Trump’s “I mean real rough” exudes the gleeful sadism of a cosplaying warrior.
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Are they guardians or warriors? It comes across as an innocuous distinction: Warriors can be guardians, guardians can be warriors.
But in our politically charged world of 2024, a world where one party openly embraces fascism and authoritarianism, the difference can mean life or death.
I first came across this semantic distinction in a YouTube clip displaying 45 seconds of the show The Rookie. The words didn’t really mean anything to me except for the odd emphasis the characters placed on them. So I did a little digging and quickly found that the screenwriters were working from real-world material.
Consider the federal government’s National Institute of Justice website. A 2015 article on their site said that since the 1960s, and especially post 9/11, the police have seen themselves as being at war with the people and viewed constitutional rights as an impediment to their mission. The National Police Association (NPA) responded with a screed condemning Barack Obama as one of the worst law-and-order presidents in history. The NPA added that the concept of “guardian” had no purpose except to drive out the word “warrior” from police culture.
As a criminal defense attorney for over a decade, I’ve seen some things, albeit admittedly from one side of the courtroom. From my experience, while I can’t speak to motivations, I can absolutely say that police often violate the Constitution.
I can say that because I’ve won motions where the evidence is suppressed because a judge found the search to be unconstitutional. In one instance, a police officer asked a suspect for permission to search his car after he had already handcuffed him. For reasons I hope are obvious, an officer can obtain consent to a search only when the suspect is free to say no and walk away. Otherwise the consent isn’t so much freely given as it is compelled by force.
There were drugs found but the case was dismissed, as the evidence was not allowed to be used in the case. While I said I can’t speak to anyone’s state of mind, I suspect that officer, at least after the hearing, saw the constitutional principle as an impediment, not a right to be guarded.
My first experience as a lawyer was during the Occupy movement. Someone planning a protest in Santa Ana, CA, asked me to come with him to meet with the district attorney and chief of police. Having passed the bar only a few weeks before, I said nothing for 40 minutes until the DA said she had no discretion in enforcing the camping ordinance. It was pointedly taught in law school that DAs have almost unlimited discretion so I spoke up and said so. The meeting ended immediately.
I learned that law enforcement can have no trouble lying to your face about their powers and do not like to be called out about it. If the chief of police and DA were acting as guardians, who were they guarding? If they were acting as warriors, who were they at war against?
Studies say that the guardian mindset leads to policing more focused on communication, while the warrior mindset leads to more of a reliance on physical force and coercion. That seems a fairly obvious correlation to me, and I am both troubled and fascinated by the response by police organizations defending and clinging to the warrior identity.
The Las Vegas Police Association posted an article on their website with a quote from Charles Webb, Ph.D., who said, “The police are our bodyguards, our hired fists, batons and guns. We pay them to do the dirty work of protecting us.”
This, too, is both troubling and intriguing. For those who regard the police as the servants of capital, the hired fists, batons, and guns form an image that is all too apt. Hopping into the wayback machine, in 1897, a sheriff, his deputies, and coal company police killed 19 striking miners after harassing their peaceful protest march earlier in the day. Known as the Lattimer Massacre, this was, of course, far from the only conflict between police and organized labor. That history of violent suppression underlies the view among some that police unions should not be considered labor unions at all.
Going back to the idea of “bodyguards, hired fists, batons and guns” — who hires bodyguards? Never the poor. Who has hired fists and guns? Not your average law-abiding Joe. It’s the rich and powerful who routinely have security teams and bodyguards.
Do the police exist to protect the poor from the rich or to protect the rich from the poor? It’s hardly a trivial question. It goes, in many ways, to the heart of our politics: When the IRS began to go after the wealthy, the Republican leadership called for defunding the IRS.
The language of a guardian implies protection. Such a mission may require resorting to force or violence, but its essence is protection achieved with the bare minimum of destruction or bloodshed. That is a living rebuke to the concept of a warrior. A warrior may or may not be a mercenary but the essence of a warrior’s mission is fighting; destruction and bloodshed are a feature, not a bug. Given that, it begs the question why police unions and organizations react so vehemently when the term “warrior” is questioned.
The war on drugs, under Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, led to the militarization of the police and the creation of SWAT teams. The war on terror has increased the flow of military equipment to city police and rural sheriffs’ departments. With military vehicles and weapons, it’s reasonable to expect a more military mindset.
If nothing else moves you in this election to support Harris, let it be that, unlike Trump, she is not openly fascist and does not see the police as warriors and the military as her private army.
And what do the 2024 presidential candidates have to say about policing in the US? Donald Trump wants to increase protections for abusive police and support violence against protesters. Less than two months before the election, he amplified his support, saying, “One rough hour, I mean real rough, the word will get out … and end [street crime] immediately.” It’s not hard to hear the sadistic glee in that “I mean real rough” — the warrior longing and bloodlust in one who notoriously answered his country’s call with five medical deferments.
In addition, because the fascistic implications can’t be denied, he has called for the use of the National Guard and the US military against “the enemy within.”
Kamala Harris, in early 2020 before becoming Joe Biden’s running mate, spoke about the importance of redirecting the scant resources of some cities away from the police departments.
Harris has since moved away from such talk of defunding, and definitely moved rightward on law-and-order issues. Nonetheless she still seems in favor of federal oversight to limit abusive police, in direct contrast to Trump’s stance.
It seems fair to regard her as at least an advocate for guardians and, unlike Trump, not besotted with the warrior mentality, real or faux. If nothing else moves you in this election to support Harris, let it be that, unlike Trump, she is not openly fascist and does not see the police as warriors and the military as her private army.
Doug Ecks is a lawyer and writer. He holds a JD from the University of California, Hastings and a BA in philosophy from California State University, Long Beach, Phi Beta Kappa. He also writes and performs comedy as Doug X.
