The police in the United States teaches the Peelian principles but it’s heart is in its origins as hunters of escaped slaves. In the 20th century, there are two notable shifts in police trends:
The first was Prohibition and the rise of the booze-runner gangs. This is where Cosa Nostra got a foothold here in the states and even after Prohibition was repealed, it was already installed, and this pushed law enforcement to start identifying civilian neighbors as other. Anyone not law enforcement was on the outside. By the time of the International War On Terror (and the PATRIOT Act) then the people were not just suspect but enemy on the pretense that terrorists were among us.
(There was a similar sense of this during the cold war, in which we were encouraged to suspect our neighbors as communists or Soviet spies, but since they didn’t really blow things up - …yet… - it became a running joke among us civvies, especially after the McCarthy scare ended.)
As a note, the whole Saints Row series of video games is based off the gang myth, and that street kids in the urbs unable to afford new Nikes could rise up to become bosses of international syndicates.
The second was Nixon’s war on drugs, essentially a war on blacks (which – it can be argued – is a war on the poor). It started with cannabis. Then the DEA was formed which had easy license to do SWAT raids on houses (rather than knocking with a very specific warrant). This is also the era when gang myths rose. Not that gangs didn’t exist – they most certainly did – but the police gang experts claimed they were simultaneously feral teens that could not be reasoned with, and international crime syndicates that command all the drug trafficking with an iron fist and an AK47. Mostly it was teens doing mischief with little to do with the drug shipments blended in with all the other freight.
(And the gangs didn’t really have guns until the police started selling confiscated firearms on the cheap in back-alley deals. I’d like to think those were an illegitimate racket, but it wouldn’t surprise me when they were endorsed by department admin.)
Anyhow, the brutality of US law enforcement became evident after the Furguson unrest of 2014 (the killing of Michael Brown, where we saw officers pointing military weapons with poor trigger discipline.) At that point the public realised that BLM had been right about Trayvon Martin. Videos of officer involved killings became ubiquitous, and we were supposed to see reform after George Floyd and the 2020 unrest nationwide. (We were also supposed to abolish ICE as well, and are FOing what happens for not pushing the matter).
So yes, absolutely this is an old, old problem. Another one of dozens that our national failure to address is coming back to haunt us.
the brutality of US law enforcement became evident
Rodney King “can’t we all just get along” seemed pretty evident in 1991. George Quintana handcuffed/hog tied near the exhaust of an idling police car and dying while being ignored was happening around then on the other coast too…
The pubic was plenty aware of “Pigs” and police brutality during Kent State in 1970.
Our continued failure to address the adversarial stance of police, courts and populace has been haunting us my whole life, and my father his whole life back to the Vietnam draft days.
While you’re not wrong, hired mob goons wearing local PD uniforms has been a common thing - in the US at least - since forever.
The police in the United States teaches the Peelian principles but it’s heart is in its origins as hunters of escaped slaves. In the 20th century, there are two notable shifts in police trends:
The first was Prohibition and the rise of the booze-runner gangs. This is where Cosa Nostra got a foothold here in the states and even after Prohibition was repealed, it was already installed, and this pushed law enforcement to start identifying civilian neighbors as other. Anyone not law enforcement was on the outside. By the time of the International War On Terror (and the PATRIOT Act) then the people were not just suspect but enemy on the pretense that terrorists were among us.
(There was a similar sense of this during the cold war, in which we were encouraged to suspect our neighbors as communists or Soviet spies, but since they didn’t really blow things up - …yet… - it became a running joke among us civvies, especially after the McCarthy scare ended.)
As a note, the whole Saints Row series of video games is based off the gang myth, and that street kids in the urbs unable to afford new Nikes could rise up to become bosses of international syndicates.
The second was Nixon’s war on drugs, essentially a war on blacks (which – it can be argued – is a war on the poor). It started with cannabis. Then the DEA was formed which had easy license to do SWAT raids on houses (rather than knocking with a very specific warrant). This is also the era when gang myths rose. Not that gangs didn’t exist – they most certainly did – but the police gang experts claimed they were simultaneously feral teens that could not be reasoned with, and international crime syndicates that command all the drug trafficking with an iron fist and an AK47. Mostly it was teens doing mischief with little to do with the drug shipments blended in with all the other freight.
(And the gangs didn’t really have guns until the police started selling confiscated firearms on the cheap in back-alley deals. I’d like to think those were an illegitimate racket, but it wouldn’t surprise me when they were endorsed by department admin.)
Anyhow, the brutality of US law enforcement became evident after the Furguson unrest of 2014 (the killing of Michael Brown, where we saw officers pointing military weapons with poor trigger discipline.) At that point the public realised that BLM had been right about Trayvon Martin. Videos of officer involved killings became ubiquitous, and we were supposed to see reform after George Floyd and the 2020 unrest nationwide. (We were also supposed to abolish ICE as well, and are FOing what happens for not pushing the matter).
So yes, absolutely this is an old, old problem. Another one of dozens that our national failure to address is coming back to haunt us.
Rodney King “can’t we all just get along” seemed pretty evident in 1991. George Quintana handcuffed/hog tied near the exhaust of an idling police car and dying while being ignored was happening around then on the other coast too…
The pubic was plenty aware of “Pigs” and police brutality during Kent State in 1970.
Our continued failure to address the adversarial stance of police, courts and populace has been haunting us my whole life, and my father his whole life back to the Vietnam draft days.