Normally, it’s the Republicans—and especially the far right wing of it (which is probably most of the party now, honestly)—whose case I get on when things start smelling a bit...shall we say...jackboot-oriented. But never let it be said that Democrats, especially around the issue of policing, don’t also like to ramp things up to ludicrous degrees.
In part it’s a knee-jerk response to show that they aren’t “soft on crime” so that they don’t lose centrist and independent voters. But honestly it’s also because a lot of Democrats, especially white ones, still see police as mostly good people. Never mind that the “good cops” almost never report the bad ones or speak out against them, thus making them directly complicit, and—for the most part—bad cops themselves. The numerous videos and reports of police abuses that continue despite body cams and the like should worry all of us a lot more. In many cases, police are getting more bold—or at least we’re seeing their boldness on display more—and they still largely aren’t punished for their crimes and other abuses.
Democrats overall, however, don’t seem to want to do much about that, though. President Joe Biden, for example, loves the police.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat but also a former police officer, also has worked to support police over and above what makes sense. He likes a stronger police presence and more aggressive tactics—which rarely seems to move the needle on crime—and he recently (thankfully) lost his bid to try to prevent a lifting of solitary confinement policies and to stop police from having to report more data on their interactions with civilians.
But the state’s governor, also a Democrat, has one-upped him by mobilizing the National Guard to assist police in the New York City subway system because of spike in crime on the subways earlier in the year. A spike which trailed off and which even police have said probably wasn’t a long-term trend and was something they are more than funded and staffed to handle.
Given what I talked about just last month about how I worry that Republican plans to defund police at the federal and local level will lead to using the military instead, this development in New York is not encouraging. The military is not supposed to be used for law enforcement activities toward civilians. They are supposed to protect from outside threats from non-American sources and they are supposed to help aid in things like disaster relief when things are dire enough to need the extra assistance. They should not be de-facto police. That is a step that brings us closer to authoritarianism and, sadly, the Democrats are not immune to stepping over that line.
We need to be worried not just about the increasing militarization of police forces but also the “police-ification” of actual military personnel.
Good points!