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Showing posts with label police swat teams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label police swat teams. Show all posts
Marvin Guy and Henry MageeBell County Sheriff's Department and Burleson County Sheriff's Department
One
Friday last May, the sun had not yet risen when a SWAT team ignited a
flash-bang grenade outside Marvin Guy's apartment in Killeen, Texas.
Officers were trying to climb in through a window when Guy, who had a
criminal record and was suspected of possessing cocaine, opened fire.
Four officers were hit; one of them was killed.
Five months earlier, 100 miles away, a SWAT officer was shot during a
predawn no-knock raid on another house. In that case, too, police threw
a flash-bang grenade and tried to enter the residence. Henry "Hank"
Magee, according to his attorney, grabbed his gun to protect himself and
his pregnant girlfriend. "As soon as the door was kicked in, he shot at
the people coming through the door," says his attorney, Dick DeGuerin.
With his legally owned semi-automatic .308 rifle, Magee killed one of
the officers.
The cases are remarkably similar, except for one thing: Guy is black,
Magee white. And while Magee was found to have acted in self-defense,
prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Guy. He remains in jail
while he awaits trial.
Historically, police serving
warrants were required to knock on a door, announce their presence, and
wait for an answer. But in SWAT raids, this is often no longer the case.
Police aren't required to announce themselves if they believe the
circumstances present a threat of physical violence, or if they believe
evidence would be destroyed. According to a study by the American Civil Liberties Union, no-knock warrants are used in around 60 percent of drug searches.
Like Guy, Magee was initially charged with capital murder, which is
punishable by death. But before Magee's trial, a grand jury found there
was not enough evidence for him to stand trial on that charge. "In
essence it was a ruling in self-defense," DeGuerin said. Guy has been
through the grand jury process as well, his attorney said, but in his
case, the grand jury allowed prosecutors to move ahead with capital
murder charges. So while Magee awaits trial for felony possession of
marijuana, Guy awaits potential execution.
Both defendants had previous encounters with the law: Magee had been
arrested twice for driving while intoxicated and twice for possessing
marijuana. Guy had previous charges of bank robbery, theft, burglary,
and "felony in possession of a firearm," and had done time in prison.
Guy's arrests warrant
shows that police suspected him of possessing cocaine after receiving a
tip from an informant who said he was selling. The search of his
apartment turned up an "orange glass pipe," but no drugs. Magee,
however, did have drugs—"more than 4 oz but less than 5 lbs" of
marijuana, according to the district attorney.
When SWAT teams were created, they were not intended for drug raids.
They were set up in the late 1960s for extreme scenarios like active
shooters and hostage situations. Yet 85 percent of SWAT deployments
today are for "choice-driven raids on people's private residences,"
Peter Kraska, an Eastern Kentucky University researcher who studies
tactical policing, testified in a recent Senate hearing. The ACLU study
found that 62 percent of SWAT deployments today are for doing drug
raids. The study also found that in around half of SWAT deployments for
drug offenses, no contraband is found at all.
The study also showed that 71 percent of today's SWAT raids affect
people of color, even though white people are more likely to be involved
in the types of scenarios SWAT teams were created for, like active
shooter and hostage situations.
Magee was found to have acted in self-defense by shooting at
unannounced intruders before dawn. Whether the same standard will apply
to Guy remains to be seen. His trial is scheduled for next June.
Shane Bauer is a reporter in Mother Jones' San Francisco bureau, covering criminal justice, social justice, and human rights. His work has also appeared in the Guardian, The Nation, Salon, Slate, the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and many other publications. He is the co-author of A Sliver of Light,
a memoir he wrote with his fellow hostages (one of whom is now his
wife) about their two years as prisoners in Iran. Follow him on Twitter here. RSS | Twitter
Violent
clashes between local police and protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, has
highlighted the distribution of military equipment to police departments
around the country from the U.S. Defense Department. Hari Sreenivasan
talks to Matt Apuzzo of The New York Times about the concerns over the
militarization of domestic law enforcement.
TRANSCRIPT
GWEN IFILL: One
of the many issues in Ferguson attracting national attention is the
extent to which local police are becoming ever more heavily armed, or,
as many put it, militarized.
Hari Sreenivasan in our New York studios picks up that part of the story.HARI SREENIVASAN: Most
notably, many have been talking about how military equipment is making
its way from the Department of Defense to police departments around the
country.
Matt Apuzzo been covering this for The New York Times and joins me now from its Washington, D.C., bureau.
So,
Matt, what kind of equipment are we talking about? What are local
authorities in Ferguson using that came from the DOD or the Pentagon? MATT APUZZO, The
New York Times: Well, I mean, for starters, the Pentagon makes it very
hard to track equipment that goes from the military to local agencies.
I
mean, the best data we can get comes at the county level. But in a
response like this, where — you know, where it’s basically all hands on
deck for a county response, you know, a number of M-16s — M-16s are very
common. Under President Obama, there have been tens of thousands of
M-16s transferred to police departments nationwide, after, you know,
being used in the military.
We have also seen there also have been
some trucks, there have been some aircraft. This is part of a program
that began as part of the drug war, the idea being, in the ’90s, we need
to give this surplus military equipment to police departments as a way
to fight drug gangs.
And like a lot of programs, after 9/11, it
was sort of re-engineered for counterterrorism purposes and expanded.
And, you know, you have really seen — after the drawdown of two wars,
you have really seen a huge amount of military equipment being
transferred from the Pentagon to local police departments, state and
local police departments. HARI SREENIVASAN: So, how widespread is this and what happens to the equipment if police departments don’t want it? MATT APUZZO: Well, it’s very widespread.
It’s
one of the more popular programs as far as police goes, because this
stuff is free. So, what happens is, for instance, we bought a bunch of —
we, the United States taxpayer, bought a bunch of MRAPs, mine-resistant
trucks, for fighting in Iraq.
And now we’re not in — now we’re
not fighting in Iraq anymore, and so we have got all these extra trucks.
And so they’re basically offering them to police departments for free.
And they say, if you want these trucks, you can have them, and if you
don’t want them, we will just scrap them. HARI SREENIVASAN: So
the police departments that you have talked to in your reporting, do
they say any particular reason that they need an armored vehicle that
can withstand a mine patrolling their streets? MATT APUZZO: Well,
most police departments say, well, look, I don’t think we necessarily
need it to sustain a mine explosions, but we wanted a bulletproof truck,
and this was the one that was available for free, or we could go out
and buy it.
Now, remember, for the past 10 years, there have been —
federal grants have been paying for these — for police departments to
buy this stuff outright. So the idea of — the idea that this is all just
coming from the Pentagon, that’s just one part of it.
So what you’re seeing is, you’re seeing police departments saying, well, geez, if it’s free, what’s the downside? HARI SREENIVASAN: And
one of their concerns is that their citizenry or communities in certain
areas are heavily armed. Is there any legitimacy to that idea, that
claim, saying, we’re almost outgunned when we go out there and we don’t
feel protected? MATT APUZZO: Well, I mean, certainly, there’s an argument that police should be protected.
Nobody
— any — nobody I talk to say — nobody anybody would talk to would say
that police shouldn’t have protection. But the idea that — the idea that
the streets of the United States are so dangerous as to — the police
are outgunned, it just isn’t borne out by the data.
We’re looking
at violent crime in the United States now is at a generational low, and
police shootings have been steadily declining — shootings against
police. And I should note that, while the federal government and private
groups keep data when people shoot police, no such data is collected
when the police shoots people.
And what’s interesting about this
is, what we’re seeing in Ferguson, is we can have the discussion about
the — what military equipment should go to police departments, but you
can be certain that what’s happening in Ferguson is only going to
encourage more police departments to buy this stuff. HARI SREENIVASAN: OK.
And
what about the — we had a couple of members of Congress today, even the
attorney general say that they’re very concerned about this
militarization. Anything likely to happen? It seems like a congressional
program with some support. MATT APUZZO: Yes, I mean, there hasn’t really been any opposition to this program.
