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Germany

Background

• Under the Weimar constitution, the federal states retained police authority, while many municipalities retained independent forces. There were no federal police. Each state force was divided into several components, the most central of which was the uniformed force most commonly called Schutzpolizei (Schupo). The Schupo in turn consisted of two forces. Part were heavily armed and housed in barracks, to be employed in force for crowd control (especially strikes and demonstrations) and the suppression of revolutionary uprisings. The remainder were assigned to urban precincts for routine patrol and police work. In the countryside, each state maintained a uniformed Gendarmerie or Landjagerei separate from the Schupo. The remainder of the state police served in plainclothes. Units of detectives, Kriminalpolizei, were assigned to the cities, and administrative police (Verwaltungspolizei) performed regulatory roles (housing, sanitation, etc.) and did administrative work for the other police.1
• The central authority of the states and the Reich Interior Ministry's influence over training and personnel created a uniform police career system that varied only slightly from state to state.23 Even municipal forces generally followed the pattern.2
• From detective inspector, one could rise ultimately to government counselor (Regierungsrat), the equivalent of police major. At this command level, higher civil servants transferred freely throughout government administration, so that one could command police detective offices with-out having risen through the detective ranks. It was at this level that qualified NS civil servants without police backgrounds would make their entry into Kripo and Gestapo.3
• In Prussia, the detectives claimed a phenomenal record of success to bolster their image: in 1925-1926 solving 86 percent of all murders, 95 percent of all homicides, and 51 percent of robberies; even in massive urban centers like Berlin, 97 percent of murders,94 percent of homicides, and 38 percent of robberies. But such status did not accrue uniformly, and state funding was cut during the depression despite mounting case loads. Furthermore, public response to the detective force was mixed and transitory. Acclaim for individuals mixed with criticism of the force for unsolved, sensational cases, while worsening social conditions produced ambivalence about many aspects of law enforcement.364
• In terms of rural-urban origins, the police closely matched the general population. The largest group (40 percent) had originally trained for careers in the crafts; the next largest group (22 percent) came from white-collar jobs;about 12 percent came from agricultural backgrounds. Educationally,77 percent had completed only primary school, while only 10 percent had the eleventh-year high-school-leaving certificate and 2 percent the Abitur.255
• ... the Prussian state police, which, after the Reichswehr, represented the largest official security force in the country. The Prussian police were equipped with military-style units, including their own armored vehicles.
• Even if the Weimar police were relatively immune to abuses, some advocated (and practiced) third degree techniques and summary justice. In Bavaria, during the early crisis period (1919—192.1), the political police indulged freely in such "preventive action."7
• The continental legal tradition, based on law codes, created a law enforcement environment different from Anglo-Saxon society with its common law tradition.11 As an institution, the police had significantly different history and traditions.8
• As with other aspects of conventional generalizations about German society and culture, the purported submissiveness to police authority does not hold up to scrutiny.99
• Finally, the police of the Weimar period were unionized, thus creating other variables that could affect subculture formation.1210

Disorder in Weimar

• Facing this situation of rapidly mounting disorder was a police force that was distinctly shaky in its allegiance to Weimar democracy. Unlike the army, it continued to be decentralized after 1918. The Social Democrat-dominated Prussian government in Berlin, however, failed to seize the opportunity to create a new public-order force which would be the loyal servant of Republican law enforcement.11
• The new force found itself run by ex-officers, former professional soldiers and Free Corps fighters. They set a military tone from the outset and were hardly enthusiastic supporters of the new political order.12
• They were backed up by the political police, which had a long tradition in Prussia, as in other German and European states, of concentrating its efforts on the monitoring, detection and at times suppression of socialists and revolutionaries. 93 Its officers, like those of other police departments, considered themselves above party politics. Rather like the army, they were serving an abstract notion of ‘the state’ or the Reich, rather than the specific democratic institutions of the newly founded Republic.13

