Thread by @harikunzru

The police are always political but in the US there’s no longer even the pretense that they treat everyone equally.

Across the country people are waking up to yet more images of out of control police violence. Scroll through the TL of @greg_doucette (who is collecting videos) and the cumulative effect is sickening. What to do?

There are concrete policy steps that can be taken to reform the police. Check #CampaignZero for an eight point plan - also the TL of @samswey who has been campaigning for years

A significant part of the problem is the importation of military equipment, tactics and ethos into civilian policing. In many ways the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been brought back home

The original ideal of policing was centered around consent, and the idea that the police’s ability to perform their role depends on the ability to command the respect of the public. When consent goes down, violence increases

Here (via @cstross) are the 9 principles of policing by consent that governed the first police force in 1829 gov.uk/government/pub…

Obviously these are *ideals* and Robert Peel’s 1829 police force had its origins in Peel’s experience suppressing dissent in Ireland daily.jstor.org/the-irish-root…

The UK has, to its cost, found out that policing tactics developed in ‘the colonies’ eventually find their way home. Check the work of @KimAtiWagner to find out more about India, Malaya, Kenya and eventually Northern Ireland and Brixton

The engine of the hyper-militarization of the US police also has colonial roots, in the disastrous 1033 program, which has put absurdly high spec military equipment like MRAPs in the hands of small town PD's who never knew they needed it en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1033_prog…

Police equipped like stormtroopers and trained in the hyper-macho SWAT ethos will not behave like Officer Clemmons

And as many people have pointed out, in the US, many police forces have origins in slave patrols. A book I can't recommend highly enough is Disturbing the Peace: Black Culture and the Police Power After Slavery by Bryan Wagner hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?is…

I hope that the experience of the last 10 days will lead to serious action - proper policies to limit use of force, end to militarization, transparency, oversight and bringing back forces like the NYPD under meaningful political control.

From the perspective of someone who grew up elsewhere, it's clear that much US police training centers on the assumption that guns could be present in any situation. Sensible pragmatic gun control seems like the prerequisite for changing these tactics. Hard to do.

More on the transfer of military equipment to police "There is, in fact, a “positive and statistically significant relationship between 1033 transfers and fatalities from officer-involved shootings" nybooks.com/daily/2020/06/…

And as for this ‘killology’ shit motherjones.com/politics/2017/…

Focus on police unions. They are (to put it very charitably) out of touch with the public. Often they threaten elected officials who attempt oversight and operate what is effectively a protection racket nytimes.com/2020/06/06/us/…