Militarizing Police in Complex Public Emergencies
Unconsidered complexities characterize police militarization. One such complexity, found in police militarization in transition societies of the Global South, stems from three opposing factors: the international community, national government, and local communities. The three groups' expectations of police in public emergencies are diverse and often competing, as exemplified by the case of Ebola in Sierra Leone. Each group had remarkable differences in how it conceptualized the security threat posed by the Ebola emergency. While the concern of the international community was mercantilist (the disease's impact on trade) the national government was primarily worried about regime survival. The ethnically divided local communities, however, viewed the police as protecting the position of dominant groups in the social order, and subordinate groups viewed the police as state agents sent to depopulate them, with the help of Ebola. The subordinate and infected groups put up a formidable resistance to police orders, resulting in nasty altercations. The intersection of competing factors radically redefined the boundaries of police duties and tactics, moving them from conventional policing to militarized policing. One question typically escapes analytical attention: what do police do when their primary roles and functions of fighting crime are challenged by policies enacted by a confluence of competing communities the international, national, and local communities? Arguably, the result is that it forces police officers into militarization, it securitizes public health, and it criminalizes subordinate groups. In the case of Ebola in Sierra Leone, not only did militarization do little to prevent the disease, but it shifted police officers' roles from being guardians to warriors.