Out of Order? (Routledge Revivals)

Policing Black People

E. Cashmore, E. McLaughlin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135072773
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Discrimination & Race Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1991, this book evaluates and compares the problematic relationships that have sometimes existed between police and Afro-Caribbean people in Britain and in the United States of America. Contributors from both sides of the Atlantic assess conflicting claims from police and black communities, as to whether some police are racist or too brutal in their operations. Although this book was written in the early 90s, many of the issues discussed remain interesting and relevant to our society today.

Chapter 1

Out of order?

Ellis Cashmore and Eugene McLaughlin

The mechanism for destroying the colonized cannot but worsen daily. The more oppression increases the more the colonizer needs justification.

(Albert Memmi)

The crisis is: only that there is being generated the idea that there is a crisis.

(Robert Bunyard, Commandant of Bramshill)

THE CRISIS CONSPIRACY

Conspiracy theories are usually viewed as poor and improbable ways of explaining events. But, in the case of the British police’s use of ‘crisis’ as part of their push to secure professional independence and political influence, pieces of a plot were drawn together to produce what might be seen as, at kindest, a convenience, at cruellest, a connivance.

The idea of linking immigrants with crime, unruliness and disorder is by no means a novel one. The Irish in the nineteenth century and Jews between 1880 and 1914 were popularly associated with habitual criminal activity, and moral panics were generated about foreigners and aliens, premised on racist caricatures (Holmes 1979; Swift and Gilley 1985; Williams 1985; Davis 1989). Young blacks over the past twenty-odd years have been accorded a similar distinction: officially defined as a social problem and given special treatment, which has in turn, emphasized their problematic status. Coming from populations over which the English had, in imperial eras, ruled, black people had a paradoxical presence: they were regarded as inferior, but had at least a legal claim to equality with their former ‘masters’. John Solomos, in Black Youth, Racism and the State (1988), shows in detail how social policy both created and attempted to avert the alleged ‘crisis’ of black youth. The police were, of course, part of the more general attempt.

We do not have to know the precise motives of the police to appreciate that black youth have been of enormous help to them in their attempt to secure political influence and professional autonomy. Attributed with the status of a social problem with no apparent practicable solution, black youth were the object of some very special attention by the police up to and beyond the watershed year of 1981, as study after study indicated (see, for instance, collections in Cashmore and Troyna 1982; Troyna and Smith 1983; PSI 1983). Black youth, being materially powerless with limited formal access to political representation, were manna, a perfect resource. The police used them symbolically to demand, determine, justify, legitimate and, at key moments, rationalize their drive for power. At one level, the police have been enforcing their control of this segment of the black population through, for example, swamping operations, drug sweeps, selective enforcement of drug laws and paramilitary policing tactics. At another, they have, with the help of the popular media, been masterfully stretching society’s nerves: depicting a social problem of frightful proportions and, in doing so, accessing power and resources to manage it (Hall et al. 1978; Sim 1982). Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the concern about black youth and their supposed ‘heritage of violence’ as ‘muggers’, ‘drug barons’, ‘steamers’, ‘Yardies’ and ‘posses’ has been handled in such a way as to engender public support for police strategies, especially as most of the stereotypes have been uncritically accepted and, at times, supported by politicians and the mass media. Why?

Our answer lies in the concept of crisis. It has power to instil a sense of danger or chaos in the popular imagination; and an unlikely alliance of academics, politicians of all persuasions, the mass media and the police themselves has built a rough orthodoxy about the existence of such a crisis. For the past twenty years or so, most of the arguments about the ability of the police to guarantee order have been conducted against a backdrop of crisis. During this period, academics in Britain began to consider the role of the police in relation to a more general malaise. Policing the Crisis (1978) was the title of the most authoritative analysis of the relationship between the police, the state and the multiple problems afflicting British society from the 1970s onwards. Phil Scraton, by the middle of the 1980s, was arguing in The State of the Police (1985) that law and order was ‘out of control/John Lambert referred to The crisis in policing’ (1984) whilst John Lea and Jock Young asked a pressing question in the title of their book, What is To Be Done about Law and Order? (1984).

