Karen asks how an email can go by without dogging the cops. As an ex-copper,
not of the real kind, merely a military one that worked quite closely with
the Victorian Police I can see quite clearly why there is a genuine distrust
of Police. As a soldier I was trained to differentiate quite clearly between
different groups of people. It is after all how soldiers learn to bond
closely and to mark others as worthy of discrimination and potential of
killing. The process of identity building and Othering is quite methodical
and it is worth describing, I think, because it gives an insight into Police
culture, another service culture. It also gives an insight into how our
western culture works to divide and discriminate. Firstly, however, this is
not to tar every service person with the same brush but to describe the
general logic of identity that these establishments use.
At the beginning of military training one enters into a process of
mortification. The old person is demolished and rebuilt through techniques
of elevation. You are joined with a group of thirty men you don't know,
placed in a series of rooms (four to a room) adjoining one hallway. I came
to identify as Hallway 11. You are asked to regiment your room: smiley
socks, neatly folded towels, shiny weapon, polished floors, and hospital
folds on beds. You immediately begin your days at 5:45AM, shit shower and
shave with a bunch of guys you don't know and learn to support each other
through thick and thin. Your head is shaved and you are given a pair of
ill-fitting greens, you march around like robots and learn to understand
yourself as a number or merely as recruit. Every difference in you is
denigrated and broken down and your way of being is ridiculed by the staff.
At the same time you are taught to aspire to the great Australian Soldier,
the men that think and fight harder and stronger than any other country. You
begin to think in terms of nationalism, patriotism and you begin to think of
giving the enemy a third-eye. As a grunt this was my experience, learn to
bond with your immediate group and hate the other. A hierarchy structures
this process, sections hate other sections, platoons other platoons,
companies other companies, battalions other battalions, corps other corps,
services other services, military vs civilians.
As a military copper, the 'uncivilized, the dirty, the unkempt, the
foreigner, the criminal, the lawbreaker, the troublemaker, the Other, in
whatever form was to be discriminated. Your job was to develop keen
attributes in discrimination, someone might look like trouble, they may not
meet the standard of white, male military police judgment and they were to
be identified, surveyed and acted upon if they did transgress.
Now the Police in Victoria that I worked with were brilliant at this sort of
thing: poofs, Asians, Aboriginal people, the homeless, the drunk, young
people in the wrong place, were all potential transgressors and needed to be
watched. Just a simple posture, the shoulders back, the head up, the eyes
keen, the brim of your hat low and a hand on your instrument of defence, or
offence, could set the scene for a showdown with authority. These Police,
and certainly my own Military police buddies, were never taught to question
the values and culture they were upholding. They were taught to protect
unflinchingly the Australian way - a white, capitalist, wealth driven,
functionalist way. We held it in our bodies and I might say it took me years
to lose that posture - I still have it in some ways and I still slip into
authoritarian mode every once and a while.
Anyway the point is that Police culture is the thin edge of the Western
cultural edge. It is discriminating by its very nature. It is established on
the protection of fundamentally white ways of being. It is intimately
connected with the Military, it was staffed with ex-servicemen from the
Maori wars in Australia and it continues its task today. Find the unruly,
the uncivilized, the threat to property and drag them in with the net of
'justice'. But whose justice? Mandatory Imprisonment tells us quite clearly
whose justice.
So skepticism of Police is well warranted. This is not to say that we don't
need a Police Force but it could be based on very different cultural
principles, one's that begin at training and that instill within the members
a sensitivity to the needs of different cultures and peoples, not one based
upon surveillance and blind discrimination.
Ben
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