Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America - Softcover

Williams, Kristian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1849352151 ISBN 13: 9781849352154

Publisher: AK Press, 2015

Synopsis

Let's begin with the basics: violence is an inherent part of policing. The police represent the most direct means by which the state imposes its will on the citizenry. They are armed, trained, and authorized to use force. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they represent.

Using media reports alone, the Cato Institute's last annual study listed nearly seven thousand victims of police "misconduct" in the United States. But such stories of police brutality only scratch the surface of a national epidemic. Every year, tens of thousands are framed, blackmailed, beaten, sexually assaulted, or killed by cops. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on civil judgments and settlements annually. Individual lives, families, and communities are destroyed.

In this extensively revised and updated edition of his seminal study of policing in the United States, Kristian Williams shows that police brutality isn't an anomaly, but is built into the very meaning of law enforcement in the United States. From antebellum slave patrols to today's unarmed youth being gunned down in the streets, "peace keepers" have always used force to shape behavior, repress dissent, and defend the powerful. Our Enemies in Blue is a well-researched page-turner that both makes historical sense of this legalized social pathology and maps out possible alternatives.

Kristian Williams is the author of several books, including American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination. He co-edited Life During Wartime: Resisting Counterinsurgency, and lives in Portland, Oregon.

About this title

About the Author:

Kristian Williams is the author of American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination, Hurt: Notes on Torture in a Modern Democracy, and Fire the Cops! He was one of the editors of the collection Life During Wartime: Resisting Counterinsurgency, and is a contributing editor at the movement security web journal, DCSC.ws. He has written about policing and state violence for Clamor, Counterpunch, New Politics, In These Times, and Toward Freedom. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

From Publishers Weekly:

Sweeping generalizations and little nuance make self-described anarchist Williams's first book likely to appeal only to a preselected readership who will not be put off by the title and the oversimplified theme that police officers are inherently aggressive, racist and brutal tools of the powers that be. Williams, who has written for Dissent and the Progressive, traces the development of the American police from colonial times and Southern efforts to keep slaves in check. He's strongest in delineating the unintended consequences of well-intentioned efforts to reduce police corruption and brutality, but barely a page goes by without the voicing of extremist views (e.g., a New York PBA rally that became a riot against then-mayor David Dinkins, followed by the election of the police-friendly Rudolph Giuliani, is called a "municipal-level coup"). While the litany of police misdeeds—ranging from collusion with the Klan to the shooting of unarmed Amadou Diallo—makes plain that there has always been unjustified behavior by police, it doesn't prove his argument that nothing can be done to reform the force. His alternate proposal—replacing a government force with a voluntary community patrol—will strike many as naïve in a post-9/11 world, and too rigid when he dismisses, as a form of co-optation, community policing, which has enabled officers to rely less on force.
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About this edition

• Publisher: AK Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1849352151
• ISBN 13: 9781849352154
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 592