WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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We begin with the theme song from the wildly popular 1953 television program, Dragnet; I’m sure most of you recognized it. I’ve chosen to begin with it because what we’ll hear today about policing in America (and as an import/export business) reveals the still prevalent attitudes borne of the Cold War and that challenges any distinction we might make between military intervention and police assistance.
But the bulk of what we’ll look at today centers on the era of the Vietnam War. We turn to the police crime dramas from the 1970s and start with the theme from the television show Mannix composed by “Lalo” Schifrin, an Argentine-born American pianist and composer probably best known for the “Theme from Mission: Impossible” and for his collaborations with Clint Eastwood particularly the Dirty Harry films.
Mannix aired from 1967 to 1975 on CBS and ran for eight seasons. The character Joe Mannix works for a large Los Angeles detective agency called Intertect. He also has a working relationship with the Los Angeles Police Department, often exchanging information with his contacts. Mannix is a regular guy but one fighting demons from his time with the U.S. Army during the Korean War. During the series, Mannix is also revealed to have worked as a mercenary in Latin America. The theme songs today come from programs that illustrate the plastic role of policing, or what today’s guest, Micol Seigel, calls violence work.
A key theme of our program today is “border crossing”–the way that the so-called municipal, public, police departments have always been much more than local institutions dedicated to the public safety of a town or city in a US state. “Local” officers would become part of a government agency, The Office of Public Safety (OPS), established in August of 1962 by President Kennedy. This agency offered “counterinsurgency,” or police-training, teams for U.S. “allies” and were sent to South Vietnam, Iran, Taiwan, Brazil, Uruguay and Greece. In the very famous photo to the right, Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, the South Vietnam Chief of National Police executes a handcuffed member of the Viet Cong. Loan would soon become the owner a pizzeria in Virginia where former OPS agents would often meet and talk (Seigel, 171).
In Violence Work, Seigel shows how the police put violence to work for the state; policing being the quintessential translation of state power. She highlights a number of fallacies or myths, about policing: that it is civilian and distinguishable from the military; that it is a public service rather than a private endeavor; and that it is locally based and municipally controlled. Policing is in fact the human-scale expression of the state. A key issue in all of this is the way the police serve to clear the way for the operations of the so-called free market making it clear that what we call private and what we call public are useful fictions for the operations of Empire and Capital. And now, Police Story, with Micol Seigel, on Interchange on WFHB.
GUEST
Micol Seigel is a Professor in the American Studies & History Departments at Indiana University in Bloomington, whose new book is Violence Work: State Power and the Limits of Police, published by Duke University Press.
RELATED
On Police Force (Interchange)
Police Training, “Nation-Building,” and Political Repression in Postcolonial South Korea by Jeremy Kuzmarov (Asia-Pacific Journal-Japan Focus, July 1, 2012.)
Police Aid and Political Will, US Policy in El Salvador and Honduras (1962 – 1987). Washington Office on Latin America. (pdf)
MUSIC
Television Theme Songs from Police programs
“Dragnet”
“Mannix”
“Hawaii Five-0”
“The Streets of San Francisco”
“Magnum P. I.”
“Barney Miller”
CREDITS
Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Executive Producer: Wes Martin
