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… read about the business of police shootings.

If you’re surprised that someone is getting rich off of police killing civilians in the US, thank you for being a new subscriber — we hope you’ll enjoy Critical State. Anyway, someone is getting rich off of police killing civilians in the US. Lexipol [[link removed]], a California company run by former cops turned lawyers, writes policy manuals for police departments that promise to “mitigate risk” in use of force cases. Mitigate which risk, you ask? Mitigate the risk that the police will be sued if they shoot an unarmed civilian, of course. Their manuals, which are designed to give police as much leeway as possible when committing violence in the course of their work, are in force in nearly 20% of US police departments. Not only that, but when departments do get sued, Lexipol co-founder Bruce Praet is there to take a hefty legal fee to defend them using his own policy manual.

violent outcomes in peacemaking

One of the core ideas of UN peacekeeping operations is that they have a peace to keep. In theory, warring parties are supposed to have agreed to some form of ceasefire before inviting blue helmets in to make sure everything goes well. In an age of complex civil wars, however, peacekeepers are often brought into situations where one or more parties would actually prefer to keep fighting. A new article [[link removed]] in the European Journal of International Relations looks at what happens then.

When rebel groups have a military advantage over state forces, but are unable to press that advantage because of the presence of peacekeepers, they look to other methods to impose costs on the state. Often, the researchers found, those new methods include attacks on civilians that might not have taken place otherwise.

Conversely, weaker rebel groups that were using attacks against civilians as a way to undermine state power before the arrival of peacekeepers are likely to see their capability to carry out those attacks circumscribed by the peacekeeping mission.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] National security whistleblowers

Being a whistleblower is difficult in any context, but it is especially difficult when you are blowing the whistle on matters of national security. People who come forward with information about illegal activity in the secret apparatus of state power often find themselves subject to retaliation from that apparatus. According to a new article [[link removed]] in the Journal of Politics, it may be possible to design whistleblower laws that offer greater protection for people who come forward about wrongdoing in the security and intelligence communities, but it will require major reform.

The researchers take a game theoretical approach to explaining why national security whistleblowers are so hard to protect. The biggest issue, they argue, is that no one in power wants to spend the resources necessary to figure out if national security whistleblower claims are accurate. So long the veracity of their claims aren’t clearly established, it is easy for whistleblowers to be targeted for things like mishandling classified information.

To overcome this, the researchers contend, whistleblowing laws would have to allow for some sort of reviewing body external to the executive branch (a court, for example) to establish the veracity of whistleblower claims.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE If not police, what? Part I

One of the questions advocates of police abolition get asked most often is “if someone burgles my house, who will I call if there aren’t any police?” That specific question is absurd — few police anywhere in the world will actually get your stuff back after your house has been burgled — but the questions underneath it are worth contemplating (and abolitionists have spent a long time contemplating them). What does a world without police look like? How is the provision of day to day security organized when the state is not making an effort to determine who will and will not experience physical violence in a community? People all over the world and in various time periods have come up with answers to those questions, some more successful than others. This week and next on Deep Dive, we’ll look at recent research on alternate forms of local security provision in areas that, if you asked police, they would say are “under-policed.”

One modern site of alternative local security provision is the outskirts of many major cities, where population density is high but city services tend not to reach. A new article [[link removed]] in the journal African Affairs by researcher Kamau Wairuri tracks a particular instance of conflict about security provision under those conditions, in the urban periphery of Nairobi, Kenya. Wairuri’s account is particularly notable because it describes a conflict between a form of alternative security provision and an effort to increase police accountability in much the same way that police reform (as opposed to abolition) movements have urged around the world.

In 2013, a Kenyan police constable known popularly as Katitu shot and killed a young man named Kenneth Kimani in the Nairobi township of Githurai. Katitu claimed that Kimani was a thief, and that shooting the young man was all part of his police duties. Kimani’s family disputed the charges, and filed a complaint about the killing with Kenya’s Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA). The IPOA investigated and sided with the family, recommending that Katitu be prosecuted for murder. Shortly before his arrest in 2014, Katitu then shot and killed another man he accused of being a thief: Oscar Muchoki, Kimani’s older brother and an important witness against Katitu in his murder trial.

