If we are on track for unspeakable disparities between the haves and the have-nots, then we might just want to ask ourselves: what kind of policing would such a world of inequality require?
Fifteen years from now, the United States (writes economist Thomas Piketty) “may set a new record” of economic inequality “if inequality of income from labor – and to a lesser extent inequality of ownership of capital – continue to increase as they have done in recent decades.” At that time, the “top decile” would “claim about 60 percent of national income, while the bottom half would get barely 15 percent.”
Yet in order for the United States to reach and sustain such “extreme inequality,” it would need to have in place not only an effective “repressive apparatus,” Piketty states, but “also, and perhaps primarily,” an effective “apparatus of justification,” i.e., one that rationalizes the inequality enough to prevent unrest among the bottom half.
If we are on track for unspeakable disparities between the haves and the have-nots, as well as for the erection of both an effective “repressive apparatus” and an “apparatus of justification” to sustain them, then we might just want to ask ourselves: what kind of policing would such a world of inequality require?
As it turns out, it’s not terribly hard to imagine.
First and foremost, policing will more likely than not be highly militarized. As a matter of course, officers will be equipped, for example, with an array of assault rifles, Armored Personnel Carriers, grenades and other explosives, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, and myriad other types of battle gear and munitions sophisticated enough to be utilized for all-out war. And they will be trained not so much to protect and serve, but instead to do battle with the bottom half should it fail to be convinced by whatever justifications are offered to explain away their meager 15 percent cut of national income.
Policing will also be characterized by brutality and terror; indeed, these are likely to be matters of policy, the primary purpose of which will be to underscore the permanence of economic inequality and thus to instill within the bottom half a sense of hopelessness. It’s not difficult to envision that officers will, for example, regularly subject the bottom half – especially those on the very bottom – to extrajudicial and summary executions; to random detentions, during the course of which officers will generously mete out rough rides, beatings, kicks, choke holds, rapes, injuries that permanently disable, and other acts amounting to torture and human rights violations. And certainly any attempt by the bottom to capture or document this terror will be met with retaliation.
In order for such policing to work, of course, it will have to be condoned if not actively encouraged by prosecutors, courts, and politicians. In this way, policing under a system characterized by the kind of extreme economic inequality that Piketty considers possible for this country will be utterly unaccountable to the people policed. Community oversight will be unheard of, as will prosecution of even the most egregious acts committed by officers of the law. Mass incarceration will be the norm. And the press will explain it away, will justify it in the name of meritocracy and frame it all as merely a question of the deserving versus the undeserving.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
What we are witnessing in policing today – from Baltimore to Ferguson to places yet to erupt – are perhaps the seeds of that repressive apparatus of the future, one that will no doubt be erected on the backs and dead bodies of the poor and, disproportionately, on the broken backs and dead bodies of poor African Americans who (as the current discourse on race and poverty indicate) will also be fodder for the justification of extreme economic inequality. After all, the policing and social surveillance of African Americans has been used, to a great extent, to effectively justify the erosion of civil liberties and economic equality (the Republicans' Southern Strategy, for example – and the egregious class and race-punitive policies that have flowed therefrom – was and is just as much about the transfer of wealth as it was and is about race and the mobilization of racism to erode rights).
If we are on the path Piketty describes, then we are surely challenged to talk about and imagine policing in a radically different way, to describe it precisely in terms of the political forces that are sowing the seeds for a future of extreme economic inequality. (Take Ferguson, for example. If it has taught us anything, it is that policing is actually a driving force behind the growing gap between the haves and have- nots – signified so clearly by the fact that police were crucial players in the transfer of wealth from the poor, primarily African-American Ferguson community to the white professional class.)
What kind of national guard, what kind of police force, we might wonder, can be created and deployed to arrest the economic violence of deregulation, the astronomical increase in executive salaries, and the corporate exploitation of the labor and resources of poor people everywhere? What policing is needed to address the politician/corporate back door deals that escape capture by iPhone cameras?
Or how about this: At what point do we come to understand ourselves as law enforcement, as a power that can hold accountable shareholders and executives of financial institutions just as surely as we can hold accountable neighborhood police? How will we protect and serve one another, i.e., put an end to the policies that have produced stagnant wages and grinding poverty? Can we even dare to imagine organizing and activism that dismantle policing as we know it precisely because they attend to the growing chasm between the haves and the have-nots?
In other words: as the body cameras are put in place, and the oversight commissions are organized, who will be minding the “top decile” as it captures 60 percent of national income?