The logistics of police power: Armored vehicles, colonial boomerangs, and strategies of circulation

Abstract

Images of police armored vehicles in Ferguson and Baltimore have been influential in a public conversation about the militarization of the police. However, recent critical and abolitionist work on policing rejects the concept of “militarization” for obscuring the longstanding histories and institutional connections between military and police apparatuses. By following the transfers of armored vehicles to police, this article illuminates the logistical pathways that connect colonial warfare and domestic policing, adding an account of the material composition of police power to the historical work of critical and abolitionist thinkers. The article proceeds through a critical reading of records of the Defense Logistics Agency, tracking the transfer of surplus armored vehicles to the police. Designated as “high-visibility property” by the Defense Logistics Agency, these vehicles testify to the materiality of police power. The article then tracks the visibility and materiality of these vehicles as they are deployed in urban and suburban spaces and considers their unique capacity to suppress the democratic energies of crowds. Tracking the armored vehicle provides a way to ask how the rigid lines of fortified urban space are organized into mobile vectors and where ongoing processes of colonization enter these spatial processes.

Analysis of the Position of the Tactical Vehicle Defense Industry on the National Defense Development in a Logistics Perspective

“…The use of tactical vehicles is part of the elements of operations both by TNI troops and related institutions in handling threats. In terms of needs, each institution has its specifications for the needs of its tactical vehicles (Denman, 2020). Increasing the synergy between the TNI, POLRI, and related institutions for dealing with terrorism is needed.…”

“…The ability of tactical vehicles is an increase in mobility and maneuverability, which is theoretically or practically important in distributing logistics to provide support in war or non-war military operations (Li et al, 2021). Light tactical vehicles have a function in law enforcement, both in the implementation of crowd control, special operations in urban areas, fast operations, and others by police agencies (Denman, 2020).…”

Distribution, dis-sumption and dis-appointment: The negative geographies of city logistics

“…In the military context, the focus of retrograde is the financial loss and potential danger posed by what is left behind. Yet what is withdrawn can also, through transfers of assets to civilian policing, for instance, feed-back to shape violence on the domestic stage (Denman, 2020). In a more quotidian sense, attention to retrograde logistics allows us to conceptualise the voids produced through logistics – empty shipping containers, say (Neilson, 2015) – beyond the supply-chain and its ‘wastage’.…”

Police and policing in geography: From methods, to theory, to praxis

“…While the materiality of police power certainly continues to be put on display in menacing fashion (Denman, 2020;Derickson, 2017;Neocleous, 2014;Seigel, 2018;Wall, 2016), and structural concerns are certainly part of the picture of policing that needs to be presented to the public still on the fence regarding defunding and abolition efforts, including issues of policing's embeddedness in racial capitalism, carcerality, and "surplus masculinity" (Cowen & Siciliano, 2011;Shabazz, 2009), it is the experiences of people confronted with daily indignities that need to be listened to and reported (Cahill et al, 2019). Therefore, geographers might stand to become even more adept at putting lived experience into conversation with critical and radical theory, thereby enabling would-be scholars' ability to inform the work on police and prison abolition through praxis.…”