Presented on Thursday, October 10, 2024 at 10:30A

On January 6, 2021, a large group of people violently breached the U.S. Capitol Building, unified in their intent to halt the legal certification of the presidential election results. They broke through barricades, assaulted police officers, smashed windows, openly threatened elected representatives, ransacked offices, and caused over a million dollars in damage, numerous injuries, and several deaths. An extraordinary attack on American democracy, related to deep themes and elements of US political culture, it was an event of historic proportions.

However, one of the wake-up calls of the siege on the U.S. Capitol was the revelation that the extremists included many off-duty law enforcement officers, possibly assisted by on-duty personnel. This scenario raises serious concerns and underscores the fact that some extremists – and their beliefs – have made their way into the ranks of law enforcement and the corrections sector nationwide, and are explicit about their desires to recruit both current and former law enforcement officers. This is now forcing police chiefs, sheriffs, and others nationwide to reassess and escalate their efforts to identify and root out what has long been denied as a problem within the police profession.

The relationship between far-right extremism and law enforcement in the United States has a long and complicated history. This discussion considers how far-right extremism’s antigovernment ideology, in particular, represents an external threat to law enforcement officers, and examines law enforcement’s implicit and explicit support for far-right extremism, which creates an internal threat against the legitimacy of the profession.

What measures must be taken to root out staff with ties to white supremacist and far-right groups? What are the procedures and policies that should be put in place to encourage officers to speak out when they observe or know about another’s involvement? Are the unions a forum for assisting or a source of hindrance to officer accountability? Who should be tasked to root out those who may not actually be a part of the extremist groups but secretly subscribe to their ideologies? And what role must current law enforcement officers play in efforts to curtail what now appears to be a troubling pattern. Finally, policy initiatives are discussed to reduce these threats.