Reddit reviews Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America

I am not really sure what you're trying to say here. I completed my thesis on this topic and I encourage some of these readings:

Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis

Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

In his 1968 run for President, Richard Nixon and fellow conservatives seized the tumultuous events at the time as an opportunity to gain political points--you are spot on.


Nixon dedicated seventeen speeches solely to the topic of law and order. The liberal Democratic establishment was characterized as out-of- touch and weak on crime. In one of his television ads Nixon called upon American voters to reject the lawlessness of civil rights activists and embrace “order.” At the end of the ad, a caption reads: “This time . . . vote like your whole world depended on it . . . NIXON.”

After viewing the campaign ad, Nixon remarked that the ad “hits right on the nose. It’s all about those damn Negro-Puerto Rican groups out there.”

Before Nixon’s inauguration—Krogh and Ehrlichman held strategy sessions with ranking members of the House Judiciary Committee. Their meetings were an attempt to test nationwide federalist crime policy in Washington DC, increasing preventative detention and no-knock raid provisions left out of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act passed six months earlier. The new administration held two strategy sessions on crime, just before Nixon took office, and another shortly after his inauguration. Nixon surrounded himself with some of the most notable conservative crime experts at the time. In addition to Krogh and Ehrlichman, were GOP chief House counsel John Dean, and future Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then a domestic policy adviser.

Fast forward to the Texas Tower shooter and you have the creation of SWAT. Though SWAT’s original motives were to handle
extreme emergencies, their first official mission is indicative of what the State constitutes
as an emergency. In 1969, in its first mission, SWAT raided an alleged headquarters of
the Black Panther Party.

I could go on and on, but I'll leave you with one final article that I think you should take a look at: How White Users Made Heroin a Public-Health Problem and the 1985 Philidelphia MOVE Bombing. where police literally bombed--as in C4 explosive from a helicopter--a neighborhood because it was rumored to be home of black activists.

> Besides if the government is responding to social movements with violence then we have other issues to deal with.

lol

When are they not?

When I was involved in anti-war activism, just like 5 years ago, the place where I did political organizing was firebombed twice, broken into and raided probably 6 times, and had at least 3 informants that I was aware of. One guy, who became the executive director none-the-less, was an informant who decided to infiltrate us at the government's direction rather than answer for sex crimes in Florida. He was later caught and exposed after sexually assaulting a woman.

I'd highly recommend you read Kristian Williams book "Our Enemies In Blue", as a primer on how police deal with political activists. Wililams body of work proves a thesis that a major role of policing in the United States is to deploy counter-insurgency tactics on political activists for the purposes of maintaining social order.

Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America

Relevant link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Our-Enemies-Blue-Police-America-dp-1849352151/dp/1849352151/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1563344728

Theres a lot of things that can be done, depending on the specific issue.

If I had the infinity gauntlet, I'd abolish capital and property rights which is largely what police exist to serve and protect. But with some basic electoral reform; I'd make having a gun something thats a pain in the ass to do, like the police in the UK for example, their guns are in a locked room somewhere and they need to go through a bit of a hassle to actually arm themselves. Thats first and foremost.

Secondly, ending the "war on drugs" would be huge in dealing with our policing problem. It was a war that was started to target Black radical groups and their white allies. Don't take my word for it, its all perfectly public and googable (I like that word, lets make it a thing)

Speaking broadly, just fire all existing police officers, give them severance and make sure they all have a living wage while they go do other things to make the world a better place. And replace the police as we know them, with people who are elected by their communities to keep the peace, settle disputes and so on.

These are broad strokes, when your instinct kicks in to defend the system as it exists, just remember how awful it is for so many humans and rethink it.

This system isn't working for poor people, black people, mentally disabled people, women, largely anyone thats not in the middle and upper class. So if your solutions don't deal with how police act as an occupying force using leftover weapons from the military, then its not a real solution. I'd love to hear your thoughts though, what do you think should be done to stop police murdering innocent people, stealing more from citizens than burglars, and in general terrorizing impoverished neighborhoods?

https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries


EDIT- I'm not an expert, not that I should need to be to comment on the gaping problem here, but I have read what the experts think, and I'm going to link some books that I have read and some that I'm going to read when I have the time and money, and you can get the solutions straight from the horses mouth. Now you've gone through my posts so you already know the books I'm about to link:

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2530-police

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing

https://www.amazon.com/Our-Enemies-Blue-Police-America/dp/1849352151

https://www.amazon.com/Police-Power-Patriarchy-Foundations-Government/dp/0231132077