Summary: Today we look at changes in American law enforcement, another aspect of the New America rising around us. We have been slow to see this, despite increasingly loud warnings during the past 2 decades. Now that the evidence has become too loud to ignore, many American respond with active denial. It’s a test of our ability to see the world and respond to it. No republic, no matter how powerful, can prosper with apathetic and passive citizens. Either it will fall, or others will take the reins of government. {1st of 2 posts today.}
Contents
- Denial of New America.
- Mass incarceration.
- Shoot first!
- Spread of the SWAT teams.
- Militarization of police.
- For More Information
(1) We’re changing, but deny it
By now everybody sees to some degree that a New America arises on the ruins of the America-that-once-was. Our reactions to this will determine our future. So far as I can see in the comments to my posts about this, the most common reaction is denial. We see this with the people on both the Left and Right who refuse to see that the world has been warming for 2 centuries — due to both natural and anthropogenic causes, and to a score of other problems as or more serious. It’s obvious in the comments to yesterday’s post about the evolution of police in America.
It works well for us, defusing any need to act — and justifies our apathy and passivity in the face of otherwise terrifying trends. Such as the evolution of law enforcement in America, trends with few precedents in our history or western history — excerpt in nations facing outright insurgencies.
(2) Mass incarceration
Perhaps nothing shows the scale of the madness in our dysfunctional law enforcement system as our incarceration policies. Notably the acceptance of routine rape in prison and the fantastic increase in the prison population.
For evidence of the latter see this brief report by the Population Reference Bureau, and especially these graphs. These 2 graphs tell the tale. Has anything changed in the past few decades? For more details see the links at the Wikipedia entry. Click here to see the incarceration rate over time in your State.
(3) Shoot first!
One driver of increased shootings by police was “How Close is Too Close” by Dennis Tuller in the March 1983 issue of SWAT magazine. His conclusion:
How long does it take for you to draw your handgun and place two center hits on a man-size target at seven yards? Those of us who have learned and practiced proper pistolcraft techniques would say that a time of about one and one-half seconds is acceptable for that drill. … {What is} the “Danger Zone” if you are confronted by an adversary armed with an edged or blunt weapon. At what distance does this adversary enter your Danger Zone and become a lethal threat to you?
We have done some testing along those lines recently and have found that an average healthy adult male can cover the traditional seven yard distance in a time of (you guessed it) about one and one-half seconds. It would be safe to say then that an armed attacker at 21 feet is well within your Danger Zone.
Since the legal doctrine for police use of force is the degree to which the officer feel threatened, anyone within 21 feet becomes a threat justifying shooting — no matter how violent he or she looks, the number of police present, or their armor and weapons.
The NY Times reports that recent events have forced police departments to reconsider this doctrine, and more broadly how police apply force. I suspect the pressure comes not just from the bad publicity and the protests, but as local governments (and taxpayers) realize the large sums being paid in legal settlements for excessive police violence. Baltimore paid $5.7 to 100 people over 4 years.
Excessive shootings are just one aspect of police racism and use of excess force. LA police chief Daryl Gates pioneered our new age of militarized policing. The 1991 “Report of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department” documented the resulting horrific behavior by the LAPD, concluding that…
“There is a significant number of officers in the LAPD who repetitively use excessive force against the public and persistently ignore the written guidelines of the department regarding force. … The failure to control these officers is a management issue that is at the heart of the problem.” {source}
Tolerance of brutal and corrupt police officers has been an expensive policy for Los Angeles. They paid over $125 million for incidents in the Rampart scandal, with policy brutality a key part — and that’s just on item on the ledger.
(4) Spread of the SWAT teams, leading edge of militarization
First created by the infamous LA police Chief Daryl Gates in 1965, his concept of Special Weapons Attack Teams has spread across the nation (renamed for less accurate but better PR as Special Weapons and Tactics). This NY Times article and video documentary tells the tale.
To see how we got here read “Militarizing Mayberry and Beyond: Making Sense of American Paramilitary Policing” by P B Kraska and L J Cubellis, Justice Quarterly, December 1997. Almost every city in America has a SWAT team. By 1996, 65% of small towns 25,000-50,000 people) had a SWAT team, with another 8% planning to get one.
We have little hard data on the use of SWAT teams. From a few hundred per year in the 1970s the number of SWAT “deployments” has grown to perhaps 80,000 per year. In two-thirds of these raids entry is forced (e.g., a ram or explosive). Where they suspect drugs, roughly 1/3 of the raids find none, ditto when they suspect weapons are present (this is important, as drugs and weapons often justify the search and forced entry).
To see the shocking results read Randy Balko’s 2006 CATO report, “Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America“. Also see this chilling interview with Balko, or read his Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces
(5) Militarization of police
SWAT teams are the cutting edge of police militarization, but money is its driver. Always looking for new markets, the defense industry teamed up with our domestic authoritarians to have Congress pass the 1033 Program in the National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 1997. By 2014 it had transferred $5.1 billion in military hardware from DoD to police since 1997; $449 million was transferred in 2013 (source here). For details see the links in the Wikipedia entry.
For a heavily documented description of the result see the 2014 ACLU report “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing“. Nobody can read this then deny we have a problem, or that policing in America has radically changed during the past several decades.
An estimated 500 law enforcement agencies have received Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles built to withstand armor-piercing roadside bombs.
(6) For More Information
For a deeper understanding of what’s happening on our streets I recommend “The New Age of Counterinsurgency Policing” at TomDispatch.
For more about this see Radley Balko’s Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about the police, especially these:
- We are alone in the defense of the Republic.
- Do not talk to the police (important advice in New America).
- Police grow more powerful; the Republic slides another step into darkness. Can cellphone cameras save us?
- Shootings by police show their evolution into “security services”, bad news for the Republic.
- News good & bad about the fantastic growth of America’s security services.
- We can’t fix police violence because we don’t know the cause.
