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Weapons of War On Our Streets: A Guide to the Militarization of America’s Police
The claim often heard from those attempting to pass more gun control legislation is that all they’re trying to do is get the “weapons of war off our streets,” but it’s simply untrue that “weapons of war” are available to the general public. You’d last about three minutes in a conventional war with an AR-15, even with one of the most aggressive builds you can get your hands on (that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for guerilla uprisings to defeat powerful enemies). The truth is that the only people with “weapons of war” on America’s streets are, increasingly, the police.
Thanks primarily to the Pentagon’s 1033 program which allows law enforcement agencies to get their hands on Department of Defense technology and the Bush-era War on Terror, American police have received a startling amount of heavy-duty, military-grade hardware. Between 1998 and 2014, the dollar value of military hardware sent to police departments skyrocketed from $9.4 million to $796.8 million.
And just as when “all you’ve got is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail”, militarized police have become more willing to use their new weapons when carrying out law enforcement tasks. For example, the number of SWAT raids in the United States grew dramatically from about 3,000 in 1980 to a whopping 50,000 SWAT raids in 2014, according to The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.
To say that the militarization of the police is nothing new is to ignore America’s recent history as well as the long-standing model of a peace officer. As the police have militarized and the Pentagon backs major players in Hollywood, the focus has shifted from one who keeps the peace to one who enforces the law – and that’s an important difference.
Continue reading Weapons of War On Our Streets: A Guide to the Militarization of America’s Police at Ammo.com.
Published in Policing
I disagree. There is a reason why the body cams from the four officers have not been released. They will show, if they have not gone to the place the Epstein cell videos have gone, that he continued to struggle and they were worried about drug frenzy. I am not unthinking supporter of police. I once testified for a patient of mine whose life was ruined by an accidental shooting by an LAPD officer.
Chauvin was no Boy Scout but there is hysteria based on inadequate information.
Terms like ‘weapons of war’ and ‘military hardware’ are far to vague to be useful here.
Worse, people’s perceptions of what is too military for police based on optics and aesthetics, not need and effectiveness.
For my own part, I don’t like seeing huge armored vehicles being used by the police. But I need to remind myself that I’m not the one being shot at – if I were, I’d probably kind of like a huge armored vehicle to stand behind.
What concerns me most is accountability. When a policeman acts, it is important to be able to identify him later – same with criminals btw – because he has to be held responsible for his actions. How this is to be maintained in our dox-happy world I don’t know.
Another quick thought on police budgets for military stuff; how much of the stuff they are buying is just the stuff everyone eventually gets access to at auction or military surplus stores? Body boards, desks, axes? And how much of it is boxes of gun parts or bullets for range practice?
Already in place and in use in Portland before the accusations there were made. The officers in question bore individual identifying markings, just not their names to protect them and their families against terrorsts doxxing them as they have Portland LEOs.
I didn’t intend to reference that incident but rather an ongoing concern that the more layers there are between police identity and the public, the more we trade confidence in them for fear of them. This is not meant as a criticism of the police, but as an acknowledgement of how things work.
Uniforms and badges are important. Kind of a minimum for police. Next up is utility belts with threatening items. Again, not criticism. They need cuffs, guns, radios, and nightsticks. Most of the rest of the stuff is just more of the same with different risk/effectiveness qualities (more options seem to mean more lawsuits though). I can’t object to a ballistic vest where applicable*. I can’t object to any of it as such. But once your officers are all in black, wearing face masks, carrying shields, clubs in hand and lined up in a wall, it’s not a surprise when the people they are facelessly staring down don’t see them as human beings anymore.
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* I can’t define this – that’s for each police department to assess.
I won’t even begin to entertain your point in the context where federal officers are contending with rioters for sixty straight nights. Anyone aware of the activities and the circumstances has lost any confidence in their LEOs to protect themselves under the prevailing rules of engagement, much less affected residents and employees. Identifiers on the uniforms that are memorizable and photographed allows for accountability through the agencies involved and through the court system while protecting officers and their homes and family. I think anyone who shows up armed or brandishes a weapon should be arrested and held. Anyone throwing missiles of any kind or holding lasers, arrested and held. And if it turns out they are being payed to commit crimes, roll that up the chain. None of this is the standard for a LEO on the street under civil order. We have to go back there. Two months of continuous rioting is an organized insurrection, not a policing image issue.
I’m not sure we’re in disagreement.
Amen, brother.
If the body cam video is ever released, you might want to re-evaluate your opinion. What is likely to happen, however, is that those tapes will disappear the same way the Epstein cell video did.