Police Force

The police today, in some ways, are like a military force. They are organized and disciplined. They have ranks, and they even use military names for their ranks. SWAT teams use military tactics and are sometimes trained by the military. For these reasons and others, you may be against police force. Or you may be critical of modern police forces.

But most people don't object to police force. If you don't, don't worry. The police may look like a military unit, but there's a big difference in principle between police force and military force. Aldous Huxley gives some reasons why the two are different:

The force which [armies]...use is not limited. Their function is not to restrain the guilty; it is to destroy all things and people within their range. When the police wish to arrest a criminal, they do not burn up a town in which he is living and kill or torture all its inhabitants. But this is precisely what an army does, particularly an army using modern weapons.

States [claim]...the right not only to judge other states, but also by means of their armies, to punish them. The principle is wholly repugnant to law; moreover, the process of punishing the guilty entails the destruction of countless innocent individuals. An army with atomic and hydrogen bombs is not and cannot be a police force. Nor can its essentially evil and destructive functions be moralized by calling it a U.N. army, an instrument of collective security, etc. Police operate with the consent of the community which employs them. Armies operate at the order of one among the nations or the few nations which are allied together. 1

You may not, of course, agree. Some people believe the police are an instrument of the rich for keeping the poor "in their place." But if you believe this, it doesn't mean that you support war.

A more complicated question is the use of troops as "peacekeeping forces." Such forces often operate with the consent of the government--though not always that of the people--of the country where they are stationed. Are they operating as a military unit, or as police? There's no easy answer to this question, but one clue lies in the command structure. Who is in charge? The community where the troops are stationed, or the nation which sent them there? Do you see a difference between a United Nations peacekeeping force and, say, the US Marines who were stationed in Lebanon in 1982-84? Or is there no difference?

If you are sure that you'd take part in a peacekeeping force, you may have trouble being recognized as a conscientious objector. Guy Gillette, whose case is discussed in Chapter 4, said he would be part of a peacekeeping force and was denied CO status. But maybe you can still qualify. It's best to talk with your counselor about this issue before you try to write anything about it. Or maybe you can simply omit discussion of it. You don't have to deal with it in order to answer the question on the use of force.

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