-Caveat Lector-
[1]http://www.reason.com/news/show/121169.html
Our Militarized Police Departments
Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Crime
[2]Radley Balko | July 2, 2007
Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the committee, thank you
for inviting me to speak today.
Im here to talk about police militarization, a troubling trend
thats been on the rise in Americas police departments over the
last 25 years.
Militarization is a broad term that refers to using
military-style weapons, tactics, training, uniforms, and even
heavy equipment by civilian police departments.
Its a troubling trend because the military has a very different
and distinct role than our domestic peace officers. The
militarys job is to annihilate a foreign enemy. The police are
supposed to protect us while upholding our constitutional rights.
Its dangerous to conflate the two.
But thats exactly what were doing. Since the late 1980s, Mr.
Chairman, thanks to acts passed by the U.S. Congress, millions of
pieces of surplus military equipment have been given to local
police departments across the country.
Were not talking just about computers and office equipment.
Military-grade semi-automatic weapons, armored personnel
vehicles, tanks, helicopters, airplanes, and all manner of other
equipment designed for use on the battlefield is now being used
on American streets, against American citizens.
Academic criminologists credit these transfers with the dramatic
rise in paramilitary SWAT teams over the last quarter century.
SWAT teams were originally designed to be used in violent,
emergency situations like hostage takings, acts of terrorism, or
bank robberies. From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, thats
primarily how they were used, and they performed marvelously.
But beginning in the early 1980s, theyve been increasingly used
for routine warrant service in drug cases and other nonviolent
crimes. And thanks to the Pentagon transfer programs, there are
now a lot more of them.
This is troubling because paramilitary police actions are
extremely volatile, necessarily violent, overly confrontational,
and leave very little margin for error. These are acceptable
risks when youre dealing with an already violent situation
featuring a suspect who is an eminent threat to the community.
But when youre dealing with nonviolent drug offenders,
paramilitary police actions create violence instead of defusing
it. Whether youre an innocent family startled by a police
invasion that inadvertently targeted the wrong home or a drug
dealer who mistakes raiding police officers for a rival drug
dealer, forced entry into someones home creates confrontation.
It rouses the basest, most fundamental instincts we have in us
those of self-preservation to fight when flight isnt an
option.
Peter Kraska, a criminologist at the University of Eastern
Kentucky, estimates weve seen a startling 1,500 percent increase
in the use of SWAT teams in this country from the early 80s until
the early 2000s. And the vast majority of these SWAT raids are
for routine warrant service.
These violent raids on American homes, when coupled with the
imperfect, often ugly methods used in drug policing, have set the
stage for disturbingly frequent cases of police raiding the homes
not only of recreational, nonviolent drug users, but the homes of
people completely innocent of any crime at all.
Take a look at the map on the monitor
([3]http://www.cato.org/raidmap). This is a map of the botched
paramilitary police raids I found while researching a paper for
the Cato Institute last summer. It is by no means inclusive. It
only includes those cases for which I was able to find a
newspaper account or court record. Based on my research, Im
convinced that the vast majority of victims of mistaken raids are
to afraid, intimidated, embarrassed, or concerned about
retaliation to report what happened to them.
Pay particular attention to the red markers on the map. Those are
the approximately 40 cases where a mistaken raid resulted in the
death of a completely innocent American citizen.
The most recent example of course is the drug raid in Atlanta
last fall that killed 92-year old Kathryn Johnston. Ms. Johnston
mistook the raiding police officers for criminal intruders. When
she met them with a gun, they opened fire and killed her. The
police were acting on an uncorroborated tip from a convicted
felon.
Id estimate I find news reports of mistaken raids on Americans
homes about once a week. If youre wondering, yes, there was one
just this week. This past Saturday, in Durango, Colorado, police
raided the home of 77-year-old Virginia Herrick. Ms. Herrick, who
takes oxygen, was forced to the ground and handcuffed at gunpoint
while officers ravaged through her home.
They had the wrong address. In just the last month, there have
been mistaken raids in New York City; Annapolis, Maryland;
Hendersonville, North Carolina; Bonner County, Idaho; and
Stockton, California.
In each case, innocent American citizens had the sanctity of
their homes invaded by agents of the government behaving more
like soldiers at war than peace officers upholding and protecting
our constitutional rights.
800 times per week in this country, a SWAT team breaks open an
Americans door, and invades his home. Few turn up any weapons at
all, much less high-power weapons. Less than half end with felony
charges for the suspects. And only a small percentage end up
doing significant time in prison.
Mr. Chairman, I ask that the Congress consider ending the federal
incentives that are driving this trend, and that the Congress
reign in the copious use of SWAT teams and among federal police
agencies.
There are appropriate uses for these kinds of tactics. But the
bulk of the dramatic rise in paramilitary police operations is
attributable to inappropriate use of SWAT teams for routine
warrant service.
Its time we stopped the war talk, the military tactics, and the
military gear. Americas domestic police departments should be
populated by peace officers, not the troops of an occupying
military force.
*
References
1. http://www.reason.com/news/show/121169.html
2. http://www.reason.com/staff/show/143.html
3. http://www.cato.org/raidmap
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