The start of partisanship

• Studies of the German police reveal that a key element of their self-image was that of a professional force beyond political influence. Even obvious ideological biases, like those in Bavarian political police offices, did not necessarily deny them a sense of being above "political"—that is, party—influence. Unfortunately, efforts to reform the police into a force suitable for a democratic republic inevitably required "political interference." Consequently, regardless of where the policeman stood ideologically in his perception of his professional image, pressure for changes could appear as "political" interference threatening his professionalism.1614
• Although the Weimar-era police may have achieved admirable levels of professionalism, they were subject to many public pressures and confrontations that would turn them inward against a perceived "hostile public." Recorded behavior resembling that predicted by the model argues persuasively for its existence in Weimar Germany.15
• Since conservative politics demanded little "democratic reform" in public institutions, the "political interference" that the police experienced inevitably came from prorepublican circles. Whether in Prussia, where the Socialistische Partei Deutschland (SPD) dominated, or in conservative Bavaria, efforts to move the police to the center required movement to the "left." This image-reform conflict helps explain why police could see left-wing political orientations as contaminating their professionalism, while the right was less threatening. Predictably, as enforcers of order and the status quo, police should have less empathy for the left, but when it threatens their own internal order, it becomes an overt "enemy of order."16
• The first effect is police hostility toward those groups who threaten order and create the crisis situations most conducive to role conflicts for the police. Police hostility toward the Kommunistische Partei Deutschland (KPD) is well known, and police-subculture theory adds to our understanding of why. In contrast, police attitudes toward the NS Movement were more complex, and this theory also contributes to analysis of those attitudes.17
• The second effect introduces another mechanism of police subcultures. In any isolated group, authority tends to become more personal than it is supposed to in a legal, bureaucratic command structure. Authority gravitates to leaders who identify with the values of the group rather than with those of society. Examples of this are obvious in the problems of reformers like Albert Grzesinski and Bernhard Weiss in Berlin, but they can also be read into Harold Gordon's analysis of power relations in the Bavarian police.22 Furthermore, external appeals directed at the police should gain more favorable responses when oriented toward police subcultural rather than toward societal values. This provided a lever that the Nazis pushed most effectively.18

Professional frustrations

• Frustrations over limited promotional opportunities and mandated retirement peaked just when the Republic's last trial had begun, when the depression closed all other opportunities, and when the police confronted the full brunt of Nazi and Communist assault. As role conflicts increased and recognition decreased, the mechanisms of a police subculture should have created levers that could be used to "turn" the police.19
• During the Weimar period, the process of restricting police power advanced considerably through a system of administrative courts that protected the individual from police excesses.2820
• While the forces of liberalism and socialism tried to curb police power, right-wing movements argued that the restrictions of the liberal, constitutional state had "chained the police" and paralyzed the authority of the state.21
• Modern developments constantly put stumbling blocks between them and the performance of their duty, while seemingly encouraging a popular view of the police as oppressors against whom the people needed protection.Yet, simultaneously they were taunted with the image of an emasculated force and chided for their failure to protect society.2922
• In this respect, the paramilitary units of the police—the training ground for rookies—became the center of conflicts. When used to control strikes and demonstrations, they encountered the working class, the unemployed masses, or the politically active and public-spirited citizen. Both the Communists and Nazis made the most of that conflict in their propaganda. They portrayed the police as agents of an evil regime directed against the people.3023
• The tug-of-war over militarism and authoritarianism versus a "people's police" image produced a decisive split within the police subculture itself. In Prussia, the policemen's unions represented the split. From early on, the Schrader Verband (Allgemeine Preussischer Polizeibeamten Verband), which claimed to represent 70 percent of the rank and file, supported and encouraged government reforms to "democratize" the police. This movement generated a counterpart, the Verein der Polizeibeamten Preussens, which claimed to represent 90 percent of the officers, and which fought for the military and authoritarian traditions.24
• From such tension many policemen, especially officers, grew isolated from the government and hostile toward liberal and socialist politicians whose reform efforts associated them with hostile critics of the police. Considering such great potential for a rift in the police, one wonders that Liang detected no lack of discipline or insubordination among the lower ranks in his study of the Berlin police. Perhaps the "fundamental solidarity in the police" that he describes attests to the power of a police subculture to bond its diverse components despite such internal disagreement.3225

Initial Nazi influence

• Although there is not yet any empirical base, the impression emerging from the literature and from the personnel files of Sipo men is that the detectives, like the uniformed officers, were attracted in disproportionate numbers to right-wing causes and ultimately the NS Movement.26
• Yet despite all these reasons why policemen might have been drawn away from support of the Republic, scholars until recently generally agreed that in fact the police served the Republic dutifully to the end.27
• Reich Chancellor Brüning decided to use the police, however, to curb political violence on the right as well as the left, because the chaos on the streets was deterring foreign banks from issuing loans to Germany.28
• Furthermore, the negative effect on the police of the efforts of the left (both the SPD and KPD) under-mined their resistance to Nazi appeals. It added to dissension among the police and intensified the traditions and attitudes upon which the Nazis could capitalize.29

