In Violence Work Micol
Seigel offers a new theorization of the quintessential incarnation of
state power: the police. Foregrounding the interdependence of
policing, the state, and global capital, Seigel redefines policing as
“violence work,” showing how it is shaped by its role of
channeling state violence. She traces this dynamic by examining the
formation, demise, and aftermath of the U.S. State Department's
Office of Public Safety (OPS), which between 1962 and 1974
specialized in training police forces internationally. Officially a
civilian agency, the OPS grew and operated in military and
counterinsurgency realms in ways that transgressed the borders that
are meant to contain the police within civilian, public, and local
spheres. Tracing the career paths of OPS agents after their agency
closed, Seigel shows how police practices writ large are rooted in
violence—especially against people of color, the poor, and working
people—and how understanding police as a civilian, public, and
local institution legitimizes state violence while preserving the
myth of state benevolence.