Eight Minutes and Forty-Six Seconds

Paul Edwards is a Criminology PhD Researcher based at Liverpool John Moores Universities Faculty of Arts Professional and Social Studies & School of Justice Studies. Research interests include: Popular and cultural criminology, illicit markets, organised crime and critical criminological theory.

 

“These streets will speak for themselves”

(Dave Chappelle – 8:46 Netflix)

The murder of George Floyd shocked the world and again put the reality of living in the United States, especially as a BAME citizen on the global stage. During a global pandemic, millions around the country bravely marched, protested for justice and declared their message ‘Black Lives Matter’. In response the US government deployed its heavily militarised police to face them and later, National Guard units lined city streets: rifles, batons and shields in hand.

This also inspired protests globally: in the UK, France and Belgium people came out in support of the BLM movement. Nations woke to populations whose anger was clear to see and statues of former slave traders (representing the historical roots of black oppression) were ripped down. So, in light of recent events this blog will focus on the current state of policing in the United States and seek to address the questions: Where has policing gone wrong? How policing relates to concerns about racial tensions? and How might policing change?

To answer the first question, it is not hard to see that the trust in the police and the wider justice system is seriously eroded in large sections of the US. Thus, this section will focus on the loss faith in policing in the US and how it adds racial inequality and oppression.

This subject is ‘Militarisation’, which Kraska (2007) notes as the traditional distinctions between military/police, war/law enforcement and when internal/external security becomes blurred. Additionally, Kraska states that Militarism in its most basic sense, is an ideology focused on the best means to solve problems. It is a set of beliefs, values, and assumptions that stress the use of force and threat of violence. This direction towards militarisation has been tracked down to its beginnings most impactfully with the terrorist event of 9/11 (Dunlap, 2001). However they have also been documented as early as the US involvement, both abroad and domestically, in drug control efforts in the mid-to-late 1980s (Kraska, 1993) .

The consequences of militarisation are vast, including hyper-violent, no-knock raids. Debates have been raised to question if these are unconstitutional and breach local police powers. In the US, these types of raids go head to head with the second amendment, as cases have come to light where officers and citizens have been shot as a result, see example here: Breonna-Taylor-shooting. These usually result in expensive litigation judgments but they still exist as a result of militarisation, with questions being raised on the targeting of innocent individuals (like the case above) because of their race (Balko, 2006).

Opinions voiced in online platforms, suggest the policing community see their job as an ‘us vs. them’ scenario. This is best described by youtuber Wraglerstar who shares his opinions about the change in the policing, specifically from the 80’s to the present day. In this he describes the beginnings of the militarisation of police and the change (notably in the city) where police officers seem to become more ‘special forces operator looking’ as well as describing this changed mentality. For Wraglerstar, this changed mentality in policing was experienced after being pulled over aggressively by heavily armed officers, assaulted and even being harassed by the same officers after the incident. Going further he points out that ‘no one is inviting these guys to the local barbeque’ because their aggressive nature is not welcome. This is unlike  the past, where police and other services would be invited to ‘birthdays’ and ‘thanksgiving’ get togethers to tighten community bonds, morals and trust. Therefore, this demonstrates that community policing is, as stated above, seriously eroded.

In short this change in mentality can be said to be due to militarisation as Kraska (2007) noted that it causes a cultural shift to martial language, appearance, beliefs, and values. An example of the culture can be seen in the Punisher Skull used by police in the US specifically, even though the use of this in the Marvel comics represents the failure of the police and justice system. What this has caused, is a complete failure of the purpose of the policing model in the US with the community aspect of policing being totally thrown out of the window. Regardless of how many community outreach teams departments police have, the community they serve is fearful and disconnected.

Turning to the second question, it is obvious that the militarisation of the police only serves to widen the racial tensions in communities and enables those officers who have a racist mindset to exercise their views in a more hyper-violent way. Policing as a whole depends on communities trusting those who are there to protect and serve. However, if the police themselves are not part of the community, they have no vested interest in that community. This is not helped by officers who are drafted in from other parts of the country and do not understand the cultures and traditions of the neighborhood.

