FINDINGS
On my last day of field work, I attended Terryville PD's academy graduation. The ceremony took place at the convention center downtown, and the large auditorium was filled with the cadets' family and friends. The Chief of Police pinned a shiny, silver badge onto each new officer's uniform, and gave a short speech. He announced that this class was coming into policing at a "different time and context," then paused dramatically, scanning the crowd, and added, "a different world." He explained that today, police officers have to be "warriors and guardians," that they need to be "the kindest" people, but also be ready for "a battlefield."
In this section, I outline the ways that this warrior-guardian construct took shape at the police academy. I begin by showing how academy instructors established a ruthless, unpredictable enemy who deserves punishment. Next, I explain how cadets were taught to identify their enemy in gendered and racialized ways. Lastly, I describe the process whereby cadets were encouraged to adopt a warrior's mentality, paying special attention to how the warrior-guardian construct placed women officers in a bind.
Establishing the Enemy: Bad Guys
Throughout the academy, instructors made reference to "the bad guy." This bad guy is ruthless, malicious, commits crimes, and disregards humanity. He (the concept assumes maleness and masculinity) is unpredictable, violent, carries weapons, and harms others for his own gain. Bad guys want to take advantage of innocent people and have a particular penchant for hurting and killing police officers. During lunch, academy instructors reminisced about being young and eager to "catch bad guys." During defensive tactics training, instructors called the role of the person being arrested "the bad guy." In the hallway on the way to a scenario, an instructor eagerly asked the cadets, "Y'all ready to shoot some bad guys?" This "bad guy," then, was referenced throughout training, in many different contexts.
Starting on the first day of the academy, instructors told the cadets that they should be afraid of bad guys, and that if they let their guards down, even for one second, they could be killed. During introductions on the first day of Hudson PD's academy, the command staff urged cadets to take the training seriously, and warned them that they might be killed on duty. In his introduction, Commander Roger Carson, a tall, white officer with 36 years of law enforcement experience, told us that this was "Police Memorial Week" nationally, and that today, the department would "honor our own" officers. "Seventy-four officers have been killed on duty in our department's history," he said. Portraits of each fallen officer lined the main hallway of the academy, and he, along with other instructors, insisted that reading "their stories" would "keep you [the cadets] alive." The "wall of honor" at each academy I visited was prominently displayed and regarded with deep reverence. At Hudson PD, the required chores that cadets completed included dusting the 74 framed photos of these officers daily.
The instructors brought these verbal warnings to life by frequently showing videos of police officers being brutally beaten and killed. The 1998 video of Deputy Kyle Dinkheller's murder was shown at every academy I studied. The dash camera footage shows Deputy Dinkheller, a young, white man, pulling over Andrew Brannan, a middle-aged white man, for speeding. Brannan gets out of the car, dances around erratically, and repeatedly verbally threatens the deputy. The deputy shouts at Brannan to "GET BACK!" over and over again. Brannan returns to his truck and retrieves a rifle, all while the deputy continues to scream "GET BACK!" "GET OUT OF THE CAR!" "PUT THE GUN DOWN!" Brannan aims his gun at the deputy and shoots several times, while Dinkheller attempts to return fire. As Brannan shoots, the video captures Dinkheller's guttural, panicked screams and strained breathing as he dies at the side of his patrol vehicle.
Kevin, a white, 48-year-old instructor, showed this video during the de-escalation class at Terryville PD. He prefaced the video by clarifying that "even though we're talking about de-escalation today, I'm not watering down officer safety. Do not drop your guard." Kevin acknowledged that the cadets had already seen the video during the academy, but explained that "it's always good to watch these videos from time to time as a reminder." Hannah, a white cadet in her 20s, sat next to me during this instruction, and before the video started, leaned over and solemnly asked, "Have you seen this one?" I grimaced and responded, "Yeah, I have."
When the video ended, everyone in the room remained silent as one of the cadets turned the florescent lights back on. Kevin highlighted that Dinkheller gave Brannan 30 different commands during the interaction, with no action, and chose the wrong weapon when he initially pulled his baton. Dinkheller should have had Brannan at gunpoint when he did not comply with commands and acted aggressively, Kevin said, going on to insist that "if you give a command and they don't comply, you must make them do it. There has to be some use of force." The lesson here, at Terryville and at the other academies that showed this video, was that any stop or interaction could be your last. These videos, which instructors showed over and over again, forced cadets to watch as people wearing uniforms very similar to theirs were killed. These explicit, violent videos put meat on the bones of the instructors' verbal warnings, visually showing that any officer, at any time, could meet this same fate.