You
know, the criticism of the so-called militarization of police has
largely come from libertarian quarters for several years. They have kind
of been the lone voice on this, folks like the Cato institute. “Reason”
magazine has been writing a lot about this.
And you’re sort of
seeing — you’re sort of seeing right now — in Ferguson, you’re starting
to see what’s happening there, kind of galvanize some of the more
traditional liberal voices against this in ways that they have kind of
just been on the sidelines on this issue.
But you’re right. The
idea that — the idea that this is a new concept to members of Congress
is certainly — it’s just not true. It’s been no secret that these
transfers have been going. It’s a popular — the military transfer
program is very popular, as are the grant programs. HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, Matt Apuzzo of The New York Times joining us from Washington, D.C., thanks so much. MATT APUZZO: Thank you.
Totals are the minimum number of pieces acquired since 2006 in few categories.
The militarization of America's police forces that has been on full
display in Ferguson, Missouri, this week didn't begin yesterday or with
the Bush administration. It dates back decades. But it has, as Radley
Balko has written in two books, gotten worse. Here's Susan Gardner, in a book review in 2006 of Balko's Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America:
This study traces the rise of infatuation with SWAT units,
which today is largely used to serve drug warrants dozens of times a day
across the USA, to L.A. police chief Daryl Gates' use of them and the
Reagan administration's official declaration that the drug war was a
part of "national security," thus opening the doors to Defense
Department giveaways and discounts of weaponry to towns such as Jasper,
Florida (population 2,000), which has a police force of seven and hasn't
had a murder in 14 years.
And here's Glenn Greenwald at First Look, writing at The Intercept Thursday:
The intensive militarization of America’s police forces is a
serious menace about which a small number of people have been loudly
warning for years, with little attention or traction. In a 2007 paper on
“the blurring distinctions between the police and military institutions
and between war and law enforcement,” the criminal justice professor
Peter Kraska defined “police militarization” as “the process whereby
civilian police increasingly draw from, and pattern themselves around,
the tenets of militarism and the military model.” [...]
The best and most comprehensive account of the dangers of police
militarization is the 2013 book by the libertarian Washington Post
journalist Radley Balko, entitled “Rise of the Warrior Cops: The
Militarization of America’s Police Forces.” Balko, who has devoted his
career to documenting and battling the worst abuses of the U.S. criminal
justice system, traces the history and underlying mentality that has
given rise to all of this: the “law-and-order” obsessions that grew out
of the social instability of the 1960s, the War on Drugs that has made
law enforcement agencies view Americans as an enemy population, the
Reagan-era “War on Poverty” (which was more aptly described as a war on
America’s poor), the aggressive Clinton-era expansions of domestic
policing, all topped off by the massively funded, rights-destroying,
post-9/11 security state of the Bush and Obama years. All of this, he
documents, has infused America’s police forces with “a creeping
battlefield mentality.”
And here's Matt Apuzzo writing two months ago in the New York Times:
During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data,
police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns;
nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage
and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and
aircraft.
The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments
that already look and act like military units. Police SWAT teams are now
deployed tens of thousands of times each year, increasingly for routine
jobs. Masked, heavily armed police officers in Louisiana raided a
nightclub in 2006 as part of a liquor inspection. In Florida in 2010,
officers in SWAT gear and with guns drawn carried out raids on
barbershops that mostly led only to charges of “barbering without a
license.”
When cops treat people the way an occupying army would, the consequences
for citizens, for constitutional protections, for the police themselves
are exactly the opposite of what is needed in a civilized society.
"Serve and protect" is transformed into a sick joke.
HERE are a series of reports with video on the situation in Ferguson, Missouri since officer darren wilson killed Michael Brown on Saturday, 9 AUG 14. Missouri state officials have removed the Ferguson police from their duties, replacing them with officers of the Missouri State Police and the FBI has begun an investigation. From the +PBS NewsHour .....
Police
announced Friday morning that Darren Wilson is the officer who is being
investigated in the shooting of Michael Brown. In a halting and
sometimes disorganized statement, Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson
announced that his department was releasing details of a strong-arm
robbery that had occurred in the area prior to the shooting of Mr.
Brown. Police were responding to a 911 call about the robbery when they
encountered Mr. Brown. No details about the officer’s or Mr. Brown’s
actions were released during the press conference. Packets containing
some information requested by the press through FOIA were distributed at
the statement.
Wilson has served on the Ferguson police force for 6 years, the New York Times reports. Wilson is now on paid administrative leave.
The press conference follows a night of reduced tensions between protesters and police officers, that many attributed to a handover of security leadership over to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Led by Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson,
the team of officers engaged directly with protesters on Thursday
night, marching with them through the streets of Ferguson, and listening
to what they had to say.
Capt.
Ronald Johnson of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, who was appointed
by the governor to take control of security operations in the city of
Ferguson, walks among demonstrators gathered along West Florissant
Avenue on August 14, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. Photo by Scott
Olson/Getty Images
The force also chose to avoid wearing gas masks, SWAT gear, or any other military-type equipment in an effort to de-escalate tensions. Reports from protesters and journalists seem to confirm that the change in tactics had a positive effect on the gatherings.
A
scene of chaos in Ferguson, Missouri, captured the nation’s attention
when police officers unleashed a barrage of stun grenades and tear gas
to dispel protests over the killing of an African-American teenager.
Police said they used force when protesters started throwing rocks and
firebombs. Judy Woodruff reports on the incident, and the pushback that
followed.
JUDY WOODRUFF: We
return now to the drama that unfolded in the Saint Louis suburb of
Ferguson, Missouri, last night, and dominated conversation across the
country today.
It
was a scene of utter chaos that riveted the nation’s attention. Stun
grenades and tear gas exploded in the streets of Ferguson, as heavily
armed police aimed weapons from armored trucks. Police said they used
force when a protest that began peacefully turned violent, with people
throwing rocks and firebombs.MAN: You must disperse immediately. This is no longer a peaceful protest when you try to injure people. You must disperse now. JUDY WOODRUFF: With that, officers loosed the barrage of grenades and gas, sending the crowd fleeing. MAN: We just said, “Hands up, don’t shoot.” MAN: Is that all you were saying? MAN: That’s all we were saying, “Hands up, don’t shoot.” MAN: Were you in the front line up there? MAN: In the front line, yes. And they just started shooting. JUDY WOODRUFF: Both city and county officers were involved, and today they defended their actions.
Thomas Jackson is chief of the Ferguson police. THOMAS JACKSON,
Chief, Ferguson Police Department: There is gunfire. There are
firebombs being thrown at the police. And I understand that what it
looks like is not good. The whole situation is not good.
We would
like the protesters to stop the violence. We certainly don’t want to
have any violence on our part. We want this to be peaceful. If
individuals are in a crowd that’s attacking the police, they need to get
out of that crowd. We can’t individually go in and say, excuse me, sir,
are you peacefully protesting? Are you throwing rocks? Are you throwing
a Molotov cocktail? It’s a crowd. JUDY WOODRUFF: The Saint
Louis Post-Dispatch reported 10 people were arrested, among them, Saint
Louis City Alderman Antonio French, who’d been chronicling events on
social media, including several Vine video posts. MAN: What do we want? PROTESTERS: Justice! JUDY WOODRUFF: French was released this morning. MAN: Stop videotaping. Let’s grab our stuff and go. JUDY WOODRUFF: Washington
Post reporter Wesley Lowery recorded this exchange with police, as he
and a Huffington Post reporter were ordered to clear out of a nearby
McDonald’s. MAN: You don’t have time to ask questions. Let’s go.
The
reporters were detained and later released without any charges.
Separately, members of an Al-Jazeera America TV crew had to run for it,
after police fired tear gas as they prepared for a live report. Today,
the police chief denied the media had been deliberately targeted.
But
the stark images from last night reverberated far beyond Ferguson.
