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The Myth of Liberal Policing
For liberals, police reform is always a question
of helping police sustain their legitimacy, de-
spite their illegitimate roots.
There has been a great deal of hand wringing
about the effect of a Trump White House on the
movement for police reform. Many had hoped that
a Democratic administration would continue to
use the Justice Department to press for reforms
such as body cameras, community policing, offi-
cer diversity, and implicit bias and use of force
training. These reforms represent the hallmarks of
a liberal program to reestablishing legitimate polic-
ing.
Liberals think the police rightly have a monopoly
on using force in the interests of the state, which
they believe represents societys general will. To
retain this monopoly, the police must maintain
their public legitimacy by acting in a way the pub-
lic respects and within the rule of law, what is of-
ten referred to as procedural justice. For liberals,
police reform is always a question of helping po-
lice sustain that legitimacy. The alternative would
be to allow predators to run amok in society.
In her book The First Civil Right, political scientist
Naomi Murakawa points out that it is this liberal
misconception of the nature of policing that has
led to the inadequate police reforms of the past
and present. Reformers have focused on improv-
ing the professionalism of police in an effort to
reduce bias and unlawful behavior rather than
questioning the justness of what police are asked
to do. Why are the police waging a War on Drugs,
War on Crime, War on Disorder, and War on Ter-
ror? Are they really the best, most just way for the
state to address these issues? As part of their un-
critical understanding of state power, liberals tend
to ignore or downplay these questions as well as
the profound legacy and continued active produc-
tion of state-backed racial exploitation and domi-
nation. Rather than admit the central role of slav-
ery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, and over-
policing in producing wealth for white people and
denying basic life opportunities for black people,
they prefer to focus on a few remedial programs
backed up by a robust and legitimate criminal
justice system to transform black attitudes so that
they are better able to compete in the labor mar-
ket. As a result, black people always start from a
diminished position that makes them both more
likely to come into contact with the criminal justice
system and be treated more harshly by it.
The reality is that the police have always been at
the root of a system for managing and producing
inequality. This is accomplished by suppressing
social movements and tightly managing the be-
haviors of poor and nonwhite people in ways that
benefit those already in positions of economic and
political power. Police have always functioned as
a force for controlling those on the losing end of
these economic and political arrangements, quell-
ing social upheavals that could no longer be man-
aged by existing private, communal, and informal
processes. This can be seen in the earliest origins
of policing, which were tied to three basic social
arrangements of inequality in the 18th century:
slavery, colonialism, and the control of an indus-
trial working class. This created what Allan Silver
called a policed society, in which state power
was significantly expanded to face down the de-
mands for justice from those subject to these sys-
tems of domination and exploitation. As Kristian
Williams points out, the police represent the
point of contact between the coercive appara-
tus of the state and the lives of its citizens.
Most liberal and conservative academics try to
counter this argument by pointing to the image of
the politically neutral professionalism of the Lon-
don Metropolitan Police, which are often held up
as the original police.
Created in 1829 by Sir Robert Peel (from whom
the Bobbies get their name), this new force was
more effective than the informal and unprofes-
sional watch or the excessively violent and often
hated militia and army. But even this noble en-
deavor had at its core the mission not of fighting
crime but of managing disorder and protecting the
propertied classes from the rabble. Peel devel-
oped his ideas while managing the British colonial
occupation of Ireland, where he struggled to foster
new forms of social control that would allow for its
continued political and economic domination in
the face of growing uprisings. For years, such
outrages had been managed by the local militia
and, if necessary, the British Army. However, Brit-
ish colonial expansion and the Napoleonic Wars
dramatically reduced the availability of these
forces just as resistance to British occupation in-
creased. Peel was forced to develop a lower cost
and more legitimate form of policing. The initial
attempt was the Peace Preservation Force, which
was made up of professionals who attempted to
manage crowds through a more proactive and
preventive approach, embedding themselves in
rebellious localities to identify troublemakers and
neutralize them through threats and arrests.