Thirdly, the militarisation of the police needs to be rethought and stripped back. The communities they serve are not the enemy, they are citizens who expect to be treated as innocent until proven guilty. They are people who want to welcome in officers to their shop, chat to them on the street and invite them to cookouts. But they will not invite people they see as a threat, who are violent to them and kill people on the street through excessive force. Extensive training is needed and when an officer is seen to be using excessive force, officers around need be equipped to challenge without fear of backlash.

Perhaps the time has come to question more deeply how to police a predominantly armed nation? It is necessary to question why patrol officers need to be seen in neighborhoods patrolling in camouflage pants and why at a peaceful protest is there armored SWAT trucks and officers with rifles at the ready. This only harbors a culture that looks at everything like a battle to be fought.

To conclude, it is obvious how the militarization enables an overuse of power and potentially allows those with a racist mindset to fulfil their prejudice and this needs to change. Policing needs to change, whether this is stripping departments back to people who come from the communities, or other solutions, it is critical-community style policing restored to maintain civilian oversight. Other solutions like defunding the police may be a slippery and dangerous slope however and may lead to private security solutions (as seen in the UK and some US states) and this needs to be avoided, as this may lead to the loss of trust and vulnerability as demonstrated in South Africa. With this it is critical solutions are looked for, debated and critical thought is needed from all sides. This blog ends on one thought, that the police (and the incredibly difficult job they do) are needed but the senseless deaths need to end.

 

Below are links to recommended viewing:

The Future of Policing in America – Understanding & Changing Police Training: Gracie-Breakdown

Racial oppression and community by Kimberly Jones

Netflix 8:46 – Police brutality and lived experience by Dave Chappelle

Netflix Collection – ‘Black Storytelling’ Including Ava DuVernays ‘When They See Us’

 

Contact

Paul Edwards,  Liverpool John Moores University

Email: P.Edwards@2020.ljmu.ac.uk

Twitter: @P_Edwards8

Images: courtesy of the author

News of Police Racism May Shock, But Should It Surprise?

Dr. Lambros Fatsis is a Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Brighton and the winner of the British Society of Criminology’s ‘Blogger of the Year Award 2018’.

 

 

The news of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s killing by US police and the protests it inspired worldwide, continue to attract widespread media coverage and light the fuse for much public commentary and private discussions on police racism and what can be done to root it out. Such fatal incidents of police racism naturally shock us on a human level, but we must move beyond surprise to fully grasp the ‘mutually constitutive’ relationship between policing and racism. This blog post is written to remind us what policing and police racism are and do, followed by some suggestions on what to do to undo the problem as citizens and Criminologists alike.

What is Policing?

Policing is (stereo)typically understood as what the police do to fight crime and keep the public safe from harm. Such a definition of — or orientation towards —  policing as the maintenance of law and order by the civil force of the state (=the police), implies that policing is what the police do as a neutral public institution that exists to ensure public safety and defend a harmonious social order where rules and laws that regulate human behaviour are respected and upheld. Seductive though such a view of policing might be, it is deeply flawed. Not only does it tell us little about how such rules and laws come to be — or whether it was “us” who asked for them in the first place — but it also paints a wholly inaccurate picture of what the police actually do.

The reality is bleaker than we care to admit. We don’t quite have our say in what becomes law, we never really asked for a police force, and crime-fighting is marginal to policing. Legislators make laws and while parliamentarians pass them, and we most certainly do not consent to everything they vote for on our behalf. When we vote for our elected representatives, we essentially give them a blanket agreement to act in our own interest by making judgements for us.  However, some legislation — like the current Coronavirus regulations — is not even discussed in parliament and can be unlawful too.

Police forces did not emerge by public demand. On the contrary, they were perceived as intrusive by the public they were created to police; earning themselves abusive — yet colourful nicknames — such as “blue locusts”, “blue devils,” “blue plagues,” “blue idlers,” “hired mercenaries,” and “unconstitutional bravoes” by those who were policed against. As for the “crime-fighting” mission of the police, it belongs to the sphere of mythology rather than the world of empirical evidence (see here, and here). As David H. Bayley pithily put it: ‘The police do not prevent crime. This is one of the best kept secrets of modern life. Experts know it, the police know it, but the public does not know it. Yet the police pretend that they are society’s best defense against crime and continually argue that if they are given more resources, especially personnel, they will be able to protect communities against crime. This is a myth. […] Governments should either resolve the doubts about the usefulness of the police or face up to the conclusion that preventing crime requires a great deal more than pouring money into law enforcement’. What policing actually does is ‘fabricate’, ‘enforce’ and protect an unequal social order through social control. There is, therefore, nothing neutral, depoliticised or democratic about it other than in disguise or in denial about its essential function and mission as an order maintenance institution.