Fighting Communists

• Most extremely, the KPD drove the police deeper into hostility by acts of violence and murder directed specifically at policemen.41 Police training manuals and other publications further inflamed their hostility. They described Communist Red Front fighters as "the most worthless, criminal elements in society," and "rabble of the meanest sort, interested only in selfish gain."42 Anti-KPD indoctrination and physical confrontations with the KPD undermined police resistance to right-radical appeals. Although lowered resistance would not necessarily make the police pro-Nazi, it enhanced NS appeals for some.30
• From the beginning, the prevalent attitude of the police was anti-Communist, strongly nationalistic, but otherwise indifferent to "partisan politics." They generally disapproved of right radicals,but did not consider them too serious a threat.43 Meanwhile, police hostility toward the Reds had developed into a preventive-attack mentality that, in the long run, may have produced more trouble than it prevented.4431
• The KPD strategy became more radical just as the depression began to exaggerate tensions. Pressures escalated between 1928 and 1933. One sees clues of a significant breakdown within the police before 1932.. For "breakdown," however, one should not read "collapse," for that did not happen. Instead, there was a subtle shift from a police force that tried to serve a republic to one increasingly alienated from that role, imposing its own definition of law and order.32
• By 1927, increasing clashes between the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the Red Front led the police to use a heavy hand in managing political demonstrations. Their lack of restraint often ended in shootings that sometimes killed and wounded bystanders. The police perceived an apparent decline in their public image, for they certainly got bad press.Tensions came to a head on May Day 1919, when working-class districts of Berlin erupted into near civil war. Thirty-one people died; more than a hundred were injured.33
• The press also accused the police of beating up reporters who filed derogatory reports. For months thereafter, part of the press attacked the police for bloodthirsty and callous behavior. Whatever the real public response was, it was irrelevant: the critical press and Communist propaganda told police that respectable citizens feared and hated them.46 The police responded with blind self-justification, even pride in their display of technical proficiency. Their sense of growing public hostility had turned them inward. They felt betrayed by the people and the government.34
• While policemen readily reported Communist subversion among themselves,they apparently did not see the Nazis as subversive.47 For a growing number of policemen, what the Nazis said about the link between crime and disorder, International Communism, and the weakness of the Republic made sense. From this point on, individual policemen drew increasingly closer to the Nazis, some joining the Movement.4835
• They intimidated individual anti-Nazi policemen, but they made no centralized effort to destroy the police. Nazi intelligence agencies penetrated the police, but without a Party policy for undermining and destroying them. For most of the NS Movement, the police represented an essential institution to be maintained and strengthened after their power seizure. For this purpose, policemen could be recruited in advance into the Movement.50 With the Nazis, the police encountered less psychological confrontation, and more sympathy.36

Increasing Nazi sympathies

• On the other hand, his social and professional frustrations appeared to be the result of a weak, corrupt government. Ambivalence toward the Republic grew and in many cases turned into disdain and hostility.52 The right, especially the Nazis, recognized this discontent and took full advantage of it in propaganda directed at the police.37
• In that process, within both the state and the police, the forces of the conservative counterrevolution paved the way. Once the Nazis were the legal government, however, they had in the police a susceptible agency, if they appealed to them through the channels of their subculture and stroked their professional image.38
• If the policeman felt alienated, the Nazis offered a warm and loving embrace. They portrayed the policeman as a man who served out of a sense of duty to society. He was no more the willing agent of the Republic than any other good German; instead, he was also its victim.53 They exonerated the police and their profession from responsibility for existing evils and promised them "that the police in the Third Reich will be conceded a more esteemed and respected place than at present." Nazi service chiefs would support their police unlike "the superiors in the present system, where indeed the police, especially the Schutzpolizei, are viewed and treated only as a necessary evil."5439
• Regardless of how strong the Nazi appeal should have been for policemen, we have little knowledge of how well it worked. A 1935 report to Hitler claimed that before 1933, 700 uniformed policemen(only about 0.7 percent) became Party members. This figure excluded administrative police and detectives, and apparently did not include policemen who had only joined NS-affiliated organizations.5640
• Not surprisingly, therefore, policemen began to sympathize with the Nazis’ attacks on the Weimar Republic. In 1935, a report claimed that 700 uniformed policemen had been members of the party before 1933, while in Hamburg 27 officers out of 240 had joined by 1932.41
• The issue is clouded because, before the summer of 1932., the law prohibited membership for most policemen in NS organizations.42
• All over Germany success from within the police went hand in hand with influence from above through electoral victories.5743

Policing the police

• In his case study of Berlin, Hsi-Huey Liang concluded that the Police Presidium made little effort to detect undesirable political affiliation in its police. Rather, it relied on denunciations by fellow policemen. Not only were denunciations generally not forthcoming, but commanding officers usually preferred to deal personally with such problems. Denunciations coming from outside the police were readily disbelieved, investigative teams were understaffed, and internal disciplinary courts were generally lenient. The standard procedure was transfer to less sensitive positions. Files on the political activity of policemen in the south German city of Stuttgart indicate similar responses.17 These are the predictable responses of a police subculture with pariah-like undertones.44
• Despite significant cause, the Prussian police did not have a special force to investigate subversion and political deviance within the police until January 1932. Once created, it became a coordinating center for the entire Reich, but with a ludicrously small staff. As a measure of attitudes elsewhere, this office complained of lack of cooperation from the other states, and one can interpret the official response to its complaint as "don't make waves."1845