President Obama interrupted his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:
There is never an excuse for violence against police or for those who
would use this tragedy as a cover for vandalism or looting. There’s also
no excuse for police to use excessive force against peaceful protests
or to throw protesters in jail for lawfully exercising their First
Amendment rights.
And here in the United States of America, police
shouldn’t be bullying or arresting journalists who are just trying to
do their jobs and report to the American people on what they see on the
ground. JUDY WOODRUFF: Meanwhile, Missouri political
leaders spent the day in Ferguson. U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill,
speaking after a community gathering, sharply criticized police tactics. SEN. CLAIRE MCCASKILL,
D, Mo.: I think that the police response needs to be demilitarized. I
think that the police response has become part of the problem, as
opposed — as opposed to being part of the solution. JUDY WOODRUFF: Police Chief Jackson rejected the criticism. THOMAS JACKSON:
The whole picture is being painted a little bit sideways from what’s
really happening. And it’s not military. It’s tactical operations. It’s
SWAT teams. That’s who’s out there, police. We’re doing this in blue. JUDY WOODRUFF: In
a statement, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder also voiced concerns
about police actions, and said the Justice Department has offered to
provide technical assistance with crowd control.
The night’s
events in Ferguson have swept across the Web in a torrent of videos,
tweets and retweets. The chant of “Hands up, don’t shoot” had already
morphed into a rallying cry on social media. This morning, Howard
University in Washington, D.C., posted a photo on its Facebook page,
showing scores of students with hands raised and the hashtag
#HandsUpDontShoot.
Similar photos from across the country also circulated online. PROTESTERS: Don’t shoot! PROTESTERS: Hands up! PROTESTERS: Don’t shoot! JUDY WOODRUFF: At
the same time, the investigation continued into the incident that
started all this, Saturday’s shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
The
identity of the officer who fired the fatal shot remained a point of
contention. Authorities again said they’re not ready to release the
name, due partly to death threats. At one point, a Twitter account
associated with the activist group Anonymous did publish a name that it
said was the officer in question. That was flatly denied by police, and
Twitter later suspended the account.
The
killing of Michael Brown -- and the subsequent police response to
protests and riots sparked by the lack of transparency -- has provoked
reflection around the country about some of the deeper social and
economic issues. Gwen Ifill gets reaction from Eric Liu of Citizen
University and Jelani Cobb of the University of Connecticut.
GWEN IFILL: Today’s
pleas for restraint, safety, peaceful protests, and justice rippled far
beyond Missouri. As one official put it this afternoon, “The eyes of
the world are on us.”
We explore how some of these issues and images are resonating around the country.Eric
Liu is an author, educator, former White House speechwriter, and
founder of Citizen University, which promotes civic activism. And Jelani
Cobb is an associate professor of history and director of the Institute
for African-American Studies at the University of Connecticut. He is
also a contributor to “The New Yorker.” He joins us from Saint Louis.
Jelani
Cobb, I want to pick up from something that the former mayor of
Ferguson told Judy a few moments ago, which is, this could happen
anywhere.
You have been on the streets of Ferguson for the last few days. Do you agree with that? JELANI COBB,
University of Connecticut: Well, I think recent history shows that not
only that it could happen anywhere, that it has happened in several
other places.
There are some really terrible overlaps here, one of
which is a striking irony that Tracy Martin, the father of Trayvon
Martin, who was slain two years ago under circumstances I think we’re
all familiar with, he was scheduled to actually be in this area for an
event that will take place on August 24 promoting nonviolence called
Peace Fest.
And he agreed to attend this program weeks before
Michael Brown was killed. He’s now entering — coming here under very
different circumstances. So we have seen all these things happen before.
That
notwithstanding, I think it’s very troubling to say, in the context of a
community that’s grieving, that’s devastated and that certainly feels a
great deal of resentment about the way in which it’s being policed,
that there is nothing atypical about what’s going on here, that this is
just something that could have alighted anywhere, but it just happened
to be here. GWEN IFILL: Eric Liu, I want you to pick up on
that. Why would it not be atypical? And does that explain some of the
depth of the anger we’re seeing? ERIC LIU, Co-Author, “The
Gardens of Democracy”: Well, I think one of the questions that
protesters have been chanting in Ferguson is very simple: What if it was
your town?
And I think a lot of people all across the country
watching things unfold over the last few days are beginning to really
reckon with the fact that this is not only the product of the
extraordinarily segregated and charged circumstances that you might find
in Ferguson, but that in every town in this country right now, there is
alienation.
In every town in this country, there are young people
who, because of the color of their skin, are receiving brutal
mistreatment by law enforcement. And there are communities all across
this country right now where people across lines of race and class
simply do not see each other, do not — they may pass each other, but
they don’t really see one another.
And I think, in that sense,
we’re all reckoning with the possibility or the reality that in every
town in the United States right now, the potential for this kind of
understanding and this kind of tragedy exists. And part of our
responsibility, I think, is to figure out what we can do, whatever town
we live in, to ensure that what’s unfolded in Ferguson doesn’t unfold
again where we live. GWEN IFILL: Jelani Cobb, it seems
almost like that, in the last 24 to 48 hours, this has gone beyond the
simple question of what happened to Michael Brown to something else. It
seems to have touched another cord.
And I wonder whether it feels that way to you too, or whether the anger seems very, very focused around that singular event? JELANI COBB: No, no doubt this became a very different story just even in the 48 hours that I have been here.
Initially,
this was very much focused on the circumstances around the death of
Michael Brown. But now it’s expanded into, you know, bigger questions
about policing, questions about militarization of police, as you talked
about in your early segment — earlier segment.
I had a
conversation with community activists and people who live in the area
where Mr. Brown was killed, and they talked about economic
disenfranchisement and a whole array of other things that touch upon
what’s really going on in this community.
And, if I can, I will
say one thing in addition to this. One of the things that I have heard
over and over again when I talked to people out in this community, and I
said, you know, what exactly do you want in the short-term, what do you
want immediately, what do you think would pacify some of the anger that
you see happening in these communities?
And they said, we would
like for the officer to be named, and we would like for there to be
transparency in the process in which he is being investigated. And I
have heard that again and again.
And so I think what the police
department may not have recognized or maybe recognized too late was the
steadfast insistence that they wouldn’t name the officer was going to
fuel another set of problems that, based upon what I have heard, even
people who are activists and people who are police officers have all
been taken by surprise at the extent to which there has been a kind of
durable anger, that people were not satisfied just to go out and protest
for one day, but they came out the next day and the next day and the
next day, and have pledged to continue to do so for the amount of time
the officer remains anonymous. GWEN IFILL: Let’s talk about this idea of durable anger, Eric Liu.
One
of the things that has been making the rounds of social media is
pictures of people putting their hands up in the air and saying, “Hands
up, don’t shoot.” We heard a gentleman say that in one of our earlier
pieces tonight.
Does that speak to people beyond who is in the
street, this idea that you can be — say, I cede all my power to you, and
still become a victim? ERIC LIU: I want to be specific.
That image that is circulating on the Internet is of African-Americans with their hands up. “Hands up, don’t shoot.”
And
I look at that picture and I am both stirred and shamed. I’m stirred
because I feel a deep sense of connection that, in the United States in
2014, this is happening. But I feel shamed as well that we’re not able
to have a conversation about this and about the conditions of unequal
justice that unfold without it becoming quickly polarized and quickly
partisan.
And the reality that’s interesting right now and part of
why this has become a national story and a national phenomenon is that,
as Jelani Cobb was just saying, the response of the police in Ferguson
to the protesters, the ways in they have, in heavy-handed manner, run
roughshod over freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, over the right
simply of young people to be African-American and out in public has been
shocking to the conscience.
And it raises a very simple question
of, what country is this? There is something deeply striking about how
un-American these images seem. And I think one of the challenges that we
face right now is that it’s only un-American if we stand up and do
something and say something about it. If we just turn away, avert our
gaze and say, wow, that’s something awful that is happening in that part
of the country or that weird community, then, in fact, norms set in
where we tolerate this.
