Police Militarization Is a Problem the Left and Right Can Agree About — and Solve

Prozyan said:

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The second factor, which I don't think I've seen mentioned here, is the increased terrorist funding police forces receive from the DHS. DHS is shelling out tons of funding to police departments. Anyone vaguely familiar with government budgets knows it is considered a sin to have a budget surplus at the end of the year, as this usually results in a budget cut the following year. So police departments have been buying all forms of body armor, weaponry, etc. After enough years, they have an arsenal of this stuff and can't justify further spending on it so they have find other things to spend in on. In roll the urban vehicles, etc....

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blacbird said:

Aside from the issue of physical armaments, another matter of concern is the militarization of the mindset of police now equipped with such weapons. Very few police forces undergo the training the military forces do in use and discipline of use of such weapons. In short, there are a lot of undertrained, underdisciplined cowboy cops out there that I'd rather not see driving around an APC brandishing a .50 cal. machine gun.

caw

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mccardey said:

That struck me as a really telling point. I'll bet for a lot of people it's quite ok - even comforting - to see this kind of protection on the street. It's protecting their interests after all. But I'll bet there is an entirely different view from a less privileged segment of society.
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Alessandra Kelley said:

Those morel hunters are vicious. It's a jungle out there.

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Prozyan said:

The North Hollywood Shootout is an anomaly and shouldn't be used as any sort of justification to increase the weaponry of the police force. Even as severely outgunned as the police were in that situation, they handled the job just fine.

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Armed only with their shotguns and 9 mm handguns, the officers went to a nearby gun shop, where employees broke out shotguns and rifles and more powerful ammunition.Officers faced what Williams said were armor-piercing, automatic rifles that could slice through a police-issue bulletproof vest 200 yards away.

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rugcat said:

Yes, the police did an excellent job under trying circumstances. But they really shouldn't have had to resort to this:

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patskywriter said:

Here in Durham NC, there have recently been some situations where local citizens have been shot by local police. The police chief always says that his officers were "following police department procedures." This statement serves as a conversation-ender—reporters can't seem to come up with anything when he says this. I called for the police procedures and policies to be made available online as they are in several USA cities. (I did this in my online newspaper's cover story this month—way before the Michael Brown case.)

If the citizens have no clue what procedures their local police are supposed to be following, how can they hold them accountable? I'm hoping that more people will call for their police departments to upload their policies and procedures. At the very least, we'll be able to become familiar with the rules they're supposed to be adhering to, not to mention our rights as citizens.

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milkweed said:

Ok back to demilitarizing our local police departments, I didn't even know they had been militarized.

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For some then the police have come too late to the notion that they are there to “protect” lives. “The law,” wrote James Baldwin, “is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less my torturer and my murderer.” Those who call for law and order now must understand that there is no order because men with badges have been acting lawlessly.

As I wrote after the riots in London three years ago: “Insisting on the criminality of those involved, as though that alone explains their motivations and the context is irrelevant, is fatuous. To stress criminality does not deny the political nature of what took place, it simply chooses to only partially describe it. They were looting, not shoplifting, and challenging the police for control of the streets, not stealing [policemen’s] hubcaps. When a group of people join forces to flout both law and social convention, they are acting politically.”
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People ask: what could violent protest possibly achieve? It is a good question. But it only has any validity if they also question the nature of the “peace” preceding it. Those who call for calm must question how calm anyone can be in the knowledge that their son, brother or lover could be shot in such a way.
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Resistance to occupation is often romanticised but never pretty. And Ferguson – a mostly black town under curfew in which the entire political power structure is white, with a militarised police force that killed a black child – was under occupation.
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Nobody in their right mind wants more violent protests. But nobody wants more Michael Browns either. And those two things – the violence of the state and the violence of the street – are connected. “A riot,” said Martin Luther King, “is the language of the unheard.” The people on the streets don’t donate thousands of dollars to anyone’s campaign. They don’t get a seat at any table where decisions are made or have the ear of the powerful. But with four black men killed by the police in the country in the last four weeks, they have a lot to say, and precious few avenues through which to say it. The question now is who’s listening.

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Alessandra Kelley said:

I think that police departments have been historically starved of funds and the support they need, especially as the economy has tanked, and that this influx of military-grade leftovers has been a half-baked fake solution, a distracting subsitution of violent toys and vigilante atmosphere instead of the real funding and support they actually need.

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Williebee said:

How much would it have cost to rebrand the body armor, I wonder? Lose the OD Green and the Camo and add reflectors and PD paint?

We're safer, we're protected, but we're still part of the community, rather than dragging in the imagery of an occupying force.

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It’s hard to date when the backlash began, or when it became mainstream, but 1989 is a good time to start. That was a hot year for the crack wars, not long before Washington Mayor Marion Barry was arrested with a pipe in the room, and the year Congress’ National Defense Authorization Act added Section 1208. The new NDAA language authorized the transfer of excess military equipment “suitable for use” in “counter-drug activities.”

In 1989, that meant almost anything. The first time many Americans realized that was in August 1992, when the ATF, FBI, Border Patrol, U.S. Marshals, Idaho National Guard, Idaho state police, and local police laid siege to Randy Weaver’s home in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, with assault weapons and night-vision goggles. The siege started with the deaths of Weaver’s son and one of the dogs, and the Weaver family would eventually settle for more than $3 million. But less than a year later, some of the same agencies (and some of the same agents, as Radley Balko points out in Rise of the Warrior Cop) raided David Koresh’s compound outside Waco, Texas, smashing the walls with tanks and shooting 350 rounds of tear gas inside.

Seventy-six people died. But Bill Clinton was in the White House.

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Don said:

I've oft said that had a Republican been in the White House, there might have been some civic reaction to Ruby Ridge and Waco. Ferguson is the ugly great-great-grandchild of Ruby Ridge and Waco.

I think we've seen the same thing dynamic out over the last several years, right up until Ferguson. Ferguson flipped a switch in some people's minds that remained untouched through countless Kathryn Johnstons and Sean Bells.

Can anyone explain why this particular incident lit the fuse?

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robjvargas said:

I'm OK with not bothering to find out. The fuse needed lit a long time ago. If this doesn't fizzle, we'll be a better nation for it.

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In the wake of the ongoing clashes in Ferguson, Mo., President Barack Obama said Monday that there would likely be bipartisan interest in re-examining the federal programs that help funnel military-grade equipment to local and state law enforcement.

"I think it's probably useful for us to review how the funding has gone, how local law enforcement has used grant dollars to make sure that what they're purchasing is stuff that they actually need," he said at a Monday press conference. "I think there will be some bipartisan interest in reexamining some of those programs."

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robeiae said:

Heh. Check out LA County in California on Don's link.

Also, Franklin County in Ohio. For starters...

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