The Militarization of Local Police Departments in America

Summary

Dr. Schneider discusses the history of American police departments, their gradual militarization, and the ensuing consequences affecting Black communities and communities of color. Afterwards, she offers steps individuals can take to prevent the further militarization of their own local police department.

Video Transcript

Hello, I'm Paige Schneider, and I teach in the departments of Politics and Women's and Gender Studies. Today, I'm going to speak on the history of the militarization of local police departments in the United States. You've likely watched on TV, or perhaps even participated in one of the recent marches to protest police brutality against African Americans. If so, you may have noticed that some local law enforcement officials looked as though they were going into combat rather than providing for the safety of American citizens. When police are armed with military-grade weapons and combat vehicles to patrol lawful protests, it can contribute to the escalation of violence and the use of unnecessary force against Americans.

So how did we get here? Well, local law enforcement agencies began to receive surplus military equipment in large quantities after 1989, when Congress authorized the Department of Defense 1033 program. It was part of the national strategy to address the sale and use of illegal drugs. Otherwise known as the war on drugs. Surplus weapons include things such as flash-bang grenades that temporarily blind and deafen those targeted. It can often result in serious burns. Deadly assault weapons, like M-16s, and military vehicles, such as APCs (or armored personnel carriers) and M wrap vehicles (or mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles) that are usually used during wartime for roadside bombs.

Additional programs increased the supply of military weapons after 9/11. These programs had the intention to arm police to fight terror threats, but unfortunately, most military equipment is used by local law enforcement agencies against U.S. citizens during lawful protests or to conduct no-knock SWAT raids. Extremely aggressive and often violent, no-knock SWAT rates were originally created in the 60s as a tactical tool to assist police in addressing serious, but rare events such as a hostage crisis. However, after the 1980s police in communities around the country increasingly utilized SWAT deployments to serve arrest warrants to people in their homes often for nonviolent drug offenses. While the recent death of Briana Taylor in Louisville was not a SWAT team raid. The incident did share important characteristics with the majority of SWAT deployments.

In a 2014 investigation of SWAT deployments by the American Civil Liberties Union (or the ACLU), they found that police too frequently make mistakes in identifying the location of suspects. And sometimes those mistakes can be deadly. Deadly for innocent bystanders, such as 26-year-old African American woman Tarika Wilson who was killed when she and her 14-month-old son were shot in a botched raid in Ohio in 2008. Unfortunately, there are many more instances of individuals who were seriously harmed or killed in these SWAT incidents. The ACLU also found that SWAT teams were often deployed to residences, to serve warrants for nonviolent drug offenses, even when children were likely to be present in the home. Data show that communities of color are disproportionately harmed by the use of heavily militarized, no knocks SWAT raids. In fact, 61% of all people who were impacted by a SWAT raid deployed due to an arrest warrant for a drug crime were Black or Latinx, even though people identifying as Black or Latinx comprise less than 30% of the overall U.S. population. This is particularly egregious because we know and data show consistently that white people use and sell drugs at about the same rate or higher than people of color, yet communities in which white people are selling or using drugs, rarely experience SWAT deployments and the terror that these operations unleash.

It is not clear whose interests are served by a heavily militarized police force. Scholar Jonathan Mummolo, who studies the effects of the militarization of the police, concludes that the increase in military weapons to local police forces has failed to reduce crime, failed to keep police safer on the job. It does do one thing, however: it frays bonds of trust and creates deep and lasting wounds and police-community relations. Recent police excesses have led to calls to eliminate the pipeline of military surplus weapons to local law enforcement. If you want to act now to help stop the militarization of the police, contact your U.S. congressional representative and ask them to support senators, Brian Schatz and Rand Paul's bipartisan amendment to the National Defense Reauthorization Act that calls for an end to the 1033 military surplus program. Thank you.