It reinforces a general acceptance among officers of the use of any and all means of force available when confronted with real or perceived threats to officers. Another law passed in 1997 further streamlined the process. Terrorism should be tackled like any other crime – with tedious, old-fashioned police work. There have been brutal layoffs and pay-cuts. Whether you live in India or overseas, you can do it here. Summarizing their results in The Washington Post, the authors of the study wrote: “Even controlling for other possible factors in police violence (such as household income, overall and black population, violent-crime levels and drug use), more-militarized law enforcement agencies were associated with more civilians killed each year by police. The number of towns with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 with a SWAT team increased 157 percent between 1985 and 1996. All of that equipment then facilitated a dramatic rise in the number and use of paramilitary police units, more commonly known as SWAT teams. HuffPost is part of Verizon Media. Prohibition has been a tragic failure. Instead, we got a 10-year campaign of increasing militarization, constitution-abusing tactics, needless violence and heartache as the police used federal funds, equipment, and … The militarization of police forces is troubling for many reasons. It then charts how police militarization has exploded in the wake of U.S.-led post-9/11 wars, specifically examining A surplus of decommissioned military equipment and weapons has also found its way into domestic police forces. Behavioral scientist Denise Herd has studied the community effect of police violence. (2) After 9/11 two developments have fueled the default police reaction to political protest. For one thing, police aren’t soldiers and lack the training actual military personnel receive. The combination of the two has been a calamity. Instead, we got a 10-year campaign of increasing militarization, constitution-abusing tactics, needless violence and heartache as the police used federal funds, equipment, and training to ramp up the drug war. You have entered an incorrect email address! So has the War on Terror. In 2002, the seven police officers who serve the town of Jasper, Florida -- which had all of 2,000 people and hadn’t had a murder in more than a decade -- were each given a military-grade M-16 machine gun from the Pentagon transfer program, leading one Florida paper to run the headline, “Three Stoplights, Seven M-16s.” […]. Of course, the militarization of America’s police began much earlier than 9/11. We have seen this play out during the first week of protests following Floyd’s death in cities from Seattle to Flint to Washington, D.C. The Indian-American who will co-chair Biden’s Covid task force, Better than Netflix, torrents — Why Telegram is the new destination for movies, shows online. The need to address the escalation of police confrontations – both during protests and in individual encounters – was a focus of the last big push for police reform, after the killing of a unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. We need to prevent terrorist strikes, but we don’t need to fight a “war” on terror in order to keep Americans safe. The unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd after being pinned to the ground by the knee of a Minneapolis police officer has left parts of U.S. cities looking like a battle zone. Balko has other interesting details. In Richland County, South Carolina, Sheriff Leon Lott procured an M113A1 armored personnel carrier in 2008. The police have deployed a militarized response to what they accurately or inaccurately believe to be a threat to public order, private property, and their own safety. through its intensification after 9/11, demonstrating how today’s mine-resistant vehicles and tear gas emerge from a deep lineage of “militarized” policing. It recommended the implementation of training and policies that “emphasize de-escalation.” It also called on police to employ tactics during protests “designed to minimize the appearance of a military operation and avoid using provocative tactics and equipment that undermine civilian trust.”. The War on Terror is spilling over into the War on Drugs, and the civil liberties of ordinary Americans – not to mention the life and liberty of our neighbors south of the border, and people across the globe – are trampled on in the process. A study of police-involved deaths between 2012 and 2018 found that on average, police kill 2.8 men every day in the U.S. Facebook Twitter. It may be the most important 9/11 memorial you’ll read. Police militarization, the process in which law enforcement agencies have increased their arsenal of weapons and equipment to be deployed in an array of situations, began in earnest in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Peter Kraska, a criminologist at the University of Eastern Kentucky, has been studying this trend since the early 1980s. What is clear from the latest round of protest and response, is that despite efforts to promote de-escalation as a policy, police culture appears to be stuck in an “us vs. them” mentality. The militarization of police departments has been a feature of U.S. domestic law enforcement since the 9/11 attacks.What is clear from the latest round of protest and response, is that despite efforts to promote de-escalation as a policy, police culture appears to be stuck in an “us vs. them” mentality. In 2007, Clayton County, Georgia -- whose sheriff once complained that the drug war was being fought like Vietnam, and should instead be fought more like the D-Day invasion at Normandy -- got its own tank through the Pentagon's transfer program. I have seen, throughout my decades in law enforcement, that police culture tends to privilege the use of violent tactics and non-negotiable force over compromise, mediation, and peaceful conflict resolution. