16th book read of 2026.
How to Keep House While Drowning - KC Davis
Austin Kelmore
@austinkelmore.com
5.1K followers 187 following 6.5K posts
Unionizing the games industry one person at a time. Cofounder of @gameworkers.co.uk, @gameworkersolidarity.com, and @nogamesforgenocide.com. Game worker, rock climber, cat hugger based in Glasgow, Scotland. www.austinkelmore.com
![Police embody and exercise the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. That means that police rules necessarily authorize violence and grant police tremendous discretion to use it. For example, the Minneapolis Police Department's use of force policy, even after it was revamped in the wake of George Floyd's murder, still allows "[t]the amount and type of force that would be considered rational and logical to an 'objective' officer on the scene, supported by the facts and circumstances known to an officer at the time force was used."
Notice that the policy refers to the amount of force that is "necessary" -defined by a cop's perception of who needs to be put in their place, and how. Illustrating the futility of the new policy, a Minneapolis cop interpreted this to mean that it was necessary to shoot Amir Locke as he lay asleep under a blanket after barging into the apartment he was staying in, on a (supposedly banned) "no-knock" warrant that did not even name Locke.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:m2wtiwhflzv7ijhem7gimqqz/bafkreidy6pj3zo3p5nzvbc3pwyfzqus4t2xuqinkbta3w3m4n2ns6vxshi)
![The doctrine of police discretion argues that the work of law enforcement can only be carried out with preemptive blanket permission to discriminate, use violence, and criminalize as they see fit. As sociologist Brendan McQuade says, "Police must be unencumbered from anything that actually limits their power, capacity, reach, and violence." Likewise, because they cannot possibly respond to every single violation of law, cops also claim discretion to decide who and what presents the greatest threat at any given time, when or whether they should act, and how.
While Department of Justice consent decrees seek to promote "constitutional policing," there is very little in the way of legal limits that can actually be enforced. Most police violence is what New York Times columnist Charles Blow describes as "awful, but lawful." Contrary to the story we are told about the law acting as a check on police power, in fact, the law condones, facilitates, and promotes police power. As David Correia and Tyler Wall, authors of Violent Order: Essays on the Nature of Police, put it: "[P]olice officers are [the] law's violence workers. It is the violence of police ... that both makes and preserves law." As a result, there is little relief to be found in the law. Instead, the law justifies the broad license for violence afforded to police by appealing to the need for order.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:m2wtiwhflzv7ijhem7gimqqz/bafkreid6vfd3kgckhj354z2ffscqcya3tlqlschcvvq6dnjgiikaepzia4)