And I just want to take a moment. That
image of people saying, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” today, 50 years after
the signing of the Civil Rights Act into law, 49 years after the Voting
Rights Act, the fact that this is still happening is an abomination. And
I say that, of course, as an American. You don’t have to be an African American
to say that, just as an American. GWEN IFILL: Jelani Cobb,
where does — where does political leadership come in, in this? We have
waited and saw the governor speak today. The mayor has spoken, the
attorney general, the president.
Has it been sufficient, and does it matter? JELANI COBB: I
think, you know, again, I don’t live in this community, but based upon
what I have heard from people in the interviews, I have talked to a
couple of dozen people at this point, and, you know, the thing that I
heard very frequently is that they felt that the political leadership
was ineffectual, that people had come too — it had been too little, too
late.
There were questions yesterday about whether or not the
governor would be involved, whether or not they would bring the National
Guard in. There were all kinds of things people were wondering about
how this would be handled.
And it also seemed that, you know, on
the ground, there was a kind of ad hoc quality. So, out there, people
kind of saw the kind of line of defense, where there were lots of
officers who were blocking the area where the QuikTrip stood. But what
you couldn’t see unless you were up close was that there were officers
from different municipalities.
There were state people. There were
local people. And it seemed as if there was a kind of overlap. You
could kind of wonder what the central command was, who was calling the
shots and what the real strategy was.
Now, that said, I think there is another thing to be added, two quick things. GWEN IFILL: Briefly. JELANI COBB: One,
this has not solely been black. There have been people of — black and
white people who have been out there protesting about what happened. And
people are very for them — it was very important to them to convey
that.
The other is that the people who were in riot gear, I don’t
think that was what incensed people. People were — and there were many
people in the community who didn’t want to see more rioting. But the
idea that there were police officers who were on top of armored vehicles
with assault rifles mounted on tripods and pointed at the crowd did
nothing to convey that this was a group of people who were interested in
preserving law and order. It seemed much more like a group of people
who were there to intimidate. GWEN IFILL: Jelani Cobb and Eric Liu, thank you both for your observations. JELANI COBB: Thank you. ERIC LIU: Thank you. GWEN IFILL: We continue our coverage on Ferguson, Missouri, online.
Lesley
McSpadden, the mother of slain teenager Michael Brown, showed a
painting of her and her son through her car window. Brown’s death has
provoked a Twitter campaign questioning how young black victims are
portrayed in the media. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
The
photos of military vehicles dispatched in the streets could have come
from a war zone, but it’s Ferguson, Missouri. Community members are in a
tense stand-off with law enforcement days after an unarmed
African-American 18-year-old named Michael Brown was shot and killed by a
police officer. While the unfolding events continue to disturb
observers around the country, the emerging narrative is familiar.
“We
have a kind of script that we often use when dealing with the deaths of
young black and brown people at the hand of police,” said Craig Steven
Wilder, head of the History Department at MIT, in a conversation with
the PBS NewsHour. “When you have young, low-income people dying, we look
for the victim to assume the guilt, assuming they were responsible for
forcing the police to take aggressive action.”
Wilder appeared on the NewsHour in June to discuss the $40 million settlement
made by the city of New York to a group of men known as the Central
Park Five, who were wrongly convicted of a brutal rape in Central Park
in 1989 and misrepresented in the media as a pack of predatory hoodlums.
He explained how the pressure to solve the case put police and
prosecutors on a track to resist the facts.
On Thursday we talked
to Wilder by phone for his take on how citizens in Ferguson are
responding in the streets and on social media, as well as how the events
are being portrayed in the media.
NEWSHOUR: From
your perspective as a scholar who specializes in urban history, how
significant is what is going on in Ferguson, Missouri, right now? CRAIG STEVEN WILDER:
I think there are some key issues happening here that people need to
think about. We need to think about the social implication of the
militarization of local police forces. It’s so compelling and shocking,
these can pass as images from Baghdad three or four years ago. This
hyper militarization is the consequences of the past decade-and-a-half
war on terror and that increasing exploitation on an international and
national level.
The criminalization of low-income, non-white
people is another issue here and it is what has created, essentially, an
excuse for turning our local police into military units. All of this is
unfolding right in front of our eyes in Ferguson. NEWSHOUR: What do you make of these Twitter hashtags (like #IfTheyGunnedMeDown) associated with the events? CRAIG STEVEN WILDER:
I think it’s important to hear what they are saying on Twitter – a
large part of the population has a legitimate fear of the police forces
that are supposed to keep them safe. The ease with which we accept, as a
nation, the killing of unarmed black and brown men, it should be
frightening to us all. What’s happening is a cry from the street and a
protest from the street. It is asking us to take a harsh look at the
values of our laws in the context of people of color. NEWSHOUR:
We’ve talked before about media portrayal surrounding the Central Park
Five and how that has a lasting impact on how they are remembered.
Obviously this is a very different case, but what do you see as being
the same? CRAIG STEVEN WILDER: We have a
kind of script that we often use when dealing with the deaths of young
black and brown people at the hand of police. When you have young,
low-income people dying, we look for the victim to assume the guilt,
assuming they were responsible for forcing the police to take aggressive
action. You can compare that to how we treat white young men accused of
mass murder campaigns in the U.S. We almost immediately turn to a
script that is one of sympathy for these young men and the assumptions
that they are suffering from a pathological disorder.
There is a
racialized script that we used and that we turn to with these cases.
Immediately after you see the media go out of its way to wait for
toxicology reports and things which is a sort of not so coded language
to say let’s actually find evidence of guilt that excuses the aggressive
action taken by the police. That’s not the way we treat white people
when they’re arrested by the police and when they’re the victims of
excessive police action. NEWSHOUR: St. Louis is not
dissimilar from other American cities divided by race and income. With
the right trigger, could we see this happen anywhere? CRAIG STEVEN WILDER:
I think this is a time to reflect on the crisis of inequality and the
fact that so much of that manifests in urban areas. The triggers are
more easily found and created in urban areas, but I think what this is a
time to reflect on is the nature of inequality. The growth of income
inequality, the severity of unemployment in low-income communities, we
have as a nation for the past 30 years, criminalized the non-white poor,
we have incarcerated the unemployed and I think we are seeing all of
that come to the surface in Ferguson.
THE police are out of control in Ferguson, Missouri, proof as seen in these videos of the massive militarized police actions captured in these videos from +Daily Kos and YouTube....
An outright, unprovoked attack on peaceful demonstrators in Ferguson,
Missouri, protesting the killing of an unarmed 18-year old last
Saturday: http://youtu.be/GO1SKC6dK7o
Published on Aug 13, 2014
Recorded Via Livestream from Ferguson;
Ferguson
police fire rubber bullets and tear gas canisters into peaceful protest
and local neighborhood, no crimes have been committed and the only
violence that occurred was after police started firing into the crowd.
This attack was unprovoked.
This is part 2 after they had fired
tear gas & rubber bullets into the crowd and the crowd had moved
down almost 2 city blocks from the original protest location. The crowd
of course gets upset.
A angry city that wants answers turns into a
warzone from police action. What does a police state look like? This is
what a police state looks like!
A sign and a pin are pictured on the back of a
demonstrator during a protest against the shooting death of teenager
Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 13, 2014.
Radley Balko has great look at how police shouldrespond to civil disobedience:
Geron also emphasizes personalization, pointing out that
when police show up in full riot garb, especially gear that covers their
faces, they dehumanize themselves to protesters. This is especially
dangerous when the protests are against the police themselves, as was
the case in Ferguson. “You make all of your officers look like one
another. To the protesters, to the people, your officers are no longer
individual human beings with faces. You’ve just made each of them a
faceless symbol of the police institution that the protesters are
reacting against.”
The police in Ferguson are almost a textbook example of how not to
react to protest. “When you start by rolling out the the SWAT team, and
you then position a sniper on top of an APC with his gun pointed at the
protesters, what kind of message are you sending? Did they really expect
the sniper would need to start shooting people? It was just a show of
force,” Geron says.
