Significance of The Police

Again throughout the narrative, the police (and by extension the entire legal system) is a primary means, if not THE primary means, for white society to utilize violence against the black body (individual or community) in order to sustain fear and maintain the Dream-defined status quo. The author not only suggests that this system has institutionalized and legalized such violence, but that it has also sustained both violence and racist attitudes / behaviors over the decades as fundamental aspects of American culture - and again, of the status-defined aspects of the "Dream".