The police force : gender, race, and use-of-force training

Dozens of high-profile cases of police violence against Black people have incited public outrage and organizing. In response to this mounting pressure, police departments have implemented new practices and policies, including diversity initiatives in hiring, de-escalation training in the academy, and body cameras on officers. Despite these efforts, however, the police continue to use force disproportionately and excessively against Black people. In this dissertation, I provide evidence of the organizational practices of law enforcement that lead to racist use of force. I turn the attention away from explanations of police violence that point to officers’ individual racial biases, the purported necessity of using force in high-crime areas, or inadequate de-escalation training, to instead show how police hiring and training practices contribute to racist violence. I draw on one year of ethnographic field work at four police departments and 40 in-depth interviews with cadets and officers to answer the following questions: (1) How do police departments decide who to hire? (2) How are police cadets taught to think about their relationship with the public? (3) How are police cadets taught to use force? In answering these questions, I present three primary findings. First, I argue that the way in which police departments conceptualize the ideal candidate, and the hiring procedures and practices organized around this discourse, contribute to patterns of racist violence. Second, I show that at the academy, cadets are taught to be warriors, and that their enemies are Black men. Lastly, I argue that the academy conditions cadets’ bodies, through repetition and institutional disciplining, to engage in violence. In this dissertation, I focus on hiring and training to provide an organizational explanation of racist trends in police violence