The Liberalism of Cop Watch, and an Alternative

This is the beginning of the documentary Cop Watch: These Streets are Watching (available via bittorrent — I'll be seeding for a week or so). Cop Watch grew out of the defence of homeless people in a number of American cities against police harassment by monitoring, documenting and filming any and all police interactions with the public. Protected by various American constitutional rights to observe and film the police, Cop Watch aims to ensure that the police stick to the law and to provide footage for defence of those arrested in court.

Radical Youth, in their latest issue of Outraged also advocated the use of Cop Watch here in Aotearoa, and it got me thinking about how useful this tactic actually is. Cop Watch certainly reduces the worst extremes of police brutality. The law allows them to get away with a lot of legitimate violence. It does, however, provide limited constraints on this violence and it seems that, based on the U.S. example, filming and documenting police behaviour makes them more likely to limit themselves just to legitimised violence. Cop Watch is also important in the way it encourages tendencies of community cohesiveness and organisation in opposition to the forces of the State. Grassroots and community organisation is important in any revolutionary project that aims at the eventual eclipse of this form of organisation over State-based organisation and direction from above. The fact that this form of organisation is in opposition to the State works well to crystallise notions of class division and opposes any perceived alignment of the interests of community and the State.

The tactic, however, is also seriously limited. It is, after all, merely attempting to get police to obey the law — laws which only serve the interests of the powerful and still allow for the legitimate violence of the police, breaking of pickets, abuse of protesters, harassment of the poor and Maori... I could go on. Cop Watch is at best a defence against the worst exigencies of the State. Equally as important, the discourse Cop Watch is part of is thoroughly liberal: it is rights-based, legalistic, assumes the law is essentially good, legitimises legal police violence, legitimises the justice system and seeks only a reformed State (a la the liberal utopia).

And watching the video, I really don't think I could merely video police violence without actually trying to do something to stop it.

The Polynesian Panthers had a variation on Cop Watch which I think overcomes these problems: they documented the police, but not to force them to adhere to the law, rather so that they could fight back. When police were carrying out early morning raids to seize immigrants deemed illegal, the Polynesian Panthers would react by carrying out early morning raids on the homes of police officers responsible. These tactics are in opposition to liberal discourses and recognise that even the legitimate violence of the State must be abolished.