4GW and the RCMP
William Lind’s On War article this week was titled “Cops Who Think”. The thrust of the article is that, given the trend towards non-state forces like gangs and terror organizations being our greatest threats, it is the police and not the military that will find itself on the front lines.
The reason for this is in large part because our military forces are mainly designed to fight other military forces. Move beyond that and, as we’ve seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, they don’t perform nearly as well. Just think for a moment if the tactics our forces were using in Afghanistan were a common occurrence in Calgary or Toronto.
Defeating non-state forces requires local cooperation and intelligence. And particularly in domestic situations, it is the police who have the ability to fill those requirements.
From Lind:
Prevention can only be done by police, because only police, not the military, are sufficiently integrated with society to get the "tips" prevention usually requires. The need for such integration in turn explains why police should never allow themselves to be militarized, despite most cops' enthusiasm for military gear. Militarization automatically separates police from civil society, which leaves them blind and deaf.
And that brings me to a post by Boris at The Galloping Beaver, where, somewhat unfortunately given the above, he talks about how our police forces are evolving:
My father was a policeman during the 1960s and would often go out on patrol without his service revolver. Never once did he have to draw his weapon or beat someone to make an arrest. Indeed, he once, unarmed and alone, successfully disarmed and arrested a man with a shotgun who’d just blown a hole in his wife’s leg. He did this with a calm voice and discussion.
Somewhere between his day, and now, there seems to have been something lost in the human side of policing.
. . .
Somewhere in the past 10 or 15 or 40 years, I suspect something changed in North American policing. Police stopped wearing light-blue linen shirts, and began to appear in monotone navy or black outfits, with armour, looking much closer to a infanteer than someone who is meant to professionally and courteously interact with the public.
. . .
Offensive gadgetry from taser and mace to firearms replaces politeness, brains, and communication skills. The cruiser replaces the footpatrol. I think it’s a trickle down effect of military-industrial complex. We have air-support so we’ll bomb the hut.
. . .
What the police appear to miss is that not everyone cowers when confronted with power and threats. Some people push back. Even innocent, unarmed ones. Granted, the police should be able to protect themselves, but not at the expense of the public. Ultimately, this harms the police as public trust is eroded, and the public begins to fear the people meant to protect them. Policing then becomes a version of a protection racket.
Much like our military, the byword for the police now seems to be "force protection". As the incident with Mr. Dzeikanski showed, the RCMP are far too willing to use force, even possibly lethal force, rather than chance any unpleasantness by trying to resolve the situation peacefully. (And this incident is hardly better.)
Rather than working to integrate themselves within their communities, our police forces are erecting barriers between themselves and the public they're nominally supposed to be protecting.
"blind and deaf".
It bodes poorly for the future.
