The Racial Politics of Protection: A Critical Race Examination of Police Militarization

Abstract

Across the country, police departments are using aggressive, military-style tactics and weapons to enforce the law. More recently, the state of police militarization displayed in cities like Ferguson and Baltimore raises deep questions about the ethics of paramilitary policing and its consequences for minority citizenship and inclusion. This Note examines police militarization as the result of concerted political decisions that often trade on racial fear and anxiety. Beginning in the Reconstruction Era and continuing through to racial uprisings in the 1960s, the War on Drugs, and present movements for police accountability and racial justice, this Note argues that police militarization is, and has always been, a deeply racialized issue. Specifically, the trend of police militarization can be viewed as a race-making process—that is, patterns of police militarization have constructed and reinforced race and racial hierarchies in America. The racial politics of protection refers to a process of police militarization that allows the State to construct race by selectively assembling two groupings—those who will be marginalized through heightened surveillance and control and those who will be advantaged by their access to state protection. Ultimately, this Note stresses a more nuanced conversation about the critical intersections of race, militarization, and policing. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15779/Z385P1R Copyright © 2016 California Law Review, Inc. California Law Review, Inc. (CLR) is a California nonprofit corporation. CLR and the authors are solely responsible for the content of their publications. * J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2016; B.A. Tufts University, 2010. Special thanks to Professor Ian Haney Lopez, Asad Rahim, Evelyn Rangel-Medina, Nabanita Pal, and the editors and members of the California Law Review. Thanks also to the members of the Berkeley Law Critical Race Theory seminar and the Racial Justice Writing Workshop for their valuable feedback. Finally, I am grateful for my friends and family, particularly Kyle Halle-Erby, for their love and support. 980 CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 104:979 Introduction 980 I. The Hidden Story of the PCA 983 A. The Meaning of Freedom 984 B. Race and Retreat 986 C. Race and Protection 988 II. Black Revolt and Police Militarization During the Civil Rights Era ......... 989 A. Uprising in Watts 989 B. Uncovering the Causes of Unrest 991 C. Setting the Stage for Police Militarization 993 D. Protecting Advantage 995 III. Race, Police Militarization, and the War on Drugs 996 A. The Impact of Race 998 IV. War at Home 1001 A. The Reality of Police Militarization 1003 Conclusion 1006