Law is law, war is war — forget that and democracy dies | thearticle

George Floyd’s murder by the police and their heavy handed response to the protests incited by his death is the repetition of a now familiar scenario where racism finds its expression in a

specific culture of militarised policing. Indeed policing in the US now looks more like a counterinsurgency operation than the maintenance of law and order. The type of militarised policing

we are witnessing subverts America’s democratic traditions by undermining the strict separation of military and the police, which is intended to constrain the excesses of federal government.

This is pushing the US to breaking point. It may yet lead to a constitutional crisis. The roots of this shift can be traced back to the 1960s, when America’s police forces started to look

and more importantly operate, much like the military. This shift was entwined with race politics from the very start. From the battlefields of Vietnam, the worst, often racialised aspects of

that era’s counterinsurgency doctrine returned home and led to the militarisation of domestic policing. In response to the Watts riots, John Nelson, a reconnaissance marine turned police

officer brought his Vietnam experience of operating in hunter-killer units to the streets of Los Angeles. Nelson’s realisation of Police paramilitary units or SWAT teams as they are known,

was the first step in the Police adoption of military weapons and tactics. It was former service men who began to influence mainstream policing. Perhaps even more important than the military

equipment was the mentality that these men bought back from Vietnam and the close ties that were formed with the military. Previously the distinction between the police and military had

been enshrined in the Constitution. It was further entrenched after the Civil War in the Posse Comitatus Act, which expressly forbade the routine use of the military for law enforcement.

Since the 1990s a Pentagon program known as “1033” offloaded surplus military equipment to aid the police in the war against drugs. It expanded rapidly in the wake of 9/11 and turbocharged

the militarisation of policing. It was part of a wider transformation in the US in which exceptional measures, normally reserved for extreme emergencies, became normalised. The notion of a

“War on drugs” was quickly followed by the “War on terror”. Unsurprisingly, equipping the police as if they were at war, while telling them that they actually were fighting a war, caused a

cultural shift in how they viewed their role in society. The most important element of this was to separate them from the society that they policed. Militarisation implies a presumption of

threat, reversing the principle on which policing in a democracy should be based. Policing suddenly became preventative rather than strictly reactive. The deployment of a militarised police

force anticipates extreme violence that almost always requires a heavy response. In other words the steady militarisation of US policing has reversed the assumptions which underpin her

democracy and instead applies the logic of military occupation. No wonder so many Americans have taken to the streets in the belief that law and order no longer serves or represents the

society that it is meant to protect. George Floyd’s death is of course not the first time that the murder of an African-American man has resulted in civil unrest. The shooting of Michael

Brown in 2014, although it lead to widespread rioting in Ferguson, ultimately didn’t spark real change in the persistent militarisation of US policing. This time the US is teetering on the

precipice, with civil disobedience spreading across the country. Donald Trump is now seemingly at odds with his own military leadership over his threat to invoke the Insurrection Act to

deploy US troops onto the streets. Even if not a precursor to civil war, this has the potential for a fundamental constitutional crisis that stretches beyond issues of policing, undermining

the authority of the President. The last time the Act was invoked was to suppress race riots in Los Angeles after the acquittal of police officers for the beating of Rodney King in 1992.

Indeed nine of the previous ten invocations of the Act have been race related. At the intersection of racial politics and the exercise of executive power, Donald Trump is precisely the wrong

President to calm the situation. As Trump finds himself trailing his Democratic Presidential rival, Joe Biden, in the polls, it is not too farfetched to think that Trump would willingly

exacerbate civil unrest and racism in order to further his chances of winning a second term. It already seems a long time ago but only last month Trump directed armed militias to rise up

against state capitols in defiance of Covid-19 lockdown. He clearly has no self-imposed limit on his actions and has come closer to inciting civil war than any other US president. In an

ominous forewarning, Trump has branded himself the “Law and order President”. He had already reversed an Obama era attempt to end the 1033 program. The simple fact is that Police need to

return to viewing themselves as civilians among other civilians, not apart from them. With a President who exploits insecurity and threat for political gain it is hard to see a path back for

American law enforcement.