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This post resonates with me, mainly because I also don't like the aesthetics of masked officers -- especially balaclava-style masks. This is despite the fact that I largely support ICE's activities.
While I share the ideal that law enforcement should strive to be so "kind and civil" as possible, I also recognize that this is just an aspirational sentiment. Ultimately, the laws need to be enforced, and that enforcement is often going to require violence -- sometimes deadly violence. So be it.
But balaclavas really rub me the wrong way -- and in a Chesterton's fence sort of way. Maybe it's just Western cultural chauvinism on my part, but it looks like what the bad guys wear. I associate the balaclava aesthetic with Eastern despotisms and the forces of Mordor. It's arguably something that you would wear when you are ashamed of your actions.
If I had to choose, I would rather see enforcement increase in harshness by several multiples without concealing the faces of the enforcers rather than undermine that norm.
How about motorcycle helmets? Full riot gear?
The gear doesn’t bother me very much. Officers who are particularly likely to be in dangerous situations should be armed and armored appropriately. I'd prefer that beat cops in peaceful neighborhoods not be stomping around with plate carriers and full-auto rifles, but I don't see anything like that on the near horizon.
Covering of the face and concealing of identity is what bothers me. I realize that this could make things personally more dangerous for the officers, either as a result of doxxing or in the form of retaliation from future administrations, but I don’t think it is too much to ask for us to demand that law enforcers be personally courageous and willing to face such threats (nor inappropriate to compensate them accordingly).
Concealing one’s face makes it easier to commit shameful or dishonorable actions, ranging from “arrest these men with no probable cause” all the way up to “shoot these men without a trial.” It makes it easier for cowards (who lack either physical or moral courage) to be enforcers. And it’s a genie that’s likely to be very difficult to stuff back into the bottle once it should become normalized.
Probably everyone will agree that the bulk of brave and righteous men belong to their own tribe, and that the enemy tribe disproportionately comprises cowardly snivelers and bootlickers who benefit from anonymity for accomplishing their evil deeds, and thereby conclude that agreeing to such a norm is advantageous for their tribe. That makes it a norm that we can probably all agree on — just as we can likely agree that in a dystopian totalitarian hellscape, the bad cops are probably wearing balaclavas.
You know, for all the common talk about how American cops are so militarized, I've been surprised on a few occasions in Europe, where just having the gendarmes or sometimes even actual troops standing around in public spaces (airports, tourist hotspots) in full kit with long guns is a weird vibe. Although we recently had national guardsmen on the NYC subways, didn't we?
Still there, that's "Empire Shield"
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Meh, they’re protecting themselves from the unvaccinated.
Joking aside, it’s also in response to another norm, which is “technological bookkeepers can unperson you at any time now or in the future if you are ever caught enforcing laws they don’t like”.
This wasn’t as much a problem 50 years ago, for obvious reasons, but it is today. And we can write legislation so that that doesn’t happen, but we haven’t done that yet, and we want to start enforcing the law right now.
So yeah, they need the masks.
Come on. Nobody will put ICE agents in jail for simply having acted as Trumps goons. That is a benefit of having a working legal system. If Trump used them as a death squad, things would look different.
They are simply wearing masks for the same reason some amateur porn actors wear masks, i.e. that they are aware that a significant fraction of the population consider the job they are doing broadly unethical, and would prefer to be still be treated as polite society by people with such sentiments.
There are plenty of occupations which are not well regarded. Factory farmer, international arms trader, yellow press journalist, gang member, health insurance executive. Working hard to fill Trump's deportation quotas is kinda similar. Some people will think you are scum, just like some people think that people who make a living from sex work are scum. But unlike the latter, the ICE goons will not even get debanked.
And a failure state of that system is "ceases to function because those who enforce the law are prevented from doing so by the mob". The Mexicans, and residents of other Latin American countries, are very well acquainted with this concept. So are the Italians, the Russians, and other Europeans from countries east of Germany to varying degrees.
The anti-ICE faction/mob has already done that for causes far more anodyne than "enforced the law", and this unites that cause far more than factory farmers. (International arms traders are sanctioned by both sides, yellow press journalists and gang members are core Blue tribe constituencies so they'll never be sanctioned, and health insurance executives are too lucrative to debank.)
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Seems like the root problem is the "technological bookkeepers can unperson you at any time" bit. Perhaps this admin should be focusing a little bit more on fixing the thing where the financial industry is secretly an unaccountable fourth branch of government.
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