Anthropology and the Police

https://www.dylankerrigan.com/opeds/anthropology-and-the-police

Any list of troubles in our local Police Service would include excessive use of force, blurred lines between police and military, an intense focus on policing the poor, failure to police the wealthy and white-collar crime in general, a lack of police accountability, street justice, regular fatalities in interactions between police and the public, low conviction rates, and internal corruption.

Applied anthropologists who historically have worked to improve justice systems around the world, are quick to point out the racist logic and prejudice against the poor embedded in many police cultures. For example, one of National Security Minister Gary Griffith’s favourite borrowed theories for reducing crime in T&T—the “Broken Windows” policing of documented racist Rudy Giuliani—is an already discredited idea understood academically in the US as a war on the poor and people of colour.