Militarized Policing And Political Protest In The New Media Landscape
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A frequent observation is that in the post-9/11 U.S., the police are becoming increasingly militarized, adopting military strategies, tactics and technologies to monitor the citizenry and control crime and disorder, and that this newly militarized policing poses a formidable threat to democracy. Certainly, a question at the heart of the relationship between the military and the domestic police force in modern democracies concerns the tenuousness of the distinction between them.
Militarized Policing And Political Protest In The New Media Landscape
A frequent observation is that in the post-9/11 U.S., the police are becoming increasingly militarized, adopting military strategies, tactics and technologies to monitor the citizenry and control crime and disorder, and that this newly militarized policing poses a formidable threat to democracy. Certainly, a question at the heart of the relationship between the military and the domestic police force in modern democracies concerns the tenuousness of the distinction between them.
Militarized Policing And Political Protest In The New Media Landscape
This essay is part of the forum:
This essay is part of the book review forum:
A frequent observation is that in the post-9/11 U.S., the police are becoming increasingly militarized, adopting military strategies, tactics and technologies to monitor the citizenry and control crime and disorder, and that this newly militarized policing poses a formidable threat to democracy. Certainly, a question at the heart of the relationship between the military and the domestic police force in modern democracies concerns the tenuousness of the distinction between them.
Militarized Policing And Political Protest In The New Media Landscape
This essay is part of the forum:
This essay is part of the book review forum:
A frequent observation is that in the post-9/11 U.S., the police are becoming increasingly militarized, adopting military strategies, tactics and technologies to monitor the citizenry and control crime and disorder, and that this newly militarized policing poses a formidable threat to democracy. Certainly, a question at the heart of the relationship between the military and the domestic police force in modern democracies concerns the tenuousness of the distinction between them.
Militarized Policing And Political Protest In The New Media Landscape
This essay is part of the forum:
This essay is part of the book review forum:
A frequent observation is that in the post-9/11 U.S., the police are becoming increasingly militarized, adopting military strategies, tactics and technologies to monitor the citizenry and control crime and disorder, and that this newly militarized policing poses a formidable threat to democracy. Certainly, a question at the heart of the relationship between the military and the domestic police force in modern democracies concerns the tenuousness of the distinction between them.
How can the concept of militarism inform our understanding of the role of the modern domestic police force in liberal democratic societies? A frequent observation is that in the post-9/11 U.S., the police are becoming increasingly militarized, adopting military strategies, tactics and technologies to monitor the citizenry and control crime and disorder, and that this newly militarized policing poses a formidable threat to democracy. Certainly, a question at the heart of the relationship between the military and the domestic police force in modern democracies concerns the tenuousness of the distinction between them. A related question concerns the role of the domestic police in managing—and oftentimes outright repressing—anti-war movements as well as other political protests and advocacy efforts aimed at bringing about democratic reforms or more radical social transformations. My interest has been in the police use of media, and in particular, the types of “new media work” that the police perform in the context of managing and repressing political protest.
Historically, the police have had a ubiquitous presence not only in the physical space of political demonstrations, but in the mediated narratives and images of protest that circulated beyond particular events. These media images have favored the police at times, while other times shedding an unflattering light on bad police behavior. As Andrew Goldsmith (2010) has noted, the rise of mass circulation newspapers in the 19th century gave the police a “secondary visibility” beyond their physical presence on the streets, allowing people “far removed from particular settings” to be “made aware of police activities.” Today, the rise of distributed digital networks, social media platforms, and mobile media devices has changed the dynamics of media coverage and visibility with respect to political protest and police authority.
In Christopher Wilson’s (2000) important analysis of police power and cultural narrative, he examines the narrative power that police held in the United States throughout the twentieth-century—how certain ideas, values and assumptions about crime and policing circulated back and forth from police policy and practice, to crime reporting and the popular genres of crime fiction and True Crime storytelling. My aim is to extend this cultural history of policing to the present, asking what the new media landscape portends for the narrative power of the police in post-9/11 United States. How does the new media landscape, and the new forms of police visibility that it affords, challenge the narrative power that the police have conventionally held? Conversely, how does it support that power, or otherwise give the police new tools for managing political protest and gaining and maintaining political authority as agents of the state? These questions concerning police media work and narrative authority are central to understanding the culture of militarization that defines the contemporary U.S.
References
Goldsmith A (2010) Policing’s new visibility. British Journal of Criminology 50: 914–934.
Wilson C (2000) Cop Knowledge: Police power and cultural narrative in twentieth-century America.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Through analyses of interviews with developers, industry professionals and law enforcement as well as published statements, this article offers a detailed examination of how the function and premises of ‘data-driven’ policing are altered by this turn to epistemologies of risk. I argue that the latent presence of ‘disorder’ supplements visible aberrations of ‘order.’
This paper focuses on surveillance technologies that New York City landlords have been installing in low-income, public, and affordable tenant housing over the last decade. It looks at how new forms of biometric and facial recognition-based landlord technology automate gentrification and carcerality, reproducing racist systems of recognition and displacement.
Guided by a prisoner’s narrative of escape from a Guatemalan prison, evasion, exile, and re-capture, this essay brings the phenomenon of prison escape into conversation with carceral geography’s exploration of essential connections and reflections between the prison and other social, institutional and geographic spaces, highlighting how multiple actors and forces beyond the carceral state collude in fixing vulnerable bodies in place.
