Police Contradictions

The film, Let the Fire Burn, features police testimony from the MOVE Special Investigation Commission. Over the course of the film, the audience hears police officers, chiefs, and commissioners discuss the relationship between the Philadelphia Police Department and MOVE members as well as the events and conflicts that transpired between the two groups. During the police testimonies, three contradictions arise in the police’s framing and use of violence. The policemen’s perceptions of MOVE members as enemy combatants allowed the contradictions in the minds of the police and in their rhetoric to exist and allowed the police to wield and use the weapons that produced the catastrophic damage to Osage Avenue on May 13th, 1985.
In the framing and

the use of violence, members of the Philadelphia Police Department voiced a number of contradictions. First, they stated that the purpose of the police was to merely evict the MOVE members; yet, they trained and prepared for a violent confrontation that would require a small army of police officers. Second, the eviction was intended to remove the people from the house safely; yet, the police used tear gas, water hoses, bombs, fire, and nearly ten thousand rounds of ammunitions that ultimately killed nearly every single man, woman, and child in the house. Finally, the police stated that they had no “intention” of burning people alive or to use fire as a weapon; yet, they also stated that they were going to seize control of the house by any means possible. Thus, while the Philadelphia Police Department may have stated they intended to safety evict MOVE members, they prepared and entered the neighborhood as if they were entering a war zone.
The lens of racialized bodies allowed these contradictions to exist because, in the United States, police view black and brown people as enemy combatants. Darker-skinned bodies are inherently suspicious and threatening to police forces, thus the categorization as enemy combatants (Wall 1127; Kelley 17-18). When confronted with black and brown bodies, police respond with lethal force first (Kelley 18). This label and its violent implications are not limited to the bodies of black and brown people. As the home of enemy combatants, black and brown neighborhoods become war zones (Kelley 23). In these domestic “war zones,” police departments respond to urban disquiet with military might and strategy (Kelley 23).
To understand the contradictions in the Philadelphia Police Department’s framing and use of violence, one can once look to the classification of MOVE members as both civilian and enemy.

If the police department’s job, according to their own rhetoric, is to serve the community by ensuring the safety of civilians, the Philadelphia Police Department’s rhetoric about civilian safety is expected and/or ‘normal’ police rhetoric as it pertains to their role in the Philadelphia community. Police officers are not supposed to kill domestic civilians, but it is acceptable for the United States military to kill foreign civilians, as was the case during the Vietnam War—a war that some of the Philadelphia police officers had participated in and learned from. Although MOVE members were domestic civilians, they were also the enemy. As enemies, the MOVE community was to be met with the deadly tools available to the Philadelphia Police Department. Warring abroad and domestic policing should be thought of as connected in that the patterns, tools, and strategies used abroad are reflected and imitated domestically and vice versa (Wall 1123). If the police saw the MOVE community as a group of enemy combatants, then their framing of the standoff and their use of violence seems normal considering what US troops do to foreign enemies abroad. For example, the use of fire and bombs on foreign civilians had been common in the Vietnam War. A decade after the Vietnam War ended, the Philadelphia Police

Department used fire and a bomb on domestic civilians. The imagery of the violence that occurred on Osage Avenue gave spectators and police the impression that they were looking at a war zone or that they were back in Vietnam. While the police acknowledged that they were not supposed to harm the MOVE members because they were civilians, they also recognized that dealing with enemy combatants in a war zone provided a label and context in which the use of asymmetric and deadly force was both acceptable and necessary.
Addressing the first contradiction, the police understood the location of the MOVE household as both a war zone and a house, as demonstrated by the use of both “compound” and variations of “house” in the police testimonies over the course of the MOVE Special Investigation Commission. As such, recognizing the police’s perception of the dual nature of physical structure that MOVE members occupied as both a house in a civilian neighborhood and as a compound of suspects, the understanding of the situation as an eviction that warranted bringing military tools and strategy makes sense. Since the police would be entering a war zone, they had to bring effectively superior tools and strategies to the fight. Understanding Osage Avenue as a both war zone and as a domestic neighborhood created the contradiction of the desire for a safe eviction of American citizens with the combined use wartime tools such as bombs and fire.
To address the second contradiction, the water hose exemplifies the tension between civilian safety and violent means. The flooding of the house with water was supposed to encourage the inhabitants to come out, but at the same time the police officers mentioned that they had hoped that the entire structure would fall down due to water damage. If the structure had collapsed while the inhabitants were still inside, it most likely would have killed many of them. Since the inhabitants are civilians, such potential loss would have been less tolerable to the police; but, due to the police’s racialized lens, the inhabitants were also the enemy, so the loss of their lives would have been more acceptable to the police.
To address the third contradiction, the projected identity of the MOVE members as enemy combatants overwhelmed their real identity as civilians in the eyes of the Philadelphia Police Department.

The police stated they had no intention of harming the inhabitants through the use of fire as a weapon, which is plausible considering the bombs they dropped were not incendiary bombs. However, police personnel also stated very clearly that they were planning on winning the battle with the MOVE members by any means necessary. Any means necessary would include using fire as a deadly weapon. In the case of the MOVE standoff on May 13th, 1985, winning the battle was ultimately more important to the Philadelphia Police Department than the safety of the civilians due to the civilians’ status as the

enemy.
One may expect the racial counterfactual to be quite different from the reality of the deteriorated relationship between the Philadelphia Police Force and the MOVE community that ended in the MOVE bombing on Osage Avenue on May 13th, 1985. Maybe there would have not ever been a complaint against the organization because neighbors would have considered them to be a Christian community that perhaps leaned towards the eccentric. Or maybe the noise complaint that ended with six arrests and a dead child may have ended when a police officer kindly and considerately asked the residents how their day was and gave them a friendly reminder to keep the noise down. If MOVE had been an organization that was concerned with the white community’s issues, the group may not have been labeled as a terrorist group by local police forces and newscasters. If MOVE’s members had been white, the local community and police force may have considered their “riots” to be protests. Ultimately, if MOVE had been a white organization, every step from the presence and escalation of tensions between MOVE and the local community and police force to the bombing of a residence that left eleven dead and over 60 homes destroyed most likely would not have happened. There were many stages at which there would have been no tensions or the police could have de-escalated any tensions. There were many situations in which the police did not need to show up with guns pointed and the cavalry ready, expecting a shootout. But since MOVE was a black organization, and was therefore the enemy, every action by MOVE members, violent or not, led to the escalation of violence by the Philadelphia Police Department. Thus, we might be able to see why the police give white bodies the benefit of the doubt, while the same police meet black and brown bodies, regardless of their actions, with police brutality.
Due to the MOVE members’ race, the Philadelphia Police Department saw them as the enemy more than as civilians. As the enemy, the police did not prioritize MOVE members’ safety and viewed MOVE’s physical community as a war zone. At the same time, the police’s testimonials in front of the MOVE Special Investigation Commission revealed some remnants of the MOVE members’ civilian status as they admitted to thinking about the safety of the civilians by avoiding causalities and harm. In recognition of this relationship between police action and race in the case of the MOVE standoff and bombing, the most important counterfactual question becomes what would have changed had the MOVE community been white, not what would have changed had the MOVE community or the Philadelphia Police Department not acted or reacted in a certain way.