Do government statements affect the institutionalisation of democratic policing practices? This article examines newspaper coverage of three major incidents of police violence in Argentina, finding that state actors adopt differing positions towards this use of force in their reported public statements. Government officials oscillate between denying the occurrence of police violence, justifying such police action and absolving themselves of responsibility. This inconsistency contributes to the persistence of police violence. While institutional reforms aimed at changing police practice are important, in addition state actors must maintain a clear and relatively consistent discourse in favour of democratic policing. State discourses can affect policy outcomes by holding police verbally accountable to minimum standards of democratic policing.
State discourses can reveal the degree of commitment state actors have to democratic policing. They suggest the level of state support police officers are likely to receive if they comply with or ignore new policies and laws aimed at changing their practices.(This support is important, particularly as in Argentina compliance with the law has traditionally been selective.) The media respond and contribute to society’s understanding of the level of police violence that is considered tolerable.
The events of police repression examined are:
- Repression of protest in December 2001, at the height of the economic crisis and the end of the presidency of Fernando De la Rúa
- Repression of protesters on Pueyrredón Bridge in June 2002, as the economic crisis continued under President Eduardo Duhalde
- Repression of a protest in the province of Neuquén in April 2007, during President Néstor Kirchner’s administration.
In their public statements responding to these dramatic acts of police violence, government officials oscillate between three principal positions. First, state actors ignore acts of police violence, arguing that the problem simply does not exist. Second, they argue that police violence can be justified because the police (and sometimes the nation) face a serious threat from an ‘enemy within’ (usually the poor, especially if they are organised). When the first two arguments are not feasible, state actors will contend that the police are responsible for their choice to use violence; the government has no role in this choice.
- 2001: ‘Frames’ used in public statements include an approach that can be summarised as: the role of the police is to decide how to combat crime and, when faced with the ‘enemy’, any level of violence can be justified. By claiming that they lack control over individual police officers, some officials provided implicit support for violent police practices.
- 2002: State actors (under a new president and different political party) repeated the message that the role of the police in a democracy is to defend democracy using high levels of violence against social protest (by especially poor people).
- 2007: Provincial state actors framed events similarly, denying responsibility for the actions of individual police officers, and suggesting that the violence used may have been justified due to the subversive groups they were confronting. In contrast, other state actors took the opportunity to blame the provincial government and frame the incident in terms of what is acceptable for democratic policing.
The high profile of these three events allows for a comparative glimpse into the vision state actors have for the role of the police in a democracy and the degree to which police are held accountable for their actions through state discourses. Without relatively consistent state discourses that articulate a clear democratic role for the police, an important level of police accountability is missing.