“The first thing that went wrong was when the police showed
up with K-9 units,” Scriven said. “The dogs played on racist imagery…it
played the situation up and [the department] wasn’t cognizant of the
imagery.”
The mayor of Ferguson claims racism didn't exist in his town. Oh really?
While black residents accounted for 67 percent of Ferguson’s
population, black drivers accounted for more than 86 percent of the
traffic stops made last year by the Ferguson Police Department,
according to a report produced by the office of Missouri Attorney
General Chris Koster.
This might have something to do with it: while just 30 percent of Ferguson's population is white...
The police force has 53 members, and three of them are
black. The city’s mayor and police chief are white, as are most of the
members of the Ferguson City Council.
But the ACLU did discover something worth knowing: after
aggregating the reports and data on SWAT raids they could find, they
found that the militarized police operations were overwhelmingly aimed
at minorities. "Overall, 42 percent of people impacted by a SWAT
deployment to execute a search warrant were Black and 12 percent were
Latino. This means that of the people impacted by deployments for
warrants, at least 54 percent were minorities." (For comparison, 72
percent of Americans identified as white in 2010.) The feel of the
police presence is much more militarized in minority communities than
white communities.
Totals are the minimum number of pieces acquired since 2006 in few categories.
The militarization of America's police forces that has been on full
display in Ferguson, Missouri, this week didn't begin yesterday or with
the Bush administration. It dates back decades. But it has, as Radley
Balko has written in two books, gotten worse. Here's Susan Gardner, in a book review in 2006 of Balko's Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America:
This study traces the rise of infatuation with SWAT units,
which today is largely used to serve drug warrants dozens of times a day
across the USA, to L.A. police chief Daryl Gates' use of them and the
Reagan administration's official declaration that the drug war was a
part of "national security," thus opening the doors to Defense
Department giveaways and discounts of weaponry to towns such as Jasper,
Florida (population 2,000), which has a police force of seven and hasn't
had a murder in 14 years.
And here's Glenn Greenwald at First Look, writing at The Intercept Thursday:
The intensive militarization of America’s police forces is a
serious menace about which a small number of people have been loudly
warning for years, with little attention or traction. In a 2007 paper on
“the blurring distinctions between the police and military institutions
and between war and law enforcement,” the criminal justice professor
Peter Kraska defined “police militarization” as “the process whereby
civilian police increasingly draw from, and pattern themselves around,
the tenets of militarism and the military model.” [...]
The best and most comprehensive account of the dangers of police
militarization is the 2013 book by the libertarian Washington Post
journalist Radley Balko, entitled “Rise of the Warrior Cops: The
Militarization of America’s Police Forces.” Balko, who has devoted his
career to documenting and battling the worst abuses of the U.S. criminal
justice system, traces the history and underlying mentality that has
given rise to all of this: the “law-and-order” obsessions that grew out
of the social instability of the 1960s, the War on Drugs that has made
law enforcement agencies view Americans as an enemy population, the
Reagan-era “War on Poverty” (which was more aptly described as a war on
America’s poor), the aggressive Clinton-era expansions of domestic
policing, all topped off by the massively funded, rights-destroying,
post-9/11 security state of the Bush and Obama years. All of this, he
documents, has infused America’s police forces with “a creeping
battlefield mentality.”
And here's Matt Apuzzo writing two months ago in the New York Times:
During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data,
police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns;
nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage
and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and
aircraft.
The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments
that already look and act like military units. Police SWAT teams are now
deployed tens of thousands of times each year, increasingly for routine
jobs. Masked, heavily armed police officers in Louisiana raided a
nightclub in 2006 as part of a liquor inspection. In Florida in 2010,
officers in SWAT gear and with guns drawn carried out raids on
barbershops that mostly led only to charges of “barbering without a
license.”
When cops treat people the way an occupying army would, the consequences
for citizens, for constitutional protections, for the police themselves
are exactly the opposite of what is needed in a civilized society.
"Serve and protect" is transformed into a sick joke.
"Our common humanity is more important than all the things that divide us." - Mairead Corrigan A collection of articles and videos covering the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the unjustifiable violent riots and looting that followed and the reactions of and actions by the Missouri state government and the U.S. government to the shooting of Michael brown and the wanton, illegal and immoral violence by the local police in Ferguson against the general civilian population and the media.
"Our common humanity is more important than all the things that divide us." - Mairead Corrigan
Since 9/11 there has been a militarization of police forces in villages, towns and cities, communities big and small all across America. The general populace has been propagandized into believing this has been and is necessary to keep us safe. The question that has been ignored for to long is who will protect us from the police, those men and women who used to be in blue but are just as likely to be in camouflage now. Beat cops and neighborhood patrols take a back seat to SWAT teams. Citizens are seen by too many, but not all police officers, as the enemy until they have proven themselves as friendlies, and police rules of engagement at times seem little different from military rules on the battlefield. It is just more proof of America's slide into Third World status, the rich and powerful being protected by a military police force that has no respect for and will not protect the lives and liberties of the 99% From +Daily Kos .....
Yes, this is the Front Page photo on Huff Post right now, but it needs
to be seen and studied by every American. There more I study it, the
more my blood boils. When did it become okay for multiple officers,
dressed for war, to aim assault rifles at unarmed civilians who pose no
threat? Even if they pose a non-lethal threat, being unarmed, do the
police have cause to respond with lethal force?
Who cleared this with the public, this tactic of heavy weapons and
implied instant death? Do we not have a say in how our law enforcement
officers conduct themselves? Have we not learned the failure of shock
and awe? Is there a sentient being on the planet who does not agree
these are the actions that breed distrust, hate and eventually armed
resistance? You dare to ask us to trust authority when you refuse to
treat the public with decency and dignity? How did these tactics work
for us overseas? Anyone think this assault on the public on the home
front at the ends of our driveways will yield any better result?
As a culture, we've lost all sense of proportion. We are insane. We
answer peddling of "loosies" with death. We answer retreat with shots to
the back, and 4 more point blank for good measure, and then get left on
the street in the heat of summer while the flies congregate and the
blood hardens on the asphalt. Jump a turnstile at a train station? Get
shot. Are you a 94 year old infirm veteran waving a steak knife at a cop
as you sit in a chair in a nursing home? Take two in the chest. Link
arms on the ground and sing in non-violent protest? Get kicked, pepper
sprayed, get shot in the face with a bean bag cannon at point blank
range.
You bastards, you don't own our streets. We owe you no obedience. We
put the food on the table of your families. You serve at our pleasure.
This needs to end.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite action. Newton's
Law, damn it. Basic physics. See that sentiment scrawled on the mailbox
in that image? If this is what law enforcement has become, if this is
the default response to its own crimes, then, yeah, I agree.
Peaceful protestors stage demonstration. Random white guy passing by
starts screaming at them, takes off his shirt and approaches black man
in the crowd, still screaming. Security guard promptly pepper sprays the black guy.
According to a police report, the guard said he used the
spray because Wilford balled his fists and “took an aggressive step
towards him.” [...]
“I thought he (the guard) was the helper, that’s why I approached
him. But he thought I was the threat,” Wilford said Monday. [...]
Afterward, the heckler walked away and a YouTube video shows that the
guard held and eventually handcuffed Wilford, about the time police
showed up. A Seattle police officer shouted at a few of the onlookers to
stay back as the guard escorted Wilford into Westlake Mall.
Demonstrators shouted, “You pepper-sprayed the wrong guy” and similar
comments.
This is in Seattle, not Ferguson. Yes, yes, it's all a misunderstanding. One that keeps happening over and over.
WHAT could go wrong with armed teachers in the classroom you ask? How about this? The Lodi police want to question the child and his parents about his motive? How about questioning the motive of the Lodi police for sending a swat officer with a loaded gun without a safety into a school for Reading Roundup? From Daily Kos.....
