5 things you need to know about police militarization

On Friday, February 28th, at 9:30p EST, our new Fault Lines episode “Deadly Force: Arming America's Police" airs on Al Jazeera America. 

Fault Lines investigates how the flow of federal dollars and combat equipment is transforming US police departments into military-like forces.

We will have more from the episode in the coming week. And note, it repeats on Al Jazeera America on March 1, 2014, 5:30p ET, and premieres on Al Jazeera English on March 4, 2014.

Join us as we livetweet this episode Friday from our main Twitter account, @ajfaultlines

Without further ado, the background reading:

“How cops became soldiers: an interview with police militarization expert Radley Balko,” Motherboard, March 4, 2013

Since the 1960s, in response to a range of perceived threats, law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier. Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment—from bayonets and M-16 rifles to armored personnel carriers—American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop—armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.

Journalist Radley Balko: There's certainly a lot of overlap between the war on drugs and police militarization. But if we go back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were two trends developing simultaneously. The first was the development and spread of SWAT teams. Darryl Gates started the first SWAT team in L.A. in 1969. By 1975, there were 500 of them across the country. They were largely a reaction to riots, violent protest groups like the Black Panthers and Symbionese Liberation Army, and a couple mass shooting incidents, like the Texas clock tower massacre in 1966.

At the same time, Nixon was declaring an "all-out war on drugs." He was pushing policies like the no-knock raid, dehumanizing drug users and dealers, and sending federal agents to storm private homes on raids that were really more about headlines and photo-ops than diminishing the supply of illicit drugs.

But for the first decade or so after Gates invented them, SWAT teams were largely only used in emergency situations. There usually needed to be an immediate, deadly threat to send the SWAT guys. It wasn't until the early 1980s under Reagan that the two trends converged, and we started to see SWAT teams used on an almost daily basis—mostly to serve drug warrants.

“ACLU launches nationwide militarization investigation,” Huffington Post, March 6, 2013

[Criminologist Peter] Kraska estimates that total number of SWAT raids in America jumped from just a few hundred per year in the 1970s, to a few thousand by the early 1980s, to around 50,000 by the mid-2000s.

The vast majority of those raids are to serve warrants on people suspected of nonviolent drug crimes. Police forces were no longer reserving SWAT teams and paramilitary tactics for events that presented an immediate threat to the public. They were now using them mostly as an investigative tool in drug cases, creating violent confrontations with people suspected of nonviolent, consensual crimes.

It was during the Reagan administration that the SWAT-ification of America really began to accelerate. Reagan (and a compliant Congress) passed policies encouraging cooperation and mutual training between the military and police agencies. The president set up joint task forces in which domestic cops and soldiers worked together on anti-drug operations. And, with some help from Congress, he nudged the Pentagon to start loaning or even giving surplus military gear to law enforcement agencies. Subsequent administrations continued all of these policies—and a number of new ones.

“Rise of the warrior cop,” The Wall Street Journal, August 7, 2013

The acronym SWAT stands for Special Weapons and Tactics. Such police units are trained in methods similar to those used by the special forces in the military. They learn to break into homes with battering rams and to use incendiary devices called flashbang grenades, which are designed to blind and deafen anyone nearby. Their usual aim is to "clear" a building—that is, to remove any threats and distractions (including pets) and to subdue the occupants as quickly as possible.

“America’s police are looking more and more like the military,” The Guardian, October 7, 2013

A total of $4.2bn worth of equipment has been distributed by the Defense Department to municipal law enforcement agencies, with a record $546m in 2012 alone.

In the fine print of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 1997, the "1033 program" was born. It allows the Defense Department to donate surplus military equipment to local police forces.

Though the program's existed since the 1990s, it has expanded greatly in recent years, due, in part, to post-9/11 fears and sequestration budget cuts.

“Bringing in the big guns,” Harvard Political Review, November 27, 2013

In addition to creating another channel for government waste, DHS grants have given rise to what Balko calls the “police-industrial complex,” whereby defense contractors re-gear their production toward domestic law enforcement.

“We’ve gotten to the point where businesses rely on DHS grants for their own survival,” he said. “Companies that were once designing equipment for the battlefield are now designing it for the American streets.”

Among the corporate giants of this newly arisen “complex” is LENCO, which produces the now omnipresent Bearcat Armored Vehicle—a vicious looking contraption that has become de rigeur for rural and urban police departments alike. A visit to the company’s website reveals that—in addition to domestic law enforcement—Middle Eastern autocrats, presumably spooked by the so-called Arab Spring, have seen fit to acquire entire Bearcat fleets over the past year.”

Since the 1960s, in response to a range of perceived threats, law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier. Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment—from bayonets and M-16 rifles to armored personnel carriers—American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop—armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.