By
Anthony W Fontes
Militarized Policing And Political Protest In The New Media Landscape
cholars and practitioners of urban planning need to rethink the field’s futures at this important historical juncture: some might call it a moment of truth when there is little left to hide. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed many cracks, contradictions, and inequalities that have always existed but are now more visible. This also includes the global vaccine apartheid that is ongoing as I write these words. Moreover, this is a time when the violence through which U.S. imperialism has exercised power worldwide is increasingly exposed. Protests in the summer of 2020, which spread all over the United States like fire through a long-dried haystack, showed Americans and the whole world that racialized violence and police brutality are real. They also revealed that such brutality is spatially facilitated in American apartheid—a condition that planning has been far from innocent in creating and maintaining. I think this reckoning is particularly important in the United States, the belly of the beast, where there might have been more of an illusion about planning innocence.
What’s a Rich Text element?
Moreover, this is a time when the violence through which U.S. imperialism has exercised power worldwide is increasingly exposed. Protests in the summer of 2020, which spread all over the United States like fire through a long-dried haystack, showed Americans and the whole world that racialized violence and police brutality are real. They also revealed that such brutality is spatially facilitated in American apartheid—a condition that planning has been far from innocent in creating and maintaining. I think this reckoning is particularly important in the United States, the belly of the beast, where there might have been more of an illusion about planning innocence.
Moreover, this is a time when the violence through which U.S. imperialism has exercised power worldwide is increasingly exposed.
Protests in the summer of 2020, which spread all over the United States like fire through a long-dried haystack, showed Americans and the whole world that racialized violence and police brutality are real.
They also revealed that such brutality is spatially facilitated in American apartheid—a condition that planning has been far from innocent in creating and maintaining.
I think this reckoning is particularly important in the United States, the belly of the beast, where there might have been more of an illusion about planning innocence.
What’s a Rich Text element?
Moreover, this is a time when the violence through which U.S. imperialism has exercised power worldwide is increasingly exposed. Protests in the summer of 2020, which spread all over the United States like fire through a long-dried haystack, showed Americans and the whole world that racialized violence and police brutality are real. They also revealed that such brutality is spatially facilitated in American apartheid—a condition that planning has been far from innocent in creating and maintaining. I think this reckoning is particularly important in the United States, the belly of the beast, where there might have been more of an illusion about planning innocence.
Moreover, this is a time when the violence through which U.S. imperialism has exercised power worldwide is increasingly exposed.
Protests in the summer of 2020, which spread all over the United States like fire through a long-dried haystack, showed Americans and the whole world that racialized violence and police brutality are real.
They also revealed that such brutality is spatially facilitated in American apartheid—a condition that planning has been far from innocent in creating and maintaining. I think this reckoning is particularly important in the United States, the belly of the beast, where there might have been more of an illusion about planning innocence.
What’s a Rich Text element?
Moreover, this is a time when the violence through which U.S. imperialism has exercised power worldwide is increasingly exposed. Protests in the summer of 2020, which spread all over the United States like fire through a long-dried haystack, showed Americans and the whole world that racialized violence and police brutality are real. They also revealed that such brutality is spatially facilitated in American apartheid—a condition that planning has been far from innocent in creating and maintaining. I think this reckoning is particularly important in the United States, the belly of the beast, where there might have been more of an illusion about planning innocence.
What’s a Rich Text element?
Moreover, this is a time when the violence through which U.S. imperialism has exercised power worldwide is increasingly exposed. Protests in the summer of 2020, which spread all over the United States like fire through a long-dried haystack, showed Americans and the whole world that racialized violence and police brutality are real. They also revealed that such brutality is spatially facilitated in American apartheid—a condition that planning has been far from innocent in creating and maintaining. I think this reckoning is particularly important in the United States, the belly of the beast, where there might have been more of an illusion about planning innocence.
What’s a Rich Text element?
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How can the concept of militarism inform our understanding of the role of the modern domestic police force in liberal democratic societies? A frequent observation is that in the post-9/11 U.S., the police are becoming increasingly militarized, adopting military strategies, tactics and technologies to monitor the citizenry and control crime and disorder, and that this newly militarized policing poses a formidable threat to democracy. Certainly, a question at the heart of the relationship between the military and the domestic police force in modern democracies concerns the tenuousness of the distinction between them. A related question concerns the role of the domestic police in managing—and oftentimes outright repressing—anti-war movements as well as other political protests and advocacy efforts aimed at bringing about democratic reforms or more radical social transformations. My interest has been in the police use of media, and in particular, the types of “new media work” that the police perform in the context of managing and repressing political protest.
Historically, the police have had a ubiquitous presence not only in the physical space of political demonstrations, but in the mediated narratives and images of protest that circulated beyond particular events. These media images have favored the police at times, while other times shedding an unflattering light on bad police behavior. As Andrew Goldsmith (2010) has noted, the rise of mass circulation newspapers in the 19th century gave the police a “secondary visibility” beyond their physical presence on the streets, allowing people “far removed from particular settings” to be “made aware of police activities.” Today, the rise of distributed digital networks, social media platforms, and mobile media devices has changed the dynamics of media coverage and visibility with respect to political protest and police authority.
In Christopher Wilson’s (2000) important analysis of police power and cultural narrative, he examines the narrative power that police held in the United States throughout the twentieth-century—how certain ideas, values and assumptions about crime and policing circulated back and forth from police policy and practice, to crime reporting and the popular genres of crime fiction and True Crime storytelling. My aim is to extend this cultural history of policing to the present, asking what the new media landscape portends for the narrative power of the police in post-9/11 United States. How does the new media landscape, and the new forms of police visibility that it affords, challenge the narrative power that the police have conventionally held? Conversely, how does it support that power, or otherwise give the police new tools for managing political protest and gaining and maintaining political authority as agents of the state? These questions concerning police media work and narrative authority are central to understanding the culture of militarization that defines the contemporary U.S.
References
Goldsmith A (2010) Policing’s new visibility. British Journal of Criminology 50: 914–934.
Wilson C (2000) Cop Knowledge: Police power and cultural narrative in twentieth-century America.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