The assumption in these and in many other pieces of work that have proliferated on policing in Britain from the 1970s onwards is that there is a crisis, one which affects and is affected by the police but which extends far beyond the police themselves, to every area of society. It is an assumption that takes substance from the media, in the 1980s and early 1990s full of images of petrol bombs hurtling towards police lines, police-horses charging into demonstrators and armed and armoured police-officers patrolling not just inner-city ‘front lines’ but also traditional Yorkshire mining villages, fields around Stonehenge, outside factories, university student unions, acid house parties, football grounds and town halls. From the early 1970s anxieties have been raised by chief police-officers like James Anderton, who has interpreted every episode as part of a conspiracy to overthrow democracy in Britain.

‘Crisis’ is one of those concepts that knits together the otherwise diversionary philosophies of Left and Right, haves and have-nots, them and us. Quite apart from the police themselves, politicians and policy-makers have sought to justify their politics and policies by reference to the assumed disintegration of values and the collapse into disorder and anarchy that it entails (Box 1987: 150). Tom Nairn believes the concept of crisis has permeated British thought and action for virtually the whole of the twentieth century. As he puts it, ‘since 1910 it has been all “crisis” ’ (1979: 44). But it has taken on a new relevance since the early 1970s. Such is the agreement about its existence, that it is now established ‘fact’. This has proved to be an inspired starting-point for the police’s irresistible and unerring progress towards autonomy and influence. However one defines the crisis and whether or not it actually exists are not so important as the police’s use of the widespread belief that it exists.

The crisis may have the status of the emperor’s new clothes: existing only so long as everyone’s explicit agreement holds up. Unlike the clothes, a sole voice will not be enough to dispel what has now become an orthodoxy. The police are enthusiastic parties to this orthodoxy and, as we will show, have utilized the idea of a crisis to address a series of problems they needed to solve en route to autonomy. Problems such as those people who have demanded more democratic accountability and a reduction in police powers were successfully negotiated by police-forces whose prime mandate was to restore law and order. ‘I sense and see in our midst an enemy more dangerous, insidious and ruthless than any faced since the Second World War’, declaimed Anderton in 1982, adding that the subversive aim of this ‘quiet revolution’, as he called it, was to turn the police into ‘an executive agency of a one party state’ (Anderton 1982). Anderton’s major effort in his position as Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, was to resist this apparent trend. In the process, he consistently urged the removing of political and financial fetters and the release of the police from virtually all controls of governance. As Michael Brogden has noted: ‘If the functionaries are able to dramatize the connection between the organization goals and social values within the dominant ideology greater expenditure and more autonomy may be obtained’ (1982: 86).

Such strategies have been analysed by Steven Box in Power, Crime and Mystification (1983). He argues that the police shock the community they allegedly serve by substantiating fears, then using them for their own purposes. ‘The state’s attempt to reform the police into a reliable force against its domestic enemies would only be bought at a price demanded by the police’, observes Box (1983: 116). The price exacted has:

1 Enhanced political influence, with police acting in a consultative capacity on issues which are quite unrelated to the service functions of the police and not necessarily related to police expertise: for example, on questions of morality (including homosexuality and AIDS), housing (inner-city planning), education (wanting schools to accommodate police visits), censorship (pornography being a central topic), race relations (all aspects) and health and sickness (especially mental illness).

2 Hastened professionalization along similar trajectories to the medical and legal professions: making esoteric knowledge claims that only highly-trained and disciplined members of the occupational group have the necessary expertise to deal adequately with troublesome and even life-threatening problems; the claim includes the stipulation that only those privy to the knowledge and expertise are equipped to judge or even evaluate standards and behaviour. This has complemented the influence outlined in (1) by blocking off the possibility of any reciprocal influence: political intervention in police matters has been discouraged and nullified. It could be argued that police-chiefs have now acquired unique discretionary power unheard of in other professions.

3 Affirmed internal control not only by discouraging, but actually invalidating, intervention from outside groups, including politicians: so specialized is policing, that no-one outside the occupation can comprehend its peculiar complexities; errancy or irregularities in the force therefore must be handled internally – the police are virtually self-policing.