A Lodi Police SWAT officer had a Glock .35 with a flashlight in his thigh holster at a children’s reading event when a boy managed to pull the trigger and shoot the officer.
How was the child able to fire the weapon? The gun did not have a safety mechanism.
The officer was showing off the department’s SWAT truck, vest and other gear at a children’s event called Reading Roundup on Aug. 24.
“A small child, witnesses tell us was 6 to 8 years old, was able to walk up to the officer and was able to pull the trigger.”
The bullet hit the officer’s leg. He was taken to the hospital for a minor injury and released
Police department officials are hoping the child's family comes forward because they still haven't been able to interview the child or his parents.
This is how the Free State rolls.
This is just the kind of active support for limited government, liberty
and personal responsibility that's increasingly part of daily life in
NH. Thank you FSP. What took you so long to get here...? http://freestateproject.org/
During
testimony at the Concord City Council public hearing regarding the
acquisition of a ManBearPig-- er, I mean BearCat, the "Homeland
Security" grant-subsidized (so, your money, regardless) armored attack
truck (the manufacturer's description, although the cops prefer "rescue
vehicle," which isn't exactly prominent in the marketing materials for
some reason) by local law enforcement's Special Operations Unit, in
Concord, NH, 8/12/2013, there was this little gem from retired Marine
Colonel Pete Martino. Complete hearing at http://bikerbillnh.blogspot.com/2013/...
"Peter
Martino is a citizen of the State of New Hampshire. Mr. Martino is a
Colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve who has been mobilized three
times. During his military career, he commanded an infantry platoon,
company, and battalion. He was also the senior U.S. adviser to an Iraqi
Army brigade. Mr. Martino has had a successful civilian career providing
training, consulting, and program management services to private
companies and to state and federal agency contractors. Mr. Martino
presently holds a top secret security clearance."
2008
(EDIT: Updated with better version of the video, thanks to freekeene.com. Original video below the fold)
Based on this speech, the city of Concord has postponed the vote on
armored vehicles until Sept. 9, 2013 at 6 PM. Vote will take place at 41
Green Street, Concord, New Hampshire.
More from the Huffington Post on the militarization of police:
Today in America, SWAT teams are deployed about 100 to 150
times per day, or about 50,000 times per year -- a dramatic increase
from the 3,000 or so annual deployments in the early 1980s, or the few
hundred in the 1970s. The vast majority of today's deployments are to
serve search warrants for drug crimes. But the use of SWAT tactics to
enforce regulatory law also appears to be rising. This month, for
example, a SWAT team raided the Garden of Eden, a sustainable growth
farm in Arlington, Texas, supposedly to look for marijuana. The police
found no pot, however, and the real intent of the raid appears to have
been for code enforcement, as the officers came armed with an inspection
notice for nuisance abatement.
Where these teams were once used only in emergency situations,
they're used today mostly as an investigative tool against people merely
suspected of crimes. In many police agencies, paramilitary tactics have
become the first option, where they once were the last.
“It’s really about a lack of imagination and a lack of creativity,”
says Norm Stamper, a retired cop who served as police chief of Seattle
from 1994 to 2000. “When your answer to every problem is more force, it
shows that you haven’t been taught and trained to consider other
options."
When the FBI finally located Whitey Bulger in 2010 after
searching for 16 years, the reputed mobster was suspected of involvement
in 19 murders in the 1970s and '80s, and was thought to be armed with a
massive arsenal of weapons. He was also 81 at the time, in poor
physical health, and looking at spending the rest of his life in prison.
Of all the people who might meet the criteria for arrest by a SWAT
team, one might think that Bulger would top the list.
Yet instead of sending in a tactical team to tear down Bulger’s door in the middle of the night, the FBI took a different appraoch.
After some investigating, FBI officials cut the lock on a storage
locker Bulger used in the apartment complex where he was staying. They
then had the property manager call Bulger to tell him someone may have
broken into his locker. When Bulger went to investigate, he was arrested
without incident. There was no battering ram, there were no flash
grenades, there was no midnight assault on his home.
That peaceful apprehension of a known violent fugitive, found guilty this week of
participating in 11 murders and a raft of other crimes, stands in stark
contrast to the way tens of thousands of Americans are confronted each
year by SWAT teams battering down their doors to serve warrants for
nonviolent crimes, mostly involving drugs.
On the night of Jan. 5, 2011, for example, police in Framingham,
Mass., raided a Fountain Street apartment that was home to Eurie Stamps
and his wife, Norma Bushfan-Stamps. An undercover officer had allegedly
purchased drugs from Norma's 20-year-old son, Joseph Bushfan, and
another man, Dwayne Barrett, earlier that evening, and now the police
wanted to arrest them. They took a battering ram to the door, set off a
flash grenade, and forced their way inside.
As the SWAT team moved through the apartment, screaming at everyone
to get on the floor, Officer Paul Duncan approached Eurie Stamps. The
68-year-old, not suspected of any crime, was watching a basketball game
in his pajamas when the police came in.
By the time Duncan got to him in a hallway, Stamps was face-down on
the floor with his arms over his head, as police had instructed him. As
Duncan moved to pull Stamps' arms behind him, he says he fell backwards,
somehow causing his gun to discharge, shooting Stamps. The grandfather
of 12 was killed in his own home, while complying with police orders
during a raid for crimes in which he had no involvement.
The Obama administration has begun talking about reforming the
criminal justice system, notably this week, when Attorney General Eric
Holder announced changes to how federal prosecutors will consider
mandatory minimum sentences. If government leaders are looking for
another issue to tackle, they might consider the astonishing evolution
of America’s police forces over the last 30 years.
Today in America, SWAT teams are deployed about 100 to 150 times per
day, or about 50,000 times per year -- a dramatic increase from the
3,000 or so annual deployments in the early 1980s, or the few hundred in
the 1970s. The vast majority of today's deployments are to serve search
warrants for drug crimes. But the use of SWAT tactics to enforce
regulatory law also appears to be rising. This month,
for example, a SWAT team raided the Garden of Eden, a sustainable
growth farm in Arlington, Texas, supposedly to look for marijuana. The
police found no pot, however, and the real intent of the raid appears to
have been for code enforcement, as the officers came armed with an
inspection notice for nuisance abatement.
Where these teams were once used only in emergency situations,
they're used today mostly as an investigative tool against people merely
suspected of crimes. In many police agencies, paramilitary tactics have
become the first option, where they once were the last.
“It’s really about a lack of imagination and a lack of creativity,”
says Norm Stamper, a retired cop who served as police chief of Seattle
from 1994 to 2000. “When your answer to every problem is more force, it
shows that you haven’t been taught and trained to consider other
options."
Why can’t drug suspects be arrested the way Bulger was -- with as
little violence and confrontation as possible? One big reason is a lack
of resources. Many police agencies serve several drug warrants per week.
Some serve several per day. They simply don't have the time or
personnel to come up with a Bulger-like plan for each one. It's quicker
and easier for the police to use overwhelming force.
"There are just too many of these cases," says Joe Key, a longtime
cop who served in the Baltimore police department from 1971 to 1995 and
started the department's SWAT team.
Key adds that another reason police don't want to set up a perimeter
and allow drug suspects to surrender peacefully is that it would give
them an opportunity to destroy evidence. That, of course, means that,
perversely, genuinely violent suspects are treated less harshly than
people suspected of nonviolent crimes.
"Someone might say that's an indication that we need to reconsider
these drug laws," Key says. "But that's a whole different argument."
Add to all of this a Pentagon program that gives surplus military
equipment to local police agencies, a Department of Homeland Security
program that cuts checks to police departments to buy yet more military
gear, and federal grants specifically tied to drug policing and asset
forfeiture policies, both of which reward police officials who send
their SWAT teams on drug raids, and it isn't difficult to see how we
reached the point where SWAT teams are deployed so frequently.
