It could be an episode of the Twilight Zone: Consider if you will, a world without police, where public safety is dictated by the community, not men in uniform.
Consider it a real possibility, says Portland's Kristian Williams, author of "Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America."
"We haven't always had this institution," Williams said. "The institution of the police is really only a couple hundred years old, and if we're willing to accept the idea that social changes produced this new institution, we should at least have an open mind that further social change could eliminate it."
Williams will read excerpts from his new book in an event sponsored by Rose City Copwatch. The reading will be at 7 p.m., March 10 at Vinnie's Pizza, 300 N. Killingsworth.
"Our Enemies in Blue" traces the history of policing from the slave patrols of the colonial era to the contemporary age of militarization and the war on terrorism. Williams looks at the institution's role in preserving racial and economic inequality, and suppressing social change.
"We're very much encouraged to think of the police in terms of what they do - they fight crime, defend public safety, direct traffic at accidents," Williams said. "Those are actually secondary functions. The guiding force of the institution is the need to maintain the distribution of power in roughly the configuration that it is: keeping the rich well off and the poor marginalized and preserving the monopoly that white people exercise on all of the benefits of society. And when those things conflict either with public safety or the law, public safety or the law falls to the side. The preservation of class and race hierarchies are a far better predictor of what police are going to do."
But Williams doesn't lay the blame on individuals. In fact, he says the institution is better served if as few officers as possible realize what they're doing.
"It's not personal, it's institutional," he said.
In contrast, Williams offers up examples of a different approach to public safety, drawing on the work of the Black Panthers to organize survival programs for the elderly, and the street committees created by the anti-apartheid movement to protect black citizens in South Africa. Another example is the Labor Guards of the Seattle General Strike. One striking model comes from the Community Restorative Justice program of Northern Ireland after the evacuation of British police units.
"They went to criminologists and conflict resolution professors and asked them to design a system that would help them out of this trap. It really was a trap. The British knew that was going to be the result when they withdrew. At the outset, the academics met with people in the communities, had meetings, block by block, building by building, talking about what their concerns were and what they wanted out of resolutions. And they then came up with specific aims, among them were nonviolence, respect for human rights, opportunity for due process, restorative focus and, interestingly, working within the law. They were elected bodies that took on a restorative perspective. They operated in very small areas and relied on public cooperation to sanction people who were behaving antisocially."
The pilots caught on and are still at work today, a decade later, Williams said.
But with any policing system, checks and balances are key.
"We shouldn't exempt these kinds of organizations from the skepticism we would bring to any other authority," Williams said. "They can only be trusted to the degree that they are actually controlled by the communities they are serving and to the degree that they are genuinely committed to humane and democratic values.
While William's book has a national focus, Portland serves as an example in several cases, from both a personal and scholarly perspective.
"Portland, especially recently, has exemplified several of the current trends," Williams said. "We've seen, for example, the simultaneous rise of community policing and militarialization. Both very clear trends locally. The public here has also been given more scrutiny of what the police are doing than a lot of places. We know more of what they've done. The current controversy around the Joint Terrorism Task Force is indicative of that. . There's more scrutiny and more documentation, and other representatives on the issues besides what the police say in their press release."
As an institution, the police force is the agent of those with the power, Williams said, and as such serves their interests. Williams also said police, like most organizations, are predisposed to seek out rewards and avoid trouble.
"If the police go about scrutinizing, harassing and bullying people who are relatively powerless, than the possibility of reward is high and the possibility of trouble is very low," Williams said, using the example of police measures to arrest and curb panhandlers. "If they tried to hold privileged people to the same standards as poor people then the possibility of rewards would be very low and the possibility of trouble would be very high. That's why things like the sit-lie ordinance are so dangerous. Any cop with a healthy sense of self preservation and the desire to keep his job is mostly going to enforce that against people who aren't in a position to give him static. They may mouth off at the time, but unlikely to file complaints or create a scandal in the media.
And that means poor people, people of color, and young people are going to be told to move along, and well off, middle-aged white people are going to be, for the most part, left alone, even if they are behaving in more or less the same ways."
At the reading, other speakers from Rose City Copwatch will relate historical examples to the organization's long-range aim of abolishing the police and to its ongoing work monitoring police activity here in Portland.
The author will be available afterwards to sign books. Proceeds from book sales will benefit Rose City Copwatch.