In addition to the dangers involved in officers' everyday tasks, instructors warned that now, more than ever, police officers are being targeted. During one day of field work, Paul, a 47-year-old, white instructor at Rollingwood PD, told me that being a police officer was more dangerous than it had ever been. I asked Paul, "Do you think the job is more dangerous now than it used to be?" "Yes," he said, "I think so." "Compared to when?" I pressed. "What do you mean?" he asked. "Well," I explained, "you're saying policing is more dangerous now than it used to be. When was it less dangerous?" He struggled through his response, and attempting to clarify my reasoning, I said, "It seems like there was just as much, if not more, political unrest in the 1960s, which included some animosity towards law enforcement, right?" "True, there definitely was," he agreed, "but that was a movement," he explained. He elaborated, "It wasn't a feeling of hate directed specifically towards cops … cops weren't just getting ambushed because people hated them and wanted to kill them, like they are now."
This sense that police officers were being specifically targeted also came up during firearms training at Terryville PD. While teaching about shooting in low-light situations, Dylan, a white instructor in his 40s, showed a PowerPoint slide listing the number of police officers killed every year on duty, both nationally and in the state. Dylan explained that although police officers have always been killed on duty, it has become far more prevalent for "criminals to actively hunt police officers." Dylan warned that the cadets must carry a firearm to protect lives, and sometimes to take lives in order to protect others. Again, the instructor's warning was focused on the unpredictability and severity of potential danger and the resulting necessity of mastering violence.
Cadets were taught that not only do bad guys take advantage of, harm, and kill good people, but they also have a particular interest in hurting and killing police officers. Instructors repeatedly told stories of police officers who were killed on duty, warned cadets about the possibility of their violent deaths, and showed graphic videos of police officers being killed. Instructors emphasized that policing was more dangerous now than ever before, and that increasingly, officers were being killed in targeted ambushes. This "bad guy" discourse is certainly not exclusive to policing circles. Scholars have demonstrated that the "bad guy" construct – in a range of contexts, including civilian firearms training, in war, and in gangs – is often deployed to justify violent behavior (Carlson 2015; Contreras 2012; Shapira and Simon 2018; Stroud 2015). At the academy, these messages taught cadets to be intensely afraid of the "bad guys," who are malicious, ruthless, and violent. This discursive binary has major implications. For example, police officers sometimes justify their decision to use deadly force by explaining that the person deserved it (Waegel 1984). Establishing this bad guy, then, created an enemy and a justification to use violence to defeat this enemy.
Profiling Bad Guys
Although academy instructors warned that any interaction could be dangerous and that an ambush could happen at any moment, they did not express an equal fear of everyone. Instructors taught cadets who to fear and how to identify dangerous people and situations, insisting that cadets learn how to identify bad guys by profiling behavior and appearance. This lesson taught cadets what bad guys look like, what kind of clothing they wear, what kinds of cars they drive, and how they move their bodies when they are going to initiate an attack. All of these indicators were gendered and racialized in important ways.
Cadets were taught to identify body movements and behavior that were considered suspicious and/or dangerous. Officers were most concerned with hand placement and what were called "pre-attack indicators," which signaled that someone was going to initiate a physical attack. In the de-escalation class at Terryville PD, Kevin told the class that someone's use of space and hand placement indicates whether they are hiding something, especially weapons or drugs. Kevin explained that if a person walks away from him as soon as he arrives at a scene, this means they do not want to be around him, and, thus, are probably hiding something. To illustrate, he asked two cadets to come to the front of the class and approach him from either side. Kevin turned his body so he was positioned perpendicular to the two cadets, and placed his hand over his pocket. "This could tell us something," he said, referencing his hand placement. This emphasis on hand placement was ubiquitous and repeatedly invoked in warnings about officer safety. Importantly, these ways of seeing indicators of threat or guilt excluded other possible explanations, such as distrust or fear of the police. The emphasis on threat eliminated other ways of understanding and interpreting behavior that would perhaps not warrant a physical, and often violent, response by police officers.
Instructors also warned cadets to watch for indicators that someone was going to attack them. Instructors explained that if someone swings their arms back and forth in front of their chest, tosses their head from side to side, jumps up and down, or especially, announces, "I'm not going to jail," they are probably going to throw a punch or try to run away. Instructors emphasized the ability to discern intention – whether it was lying, hiding something, or initiating violence – from the body, and encouraged cadets to always trust their gut. Kevin told the class that they should "always listen to your hunches," adding, "if your subconscious is telling you that someone needs to go into cuffs, you need to put them in cuffs." "Maybe the guy in front of you has a bad leg," Kevin said, "and that's why he's walking strangely. Or, maybe he has a gun and he's going to shoot a cop so that he doesn't have to go back to jail. Do not ever question your instinct, because it's what will keep you alive." Cadets were taught that their lives depended on their ability to discern intention from body language, and to always err on the side of caution.
Who was considered to be suspicious or dangerous depended on their race and gender. The instructors officially told cadets that they should never racially profile. During a lecture on the criminal code of procedures at Terryville's academy, for example, Sabrina, a white instructor in her 30s, somewhat derisively asked the class, "Can we racially profile?" An exaggerated and obvious "no" filled the room. "No," Sabrina confirmed, "don't do it." The instructors did, however, encourage cadets to profile "criminality."