What is Police Racism?

Not unlike policing, police racism is also held hostage to misunderstandings and denials of its very existence. Frequently mistaken for personal prejudice, police racism —like racism itself — is rarely discussed as the form of structural inequality that it actually is. (Police) racism is not simply what somebody thinks about or does to someone who is perceived, defined, classified and understood —primarily if not exclusively — as a member of a particular (minority) racial or ethnic group. It is a socio-cultural, political, institutional mentality, worldview and ideology which assigns a negative value to biological and cultural differences that are perceived as alien, incomprehensible, and inadmissible to a (majority) white society. (Police) racism, therefore, is not just what happens as a result of discrimination against those who are racially or ethnically “different”, but the socio-cultural and political context in which such difference is created and policed against. As such it is absorbed and embedded into, as well as normalised and legitimised within mainstream social, cultural and political institutions. In fact, police racism doesn’t even require police officers to be racist for policing to be racist. It is a systemic feature of a criminal justice institution that is shaped by an exclusionary worldview, which draws boundaries and establishes hierarchies on the basis of physiological or cultural traits. Police racism can therefore be understood as racism in uniform — armed with a truncheon— but it is also a tautology given that racism and policing share the same history and function as ideologies (racism) and tools (policing) of social control.

Contrary to conventional wisdom and mainstream criminological historiography, policing as a modern institution — in the US and the UK — was not immaculately conceived in 19^th century New York and London but founded during colonialism and slavery. Both in the US and the UK, the models and styles of policing that emerged in the metropole derive from pre-professional, informal militias that were formed to patrol, capture and control fugitive slaves and colonial subjects in the American South and Britain’s overseas “possessions” (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). The antecedents of the London Metropolitan Police in 1829, therefore, exist not just in the Royal Irish Constabulary in the former British colony of Ireland — both founded by the Conservative party’s founder Sir Robert Peel — but in the plantations of the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent too. As such, police forces start their life as instruments of suppression —wielded by slaveholders and colonisers to maintain a form of discrimination and dehumanisation —before evolving into professional institutions that serve and protect the state from those who are seen as undeserving of its protection. Originally designed as they were to brutalise and terrorise slaves and colonial subjects, police forces seamlessly transitioned into policing — and sometimes killing — Black and Brown people today.

What to Do?

Having offered only the sketchiest overview of what policing and police racism are and do, setting out a plan of action nevertheless seems inevitable given the palpable urgency of the current moment. None of what follows is therefore intended as a paternalistic finger-wagging exercise but as an invitation to undo policing and its racism intellectually, culturally and politically by killing that cop inside our heads. In the interest of brevity, these suggestions will be presented as a bullet point list, or notes to self, in the hope that firing them off in this manner with not compromise their critical content but open up a frank discussion about the issue.

• Read extensively about policing and police racism to gain a deeper, and more critical, insight into both. These recommendations are a good place to start.
• Don’t vote for political parties that promise more powers or more money to the police. Or at least challenge them about it.
• Learn about, join, and support campaigns against police violence (I, II, III IV)
• Think beyond policing when thinking about how to design public safety. Think about what can we do to be safe without the police (e.g. I, II)
• Don’t call the police, if possible. Think about alternative sources of help and support that can actually keep us safe
• Teach policing and the history of policing differently to illustrate how the legacy of colonialism and slavery is still alive as an ideology and practice of racial discrimination
• Do research on, not for the police

 

The list could go on, yet the message is simple: defunding, disarming, disbanding and disempowering the police  should become a priority. Such calls are becoming mainstream, yet the Criminological mainstream retreats to feel-good bromides about reforming, working (together) with, or being “critical friends” to the police. Objective, sensible, cool-headed, reasoned and respectably “professional” though such stuttering timidity may sound, it simply creates the illusion of problem-solving without addressing what “the problem” is, where it comes from and how to address it; beyond cosmetic changes that repair the reputational damage of policing without reducing its impact on those who are harmed by its discriminatory nature and lethal outcomes. Criminologists may not have the monopoly over such knowledge or be singlehandedly responsible for producing and disseminating it, but it is still our duty to ensure that our thinking, our writing, our teaching and our actions move beyond ‘dangerous myths and comfortable untruths’ that empower law enforcement at the expense of social justice.

