Posted on 06/27/2014 6:05:36 PM PDT by RKBA Democrat
If there’s anything I know after serving the Boston Police Department for 27 years, it’s this: Good policing is all about trust.
This isn’t a particularly novel insight, but my time as a beat cop hammered it into me time and again. Yet it’s incredible how many police departments across the nation have lost sight of this in their rush to transform into something more akin to a standing army rather than a civilian police force safeguarding a democratic people.
Have no doubt, police in the United States are militarizing, and in many communities, particularly those of color, the message is being received loud and clear: “You are the enemy.” Police officers are increasingly arming themselves with military-grade equipment such as assault rifles, flashbang grenades, and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected, or MRAP, vehicles and dressing up in commando gear before using battering rams to burst into the homes of people who have not been charged with a crime. Perhaps more alarming is the fact that the Pentagon has played a huge role in this militarization by transferring its weapons of war to civilian police departments through its so-called 1033 program.
Many communities now look upon police as an occupying army, their streets more reminiscent of Baghdad or Kabul than a city in America. This besieged mentality created by the militarization of police has driven a pernicious wedge into the significant gains made under community- and problem-oriented policing initiatives dating from the late 1980s. The trusting relationships so many police officers painstakingly built within their communities have been eroded by the mindset of the warrior cop.
One of the more alarming trends in the overall militarization of police, which has accelerated since 9/11, is the use of Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT, teams for routine police work. According to the ACLU’s new report, “War Comes Home,” the majority of the SWAT raids it examined was to execute search warrants, usually in low-level drug investigations. The ACLU also found that many of the SWAT raids it studied used unjustifiably “violent tactics and equipment,” often in homes where children were known to be present.
The ACLU also found something far more worrisome but unfortunately not surprising. The use of SWAT teams disproportionately impacts people of color, particularly when the teams were deployed to execute a search warrant for a drug investigation. Of the cases the ACLU studied, when SWAT raids affected blacks and Latinos, 68 percent were for drug searches. But when SWAT raids affected whites, only 38 percent were for drug searches, even though whites use drugs at roughly the same rates as blacks and Latinos.
This discriminatory and excessive use of SWAT teams turns the criminal justice system on its head and eviscerates the presumption of innocence, which is the hallmark of American justice. People who have been charged with no crime aren’t only treated like they’re guilty; they’re made to endure a violent intrusion into their home based on the mere suspicion of low-level crimes. To the victims of unnecessary SWAT raids and their communities, the idea that police are there to serve and protect them becomes a bad joke.
This isn’t to say that the use of SWAT teams is never justified. I know better than most. I participated in one of the very first SWAT deployments at the Boston Police Department when a man who shot a police superintendent barricaded himself in an apartment. But this is the precise type of situation that the SWAT program was created for, not breaking down the door of people in the middle of the night with guns drawn in pursuit of drugs.
Militarized policing undermines the very notion of law enforcement in a democratic society. Rather than reassuring us that we are safe and out of harm’s way, it creates a pervasive sense that we are unsafe and in danger, sometimes from the police themselves. It’s not surprising then that the ACLU also discovered that the militarization of domestic law enforcement occurred without any input, direction, or oversight from affected communities and that law enforcement agencies’ records on acquisitions of military weapons, vehicles, and equipment were “virtually nonexistent.”
The situation, however, is far from being beyond hope or possible resolution. Not all police practitioners — including policy makers, administrators, managers, supervisors and line officers — endorse and support the militarization of America’s law enforcement agencies. Progressive police chiefs in Madison, Wisconsin, and Salt Lake City, Utah, for example, have been publicly critical of police militarization practices and initiatives.
If we want to roll back the militarization of our police forces, the ACLU offers many common sense recommendations, but two stand out as critical first steps. The first is that the use of paramilitary tactics should be restricted solely to situations where there is a true and verifiable emergency, such as a hostage or barricade situation. The second would require that police record and report all uses of paramilitary tactics, including a justification for the use of SWAT, as well as all injuries and property damage caused by the use of SWAT teams.
Our streets and communities aren’t warzones, but the creeping militarization of our police forces and the warrior mindset it creates has the feel of a self-fulfilling prophecy on the part of our nation’s law enforcement agencies.
The police use the WOD as an excuse for and for funding of their military toys.
I am afraid Obama is ramping up the Cops to be his Civilian Security Force. The Military won’t turn on the citizens but the Cops may. The Sheriffs and Deputies won’t turn either.
Excellent point.
I also don’t like the police penchant of referring to citizens as “civilians” —the term would only make sense if the police are the SAME as the military.
“You want to look around the world and see what a country really stands for, and what the word “civilization” really means? You need only look at one thing: the relationship of its police to its people.”