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. You may opt-out by. So too have police officers dressed in full riot gear and backed by an arsenal that any small military force would be proud of: armored vehicles, military-grade aircraft, rubber and wooden bullets, stun grenades, sound cannons and tear gas canisters. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. After all, the 9/11 terrorist attacks took place on specific police beats in specific police precincts. © 2020 Forbes Media LLC. Nearby Cobb County got its tank in 2008. Information about your device and internet connection, including your IP address, Browsing and search activity while using Verizon Media websites and apps. It goes on and on. Tom Nolan, Visiting Associate Professor of Sociology, Emmanuel College. Read the original article. In part, this is a response to new rules established in the PATRIOT Act. In the years that followed, domestic law enforcement in the United States began a strategic shift toward tactics and practices that employed militarized responses to even routine police activities. Find out more about how we use your information in our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy. Ltd. All rights reserved. Second, there … EY & Citi On The Importance Of Resilience And Innovation, Impact 50: Investors Seeking Profit — And Pushing For Change. Also read: Silence on race no longer an option, US brands struggle to market themselves, And there appears to be a correlation between militarization and police violence. What is clear from the latest round of protest and response is that despite efforts to promote de-escalation as a policy, police culture appears to be stuck in an “us vs. them” mentality. Finally, police are not waging an actual war. When a county goes from receiving no military equipment to $2,539,767 worth (the largest figure that went to one agency in our data), more than twice as many civilians are likely to die in that county the following year.”, And it isn’t just individuals who suffer. By the evidence of the last few days, a number of police departments have failed to heed the message. Police departments are also not the military, and may lack the discipline and oversight. The war on drugs now has its own arms race to contend with. The trauma from the video of George Floyd in clear distress while a uniformed officer knelt on his neck is evident in the reaction it has provoked. A 2017 study analyzed spending by police departments against police-involved fatalities. Sustaining journalism of this quality needs smart and thinking people like you to pay for it. Domestic police agencies also got bayonets, tanks, helicopters and even airplanes. As National Journal reported in 2000, in the first three years after the 1994 law alone, the Pentagon distributed 3,800 M-16s, 2,185 M-14s, 73 grenade launchers, and 112 armored personnel carriers to civilian police agencies across America. As with the case of George Floyd, it led to violent scenes in which protesters confronted militarized officers. Militarisation of US police since 9/11 makes it see protesters as ‘enemy’,... death of George Floyd after being pinned to the ground by the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, written on the policing of marginalized communities, think like soldiers and learn how to kill, police-involved deaths between 2012 and 2018, video of George Floyd in clear distress while a uniformed officer knelt on his neck, When Black lives are valued, property becomes worth saving, Few things tie Modi’s India and Imran’s Pakistan like their love-hate for foreign invasion, Live with bats or kill them? The vehicle moves on tank-like tracks, and features a belt-fed, turreted machine gun that fires .50-caliber rounds, a type of ammunition so powerful that even the military has restrictions on how it's used on the battlefield. Much of this was aided by the federal government, through the Defense Logistics Agency’s 1033 Program, which allows the transfer of military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, and the Homeland Security Grant Program, which gives police departments funding to buy military-grade weapons and vehicles. Just months after the Ferguson unrest, President Obama set up his Task Force on 21st Century Policing. The particularly callous attack on Thursday evening shocked a nation routinely used to grim murders and high tolls in a drugs war that has claimed more than 41,000 lives since Calderon launched a military crackdown in 2006. The Progressive Mike Kuhlenbeck 09/23/2020 The new study, “The Wars Are Here: How the United States’ Post-9/11 Wars Helped Militarize U.S. Police,” by the Costs of War project, argues that “today’s high level of police militarization is one of the cruel, domestic costs of recent American wars abroad.”
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