This article gives the views of the author, not the position of the institution he works for.

Contact

Dr. Lambros Fatsis, Lecturer in Criminology, University of Brighton

Twitter: @lfatsis

 

Images: courtesy of the author and Pexels

SNC-Lavalin: Charges to settlement, have lessons been learned?

Sharon Hartles was awarded a Master of Arts in Crime and Justice (with distinction) from the Open University in December 2019. She has an interest in crimes of the powerful, including state and state-corporate crime.In an explicit attempt to move beyond criminology, she draws upon a zemiological approach to evidence the social, political and economic context in which crime is produced and interwoven into society via socio-economic inequalities.

Liam miles is a Criminology student at Birmingham City University and has a passion for writing on a range of topics including structural inequalities, systematic violence, conflict in the Middle East, Corporate and White Collar crime, and various theoretical paradigms to crime and deviance. He also works in the Students Union as Vice president for Academic Experience.

 

 

 

On the 19^th of February 2015, corruption and fraud charges were filed in the Court of Quebec by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) against SNC-Lavalin and two of its divisions (SNC-Lavalin Construction Inc. and its subsidiary, SNC-Lavalin International Inc.). The alleged criminal acts took place between August 2001 and September 2011 and consisted of an exchange of ‘almost $47.9 million to Libyan government officials to use their positions to influence government decisions’ and defrauding ‘the Libyan government and other entities of “property, money or valuable security or service” worth almost $129.8 million.’  According to a statement released by RCMP, the then Assistant Commissioner Gilles Michaud, “The charges laid today demonstrate how the RCMP continues to support Canada’s international commitments and safeguard its integrity and reputation,” It will come as no surprise to note that the charges and statement were met with a counter public statement issued by SNC-Lavalin in which it declared the charges to be without merit.

The potential harm and wider-reaching ramifications which a guilty verdict would have incurred should not be understated. If SNC-Lavalin Group were to have been convicted of offences under the Canadian Criminal Code (or under these acts: Competition Act, Controlled Drugs and Substance Act, Corruption of Foreign Officials Act, Excise Tax Act, Financial Administration Act, Income Tax Act, Lobbying Act) they would have been ineligible to compete for federal contracts for ten years. In line with the Integrity framework regime which was introduced in 2015, a government–wide ban prohibits federal departments from doing business for a period of 10 years with companies who have engaged in improper conduct. This 10 year ban is in place to ensure the Canadian government does business only with ethical suppliers in Canada and abroad.

In 2018, SNC-Lavalin was ranked Canada’s top contractor, for the third consecutive year, generating around US$9.8 billion in revenue. Such an assertion is supported by SNC-Lavalin’s annual reports financial highlights for  2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and  2015. On its 2015 report as at 31^st December, SNC-Lavalin declared a figure of 36,754, as the number of people employed, of which around 9,000 of these reside in Canada. With this in mind, it is clearer to comprehend the potential global harm a conviction outcome would have set in motion and therefore why this may have been deemed not to be in the best interests of the Canadian government. With that noted an alternative arrangement to a 10 year ban had to be devised.

A solution presented itself in the form of a remediation agreement, also known as a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) which defers or suspends criminal charges. However, in 2015, when the charges were filed against SNC-Lavalin Group remediation agreements did not exist within Canadian law. Taking that into account, in 2016 SNC-Lavalin successfully lobbied government officials, and the direct result was that as part of the 2018 federal budget, Canada’s Criminal Code was amended to encompass the newly adopted DPA regime for corporate wrongdoing in Canada. This truth cannot be dismissed because it is reinforced in the report published in August 2019, by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion: Ethics Commissioner’s report on Justin Trudeau and the SNC-Lavalin scandal.

The Dion Ethics Report sheds light on the political interference which surrounded the issuing of a DPA for SNC-Lavalin Group. Jody Wilson-Raybould, Minister of the Attorney General (2015–2019) stood before the Justice Committee on the 27^th February 2019, and stated that between September and December 2018, she “experienced a consistent and sustained effort by many people within the government to seek to politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in my role as the attorney general of Canada in an inappropriate effort to secure a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with SNC Lavalin”.