An astute comment. And applied to the US, it means that people by and large don’t want anything to do with them, don’t trust them, and are coming to hate them. Pretty much the same relationship they have with the political class come to think of it.
It’s truly sad. In my lifetime I’ve seen the situation go from one of mutual respect to what it is now.
Reading stuff like this makes me want to “shelter in place”.
That is stupid. The cops are not after users, they are after sellers, and blacks and latinos are sellers at a much higher rate than whites.
I agree with the main premise, that the police are getting too militarized, but making the point that there is good reason why blacks and latinos are getting plenty of attention from the cops doing low-level drug investigations.
A big problem is that police don’t walk a beat anymore, and thereby interact with law-abiding citizens. The only ‘civilians’ they see on the job are criminals and low-lifes, so have a false and ugly view of civilians.
“Iam afraid Obama is ramping up the Cops to be his Civilian Security Force. The Military won’t turn on the citizens but the Cops may. The Sheriffs and Deputies won’t turn either.”
We have history to look at. Look up the Vel d’Hiv incident.
The course was having a big "guests" tourney, and the cops were staking out the exit highways from the course for DUI. I drove up and tipped them the wink at the reception tent.
Scumbags.
Our members of the armed forces by design of the forefathers operate under a completely different law than civilian LEO's. The military is under the UCMJ and double jeopardy is allowed reaching into crimes against civilians or civilian jurisdictions. You screw up you will be punished and not just allowed to resign.
Military units operate in squads meaning someone is there to keep it honest. Cops no longer have ride along partners. I think they should return to a two man patrol of senior and junior officers. Senior Officer status should be designated as one having at least a ten year unblemished record as a patrol officer.
The mental profile of some cops is disturbing. Bad cops have always been among us. But up till the last decade or so they did not have weapons more powerful than civilians.
My late F.I.L. years ago was a career LEO serving on the THP, KCSO, and UT Police force in Tennessee. He was one of the worse of the worse. He once ran a county Penal Farm which his actions likely triggered an escape an infamous manhunt in the early 1960's in east Tennessee. He ran the place like it was hell. He ran his home like it was hell. He loved to inflict pain upon others. I can not imagine a sadist like him being given the firepower and Carte Blanche powers to act like Roman soldiers as being allowed today. The Blue Shield of silences kept his abuses from ever being known.
Cops need to go back to traditional rolls on traditional patrols. Go back to being a part of the community rather than detached from it as some sort of overlord.
SWAT Teams? OK fine. No automatic weapons except in a clear hostage situation. No more no knock raids except in a known hostage situation. Arrest should be encouraged to be done by uniformed officer where the subject is in plain sight. SWAT Teams should not be making routine raids. SWAT TEAMs again except in the case of hostage situations should be required to wear their patrol uniform.
I can go to a flea market and find a black tee shirt with AFT, FBI, etc written on it. A patrol uniform stands out and is recognizable to innocents of which cops should be protecting. Last thing. There is no excuse for WRONG HOUSE RAIDS. Do the darn police work. That means stake outs, watching the person you're after, and never, ever doing a raid on the word of some paid informant {AKA Junkie}. Many wrong house raids are cause by very sloppy police work in some cases I see it as criminal.
Warriors are not soldiers, someone said...
I was a police supporter, but don’t like them anymore. As far as I’m concerned they just write tickets to law abiding citizens to generate money, and do paperwork. The last ticket I got was for “running a red light”. This was at one of those red/green lights at freeway onramps that meter traffic onto the freeway. It was two lanes and both greens occur at the same time. I paused a moment to the car next to me go first, and was pulled over because the light had cycled back to red when I crossed the all important line.
So, courteous driving cost me $100, and I fought it in court. The a#%hole judge agreed the a#%hole cop was right. I crossed the line 1/4 second to late. Bulls&%t cops.
Not likely...
Considering nowadays they open up right in neighborhoods full of kids and innocents, shooting pets to death, which many times are in people’s yards, on their own property. This endangers everyone in the entire neighborhood...
This now occurs at a increasing frightening frequency.
There are people from Taxachusetts that actually believe that they’re not peasants...
it will continue.
this is all part of state dept’pub 7277, freedom from war. this is phase 2 to phase 3 in progress.
I agree with essentially all your suggestions. Unfortunately few if any will be implemented. So failing any reasonable chance of improvement, the next best option is to defund the police. Reduce their numbers to an absolute minimum and reduce the potential for bad end results.
I have little need for their “protection.”
I think it costs them 200-300 to repair a traffic sign that gets damaged by an unknown vehicle or person.
I'm just sayin'...
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