The chaos and violence that erupted in Ferguson, Missouri following the death of Michael Brown at the hands of police may have subsided, but the images of SWAT units in heavily armored vehicles firing “less-than-lethal” munitions at terrified people remain etched in our collective consciousness. To the average American, the Ferguson depicted on TV looked more akin to a third-world warzone than the American heartland.
“We rolled lighter than that in an actual warzone,” reporter Travis Waldron, a former U.S. soldier, tweeted in reaction to pictures of Ferguson police officers.
The events of Ferguson
After responding to a robbery report on the afternoon of Aug. 9, Officer Darren Wilson encountered 18-year-old Michael Brown walking down the street and shot him to death. There are conflicting accounts detailing what exactly happened: Wilson maintains that he was attacked and forced to act in self-defense, while several eyewitnesses have said that Brown was standing still with his hands up. What is undisputed, however, is that Brown was unarmed.
An independent autopsy requested by Brown’s family revealed that he had been shot at least six times, and that the nature of the wounds seemed to contradict Wilson’s story. Residents of the mostly black city of Ferguson held a vigil for Brown on Aug. 10, protesting the killing of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer. By Aug. 11 the situation had turned ugly. Police responded to the demonstrations in full riot gear, firing teargas and flashbangs at protesters and using intimidation tactics against journalists attempting to cover the situation. For the next week or so police continued to clash with demonstrators and reporters, using paramilitary tactics and a variety of military-grade weaponry. Arriving mainly via social media, the scenes from Ferguson quickly provoked outrage from across the media landscape and loud calls for law enforcement reform.
| Police Militarization Timeline
1965: Birth of the first SWAT Team in response Watts riots 1971: Richard Nixon declares War on Drugs 1982: Ronald Reagan vastly expanding War on Drugs; begins deploying SWAT team for routine drug busts 1990: National Defense Authorization Act passed, Section 1208 allows for transfer of military equipment to police specifically to aid in War on Drugs 1996: National Defense Authorization Act reauthorized. Section 1033 expands transfer of military equipment to police for general purposes 2001: George W. Bush launches War on Terror in reaction to September 11 attacks. Law enforcement becomes engaged in sustained military campaign |
Weaponized law enforcement
Americans were rightly shocked at the heavy-handed response by what seemed to be an absurdly over-equipped police force. Expressing their disbelief, many wondered aloud how it had come to this. The answer to their query is that this is the result of a process that has been unfolding over the past four decades.
In the mid-’60s, Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams were created and deployed for the first time in response to the Watts riots in Los Angeles. The 1970s first saw the appearance of the law enforcement-as-military-campaign paradigm when Richard Nixon declared “War on Drugs.” In the 1980s Ronald Reagan greatly expanded the War on Drugs, implementing the deployment of SWAT teams, which previously had only been used in emergency situations.
After the Cold War, congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act which contained specific language allowing for the transfer of surplus military equipment to police departments to aid specifically in the war on drugs. And an expanded version of the act was passed in 1996 that allowed for military equipment to be used for any purpose deemed necessary.
In the aftermath of the War on Terror, the paradigm became fully solidified—law enforcement would now be literally engaging in an open-ended military campaign, using military gear and military tactics.
War at home
The problem with the “war” model of law enforcement is that it basically undermines the idea of the police force as public servant, accountable to the community it serves.
“The gear and weapons and tanks are a problem. But I think a much deeper problem is the effect all of this war talk and battle rhetoric has had on policing as a profession,” Radley Balko, respected journalist and author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces,” said in a recent interview. “In much of the country today, police officers are psychologically isolated from the communities they serve. It’s all about ‘us vs. them.’ It’s really destructive.”
Under this model of law enforcement, police are an army fighting a zero sum campaign against an enemy in hostile territory. One need look no further for an illustration of this than the way in which white police officers tend to patrol neighborhoods of color. These are officers who, for the most part, don’t live in the communities they patrol. It’s a situation that has led to the lives of Michael Brown, Alex Nieto, Oscar Grant and countless others having been cut short by the very people who are supposed to be protecting and serving.
A June 2014 report by the ACLU titled “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing,” confirmed among other things that SWAT teams and the use of paramilitary tactics are in fact primarily deployed in communities of color. The report also concluded that the problem is systemic and thus reform must be systemic. So even if eventually there is justice for Brown or Nieto or whomever, the ALCU has found that “the problems of overly aggressive policing are cultural and cannot be solved by merely identifying a few “bad apples” or dismissing the problem as a few isolated incidents.”