Interesting Times, "Protect and Serve," The Fourth Estate
“To protect and serve” is an official motto for some American police departments, and unofficial for many more. The idea is that the police are there to protect and serve the communities they work in. This notion is only as radical as the idea of American liberalism itself. Alexis de Tocqueville, in his book Democracy in America, observed:
The people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe. It is the cause and the end of all things; everything rises out of it and is absorbed back into it.
The people are the cause and end of the state; the state is by the people and for the people. It is deeply concerning, then, that large portions of Americans do not feel protected by or served by the police departments. State and local police departments are where most of us will see the state exercise its monopoly on force, but currently, the internet is swarmed with video after video of police officers harming their communities for no good reason. In New York City, a police car accelerated into a crowd. In numerous locations, political officials ranging from city councilpeople to U.S. Representatives have been subjected to actions ranging from getting pepper sprayed to being arrested. Numerous journalists, clearly identified as press, have been assaulted by the police.
It remains to be seen why law enforcement officers would think it’s a good idea to shoot pepper balls or rubber bullets at journalists, or arrest them on live television, for doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights. I follow numerous journalists of various stripes on Twitter because it provides me rapid news updates from reliable sources, and they are buzzing about this. Story after story of being maced, hit with rubber bullets, pepper sprayed, arrested, for no particular reason, all being amplified by their colleagues. A journalist saying “I was attacked by the police” today becomes “Law Enforcement Officers Attack First Amendment Rights” tomorrow. When this does happen, it will be interesting to see how quickly the tide turns against America’s third favorite institution in 2018.
I hope the tide turns strongly. The American project dreams of a state by the people, for the people. Right now, the state is against the people. That needs to change.