The violence of police officers at protests reveals their true role
The job of law enforcement officers, according to the authorities who have called on them in recent days, is to keep the public safe. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, for example, said in a press conference on Sunday that officers are “here to protect people and property.”
But the police, in many situations, have appeared to actively work against public safety. It’s hard to imagine how macing a child, or driving a car into a crowd of people, could possibly be intended to keep anyone safe.
Instead, the police seem clearly to be treating protesters — members of the public — as adversaries. As Mara Gay writes at the New York Times, “an army of public servants entrusted to protect Americans treated them as an enemy instead.”
This seems to be happening not despite the fact that the protests are about police brutality, but because of it. Previous research shows that police are more likely to use force against protesters when the subject of the protest is police violence, Shaila Dewan and Mike Baker report at the Times. Police are also more likely to use violence against protesters of color than against white demonstrators.
Now “there’s deep resentment on the part of the police that so many people are angry at them, and they’re lashing out,” Alex Vitale, a sociologist at Brooklyn College, told the Times. “Look at what we saw — people sitting on their own stoops getting hit with pepper balls. Anyone who looks at them funny, they’re attacking them.”
That’s why Wallace, the Times Magazine writer, and others have argued that in protests against police brutality, the police should be seen as counterprotesters. Their interests are fundamentally at odds with those of the protesters, who want to see them stripped of their power to harass, assault, and even kill people with impunity. And it’s clear from the events of recent days that police are willing to use more violence to defend that power.
Many have also compared the violent response to the current protests with police behavior during anti-lockdown protests by conservative groups this spring. At those protests, officers were largely peaceful and respectful toward the (mostly white) crowds. One image from Lansing, Michigan, in particular, went viral: officers stoically standing by as an unmasked white man screamed inches from their faces. Contrast that with the images we’ve seen from recent days, of police swarming and beating protesters or running them down from the safety of their vehicles.
At the time of the Michigan protests, Melanye Price, a political science professor at Prairie View A&M University, told Vox that the police response would be very different if the stay-at-home protesters were black. “Imagine 10 black men and rifles walking up to any state capitol in the United States,” Price said. “They would be shot before they ever made it up the steps.”
The protesters attacked on camera by police in recent days have been unarmed. They certainly haven’t been carrying rifles up the capitol steps. Yet the police have treated them not just like a threat but like an opponent.
It’s clear that for many officers around the country, what’s happening in the streets right now isn’t an effort to protect public safety. It’s war. {read}