GateHouse Media
June 5, 2020
When people demanded, “Get the weapons of war off America’s
streets” they were talking about AR-15s and other military-grade weapons in the
hands of criminals. Today that demand is targeted at police.
Since the late 1990s, the Federal 1033 Program allowed local
law enforcement agencies to get their hands on all sorts of military hardware.
In 2014, America saw firsthand the use of military equipment
in local law enforcement. Since Michael Brown’s killing in Ferguson, Missouri,
local law enforcement agencies have received more than $850 million worth of
equipment through the Department of Defense, according to BuzzFeed News.
The 1033 Program provides things like heavily armored
personnel carriers, aircraft, ammunition and other military equipment. The same
military equipment we see every evening on the news in Minneapolis, New York
City, Atlanta and Philadelphia to name a few.
During the protests in Ferguson following Brown’s death,
Paul Szoldra - a former Iraqi war veteran - described what he saw in
photographs of the responding police.
“We are shown a heavily armed SWAT team. They have
short-barreled 5.56-mm rifles ... with scopes that can accurately hit a target
out to 500 meters. On their side they carry pistols. On their front, over their
body armor, they carry at least four to six extra magazines, loaded with 30
rounds each,” Szoldra wrote in Business Insider.
He continued, “They wear green tops, and pants fashioned
after the U.S. Marine Corps MARPAT camouflage pattern. And they stand in front
of a massive uparmored truck called a Bearcat, similar in look to a
mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle.”
The militarization of the police is not unique to big
incidents in big cities. In 2014, Eastern Kentucky University professor Dr.
Peter Kraska testified before a congressional committee that the line between
police and military is quickly blurring.
In the mid-1980s, one-third of police departments had SWAT
teams, Kraska told the Louisville Courier-Journal. Now more than 80% of all
police departments have a SWAT team. The number of SWAT deployments skyrocketed
from 3,000 a year in the 1980s to an estimated 60,000 annually.
Though tactical raids are commonly associated with police
response to potentially violent situations, an ACLU report found that, “only a
small handful of deployments - 7% - were for hostage, barricade or active
shooter scenarios.” According to the report, more than 60% of deployments were
to search for drugs or for serving warrants on individual residences.
Local police departments have welcomed surplus military
equipment from the Pentagon. Some local police departments are so eager to get
free surplus gear they have made an investment in keeping the military
equipment flowing. Law enforcement unions or police departments have spent
millions lobbying Congress to keep the surplus program in place. In fact, since
2007 the National FOP spends about $220,000 a year on lobbying efforts,
according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
In 2015, President Barack Obama issued an executive order
limiting the availability of military-grade equipment to local police
departments. Seven different bills in the House and Senate entitled “Stop
Militarizing Law Enforcement Act” have never been voted upon. In 2017,
President Donald Trump overturned Obama’s executive order curtailing the 1033
Program.
A study published in 2018 by Jonathan Mummolo, an assistant
professor at Princeton University, found that militarized policing is
ineffective in decreasing crime and protecting police, and may actually weaken
the public’s image of the police.
Mummulo wrote, “The routine use of militarized police
tactics by local agencies threatens to further the historic tensions between
marginalized groups and the state with no detectable public safety benefit.”
The study was prophetic. Trump’s call for military
intervention in America’s cities and towns is horrifying, but for many, the
“military,” in the form of local police with military equipment and military
tactics, has already arrived.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010″ was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter at @MatthewTMangino.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010″ was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter at @MatthewTMangino.
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