Papen’s coup and open Nazi membership

• Until the spring of 1932., the Prussian government, firmly in the hands of prorepublican parties, notably the Social Democrats, influenced the police strongly enough to counterbalance the swing to the right. Then "von Papen's Coup" so thoroughly purged the Prussian police of SPD men and elements friendly to them that the Nazis had no problems directing the police to their own ends.46
• Hermann Goring was appointed Reich Minister Without Portfolio and Acting Prussian Minister of the Interior, which gave him direct control over the police in the greater part of Germany. The Nazis could thus manipulate the whole domestic law-and-order situation to their advantage.47
• The purge of the administration and police was so efficient that when Hermann Goring took charge in Prussia, much of his work was already done.51 If the backbone of the German police was not broken, it was at least twisted to the right. All over Germany, pro-Nazi elements could emerge more openly, and those who had disdained Hitler's followers must have had second thoughts.48
• In Prussia, adding to the effects of the previous purge carried out by Papen after July 1932, Hermann Goring replaced twelve Police Presidents by mid-February.49
• An example of the earlier recruits, Erich Vogel of the Saxon Criminal Police had begun an officer's career in the army, but after suffering a disability, was released in 1916 to begin a detective career. He quickly revealed his political inclinations, establishing connections with the German Peoples' Freedom Movement, and by I9z6 he was working for NS intelligence operations. At the request of the Party, he did not join until 1933, so he could work clandestinely, keeping the Party informed of police and government plans. By 1931, he had a working relationship with the SS, and in November 1933, he became a member of the SS-SD. He had been a member of the Saxon Gestapo since March 1933, and would become the center of a sensational proceeding in 1935 against Gestapo and concentration camp officials for brutality.5850
• One element stands out among these and other detectives. By 1931, either NS appeals won them, or they sought to guarantee themselves in that camp. After the Papen coup in 1932, they could proclaim NS loyalty and openly recruit others, or they rushed to establish their first link with the Movement. Obviously, they remained a minority, but that did not make them insignificant. One cannot judge which of them were simply opportunists, and which embraced National Socialism because it spoke to their values or needs.51

Hitler becomes Chancellor

• Beyond the chancellorship, Hitler demanded the Interior Ministry be given to a National Socialist, as well as two key positions at the state level for Prussia, the Reichskommissar and the state’s minister of the interior, effectively handing him control over two-thirds of the country, along with the Prussian state police, which, after the Reichswehr, represented the largest official security force in the country. The Prussian police were equipped with military-style units, including their own armored vehicles.
• Schleicher thought the Nazis’ claim on power could be satisfied with control of Prussia. Central to this strategy, however, was that the Nazis would get a Prussia without its fifty-thousand-strong police force, itself a major power factor in the Reich. If the Nazis were going to have Prussia, Schleicher wanted the police under the control of the central government.53
• The complacent belief of Franz von Papen and his friends that they had Hitler where they wanted him did not last long. The Nazis occupied only three cabinet posts. But the authority that came with Hitler’s position as Reich Chancellor was considerable. Just as important was the fact that the Nazis held both the Reich and the Prussian Ministries of the Interior. With these went extensive powers over law and order.54
• Goring, acting as Prussian Minister of the Interior, ordered the Prussian police on 15-17 February to cease its surveillance of the Nazis and associated paramilitary organizations and to support what they were doing as far as they were able. On 22 February he went a step further and set up an ‘auxiliary police’ force made up from members of the SA, SS and Steel Helmets, the last-named decidedly the junior partners.55
  While the police, purged of Social Democrats since the Papen coup, pursued Communists and broke up their demonstrations, the new force, with the agreement of the police, broke into party and trade union offices, destroyed documents and expelled the occupants by force.56
• The Social Democratic government in Prussia claimed in the early 1930s, for instance, that it was presented with confidential reports on secret sessions of the Communist Party’s Central Committee within a few hours of the sessions taking place. Police spies were active at every level of the party hierarchy.57
• Documents confiscated in 1931-2. included address-lists of party officials and active members. The police were extremely well informed about the party, therefore, regarded it as an enemy after the experience of innumerable armed clashes, and from 30 January onwards put their information at the disposal of the new government. It did not hesitate to use it.58
• On 24 February Albert Grzesinski, the Social Democrat who had formerly been Prussian Minister of the Interior, was complaining that ‘several of my meetings have been broken up and a substantial number of those present had to be taken away with serious injuries’. The party’s executive committee reacted by cutting back sharply on meetings in order to avoid further casualties. Whatever police protection had been provided for meetings before 30 January had been entirely removed on the orders of the Interior Ministry.59

