Police, Paranoia, and the Streets of Minneapolis

Brian Klaas

American political scientist Brian Klaas, in his 2001 book Corruptible, describes two different recruitment ads for police departments. In the first, for the tiny Doraville, Georgia, PD, features a flashing image of the Punisher logo from Marvel Comics, six men in body armor and assault rifles, and the city’s M113 armored personnel carrier, owned by the SWAT team. The video unambiguously advertises the opportunity to bring the hammer down on Doraville’s terrible criminals and malefactors.

Klaas contrasts this to a New Zealand recruiting video. Several police officers race through the sunlit streets in conventional beat-cop uniforms, pausing to directly address the camera. Some of the featured officers are women or members of the Māori indigenous nation. The video culminates with the officers retrieving a runaway puppy and returning it to an overjoyed little girl. The quieter, lighter-toned New Zealand video emphasizes community, public-spiritedness, and a commitment to serving the citizenry.

From this, Klaas draws conclusions about which recruitment candidates each ad will attract. Doraville, with a land area of five square miles and a population barely over 10,000, will attract testosterone-fueled cosplay warriors, mostly men, who desire to manifest power. Its aggressive, violent ad will alienate the New Zealand video’s target audience of public-spirited and emotionally mature servants. Clearly the Kiwis want people unafraid to show their faces because they live and work among neighbors.

By now, we’ve all witnessed the dire footage of Wednesday’s broad-daylight murder of Minneapolis mother and poet Renee Nicole Good. Confronted by ICE officers bellowing conflicting orders, Good attempted to drive away. Agent Jonathan Ross fired three shots at Good’s moving SUV, killing her. Vice President JD Vance has claimed Ross acted in self-defense, while Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called Good a “domestic terrorist.” But phone videos from multiple angles categorically disprove these claims.

Alex Vitale

ICE agents aren’t police, let’s state that clearly. They have a specific law enforcement remit that doesn’t include traffic enforcement. But it’s impossible to separate the agency’s recruitment tactics from those Klaas describes. President Taco ran on pledges to deport “the worst of the worst” and declarations of a nation riddled with enemies. ICE recruitment relies upon the twin propositions of a powerful, destructive enemy, and a strong Anglo-Saxon defender who will subjugate that enemy.

However, law enforcement by identifying enemies creates a maelstrom of probable boogeymen. Alex Vitale writes how many urban PDs constructed gang units to crack down on groups that were organized as solidarity against prior police crackdowns. Indeed, Yale historian Elizabeth Hinton describes how police forces began stockpiling military-grade weapons in the 1970s because, in the prior decade, Black communities had pushed majority-White PDs out of their neighborhoods. The police see enemies everywhere, and prepare accordingly.

Nor am I the first to notice this. More informed critics describe warrior mentality in police training. Though instructors use guardianship language, the tactics taught resemble those of occupying armies. Many PDs have rules of engagement more draconian than those used in the Baghdad Green Zone. This warrior mentality, and this reliance on violent confrontation, happen because police expect a world full of enemies. And like most humans, they find what they’re paid to find.

The outcome is truly horrific. Almost simultaneously as Agent Ross executed Renee Good without warrant, ICE agents pelted a Minneapolis high school with chemical weapons because students resisted unwarranted seizures of their classmates. Teenagers, who by nature resist authority because they’re kids. We’re approaching late-1960s levels of state paranoia, when unarmed college students marching across campus in unison justified National Guard forces opening fire at Kent State. And it will happen sooner rather than later.

Elizabeth Hinton

Renee Good’s death, like the Kent State shootings or George Floyd’s murder, happened because America’s law enforcement agencies have paranoia baked into their structure. Police academies teach rookies to regard every traffic stop as potential prelude to a gunfight. Federal rhetoric makes undocumented roofing laborers equal to convicted murderers, justifying commando-style raids. Every encounter between law enforcement and ordinary citizens begins with them evaluating us—you—as potential enemies who may need stopped or killed.

You can’t reform this. Protesters said this with “defund the police” in 2020, but heel-draggers scoffed. Because law enforcement is institutionally paranoid, every moving car is an assassination attempt. They constantly demand bigger guns because they believe us peons have artillery. But when confronted by actual shooters, as in Uvalde, they do nothing… because they’re terrified of us. You can’t train fear out of entire institutions. You can only dismantle the institutions and start over.