Radley Balko, who has spent his career examining police policy and law-enforcement mission creep, elucidates the latest authoritarian trolling from the White House:
Donald Trump says he wants to “unleash” the police.
The [latest executive order] is more virtue signaling than policy — more an expression of Trump’s mood than a serious proposal. And, when it comes to conventional crime, Trump’s mood is right where it’s always been: fearful, demagogic, and perpetually stuck in 1988.
The key term in the executive order is unleash, and it’s worth delving into what exaclty he means when he uses it. The literal definition is to remove from a restraint. In the context of law enforcement, it conjures images of cops siccing police dogs on suspects and protesters. Metaphorically, we tend to associate the word with starker imagery: we unleash fury, wrath, and retribution. Trump wants to project both.
He believes in projecting strength, and believes strong leaders demonstrate strength with violence. This is why he has often suggested that police officers will attack his enemies if called upon, and why the Capitol Police who defended Congress from his supporters received so much of MAGA’s wrath.
Yet you can’t unleash something that has never been restrained in the first place. And in the U.S., the police have never been restrained.
In other words, this version of reality in which police officers are hamstrung by overly restrictive rules, activist judges, and woke prosecutors only really exists in Donald Trump’s mind, and in the minds of his followers.
In the end, Donald Trump doesn’t really want to unleash the police. He just wants to be sure he’s the one holding the lead.
I mean, you can't have an authoritarian police state without balaclavas, can you?