Crackdowns start

• Regardless, in 1933, all policemen found themselves in the service of NS regimes. In Prussia that came suddenly when Herman Goring became provisional Minister of the Interior.60
• Most of the police in Himmler's SS empire came from the professional police of pre-Nazi Germany. Even though many joined the NS Movement, and even became SS-SD members, the vast majority identified themselves primarily as policemen.61
• The Nazis called for "Law, Order, and Authority," and Goring demanded that the police be freed of encumbrances that prevented them from achieving these goals. He also seemed to protect their integrity from the sort of sweeping purges, or worse still, replacement by a Nazi militia that radical elements threatened. One gets the impression that the police generally shared the sense of national rejuvenation that the new regime brought. Less than 2 percent of the ranks and 7 percent of the officers fell victim to the NS purge. As a result, the police turned diligently to the job of cleaning up the Reich, and they gave an image of legitimacy and propriety to the extralegal acts that ensued.6462
• Under NS rule, the police became notoriously involved with the physical abuse of arrestees. Since police professionalism could not prevent these abuses, especially when committed by Nazi auxiliaries, the mechanisms of secrecy and subculture indoctrination came into play to protect the police image—facilitating the conversion of the police to NS practices. The professionals covered up and denied Nazi excesses.2063
• For instance, the allegedly lower level of police brutality in the Weimar period conflicts with the uniformed police reputation for toughness in dealing with demonstrations. The Weimar police were born amid the use of deadly force to protect the Republic against its enemies, and throughout their short history were regularly reimmersed in such confrontations.2164

Political suppression

• Through the so-called "Shooting Order" of February 17 and numerous speeches, Goring left no doubt that he would consider caution in the use of force and firearms as dereliction of duty. In contrast, he would exonerate policeman from any repercussions from free use of arrest powers and weapons. Goring, as their superior, would assume the blame and shield them from criticism.6665
• With this pressure to do their duty against the enemies of society, the police must have been keyed up psychologically for the outburst of anti-Communist action that followed the Reichstag fire of February 28. As long as their SA auxiliaries only went after the Communists, beating them up, killing a few, and destroying their party facilities and homes,the police felt little concern at seeing their old enemies put down. But as the SA wrath spilled over onto individual Jews, the SPD, the labor unions, and even the would-be allies of the Nazis, they could not deny the lawlessness of it all. Worse yet, they had to include these thugs in regular patrols and police routine. The SA's lack of professional know-how, its swaggering and brutality belied the policeman's self-image of legitimized authority and force.67 All told, the collective police response to the new regime had to have been as mixed as everyone else's.66
• As elsewhere in German society, a few well-placed Nazis worked disproportionately well in establishing NS influence until the local government turned. Once the Nazis became the government, the police not only continued to serve, but like most Germans embraced the Movement as Germany's hope. Once that happened, their police subculture may have made them more vulnerable to becoming Hitler's enforcers.67
• The looting did not escape the attention of the more honest officers amongst the police. On 19 April 1933, for instance, the police commissioner in Hesse circulated police stations and local administrators condemning the illegal confiscation of the property of Marxist organizations during the raids, including the removal of musical instruments, gym equipment and even beds, all clearly intended for the private use of the looters.68
• Between this point and early 1934, 2,250 prosecutions against SA members and 420 against SS men were suspended or abandoned, not least under pressure from local stormtrooper bands themselves.69

America

Background

• As of 2019, there were 1,000,312 full-time state and local police officers in the United States,105 with a combined budget of $123 billion.10670
• ​​In fiscal year 2020ƒ Ninety agencies employed 136,815 full-time federal law enforcement officers, 3,742 (2.7%) of whom were employed by Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs).71
• About half (49%) of federal law enforcement officers worked for DHS in FY 2020. (See figure 1.) Almost a third (30%) worked for DOJ. ƒ The majority (90%) of federal law enforcement officers worked for agencies in the executive branch of government. ƒ The most common primary function of officers was criminal investigation or enforcement (68%), followed by corrections (15%) and police response or patrol (9%) (figure 2).72
• Customs and Border Protection (CBP) employed more federal law enforcement officers than any other agency (46,993) in FY 2020, accounting for more than a third (34%) of all federal law enforcement officers employed, including OIGs and agencies other than OIGs (table 1).73
• the Prison Policy Initiative’s findings on global incarceration rates in 2021: “Not only does the U.S. have the highest incarceration rate in the world; every single U.S. state incarcerates more people per capita than virtually any independent democracy on earth.”74

