Julian Go, Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US

Julian Go, whose earlier work on colonialism included comparison of the British and American empires, has changed how we will look at the history of policing in the UK and the United States.He challenges the accepted origin stories of the London (1829) and New York Police (1845) as civil police, distinguished from the military by civilian control and prevention of disorder rather than reacting with maximum force.Go's understanding of colonial conflicts leads him to argue that policing in both places, as imperial metropolises, owes much of its origin and later development to military-style strategies and tactics for control of colonized non-white subjects.The colonial element in the first two police forces shaped later forces in both Britain and the United States.The military component of colonial policing contributed from the beginning to the militarization of domestic policing directed against racialized groups -whether the Irish of the middle 19th century, later Eastern and Southern European immigrants, or African Americans and African British people today. 2Earlier comparative studies of the development of the modern police emphasized differences between British and US policing.Go stresses their similarity through borrowings from colonial police practices in both places.These include personnel with colonial policing experience, attitudes toward the policed, weapons, and tactics such as surveillance methods, crowd control techniques and specialized counter-insurgency