4 Strengthened the police’s negotiating position vis-à-vis central government: this is manifested in several spheres, such as in the police’s ability to avoid the financial constraints imposed on other welfare- and education-oriented occupations and professions (for a breakdown of comparative expenditures, see Brogden, 1982: 86); and in their successful attempts to resist accountability to local government in the face of contrary efforts.

5 Increased physical powers: a major result of the strengthening of negotiating position is the ability to justify increased expenditure on labour and technology, usually by reference to the growing demands of a society in turmoil; the costs of paramilitary policing have been offset by a government convinced of its necessity.

Documenting what is effectively a process of empowerment helps us understand why, when questions about the police’s ability to command public support or maintain public order are asked, the police themselves join the chorus. They have even taken lead roles, loudly warning of the chasms opening up in British society and the dangerous factions that need to be quelled if order and stability are to be maintained and consensus restored. As Keith MacDonald has observed:

For them [the police] community integration is not just a warm feeling, but also a means to a tangible end, that they are highly motivated to achieve. If there is genuine social disintegration and reintegration is required, who better to undertake such a task?

(1976: 52)

What concerns us here is not the truth or falsity of police claims about a crisis, but the functions they have served in the police’s effort to secure and legitimize political influence and professional autonomy. The problematic is not the objective reality of the streets; more germane to our analysis is the way in which this reality has been presented and used by the police.

The concept of crisis with black youth at its centre has been of great utility to the British police and our purpose in the remainder of this chapter is to elaborate how the ideas have been articulated and how the police have responded to them. We will argue that the police have drawn legitimacy from a largely supportive public, convinced that a crisis of law and order is upon us and equally convinced that the police should take appropriate measures to deal with it. We will also devote some attention to the most important sign that the police have achieved a position of unparalleled independence and influence: a paramilitary presence. The final ideological break with the ‘traditional’ British method of policing and the inclination towards methods favoured by colonial forces is indicative of the political leverage gained by the police over the past decade. We trace the sources of influence and the consequences. Police reaction to events that may seem only mildly troublesome, most notably the acid house parties of 1989, the Poll Tax demonstrations and soccer disorder of 1990, now include the deployment of suppression apparatus, previously used only in the north of Ireland and other colonial contexts. The parallels, we will suggest, are revealing. But our next task is to address some general questions about police legitimacy.

LEGITIMIZING CONTROL

Commentators such as Michael Stephens (1988) and Robert Reiner (1985a) argue that the legitimacy conventionally afforded to the police has evaporated during the past twenty years. This has come about, they reason, because of the more overtly political role the police occupy; a ‘politicization’ that has resulted in, as Stephens puts it, a ‘diffuse change in the attitudes of the public to the police’, namely ‘a decrease in the public’s evaluation of the acceptability of police action’ (1988: 4).

Our argument rests on a different interpretation of events. The civil disturbances of the 1970s and 1980s in English inner cities may well have been precipitated by a change in police attitudes, a change that was certainly accompanied by a gearing up of equipment for both intelligence and confrontational purposes (see Bunyan 1982). We would also agree that the police have increased their political influence. But we are sceptical about whether this has led to a decline in legitimacy in the eyes of the general public. It could be argued that the general population is at least ambivalent and in most cases even supportive of the police in their dealings with groups that have been defined as threatening, subversive and unwanted, particularly young blacks. There is little evidence to suggest that the white majority were ever tolerant of political and cultural diversity or that they frowned on attempts to put ethnic minorities ‘in their place’ (Cesarani 1990). The assimilationist approach has usually been favoured. In many circumstances, harsh policing responses have been supported by significant sections of the population in the same way as those sections have also supported crackdowns on dole-scroungers and drug-dealers. In this sense, the legitimacy of the police has been enhanced rather than reduced.

In a highly fragmented and differentiated society, a crisis for any one group can be a source of reassurance for the others. It is in such a situation that the police have built the foundations of their own legitimacy. They have done so with the backing of a central state that confers power on those agencies that contribute to the maintenance of a common set of values – a consensus – and, ultimately, social order. The police may have lost sympathy among some segments of the population, most notably those subject to policing, yet there are correspondent gains: they are generally accepted and, indeed, in certain instances, vigorously supported, especially in their efforts to establish a hard assimilationist line for ethnic minorities. As John Rex (1988: 116) has noted: ‘while most white people in Britain feel that they can ultimately rely on the police to defend them, for many young blacks they seem an alien force or an occupying army’.

