To be anti-police is to be anti-American

The argument

This argument, voiced by defenders of the police in the institutional-racism debate, holds that to be anti-police is to be anti-American: hostility to the police as an institution is hostility to the constitutional order the police exist to uphold. The reasoning runs through what proponents take America to be. The United States, on this view, is constituted by the rule of law — a system in which rights, property and liberty are secured not by private power but by impartial enforcement. The police are that enforcement made flesh: the institution that stands between citizens and the chaos in which the strong prey on the weak. Limited government, the bedrock of American liberty, depends on it — a state that cannot keep order through law will keep it through something worse, and the void left by delegitimised police is filled by vigilantism, private security for the rich, and lawlessness for everyone else. To campaign against the police as such — to 'defund' or dismantle rather than improve them — is therefore, proponents argue, to attack a load-bearing wall of the republic while claiming to renovate it. They draw a sharp line between criticism and hostility. Prosecuting brutal officers is the system working; condemning the institution wholesale for the actions of a minority is something else — a rejection of the American settlement itself, often, they note, voiced by movements explicitly hostile to the country's foundations. Hundreds of thousands of officers serve lawfully and bravely; treating them as an occupying enemy slanders the people who run toward danger on every American's behalf. From this standpoint, one cannot love the constitutional order and despise its guardians. Because to be anti-police is to be anti-American, this argument holds, the police should not be blamed for the problems of a racialised society.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics argue the argument answers a question about people while the position it supports is a claim about causation. Whether the police should be blamed for the problems of a racialised society turns on what policing does and what produces disparate outcomes. What is offered instead is a characterisation of the critics' loyalty — and even if every critic were hostile to the country, that would settle nothing about whether policing produces the outcomes at issue. The subject has been changed from the institution to the people discussing it. The equation of an institution with the constitutional order is also in tension with the tradition being invoked. American constitutionalism is founded on distrust of concentrated state power, and the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments exist to constrain law enforcement specifically — searches, seizures, interrogations, due process. On that reading, scrutiny of police conduct is closer to the founding suspicion than deference to it, and the long conservative tradition holding that any government agency will expand and evade accountability applies to armed agencies most of all. Three distinct proposals are also being treated as one. Reform, redirection of funding, and abolition are different programmes with different consequences, and collapsing them into a single 'anti-police' stance is what allows the loyalty framing to attach to all three — including to the reform position, which is the sibling position in this debate and explicitly wants better policing rather than none. Finally, two claims are asserted at exactly the points where the evidence is contested. That prosecuting brutal officers is 'the system working' is the disputed proposition, since the rarity of charges relative to complaints is what the opposing positions cite. And 'the actions of a minority' presumes the answer, because the systemic claim concerns outcomes and incentives rather than the proportion of officers who intend harm.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Identifying an institution with the constitutional order is at odds with the tradition invoked: American constitutionalism is built on distrust of concentrated state power, and the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments exist to constrain law enforcement in particular, so scrutiny of police conduct sits closer to the founding suspicion than deference does. [Rejecting P2] Reform, redirection of funding and abolition are three distinct proposals with different consequences, and treating them as a single anti-police stance is what allows the loyalty framing to attach to all of them — including the reform position, which wants better policing rather than none. [Rejecting P3] 'The system working' is asserted where the evidence is contested, since the rarity of charges relative to complaints is the datum the opposing positions cite; and 'the actions of a minority' presumes the answer, because the systemic claim concerns outcomes and incentives rather than how many officers intend harm. A claim about critics' loyalty is in any case not a claim about what policing produces.