Operation FALCON sounds like an episode of \Super Friends,"" but was actually the title of a week long dragnet, organized by Gonzales' Justice Department, carried out by state and local law enforcement agencies, which recently netted 10,000 fugitives nationwide. Here in Madison, the police have been making headlines in other ways-namely the Mifflin Street Block Party scheduling screw-up recently resolved. So, with friendly gendarmes making such headlines near and far, it might be interesting to consider a related phenomenon: the police presence, in terms of gross numbers and power, in the United States today.
There weren't always so many cops. One hundred and twenty years ago, the only state with a ton of cops was Tsarist Russia. The U.S. had Pinkerton guards, but no federal cops (the FBI originated in 1908) and few locals. Contrast that with today's numbers.
The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics last counted police officers and employees in 2000: ""1,019,496 full-time personnel, 11 percent more than the 921,978 employed in 1996."" Put differently, one out of every 300 Americans works in state and local law enforcement. Moreover, ""from 1996 to 2000 the number of full-time sworn personnel increased from 663,535 to 708,022."" That's nearly 10,000 new cops every year.
That's just a four-year, pre-9/11 period. It hints at a multi-decade growth trend: From old ""tough on crime"" politics, to President Reagan's ""War on Drugs"" and President Clinton's COPS program and its goal of putting 100,000 new officers on the streets. Ironically, the number of cops post-9/11 appears to have dropped due to state and local budget difficulties resulting from tax-cuts and a poor economy.
Still, over the long haul, cops have multiplied. Not only that, they're more powerful. JFK-era anti-racket RICO laws not only destroyed old mobster Las Vegas (not to mention the Five Families); they gave law enforcement agencies tremendous power to imprison uncooperative people. Reagan-era search and seizure laws gave cops powers not only to confiscate property connected to drug sales, but to sell confiscations for enormous profit. And though Operation FALCON was a publicity stunt (mass arrests during Crime Victim's Rights Week?), the fact that cops arrested 10,000 in seven days is fairly amazing.
To visualize the increase in cop-power, remember two symbolic images. First, the Birmingham civil rights battles. Bull Connor's police were clothed in what's practically office attire. Slacks, ties, dress shoes, with pistols, batons and water cannons. Compare that to the ""Battle for Seattle"" WTO riot in 2000. Seattle cops were in head-to-toe black Kevlar armor, combat boots and military-issue ""Fritz"" helmets, with assault rifles, ""stun"" guns and high-tech water cannons. In three decades the men in blue became men in black-dead-on sci-fi storm-troopers.
What's the significance? Well, the police could absolutely stop Mifflin Street Block Party on April 30th. They'd not only stop the hoppin' block, they would bulldozer us-if they can squash Seattle, they' can squash Mifflin (though they claim they will be ""nice""). In other words, the power the government holds in its multitudes of police officers is absolutely enormous. These observations might seem obvious, because they are. But they should also get our attention for the following reasons.
Police, while doing many invaluable, heroic services, inevitably best serve the interests of people with much to protect-rich folk. Perhaps the rise in cops goes hand-in-hand with the anti-progressive-taxation crusade (minus the IRS, naturally). Perhaps law-enforcement growth is an indirect, enormously powerful engine to make the country more conservative.
So we want good protection. But this way? Millions of cops? Do we want our country to become conservative in this way-namely, by the institutional impetus of a mammoth gendarme establishment? Maybe our answers to such questions determine where are nation is headed-2084 or 1984.
