Police brutality

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Police brutality is the use of excessive and/or suppressive force by an (otherwise legitimate) police. This should be made distinct from force by a secret or foreign (illegitimate) occupying force or police inaction that allows a third party to initiate force (such as Orval Faubus standing down the police force so that mobs could harass black students trying to integrate into a segregated school), though the lines can get blurry.

While police brutality gets the most attention when it's done against an emergent or temporary movement, police brutality is often a continuing problem. It's also noteworthy that police brutality rarely happens as an initiating force for change; indeed, police brutality tends to intensify when direct action is aimed directly at the status quo. Contrast the hostility of police towards American civil rights versus their ambiguity towards the first and second incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan.

Interestingly, when police brutality gets bad enough, the military usually comes to the side of the populace. This might be because the job of the police is to defend the status quo and the job of the military is to protect the people.[1] Of course, if the military is also functioning as the police, all bets are off.

[edit] Police brutality and authoritarianism

While it should be obvious that police brutality is the first line of defense for an authoritarian regime's hold on power, distressingly often citizens in a republic often encourage if not police brutality, then an environment where it becomes more grey or accepted. And not only as an impetus to keep down citizens of a 'bad' subgroup. You can blame citizens' and their politicians' fetishism for "tough on crime," which leads to a spiraling increase of force.

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. This is usually the same thing, because the status quo gives us awesomeness like running water and trains running on time (but not always).
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