Partisan bias

• In this paper, we analyze nearly a quarter million officers,2 covering 98 of America’s 100 largest local agencies, and representing over one third of all local law enforcement nationwide, to examine the distribution and consequences of officers’ partisan affiliations.75
• Using our newly assembled data, we first demonstrate that relative to civilians in their jurisdictions, police officers are not only more likely to affiliate with the Republican Party, they also have higher household income, vote more often, and are more likely to be White.76
• Relative to Republican officers, Democratic officers make fewer stops, arrests, and use force less often, with the average reduction in the use of force rivaling the effect of deploying a Black (v. White) officer. These effects are substantial in magnitude, representing reductions equal to 14%, 12% and 24% of the citywide average volume of stops, arrests and uses of force among Republican officers per 100 shifts citywide, respectively.77
• Our results challenge purely institutional narratives of policing—consistent with recent studies of officer race, ethnicity and gender (Ba et al., 2021; Hoekstra and Sloan, 2020), officers of different political persuasions do not converge behaviorally, despite facing common recruiting experiences and training, and even when confronting similar conditions in the field.78
• Turning first to partisan affiliation, we find officers are more likely to be Republican than civilians in their jurisdictions: as a share of the voting-age population, we estimate 32% of officers are Republican (vs. 14% of civilians). Officers are also less likely to identify with the Democratic party than civilians (31% vs. 43%). Officers are also much more politically active than a representative group of civilians: 69% of officers voted in the 2020 general election (vs. 55% of civilians).
• In 2016, there were about 7,000 contributions from police. In 2020, there were more than 46,000, totaling more than $2.75 million.79
• There’s another interesting aspect to these contributions. As we explained above, we included contributions from people who identified their jobs as police or who identified their employers as police. So someone who works for a police department in a capacity that isn’t directly related to law enforcement is included here. And over the past 16 years, those employees have been less likely to give to Republicans than have those whose occupations are explicitly described as “police.”80
• Even with the group whose employer is “police,” though, there was an uptick in contributions to Republicans last year.81

Deepening partisanship

• First introduced in the 2010s, it quickly became the dominant popular symbol of the police, flown in pride, solidarity, memoriam, defiance. It was something more than that, too. Beyond a marker of professional affiliation, it was a symbol of personal identity, one that was not restricted to members of law enforcement — one that could even, eventually, be used against them.82
• The thin blue line would become the dominant metaphor for the police. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan said the thin blue line held back “a jungle which threatens to reclaim this clearing we call civilization”; in 1993, President Bill Clinton called it “nothing less than our buffer against chaos, against the worst impulses of this society.”83
• But Mr. Parker’s vision went beyond policing as a profession. In 1965, he told a civil rights commission investigating the Watts riots that “the police of this country, in my opinion, are the most downtrodden, oppressed, dislocated minority in America.”84
• But in late 2014, Andrew Jacob, a University of Michigan student, saw the opportunity to market a different version of the symbol.As the country was roiled by protests after decisions not to indict police officers for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, as well as the shooting of Tamir Rice, Mr. Jacob sketched out a black and white American flag with one blue stripe running just below the stars. Weeks later, after two New York police officers were killed by a man vowing to avenge Mr. Brown and Mr. Garner, he began producing and selling that flag and helped to catalyze a movement.85
• Blue Lives Matter is not just an expression of support and solidarity for the police, but a response to and rejection of Black Lives Matter. It suggests that it is not Black people whose lives are undervalued by society, but police officers.86
• This blossoming identity was an opportunity for any politician bold enough to take it. While trust in the police was dropping among Black and Hispanic Americans, it actually was rising for white Americans. Donald Trump was particularly well suited to take advantage of the rise of policing as identity politics. His entrance onto the political scene in the 1980s was his call for the reinstatement of the death penalty and less oversight of police. So it was not surprising that Mr. Trump’s run for the presidency was accompanied by calls for the police to be “tougher,” an expansion of stop and frisk, the death penalty for the killing of police officers, “extreme vetting” of refugees, a southern border wall, and a ban on immigration from particular countries with large Muslim populations.87
• I also find that both White Republican and White Democratic officers grew more biased between 2012 and 2020, a period characterized by the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the election of Donald Trump.88