Katitu was arrested shortly thereafter, and Githurai erupted. Mass protests shut the neighborhood down, and eventually the paramilitary Special Service Unit was called in to brutally end the uprising. These protests, however, were not to oppose the police killing of Kimani and Oscar. Instead, they were in defense of Katitu, and an expression of outrage at the false but widely-held perception that he had been arrested for killing Oscar. The work of the IPOA, then a new organization in Kenya, had not led to an embrace of a new era of police accountability in Githurai. Rather, it heightened the tensions between the IPOA’s vision for policing and the reality of security provision for people in Githurai.

Wairuri spoke to 33 Githurai residents who observed or participated in the protests to better understand why they took place and what people hoped to achieve. What they told him illuminates a great deal about both alternative security provision and the problems faced by police reform efforts that see “police accountability” as their ultimate goal.

Wairuri’s interlocutors described a security situation in Githurai in which people relied on vigilantism to get redress for crimes. The state had crushed a local vigilante group in the years before Katitu’s killings, so people had turned to a kind of hybrid institution: police vigilantes. These were people employed as police who acted to resolve disputes and seek redress informally rather than through formal legal processes. In many cases, these informal forms of dispute resolution involved significant violence, but many people saw the violence as legitimate because it offers a method of quick, public redress that Kenyan courts cannot produce. Katitu was a leading police vigilante in Githurai, and when he was arrested, many saw it not as a victory for police accountability but as the removal of a quasi-state figure who was, if not accountable, at least responsive to their needs.

The protests, then, were not against the concept of police accountability but, as Wairuri writes, “against the interference of a state that has failed to protect people in the local security management systems that people see as effective and efficient.” The vision of police reform articulated by IPOA failed to engage with the forms of security provision actually present on the ground in Githurai. When police reform efforts attempt to enact an idealized form of policing without understanding the constellation of formal and informal institutions that produce most peoples’ security arrangements, they run the same risks that IPOA faced in the Katitu case. One virtue of the discourse around police abolition, as opposed to reform, is that it is rooted in the lived reality of existing security arrangements, many of which already function outside the structures of conventional policing.

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Daniel Ofman tracked [[link removed]] Russia’s cyber operations against Ukraine as it continues its military buildup along Ukraine’s border. Russia has been attacking Ukraine in cyberspace for years, but harassment has stepped up in recent weeks. Among the most recent operations, from January, involved taking over official Ukrainian government websites, rendering them unusable, and posting warnings like “be afraid” and “expect the worst.” Moscow denies responsibility for the attacks, but independent experts agree that the attacks are clearly coming from Russia. Ukrainian officials are working to improve the country’s cyber defenses as the chances of a war between the two countries grow higher.

Cybele Greenberg explained [[link removed]] how the United Nations could use its power to bring the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to heel. The IOC’s record on human rights, environmental protection, and corruption is disastrous, and is not improving during the current Beijing winter games. The IOC has faced very little accountability for its actions, but, Greenberg argued, the UN is in a position to demand reforms at the committee. The IOC, along with groups like the Red Cross and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, is one of the few organizations to have permanent observer status at the UN. Threatening that link could make the IOC reconsider some of its policies.

Patrick Winn and Muang Moe profiled [[link removed]] Ah Too, a Burmese insurgent fighting against the military dictatorship in his country. Before the military coup in Myanmar in early 2021, Ah Too worked at an engineering firm in Yangon, hoping to earn enough money and credibility to get an engineering job abroad. After the coup, however, Ah Too joined protests against the military and, when two of his friends were shot by an army sniper, took up arms against the government. Since fleeing Yangon and joining with a resistance group, Ah Too has become a bomb maker, applying his engineering skills to the conflict at hand.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL PLAYED

James Blunt’s interest [[link removed]] in being the protagonist [[link removed]] of history hasn’t dulled in 23 years.

The list of problems NFTs don’t solve is long, but colonialism [[link removed]] has to be high up there.

This [[link removed]] is one of those posts that’s sort of a joke but will look like a prediction within a decade.

Tune into Week 6 of the 2022 NFL season to see if they get to become [[link removed]] the Washington Captains!

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Critical State is written by Sam Ratner with Inkstick Media.

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With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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