One of the important themes in contemporary global issues is police violence directed against ethnic minorities in resource-rich and industrially underdeveloped border zones and conflict areas. This study explores how Giorgio Agamben’s concept of the state of exception throws new light on arbitrary killings enacted by police and security forces. We draw on narrative vignettes based on the first author’s experience in a national security organization in the border zone of Assam in India to identify three indistinguishable organizational thresholds: ordinary/extraordinary, potentiality/actuality, and celebration/intimidation, which blur the boundaries between legal and extra-legal violence. The narrative account indicates that organizational enactments within state security agencies enabling arbitrary violence include the demonization of minorities, proliferation of security agencies, emergence of new organizational forms that dilute accountability, informal celebrations of violence, construction of fictional narratives of gallantry, awards to personnel committing arbitrary killings, and the institutional disempowerment of resistors. These enactments operate within the indistinguishable organizational thresholds, entrenching the normalization of state violence. We show that the narrative vignettes are productive in revealing the complex interplay between individual experiences, organizational practices, and broader structures of the state in the context of arbitrary killings.