Radicalization

• For example, about 10,000 current and former employees of the US Border Patrol are members of a Facebook group that has shared racist and anti-immigrant memes. The Oath Keepers boast that tens of thousands of its members are current and former law enforcement officers and military veterans. According to Michael German, a former FBI special agent who is now at the Brennan Center for Justice, the Bureau has consistently downplayed the threat of infiltration, casting it as mainly an operational impediment to specific criminal investigations and the safety of agents and informants, and relegating enforcement to state and local police forces that may themselves harbor far-right sympathies.889
• As of October 2020, German domestic intelligence had documented 1,400 cases of far-right extremism among soldiers, police officers, and intelligence officers over the course of three years, including twenty embedded in a platoon of the elite Special Forces Command antiterrorism unit, whose arsenal was missing 48,000 rounds of ammunition and 135 pounds of explosives. Also uncovered were target lists of 25,000 pro-refugee politicians drawn from police databases. In response the German government has enacted sweeping measures against racism and right-wing extremism and dedicated more than a billion euros over the next three years to interagency programs aimed at blunting right-wing threats and preventing radicalization.90
• From the stage, Mr. Trump claimed that while the Democratic ticket stood with “rioters and vandals,” he stood with “the heroes of law enforcement.”91
• To defend Americans from what he said was the conspiracy to steal the election and destroy the country, Mr. Trump suggested that his supporters — the police, the military, bikers, construction workers — would confront his enemies in the streets, rhetorically deputizing his allies as a law unto themselves: “They’re peaceful people, and antifa and all — they’d better hope they stay that way.”92
• Yet starting in 2016, candidate Trump wasted no time in doing just that, encouraging supporters with chants of “Lock her Up” when referring to political rival Hillary Clinton for failing to turn over e-mails.13293
• In the aftermath of Jan. 6, when the nation saw that flag held aloft by the rioters who attacked the Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone (he says they literally beat him with it), the thin blue line flag has become increasingly controversial among police officers. In 2023, the Los Angeles Police Department banned its public display on the job. In an email explaining his decision to his officers, Chief Michel Moore lamented that “extremist groups” had “hijacked” the flag.94
• It is no exaggeration to note that police officers often have the ability to make policing policy unilaterally, in real time (Lipsky, 1980).95

Trump’s first term

• Bharara concluded that Trump had been trying to woo him in case any prosecutorial issues came up involving him or his business—or in case he had any enemies he wanted investigated. Bharara later decided, “He would have called me up eventually and asked for something—I have zero doubt.”96
• “Mr. President,” Mike Dubke, the communications director, asked in astonishment, “did you just fire the director of the FBI?” “Yes, I did,” Trump said.97
• Over shrimp scampi and chicken parmesan, the president demanded a virtual oath from the FBI director. “I need loyalty,” Trump said. Trying to duck without a direct confrontation, Comey settled on: “You will always get honesty from me.” Trump reinterpreted his answer to be what he wanted to hear. “That’s what I want,” he replied, “honest loyalty.”[28]98
• “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Trump told him. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” As he did at their dinner, Comey again tried to dodge without directly contradicting the president. “I agree he is a good guy,” he said noncommittally.[31]99
• “Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal, we had that thing, you know,” Trump said on April 11, alluding to his Mafia-like loyalty request.[32] That was the last time Comey would speak with Trump.100101
• “Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal, we had that thing, you know,” Trump said on April 11, alluding to his Mafia-like loyalty request.[32] That was the last time Comey would speak with Trump.100101
• But holed up that weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, Trump watched replays of Comey’s testimony and decided with Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller to fire the FBI director. He returned to the White House on Monday, May 8, with a letter of dismissal drafted by Miller, who was not a lawyer. The rambling four-page letter encapsulated Trump’s rants about “the fabricated and politically-motivated allegations of a Trump-Russia relationship with respect to the 2016 Presidential Election.”[51]102
• As he would so many times, Trump then undercut his own staff by contradicting the cover story and admitting his real purpose to a pair of Russian officials who were visiting him in the Oval Office the day after Comey’s ouster—in and of itself a highly unusual audience that Trump had granted at Putin’s personal request. “I just fired the head of the FBI,” the president exulted to Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and Sergey Kislyak, the ambassador to Washington, in comments that quickly leaked. “He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”[56]103
• Trump further broadcast his real aims when he admitted to Lester Holt of NBC News the next night that he had the Russia investigation in mind when he fired Comey. “When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story,’ ” Trump said. Rosenstein’s memo, he confirmed, was not the instigation. “Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey,” Trump said.[57]104
• When Priebus, Bannon, and McGahn learned later that Trump kept the letter, they were stunned. They worried that Trump could use it to improperly influence Sessions, holding it over his head to get him to do whatever the president wanted. Priebus told the group that it amounted to a “shock collar” keeping the attorney general on a leash, an extraordinary comment for a White House chief of staff to make about his boss.[63]105
• In the spring of 2018, Barr took it upon himself to draft an unsolicited nineteen-page memo criticizing Robert Mueller’s “grossly irresponsible” investigation.106
• Trump later gave typically conflicting answers as to whether he examined the memo himself. “I read it afterwards,” he told The New York Times, only to contradict himself moments later by saying, “I didn’t see the memo. I never read the memo.”[11] Either way, it was enough to make Barr Trump’s first choice to replace Sessions.107
• At one point, McGahn told the prosecutors, Trump called him at home and instructed him to tell Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, that “Mueller has to go,” an order that McGahn chose to ignore and almost resigned over.[20] When that episode was later reported by The New York Times, Trump blamed the leak on that “lying bastard” McGahn and insisted that he had not said what his counsel had clearly heard him say.[21] Trump even demanded that McGahn write a false memo denying the Times story, itself an attempted cover-up that the lawyer refused to go along with.108
• On at least two occasions that never became public, Trump secretly tried to enlist members of his cabinet to help him force Sessions out as attorney general in order to assert control over the Mueller investigation and end the threat to his presidency.109
• Working late and into the weekend with Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who had participated in the firing of Comey that set the special counsel investigation in motion in the first place, Barr drafted a four-page letter to Congress interpreting the Mueller report in the best possible light for Trump.110
• Police officials in a Central Texas city refused to provide an escort for a Joe Biden campaign bus when it was surrounded by supporters of then-President Donald Trump on an interstate, an amended lawsuit filed over the 2020 encounter alleges.The updated lawsuit, filed Friday, included transcribed 911 audio recordings, The Texas Tribune reported. The suit alleges that law enforcement officers in San Marcos “privately laughed” and “joked about the victims and their distress” in the audio recordings.111
• Videos shared on social media from Oct. 30, 2020, show a group of cars and pickup trucks — many adorned with large Trump flags — riding alongside the campaign bus as it traveled from San Antonio to Austin. The “Trump Train” at times boxed in the bus. At one point, one of the pickups collided with an SUV behind the bus.112
• According to the transcriptions, when the Biden bus entered San Marcos’ jurisdiction, a New Braunfels 911 dispatcher tried to get San Marcos police to take over the escort that New Braunfels had provided along Interstate 35. A police corporal told a San Marcos dispatcher “we’re not going to escort a bus,” according to the documents.113
• On Sunday night, Trump retweeted a screenshot of the FBI statement, adding: “In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong. Instead, the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people!”114