If there is a tendency in modern Britain for the majority of people to share the values that are purportedly upheld by the police, we must ask: why? Is it because they are utterly manipulated, or because they genuinely and voluntarily lend their consent? Paul Gilroy and Joe Sim provide a clue when they observe that: The majority of citizens may never have an unsatisfactory encounter with the police’; and ‘Popular sentiment about crime which develops without the experience of being a victim and without any contact with the police is obviously prone to panic and manipulation’ (1987: 98). They also argue that panics over law and order and the identification of culpable villains are recurring features of British society. The police draw legitimacy from public concern over such matters and can usually justify tightening their control in a drift towards a more authoritarian society. Furthermore, a powerful police agency has the means to create conditions under which public concern about law and order can occur. Public opinion is capable of being manipulated in such a manner that the stirring of anxieties about social problems and disorder strengthens the mandate of the police for implementing new strategies.

This unity of purpose, an ideological as well as political expression, is not unique to the 1980s but is an inherent feature of the development of the rule of law and its criminal justice system. It has been informed and characterized by a rhetoric of law and order which identifies all opposition to the established order as a ‘threat’ to the state.

(Scraton 1987: 182)

This is an overwhelmingly effective process: defining specific groups or functions as threatening to the state pushes them beyond the legitimate pale and solidifies the ‘unity of purpose’. The groups in question are made to appear pathological and much more threatening than they actually are. Resistance by such groups may exist, but we would argue that it is containable and, in many circumstances, beneficial to the social order. By officially designating what is wrong and threatening, the state reminds the rest of society what they should not be. In this sense, a certain resistance is useful to the state. Black resistance, in particular, has been expertly manipulated and turned to police advantage.

As Emile Durkheim (1973: 68–9) argued, all societies need criminals to induce conformity and order. They also need rules and mechanisms for detecting and apprehending transgressors of them. Ergo the police. So the police and the whole control apparatus of which they are part can quite plausibly insist that they always act in the interests of the common good. The ‘common good’ may reek of rhetoric, but, throughout history, some form of overt force, or threat of force, has been employed as a means of social control and been accepted as useful, if not essential, to the keeping of order. Yet, in itself, this is inefficient and expensive, requiring surveillance and territorial control, plus extensive resources, including weapons and the personnel to use them – like township policing in South Africa or the holding of the north of Ireland. Because of this, the police rely on their authority: their legitimacy derives from a general acceptance of their propriety, the laws and rules they enforce, the values they stand for, the morality they are supposed to support and the order they maintain. It is through this process that the police can come to directly represent the ‘common good’. The sight of the police may strike fear into some, but it merely reminds the majority that they should continue to exercise their internal control. As Smith and Gray have argued:

as long as most people conform at least when some pressure has been brought to bear upon them by other agents, the police can effectively deal with the few remaining cases. They are the last resort in a long process of social control.

(1985: 10)

Some might call this policing by consent, others preferring policing by manipulation. Neither does full justice to its dual-sided nature. We need to make sense of the fact that people tend to accept the opinions of those in positions of authority (including the police); they also tolerate substantial material inequalities and, because of this, are relatively easy to control, or at least influence. The ability of the police to command authority is based partly on the formal power with which they are vested, but also on the wide constituency of support they enjoy. As Brogden has noted: ‘public attitudes and policing practices do not seem to be far apart’ (1982: 201). Wide constituency does not mean total, of course, and there are many groups for whom police power is a problem. But these groups are the powerless minorities. Those who are most difficult to control typically reflect opinions, or oppose inequalities and make stringent effor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Out of order?
• 2 Policing and urban unrest: problem constitution and policy response
• 3 White policing of black populations: a history of race and social control in America
• 4 Black Cops Inc.
• 5 Police accountability and black people: into the 1990s
• 6 The policing of black women
• 7 Back to school? The police, the education system and the black community
• 8 Discrimination, disadvantage and police-work
• 9 ‘Policing a perplexed society?’: no-go areas and the mystification of police-black conflict
• References
• Name index
• Subject index