20 Oct Off the deep end with the RNC
Remember when the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary strolled about their daily rounds with no sidearms? It’s not that long ago. Until June 14, 1998, the RNC required members on normal duty to keep firearms locked in the trunks of their cruisers, deploying them only with permission from the chief.
What a difference 16 years makes. Take a gander at the latest RNC recruitment video, released just this month.
Writing in the Newfoundland and Labrador Independent, Jon Parsons decried the paramilitary fantasy evoked by the video:
This video, and the recruitment campaign of which it is a part, dangerously speaks to a particular kind of potential recruit.
The heroic, militaristic drumbeat, the culmination of the action in the forced penetration-insertion of a heavily armed tactical unit, the glorification of assault rifles and militaristic gear of different kinds, the constant “kerssshhhh” of the radios: the video is very much like a montage from a first-person-shooter video game or a scene in a badly written action movie. You don’t need to be a psychoanalyst to see the video is macho as hell.
Who does this recruitment video appeal to? Well, it appeals to dominators and sadists. It appeals to those who want to have power over others. It appeals to young men that get an erection from being in a position of authority. Enough said about that….
[T]he video does not have a single frame of a police officer talking to a citizen, and only one brief clip with citizens in the background at all. There is no interaction between the officers and the community – they only talk to each other, and even that limited communication is mediated by the radio or other forms of technology.
An anonymous video editor has already produced a satyrical critique, mashing up the recruitment video with the province’s sensuous tourism ads:
It’s sad to see a force that once policed on the basis of respect and community connectedness turn so swiftly to an approach so tone deaf to Newfoundland society. But as Parsons points out, the RNC approach reflects a North American trend toward militarization of local police forces (as previously by Contrarian discussed here and here).
The Atlantic this week gathered a staggering collection of 15 YouTube videos in which taser-happy police zap citizens (including one 10-year-old boy) with potentially lethal force for trivial violations. Parsons again:
[I]mmersion in the police point of view… is partly the reason police are given such free reign in society. But although citizens spend a good deal of time identifying with and trying to understand the police, do the police spend as much time identifying with and trying to understand the citizenry?
Less and less, it seems.
H/T: Emmy Alcorn