The question is, how could the U.S. roll all of this back? I
interviewed numerous former police chiefs, police officers and federal
officials, all of whom were concerned about the militarization of
America's police forces. Here are some of their suggestions for reform: End The Drug War
Holder’s announcement this week at least acknowledges the drug war’s
role in mass incarceration. But the damage inflicted by the country’s
40-year drug fight goes well beyond prisons. It’s also been the driving
force behind America’s mass police militarization since at least the
early 1980s, and the best way to rein in the trend would be to simply
end prohibition altogether.
Complete legalization is, of course, never going to happen. But even
something short of legalization, like decriminalization, would take away
many of the incentives to fight the drug war as if it were an actual
war. The federal government could also leave it to the states to
determine drug policy, and with what priority and level of force it
should be enforced.
Your average small town SWAT team would probably continue to exist,
at least in the short term. But these teams are expensive to maintain,
and without federal funding, it seems likely that many would eventually
disband. End Anti-Drug Byrne Grants
Just ending the federal incentives for mass police militarization
would help. The Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program,
for example, distributes grants to agencies for a variety of criminal
justice programs, many of them positive. But the grants can also go to
police departments solely for drug policing. Even more destructive are
grants that create multi-jurisdictional drug task forces, basically
roving squads of narcotics cops that serve multiple jurisdictions, and
often lack any real accountability. Even back in 2000, former FBI
Director William Webster told NBC News that the federal government had
become “too enamored with SWAT teams, draining money away from
conventional law enforcement.” End The High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program
The federal HIDTA program is another inducement for more aggressive
enforcement of drug laws. Once a police department reaches a threshold
of drug arrests, the agency becomes eligible for yet more federal
funding as a region with high illicit drug activity. This then becomes
an incentive for police departments to desire the high drug trafficking label, which means they'll devote even more resources to drug policing, which means more raids. End The "Equitable Sharing" Civil Asset Forfeiture Program Under civil asset forfeiture,
police agencies can seize any piece of property -- cash, cars, homes --
that they can reasonably connect to criminal activity. In most places,
the proceeds of the seizure go to the police department. Since civil
asset forfeiture is used overwhelmingly in drug investigations, this has
created a strong incentive for police to send their SWAT teams to serve
routine drug warrants.
In some states, however, lawmakers have recognized the perverse
incentives at play, and have attempted to get rid of them by requiring
any forfeiture proceeds to go to a state general fund, or toward public
schools. Under the federal government's equitable sharing program,
however, a local police agency can merely call up a federal law
enforcement agency like the Drug Enforcement Administration to request
assistance in an investigation. The entire operation is then governed by
federal law. The DEA takes 10 percent to 20 percent of the seized
assets, then gives the rest back to the local police agency. The effect
is to restore the perverse incentives, and to thwart the will of state
legislatures. End The 1033 Program
The so-called 1033 program, passed in 1997, formalized a Pentagon
policy of giving away surplus military equipment to domestic police
agencies, which had been going on since the Reagan years. The new law
also set up a well-funded, well-staffed office to facilitate the
donations. Millions of pieces of equipment have since been given away --
$500 million worth in 2011 alone. Once they get the gear -- tanks,
armored personnel vehicles, guns, helicopters, bayonets, you name it --
police agencies in tiny towns have used it to start SWAT teams. Even
seemingly innocuous items like camouflage uniforms can reinforce a
militaristic culture and mindset. One longtime cop (whose father was
also a longtime cop and former police chief) wrote to me in an email,
"One of the problems we both saw in the early 90's were departments
leaving the formal police uniforms with leather belts and holsters in
favor of the dark blue fatigues with nylon mesh belts and holsters. This
put police in a more fighting posture."
Some law enforcement officials have been warning of the problem for
years. One former Washington, D.C., police sergeant wrote in a 1997
letter to The Washington Post, "One tends to throw caution to the wind
when wearing ‘commando-chic’ regalia, a bulletproof vest with the word
‘POLICE’ emblazoned on both sides, and when one is armed with high tech
weaponry ... We have not yet seen a situation like [the British police
occupation of] Belfast. But some police chiefs are determined to move in
that direction." A Connecticut police chief told The New York Times in
2000 that switching to military-like garb "feeds a mindset that you’re
not a police officer serving a community, you’re a soldier at war. I had
some tough-guy cops in my department pushing for bigger and more
hardware."
It isn't difficult to see how giving cops the weapons, uniforms, and
vehicles of war might encourage them to take a more warlike approach to
their jobs. That won't end simply by shuttering the 1033 program. But it
would certainly be a start. Reform Department Of Homeland Security Grants
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the federal government has handed out some $34 billion
in grants to police departments across the country, many for the
purchase of battle-grade vehicles and weapons. This program has created a
cottage industry of companies to take DHS checks in exchange for guns,
tanks and armored vehicles. In effect, it has given rise to a police
industrial complex.
There's also little oversight. DHS can't even produce a comprehensive
list of police departments that have received grants and how they've
used them. Though ostensibly for anti-terrorism efforts, the grants are
going to places like Fargo, N.D., where they're inevitably used for
routine policing. (Or in the case of Fargo,
an armored personnel vehicle with rotating turret has been used mostly
for "appearances at the annual city picnic, where it’s been parked near
the children’s bounce house.")
The federal government has a legitimate interest in protecting the
country from terrorist attacks. So at least in theory, anti-terror
grants to domestic police agencies make sense. But it seems unlikely
that the grants in their current form are doing much to prevent
terrorism. End Federal Medical Marijuana Raids
In the late 1990s, the Clinton administration set a dangerous
precedent when it began sending federal SWAT teams to raid medical
marijuana businesses in states that had legalized the drug for that
purpose. By then, the use of SWAT teams to serve drug warrants was
common, and the explosion in the number and use of SWAT-like teams had
already happened. But until then, police agencies at least made the
claim that the use of such force was in response to a genuine threat --
that drug dealers were heavily armed, dangerous, and had no qualms about
killing police.
The medical marijuana raids couldn't be justified that way. These
were licensed businesses, operating openly and in compliance with state
laws. The show of force wasn't about officer safety or community safety.
It was about sending a message. These people were openly flouting
federal law, and they were to be made into examples. This isn't the sort
of government action we commonly associate with free societies. And of
course, these raids have continued ever since. Return SWAT To Its Original Purpose
Legislatures or city councils could pass laws restricting the use of
SWAT teams to those rare emergencies in which there’s an imminent threat
to public safety. They could limit the use of no-knock raids or even
forced entry to serve warrants only on people suspected of violent
crimes. One policy might be to allow the deployment of a tactical team
only when police have good reason to believe that a violent crime is in
the process of being committed, or is likely to be committed imminently
without police intervention.
Key, who started the Baltimore SWAT team, suggests a broader rule,
but one that would still impose limitations. "I think you could limit
SWAT teams and the dynamic entry tactics to those cases where police can
obtain a no-knock warrant," he says. "The courts impose more
restrictions for no-knock warrants. You have to show evidence that a
suspect may attempt to arm himself and attack police, or may destroy
evidence if there's an announcement."
At the very least, lawmakers should demand an end to SWAT mission
creep. It's beyond comprehension that such violent tactics would be used
to enforce regulatory law. SWAT teams also shouldn’t be raiding poker
games, bars where police suspect there's underage drinking or the
offices of doctors suspected of over-prescribing painkillers. They
shouldn't be performing license inspections on barbershops, or swarming
Amish farms suspected of selling unpasteurized cheese. Like the medical
marijuana raids, these sorts of raids are straight-up abuse -- for the
sake of sending a political message. Mandate Transparency
In 2008, the Maryland legislature passed a bill requiring all police
agencies in the state to issue twice-yearly reports on how often they
use their SWAT teams, for what purpose, what the searches found, and
whether any shots were fired. It's a simple bill that puts no
restrictions on the use of SWAT teams, yet was opposed by every police
agency in the state.
Other states could pass similar laws. And they could go further.
