Reviews
Edge of the Knife: Police Violence in the Americas by Paul Chevigny, The New Press, 1995, 273 pp., $25 (cloth). Paul Chevigny's most recent book, Edge of the Knife, is the first study of police...
...Chevigny traces the evolution of the Paulista proto-military model of policing, showing how a force organized during military rule to fight "internal enemies"-i.e...
...Paul Chevigny's most recent book, Edge of the Knife, is the first study of police behavior to compare problems of police brutality and accountability in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean...
...And here are their methods-the use of "anonymous" civilian hitmen who go after military-designated "targets," and the disguised army agents who don civilian clothes, drive unmarked cars and use private residences as detention centers for torture and murder...
...The only difference lies in the definition of the "internal enemy:' Today's targets of police violence aren't political opponents of the regime...
...He also raises important questions regarding the definition-or lack thereof-of the role of the police...
...Chevigny compares and contrasts police violence in six major cities-New York and Los Angeles in the north, and Sdo Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Kingston, Jamaica in the south...
...Chevigny's book is important because it takes the issue of police impunity-for both crimes of corruption and crimes against human life-head on...
...with an introduction by Noam Chomsky, Common Courage Press, 1996, 118 pp., $12.95 (paper...
...Colombia: The Genocidal Democracy by Javier Giraldo, S.J...
...This indepth account of the political context in each country sets the stage for an exploration of one of his main arguments-that the structure and conduct of local police departments closely reflect the social, political and economic order of the society at large...
...Giraldo's book shows how successive governments have shielded themselves from responsibility for the criminal strategies that have resulted in the slaughter of almost 40,000 Colombian citizens since the early 1980s...
...Here are the chief protagonists-army officers, in league with landowners, politicians and drug mafias-arming and training death squads and private mercenary armies...
...The concluding section, based in large part on the judicial confessions of army deserters turned informants, unravels the criminal connections between the executive, the legislature and the military-secret links that ultimately connect the paramilitaries to official state policy...
...The one who gets beaten is poor," says one of Chevigny's interviewees from a shantytown in SHo Paulo...
...In the pages of this slim volume, Father Giraldo has brought American readers an essential, meticulously documented road map through the complexities and the horrors of Colombian state terrorism...
...The state has always hidden its hand behind the twin masks of weak democratic institutions and the uncontrollable violence of guerrillas and drug mafias...
...Giraldo's book strips away those masks...
...As his book dramatically documents, it is this unresolved tension that haunts police work globally...
...Director of the Commission of Peace and Justice, an umbrella organization representing over 55 Catholic religious orders throughout the country, Giraldo uses the Commission's unique resources to gather, analyze and disseminate the casualty count of Colombia's "dirty war...
...He vividly describes the social and political worlds within which the police operate in each location...
...From the first wave of terrorism in 1978 by hitmen of the underground "Triple A" (American Anti-Communist Action), to the paramilitary savagery raging today in over half the national territory, Colombia's "dirty war" has appeared to operate without authorship, strategy or objective...
...The white collar doesn't get beaten, he makes a deal...
...His analysis of the strategy and modus operandi of the "dirty war" cuts through the self-serving confusion...
...they are the poor, the black, the petty common criminals and the homeless children on the streets of Sdo Paulo...
...In his introduction to this courageous book by Javier Giraldo, Noam Chomsky strikes to the heart of the Colombian tragedy-the state's refusal to redistribute the land...
...It is necessary to impose silence and spread fear in countries like Colombia," he writes, "a country where the top 3% of the landed elite own over 70% of arable land, while 57% of the poorest farmers subsist on under 3...
...As such, it is a ground-breaking study of official violence and impunity in the Americas...
...Should police work, he asks, be solely dedicated to punishing criminals and restoring the "status order...
...The chapter on Sdo Paulo offers a compelling exploration of the intimacy of this connection between the dominant values of society and patterns of police behavior...
...political opponents-has survived a decade of democracy unchanged...
...The confusion," Chevigny says, "represents a basic tension in governance between order and liberty, a tension that governments do not really wish to resolve...
...A native Colombian and a Jesuit priest, Giraldo is an expert witness to the Colombian state's efforts to "impose silence and spread fear...
...With chilling clarity, Father Giraldo describes a vicious and extremely intelligent form of state terror...
...Or do the police have a responsibility to protect the rights of all citizens...
Vol. 30 • September 1996 • No. 2