According to the Dion report findings, the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau (2015 – present) and members of his party had breached section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act. This conclusion was reached with evidence that detailed how the former clerk to the Privy Council Michael Wernick, (2016- 2019) allegedly telephoned Jody Wilson-Raybould on the 19^th December 2018 and stated “The Prime Minister wants to be able to say that he has tried everything he can within the legitimate tool box, so he is quite determined, quite firm, but wants to know why the DPA route which parliament provided for isn’t being used”. The Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion concluded that Justin Trudeau made attempts to influence the Attorney General’s Department to politically steer the case against SNC-Lavalin to see a remediation agreement achieved. In his defence, Justin Trudeau maintained that he was looking to protect Canadian jobs after the company warned a conviction at trial risked damaging its business.

What is of interest is that in November 2018, SNC-Lavalin was categorised in the top 27% of all companies registered in the Corporate Political Engagement Index as being a key government stakeholder and donator to the Trudeau administration. Since the genesis of the prosecution case against SNC-Lavalin in 2017, the company exerted a very broad lobbying effort to secure legal and political assistance. Such assistance extended beyond the lobbying of numerous staff within the Prime Minister’s Office (and the Prime Minister himself) and went as far as the Minsters of the Department for Finance, International Trade, Innovation, Science and Economic development. In the words of criminologist John Muncie in his work titled Decriminalising Criminology this may evidence ‘the legal transgressions routinely employed by those wielding political and economic power and their ability to deny or conceal the harms they unleash under the protection of the law.’

On the 18^th December 2019, SNC-Lavalin pleaded guilty to fraud over its Libyan activities. Its construction division pleaded guilty to a single count of fraud. All other charges were withdrawn in the settlement. The outcome of which was a probation order and a fine amounting to C$280m ($213m; £163m) to be paid over five years and a three-year probation order. SNC-Lavalin stated:

• ‘It had cleaned house and changed its ways since 2012.’
• ‘openly lobbied for an agreement that would allow it to avoid prosecution and instead face alternative penalties’
• ‘admitted that over the course of a decade almost C$48m ($36m; £28m) was directed to Saadi Gaddafi’’

In the aftermath of the SNC-Lavalin and the political scandal, damage has been done. On the one hand, by midday, the date the settlement of criminal charges was imposed, trading had resumed and SNC-Lavalin shares jumped 20 per cent to C$29.01. On the other hand, SNC-Lavalin reported a 6% drop in revenue during the first six months of 2019 to US$3.5bn from US$3.8bn in the corresponding period. This drop in revenue is a side-effect of what Ian Edwards (who was promoted to the post of interim president and chief executive officer of SNC-Lavalin from the 11^th June 2019) referred to as a ‘really tough quarter’. Furthermore, data generated by the 2019 Transparency International index of global corruption, indicates that Canada has slipped and now ranks 12th on the list of 180 countries assessed. This is a decrease of three places compared to the 2018 index.

SNC-Lavalin avoided being barred from applying for lucrative federal contracts, meaning it has been able to return to generating billions in profit and billions in revenue. There is no disputing that SNC-Lavalin is one of the world’s largest engineering and construction companies and in line with its Annual Report 2019, as at 31^st December 2019, it employed 47,000 people around the world. Having said that, this provides a broader understanding of SNC-Lavalin’s impact within an economic and social context and why it has a duty to enhance society. By investing in Corporate Social Responsibility and implementing this into practice, corporate citizenship can benefit society whilst simultaneously boosting companies reputations. To safeguard its world-wide workforce it is essential SNC-Lavalin be mindful of the consequences of its future profiteering endeavors. Only time will tell if lessons have been learned and if SNC-Lavalin has truly drawn a line under its corporate-wrongdoing.

 

Also posted on:  sharonhartles.weebly.com  and  https://liamcrime.blogspot.com/

 

Contact

Sharon Hartles   

Email: sh28739@ou.ac.uk

Twitter: @shartles1

Liam Miles

Email: liam.miles@mail.bcu.ac.uk

Twitter @liam_miles1

 

Images: courtesy of the authors