THE GEOPOLITICS OF THE POLICE - FOUCAULT, DISCIPLINARY POWER AND THE TACTICS OF THE LOS-ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT

This paper uses the insights of Foucault to analyze the Los Angeles Po lice Department (LAPD) as an agency of discipline. It takes Foucault's injunction to study the 'how' of power seriously, using insights from ethnographic fieldwork with the Los Angeles Police Department to asse ss Foucault's general formulations concerning disciplinary power. The fieldwork reveals that the LAPD does indeed engage in a series of tech nologically and organizationally sophisticated practices to monitor an d control the populace. However, it also reveals the need to remember Foucault's more cautionary programmatics in analyzing an agency such a s the LAPD; dynamics both internal and external to the police organiza tion limit the reach of its surveillance capacities. The disciplinary network of the LAPD is much more restricted, complex and contradictory than a simplistic Foucauldian reading would suggest.