Preparing for a second term

• Stephen Miller formed America First Legal, a public-interest law group that has primarily targeted “woke corporations,” school districts, and the Biden Administration.115
• Vought and Clark, meanwhile, have been advancing a formal rationale to break the long-standing expectation that the D.O.J. should operate independently of the President. The norm has been in place since Watergate, but they have argued that Trump could run the department like any other executive agency. Clark published his case on the Center for Renewing America’s Web site under the title “The U.S. Justice Department Is Not Independent.”116
• In early 2021, while Trump was fighting the results of the election, he wanted to make Clark the Attorney General, but the entire senior leadership of the department threatened to resign en masse. Now, if Clark gets a top job at the D.O.J., he is expected to use the position to try to remake the department as an instrument of the White House.117

Project 2025

• Large swaths of the department have been captured by an unaccountable bureaucratic managerial class and radical Left ideologues who have embedded themselves throughout its offices and components.118
• The DOJ engaged in conduct to chill the free speech rights of parents across the United States in response to supposed “threats” against school boards,8119
• The FBI harasses protesting parents (branded “domestic terrorists” by some partisans) while working diligently to shut down politically disfavored speech on the pretext of its being “misinformation” or “disinformation.”22120
• Conduct an immediate, comprehensive review of all major active FBI investigations and activities and terminate any that are unlawful or contrary to the national interest.30121
• Promptly and Properly Eliminating Lawless Policies, Investigations, and Cases, Including All Existing Consent Decrees.122
• PLCY should perform a complete inventory, analysis, and reevaluation of the department’s domestic terrorism lines of effort to ensure that they are consistent with the President’s priorities, congressional authorization, and Americans’ constitutional rights.123
• For several years, the FBI has recognized that the terrorist threat from domestic far-right extremists is on a par with that from jihadists. In a 2008 intelligence assessment released by WikiLeaks, it judged that “although individuals with military backgrounds constitute a small percentage of white supremacist extremists, they frequently occupy leadership roles within extremist groups and their involvement has the potential to reinvigorate an extremist movement suffering from loss of leadership and in-fighting during the post-9/11 period.”5124
• The leak of a 2009 Department of Homeland Security intelligence analysis on right-wing domestic extremism, which implicated predominantly Republican voters, enraged Republican members of Congress, who forced Secretary Janet Napolitano to quash the department’s work in that area.125

The beginning of the end

• But behavior that counted as anti-Trump could be little more than an instance of someone obeying the law or observing ordinary bureaucratic procedure. In one memo, in which a Trump loyalist argued against appointing a former U.S. Attorney who was up for a job at the Treasury Department, a list of infractions included an unwillingness to criminally investigate multiple women who had accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, according to Axios.126
• Christopher Wray, the director of the F.B.I., would be fired “right away,” he told me. Even though Trump nominated Wray to the position, the far right has blamed Wray for the agency’s role in arresting people involved in the insurrection. (As Vought told me, “Look at the F.B.I., look at the deep state. We have political prisoners in this country, regardless of what you think about January 6th.”) The other hope in getting rid of Wray is that, without him, the Administration could use the agency to target its political opponents.127