Speaking as someone who lives in one such country (even worse : we technically have a national *military *police), I admit to being somewhat bemused at the ooga-booga factor at play in the OP.
But then I remembered that Americans also often seem horrified at the idea of mandatory ID, which we also have and… “shrug what about them ?”, you know ?
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If anything, we need police that are more community based and not less. A big part of the current problem is police who have no connection to the areas they patrol, and basically act like an occupying army.
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Interesting. And, again, a bit bemusing to me - around here the first thing they do when you apply for the *gendarmerie *is ship you someplace else. This to avoid you having to police your family, your old buddies (or your old enemies) etc… which would either be awkward for you if you actually were dealing with them as a professional cop should, or would set up favoritism/harassment scenarios and the like.
Not sure how that works with regards to our local municipal police forces though.
Ok, so the National guard is, as you say, NOT a national police force. (Not questioning the accuracy of this, just trying to undstand!)
So how come they are the go to force for instances such as integrating schools, (back in the day, obviously!) the states wouldn’t abide so the government called in the National Guard to make it happen.
When they are sent in to restore order in places like Ferguson etc, how are they acting as anything other than a national police force?
They are only called out in emergencies. They are state militias and thus can supplement state police forces if necessary. It is illegal for the US army to be used for such a purpose:
While the troops are the same, the two examples you gave are very different. In Little Rock, AK, when Eisenhower called in the National Guard to ensure the safe integration of the schools, the NG had been federalized and were under the control of the US Government. Kennedy did the same thing in Alabama. The were used to enforce US Federal Court orders. Nearly all other uses of federalizing the NG are to send soldiers into combat overseas.
However, most cases of using the NG (as in Ferguson) they are under the control of the State Government. It’s a subtle but important distinction. To heighten the contrast, in Little Rock the governor first used the NG to oppose integration, but once the guard was federalized they no longer followed his orders.
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Is that a temporary thing, for that moment? Or permanent, for all time?
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Temporary…usually for some crisis, either civil or natural disaster type thing.
No, because they aren’t empowered to act nationally or for just anything, but instead have a more focused and vertical mission concerning whatever they got called up and empowered to act on. A national police force implies they have a broader mission both in scope and in the area they are empowered to act within.
I fail to see how nationalizing the municipal police forces will make anything different? They will still hire the same proportion of assholes. It wouldn’t change anything in of itself.
The justifications are pretty broad, meaning that most any instance of major civil unrest would allow the President to federalize the NG. They were federalized for integration in AK, MS, and AL, for riot control when MLK was assassinated and after the Rodney King verdict, Katrina, the Branch Davidians in Waco, and I’m sure a few others.
The more so as “gendarme” is also a (now rather obsolete) term for a country’s secret police/political police, as in, “Scratch a revolutionary and find a gendarme.” (Said of the Bolsheviks when they came to power in Russia and started censoring other parties’ media.) In that sense, the FBI (together with local PDs’ “Red Squads”) has at times been the American gendarmerie.
I’m not sure if it’s a nationwide phenomenon, but in Florida police officers tend to live “one town over” from the one they work for (as a matter of choice rather than employer policy.) That way they avoid many conflicts of interest and don’t run as great a risk of running into the guy they had to arrest last week while off duty and with the kids or whatever.