3 ms·

There’s a lot of sordid history around the police being used to keep certain ethnic groups in line (heavily but not just black people - one of the more interest

by acdha 2y ago

There’s a lot of sordid history around the police being used to keep certain ethnic groups in line (heavily but not just black people - one of the more interesting shifts was how Irish immigrants went from being over-policed to comprising large fractions of many forces), but then the war on drugs really hardened things into a relationship more like an occupying military force. That coincided with many cops joining white flight to the suburbs, meaning that they didn’t feel part of the cities where they served as had been the case a generation earlier, and the lurid tales of how violent & well-armed drug gangs were along with how dangerous “super predators” were lead to a lot of quasi-military weaponry and tactics becoming routine with quaint things like warrants being severely undermined. I say quasi-military because I’ve known multiple combat vets to express disbelief at the poor discipline shown by cops compared to the rules they had in places like Fallujah. The other big driver was the concept of qualified immunity and civil forfeiture. The modern form of the latter was invented during the drug war and formally embraced by the Reagan administration as a way to make elevated police presence self-funding, and that opened up a lot of room for abuse since it created huge conflicts of interest and the growth of qualified immunity removed the potential counterbalance of personal accountability.

hammock 2y ago
>people - one of the more interesting shifts was how Irish immigrants went from being over-policed to comprising large fractions of many forces Can you tell how this came to be?
- acdha 2y ago
  There are a couple of different things coming together but the big one is that while they were first considered degenerates, criminal, drunks, etc. they weren’t denied all of the legal status whiteness offered. As states removed the property requirements, allowing all white men to vote, the large groups of Irish immigrants voted cohesively enough to become very influential in a lot of cities – helpfully around the same time that booming cities needed professional police & fire departments, creating a ton of civil servant jobs which did not require formal certifications or uncommon skills. Once a few people from a tightly-knit community get in more will follow, and the Irish tended to be more insular as Catholics in a Protestant country.
- Tanoc 2y ago
  The persecution of the Irish was a leftover of the British's attempted cultural eradication of celtic and Catholic identities. British media often portrayed the Irish as violent and backwards, and the living conditions the British enforced often made the stereotypes seem true. After the Eiri Amach of 1798 and Irish Potato Famine of 1845 there were two waves of large immigration of Irish farmers, fisherman, and sailors to Boston and New York. These former farmers, fisherman, and sailors were extremely unfamiliar with many of the job types available in the heavily industrialized cities and struggled to find employment they couldn't form for themselves. As a result high levels of unemployment and street crime were part of American Irish life in cities in the 1850s and 1860s, leading to them being seen as troublemakers and being heavily targeted by city patrolmen. By the 1870s a large portion had left through Pennsylvania to settle in the Appalachian Mountains, and many more were pushing further west to work on the rail lines. As they were often paired up with the Chinese and German migrant workers they were distrusted and weren't easily integrated into heavily English, French, and Italian descended communities that settled along the developing railroads, continuing the reputation of the Irish being supposed troublemakers. However back in the major east coast cities the Irish who stayed were successfully carving out their own districts thanks to the enforced isolation from other ethnic groups, allowing them to form almost vertical control of the political process from individual home to district level. To ensure this control wasn't ceded as the cities grew and to prevent the return of the abuse of the 1850s, rising political institutions like Tammany Hall heavily encouraged first and second generation Irish immigrants to perform enforcement instead, leading to Irish descendants taking positions as everything from police officers to prosecutors. By the 1910s this push meant that as many as one in five police officers in New York and Boston was either an Irishman, the child of an Irishman, or the grandchild of an Irishman.
ashkankiani 2y ago
It's always Reagan. The poison seed of a human being that rotted America.

by acdha 2y ago

hammock 2y ago

>people - one of the more interesting shifts was how Irish immigrants went from being over-policed to comprising large fractions of many forces Can you tell how this came to be?

acdha 2y ago
There are a couple of different things coming together but the big one is that while they were first considered degenerates, criminal, drunks, etc. they weren’t denied all of the legal status whiteness offered. As states removed the property requirements, allowing all white men to vote, the large groups of Irish immigrants voted cohesively enough to become very influential in a lot of cities – helpfully around the same time that booming cities needed professional police & fire departments, creating a ton of civil servant jobs which did not require formal certifications or uncommon skills. Once a few people from a tightly-knit community get in more will follow, and the Irish tended to be more insular as Catholics in a Protestant country.
Tanoc 2y ago
The persecution of the Irish was a leftover of the British's attempted cultural eradication of celtic and Catholic identities. British media often portrayed the Irish as violent and backwards, and the living conditions the British enforced often made the stereotypes seem true. After the Eiri Amach of 1798 and Irish Potato Famine of 1845 there were two waves of large immigration of Irish farmers, fisherman, and sailors to Boston and New York. These former farmers, fisherman, and sailors were extremely unfamiliar with many of the job types available in the heavily industrialized cities and struggled to find employment they couldn't form for themselves. As a result high levels of unemployment and street crime were part of American Irish life in cities in the 1850s and 1860s, leading to them being seen as troublemakers and being heavily targeted by city patrolmen. By the 1870s a large portion had left through Pennsylvania to settle in the Appalachian Mountains, and many more were pushing further west to work on the rail lines. As they were often paired up with the Chinese and German migrant workers they were distrusted and weren't easily integrated into heavily English, French, and Italian descended communities that settled along the developing railroads, continuing the reputation of the Irish being supposed troublemakers. However back in the major east coast cities the Irish who stayed were successfully carving out their own districts thanks to the enforced isolation from other ethnic groups, allowing them to form almost vertical control of the political process from individual home to district level. To ensure this control wasn't ceded as the cities grew and to prevent the return of the abuse of the 1850s, rising political institutions like Tammany Hall heavily encouraged first and second generation Irish immigrants to perform enforcement instead, leading to Irish descendants taking positions as everything from police officers to prosecutors. By the 1910s this push meant that as many as one in five police officers in New York and Boston was either an Irishman, the child of an Irishman, or the grandchild of an Irishman.

ashkankiani 2y ago

It's always Reagan. The poison seed of a human being that rotted America.