Abstract
Tobias Winright may be the most prolific writer today in the area of Christian ethics and policing, and with good reason. W. is a “former corrections officer and reserve police officer who has taught ethics at two police academies” (140). Serve and Protect is a collection of his articles and essays on police ethics from 1995 to 2018. The book is organized quite simply: each previously published article or essay constitutes a standalone chapter in the volume. The book’s organization allows for two possible approaches to reading the text. Any given chapter could be read in isolation as an interesting treatment of its topic, be it police vs. military approaches to the “war on terror” and humanitarian intervention, or evaluations of our increasingly militarized local police departments. In this way, the essays are indispensable reading for college professors and their students brave enough to wrestle with policing and racial justice in their classrooms.
I recommend, however, that scholars read the book from start to finish with an eye to the evolution of W.’s thought on police ethics. W’s self-awareness is evident: “astute readers . . . will detect some development in my thinking over the past twenty-five years” (xv). He writes as a cogent witness to changing trends and issues in police ethics across decades that saw the emergence of international police actions (as opposed to military ones) as a tool of foreign policy; renewed and increased attention to police brutality, beginning with the police beating of Rodney King, and peaking today in the wake of dozens of incidents of extra-judicial shootings by police of unarmed people of color; and finally new discussions and debates on police reform, or even abolition.
Following along with W. as his thought develops is both enjoyable and enlightening. Early chapters reflect W.’s research foci from having studied under Hauerwas and Yoder. While it may seem that W.’s treatment of debates between pacifists and just war scholars are dated (some essays deal, for example, with whether the US response to 9/11 should be modeled on war/military or policing approaches), the continued salience of W.’s early work is demonstrable. Consider the recent resurgence of debates (from 2016 onward) about how the Vatican should approach active nonviolence and just war tradition. Moreover, as I write this review, the city of Kabul has fallen to the Taliban, urgently calling into question twenty years of US involvement there. W.’s early essays collected here remain relevant to these conversations today.
Another critical aspect of W.’s evolution that we see in reading the text as a whole is his own growing awareness of the intersection of his work on police ethics with his teaching on racial justice. In the foreword, Todd Whitmore notes that W. has taught a course called “Black Theology and Social Change” for over twenty years (x). On the one hand, W.’s earliest essays dealing with police ethics certainly do evince awareness of police brutality against Black Americans—for example, he sometimes takes the beating of Rodney King as a starting point or to highlight his concerns about unjust use of force. Nevertheless, there is a clear shift in themes and tone toward serious critique of systemic issues in American policing in the aftermath of the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, just minutes from W.’s St. Louis home. While early essays focus on how the just war tradition can and does serve as a restraining tool for police use of force, later ones observe, analyze, and critique “racism and the growing militarization of American police forces” (131). Finally, in the postscript, readers will find W. more critical than ever and more prophetic when it comes to police-related systemic injustice and violence against people of color in light of the murder of George Floyd. W. calls Floyd’s murder “demonic” and avers that it is related to those powers in the world that are devoted to death (155–56). Even so, W. acknowledges that he is still thinking through issues of abolition, and he is not yet convinced that it is the ethical way forward.
W. informs his readers that a new book on police ethics is forthcoming, and that it will wrestle more with contemporary calls for defunding and/or abolishing the police in the United States.