Police departments could track warrants from the time they’re obtained
to the time they’re executed, in a database that’s accessible to
civilian review boards, defense attorneys, judges, and, in some cases,
the media (acknowledging that the identities of confidential informants
need not be revealed). Botched and bungled raids should be documented.
These include warrants served on the wrong address, warrants based on
bad tips from informants and warrants that resulted in the death or
injury of an officer, suspect or bystander.
Police departments should also keep running tabs of how many warrants
are executed with no-knock entry versus knock-and-announce entry, how
many required a forced entry, how many required the deployment of a SWAT
team or other paramilitary unit, and how many used diversionary devices
like flash grenades. They should also make records of what these raids
turned up. If these tactics are going to be used against the public, the
public at the very least deserves to know how often they’re used, why
they’re used, how often things go wrong, and what sort of results the
tactics are getting.
It's clear that there has been a huge increase in the number of SWAT
teams and the frequency of their use. But we can't have a real debate
about police militarization without better data on its pervasiveness.
There are other policies that would make police departments more
transparent. The remarkable advances in and democratization of
smartphone technology have enabled a large and growing number of
citizens to record the actions of on-duty police officers. Rather than
fighting the trend, police officials and policymakers ought to embrace
it. Legislatures could pass laws that clearly establish a citizen’s
right to record on-duty cops, and provide an enforcement mechanism so
that citizens wrongly and illegally arrested for doing so have a course
of action. As many police officials have pointed out, such policies not
only expose police misconduct, leading to improvements, but can also
provide exonerating evidence in cases where police officers have been
wrongly accused.
All forced-entry police raids could be recorded in a tamper-proof
format, and the videos made available to the public through a simple
open records request. This could be done efficiently and inexpensively.
Even better, it wouldn't be difficult to equip the officers
participating in a raid with cameras mounted on their helmets, jackets,
or guns. Not only would recording all raids help clear up disputes about
how long police waited after knocking, whether police knocked at all,
or who fired first, but the knowledge that every raid would be recorded
would also encourage best practices among the SWAT teams. Additionally,
recordings of raids would provide an accurate portrayal of how drug laws
are actually enforced. It’s likely that many Americans aren’t fully
aware how violent these tactics can be. Perhaps many would still support
tactical raids for drug warrants even after being exposed to videos of
drug raids. But if the drug war is being waged to protect the public,
the public should be able to see exactly how the war is being waged.
Local police departments that receive federal funding should also be
required to keep records on and report incidents of officer shootings
and use of excessive force to an independent federal agency such as the
National Institute for Justice or the Office of the Inspector General.
Those that don't comply should lose federal funding. Currently, while
all police agencies are required to keep such data, that requirement isn't enforced.
We also need easy-to-find, publicly accessible records of judges and
search warrants (and where applicable, prosecutors). The public deserves
to know if all the narcotics cops in a given area are going to the same
judge or magistrate with their narcotics warrants, or if a given judge
hasn’t declined a single warrant in, say, 20 years. As more courts use
computer software to process warrants, it will get easier to compile
this sort of information and make it available to the public. Change Police Culture
All of these policies have infused too many police agencies with a
culture of militarism. Neill Franklin is a former narcotics cop in
Maryland, who also oversaw training at the state's police academies in
the early 2000s. “I think there are two critical components to policing
that cops today have forgotten," he says. "Number one, you’ve signed on
to a dangerous job. That means that you’ve agreed to a certain amount of
risk. You don’t get to start stepping on others’ rights to minimize
that risk you agreed to take on. And number two, your first priority is
not to protect yourself, it’s to protect those you’ve sworn to protect.
But I don’t know how you get police officers today to value those
principles again. The ‘us and everybody else’ sentiment is strong today.
It’s very, very difficult to change a culture.”
But there are some practical policy changes that may work. Police
today are given too little training in counseling and dispute
resolution, and what little training they do get in the academy is
quickly blotted out by what they learn on the street in the first few
months on the job. When you’re given abundant training in the use of
force, but little in using psychology, body language, and other
non-coercive means of resolving a conflict, you’ll naturally gravitate
toward using force. “I think about the notion of command presence,”
Stamper, the former Seattle police chief, says. “When you as a police
officer show up at a chaotic or threatening or dangerous situation, you
need to demonstrate your command presence -- that you are the person in
command of this situation. You do this with your bearing, your body
language, and your voice. What I see today is that this well-disciplined
notion of command presence has been shattered. Cops today think you
show command presence by yelling and screaming. In my day, if you
screamed, if you went to a screaming, out-of-control presence, you had
failed in that situation as a cop. You’d be pulled aside by a senior cop
or sergeant and made to understand in no uncertain terms that you were
out of line. The very best cops I ever worked around were quiet. Which
isn’t to say they were withdrawn or passive, but they were quiet. They
understood the value of silence, the powerful effect of a pause."
Stamper adds that these things aren’t emphasized anymore. “Verbal
persuasion is the first tool a police officer has. The more effective he
or she is as a communicator, the less likely it is he or she is going
to get impulsive -- or need to.”
Franklin suggests that deteriorating physical fitness at some police
departments may also lead to unnecessary escalations of force -- another
argument in favor of foot patrols over car patrols. “When I was
commander of training in Baltimore, one of the first things I did was
evaluate the physical condition of the police officers themselves,”
Franklin says. “The overweight guys were the guys who knew very little
about arrest control and defensive strategy. Being a police officer is a
physically demanding job. You can’t be so out of shape. When you are,
you’re less confident about less lethal force. It can get so that the
only use of force you’re capable of using is a firearm. You also fear
physical confrontation, so you’re more likely to reach for your firearm
earlier. Getting cops in shape is a confidence builder, and it gets
people away from relying too much on the weapons they have on their
belt.”
Police should also be required to learn and understand the effect
that power can have on their own psyche. They should be taught the
Stanford prison experiment, the Milgram experiment and similar studies.
Having complete power over another person can be immensely corrupting.
But simply being aware of its corrosive effects is an important step
toward guarding against them.
Police departments and policymakers should also embrace real
community policing. That means taking cops out of patrol cars to walk
beats and become a part of the communities they serve. It means ditching
statistics-driven policing, which encourages the sorts of petty arrests
of low-level offenders and use of informants that foment anger and
distrust. Community policing makes cops part of the neighborhoods they
serve, gives them a stake in those neighborhoods, and can be the
antidote to the antagonistic us-versus-them relationship too many cops
have with the citizens on their beats. (And the mentality usually goes
both ways.)
More generally, politicians be should called out and held accountable
when they use war rhetoric to discuss crime and illicit drugs. Words
and language from policymakers have an impact on the way police officers
approach their jobs, and the way they view the people with whom they
interact while on patrol. If we want to dissuade them from seeing their
fellow citizens as the enemy, political leaders -- the people who set
the policies and appropriate the budgets for those officers -- need to
stop referring to them that way.
Ultimately, we're unlikely to see any real efforts to reform or
rollback police militarization until politicians are convinced there is a
problem and pay a political price for not addressing it. Today,
domestic police officers drive tanks and armored personnel carriers on
American streets, break into homes and kill pets over pot, and batter
down doors to raid poker games. They’re now subjecting homes and
businesses to commando raids for white-collar and even regulatory
offenses. And while there has recently been some action from state
legislators, there’s been barely any opposition or concern from anyone
in Congress, any governor, or any mayor of a sizable city.
Until that happens, expect more tanks, more and bigger guns, more
Robocob responses to protest, and more, increasingly violent raids for
increasingly less serious crimes and infractions. Radley Balko is a senior writer and investigative reporter for The Huffington Post. This essay is adapted from his new book, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/how-to-roll-back-police-militarization_n_3749272.html
Marvin Guy and Henry Magee
One
Friday last May, the sun had not yet risen when a SWAT team ignited a
flash-bang grenade outside Marvin Guy's apartment in Killeen, Texas.
Officers were trying to climb in through a window when Guy, who had a
criminal record and was suspected of possessing cocaine, opened fire.
Four officers were hit; one of them was killed.
