exchange, accommodation). (bold emphasis my own)
Foucault M. 2000. “Omnes et Singulatim”: toward a critique of political reason. In Power, ed. JD Faubion, pp. 318-319. New York: New Press (see the text for free here)
Sgt. Crowley refuses to apologize to Gates:
http://www.thegrio.com/2009/07/cop-defends-his-actions-in-gates-arrest.php
Dr. Boyce Watkins: “Consider this before crying ‘racial profiling.’
http://www.thegrio.com/2009/07/i-am-not-al-sharpton.php
Sgt. Crowley taught courses on how to prevent racial profiling:
http://www.thegrio.com/2009/07/officer-who-arrested-gates-is-profiling-expert.php
A less than scholarly comment:
I am very disappointed by President Obama’s claim that the Cambridge PD’s actions were “stupid.”. Obama, himself, said that he was unaware of all the facts of the case. The bottom line is that Sgt. Crowley is getting publicly hung out to dry for doing his job. There is no evidence that he is “stupid.” Gates is able to leverage his status and reputation in a way that is preventing any real debate about what happened or any logical or sensible discussion of racial profiling. This is one of the most inane debates about race and police that I have seen in years. People with power will listen to Gates, who will listen to Sgt. Crowley? Will Crowley be judged only in the court of public opinion or will any real investigation be conducted to determine if his actions were inappropriate?
I disagree with how he handled his call, but hindsight is alway 20/20. Hindsight, as anyone who has actually had to testify in court knows, is not the standard by which a persons actions are judged. No one has asked Crowley why he did what he did at the time. Further, Crowley’s own past actions seem to indicate that he is not a racist. He has taught courses at the police academy for approximately five years on how to prevent racial profiling. He has rendered first aid to save the life of an African American in 1993 (albeit a famous athlete). The fact that I would not have handled Gates’ outbursts the way Crowley did does not mean that he did anything outside the bounds of the law.
Being an officer is tough emotional work. Day in and day it is spent with people who lie to you, disrespect you, call you names, and frequently try to hurt you. Through it all, officers are expected to take their ego bruising and be the bigger man. But officers are human beings too and sometimes a citizen or suspect crosses the line and an officer reacts in a way that is less than ideal. It happens but does not equate to racial profiling.
What saddens me the most is that Gates is using the term “rogue policeman” for Crowley. I have seen rogue cops in action, and reported them. They don’t act like Crowley. Rogue cops engage in a systematic pattern of misconduct in which illegal searches and seizures are conducted, state laws and departmental policies are regularly violated, and other officers and the public are put in harms way. Thus far there is no evidence that Sgt. Crowley is that kind of officer.
Tim Dunne, professor of international relations and head of humanities and social sciences, University of Exeter, reviewing the new book The Liberal Way of War:Killing to Make Life Live in Times Higher Education:
In the West, the thawing of the Cold War coincided with a revival in liberal internationalist ideas about the importance of regime type. Leading American thinkers including Michael Doyle and Francis Fukuyama seized on a claim initially articulated by Kant about the peaceful character of democracies. From Reagan onwards, every US President has endorsed the mantra that democracies are more peaceful than authoritarian regimes.
In The Liberal Way of War this hubris is dramatically punctured. Kant appears not as an exponent of a separate peace forged among republican states but as a philosopher of biohumanity. The consequence of the emergence of the human species as a referent for security is that war “becomes war without end”. On this logic, liberals are pushed closer and closer to the realist position that war is necessarily a recurrent feature of politics.
via Times Higher Education – The Liberal Way of War: Killing to Make Life Live. (emphasis added)
If the argument is that once the referent for security becomes “the human” that the result is a temporally indefinate state of affairs best described as “a war without end,” what do we make of the anagolously indefinate state of policing?
My first impression is that there are least two issues at stake here:
Anthropoliteia 