Out of this experience, Peel created the London
Metropolitan Police to replace the citys existing
system of semi-formal night watches backed up
by local militia and a few private thief catchers.
The main functions of the new police were to pro-
tect those with property from those without, and
to quell riots. They also played a central role in
putting down strikes and other organized actions
by workers, despite their claims of political neu-
trality. The London model was then imported to
the U.S. beginning in Boston in 1838 and continu-
ing through the northern cities over the next few
decades. Massive immigration and rapid industri-
alization created an even more socially and politi-
cally chaotic environment than in the U.K.: New
York was exploding with new immigrants who
were being chewed up by a rapid and immiserat-
ing industrialization. Rioting was widespread dur-
ing this period, occurring on a monthly basis for
many years. After the 1828 Christmas riot, when
4,000 workers marched on the wealthy districts,
newspapers began calling for a major expansion
and professionalization of the night watch, which
eventually led to the formation of the police.
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In some cases, early police forces were created
specifically for purposes of suppressing workers
movements. Pennsylvania was home to some of
the most militant unionism, resulting in numerous
strikes and violent confrontations in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries. Local police were some-
times sympathetic toward the workers who were
often the bulk of local constituents, so mine and
factory owners turned to the state to provide them
with armed forces to control strikes and intimidate
organizers. The states initial response was to
authorize a completely privatized police force
called the Coal and Iron Police. Local employers
had only to pay a commission fee of $1 dollar
each to deputize anyone of their choosing to be
an officer of the law working directly for the em-
ployer, often under the supervision of Pinkertons
or other private security forces. These police were
typically used as strike breakers and were often
implicated as agents provocateurs, fomenting vio-
lence as a way of justifying their continued pay-
checks.
The Coal and Iron Police committed numerous
atrocities, including the Latimer Massacre of 1897,
in which they killed 19 unarmed miners and
wounded 32 others. The final straw was the An-
thracite Coal Strike of 1902, in which miners and
employers waged a pitched battle that lasted five
months and created national coal shortages. In
the aftermath, political leaders and employers de-
cided that a new, more legitimate-seeming system
of labor management was needed, to be paid for
out of the public coffers. The result was the crea-
tion of the Pennsylvania State Police in 1905.
This was the first state police force, and it repre-
sented an important shift of power away from lo-
cal communities. The state police unambiguously
favored the interests of large employers, who had
significantly more influence over state-level politi-
cians. While putatively under civilian political con-
trol, the reality was that they remained a major
force in putting down strikes, though often with
less violence and with greater legal and political
authority. The consequences, however, were
largely the same, as they participated in strike-
breaking and the killing of miners, such as in the
Westmoreland County Coal Strike of 191011.
Their frequent attacks lead Slovak miners to give
them the nickname Pennsylvania Cossacks.
The Pennsylvania State Police were modeled in
part on the U.S. occupation police in the Philip-
pines, where the U.S. faced a large local resis-
tance. According to Alfred McCoys Policing Em-
pire, the Philippine Constabulary became a testing
ground for new police techniques and technolo-
gies, developing close ties to local communities to
monitor subversive activities and wiring the coun-
try for rapid communication of emerging intelli-
gence. When demonstrations emerged, the police,
through a huge network of informants, were able
to anticipate them and place spies and agents
provocateurs to sow dissension and allow leaders
and other agitators to be quickly arrested and
neutralized.
The U.S. also had its own domestic version of co-
lonial policing in the Texas Rangers. Initially a
loose band of irregulars, the Rangers were hired to
protect the interests of newly arriving white colo-
nists, first under the Mexican government, then
under an independent Republic of Texas, and fi-
nally as part of the State of Texas. Their main work
was to hunt down native populations accused of
attacking white settlers, as well as investigating
crimes like cattle rustling. Mike Coxs history, The
Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821-
1900, describes this as nothing short of an exter-
mination campaign.
The Rangers also frequently acted as vigilantes on
behalf of white settlers in disputes with the long-
standing Spanish and Mexican populations, serv-
ing as a major force for white colonial expansion.
Local whites had only to make vague accusations
to receive help from the Rangers.
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