On 25 May 2020, a police officer kneeled his neck on an African American man, George Floyd, a 46-year-old for nearly nine minutes which killed him.
After his killing, thousands of people marched on roads and protested against police brutality. Till now the United States is still in the grip of violent confrontations between police and protesters.
Thousands of people have been arrested and untold numbers of people are injured in this protest.
Across the country, you have noticed that the police officers look more like soldiers, and the Americans protesting against racial injustice and police brutality, in which the overwhelming majority of them peacefully have been reached by police forces that look more like an army.
This was a protest near the White House on June 3rd. It was met by forces with riot shields, rifles, helmets, and tear gas. The authorities here were a mix of police and military: There were secret service, Park Police, the National Guard, Prison Special Operations, and the local police of nearby county.
So why does the American police officers look like soldiers? And where did they get all weapons?
In the Mid 19th century, the police department serving cities such as New York and Boston started to adopt the military terms to distinguish rank and military-style uniforms.
Although the police department did not carry guns at first, they eventually began arming themselves over the first half of the 20th century,
There were periods when some US police departments even had a specialty forces that were later called the modern Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams during Prohibition when the sale of alcohol was illegal.
The model for the 21st-century SWAT team began in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. Then LAPD chief Daryl Gates thought that the department needed a specialized force of highly trained officers who could use overwhelming force and violence to neutralize emergencies such as active shooters scenarios, bank robberies, riots, and hostage scenarios.
After a series of high-profile raids in the late 1960s and the early 1970s against organizations like Black Panthers, the SWAT idea gained momentum.
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The number of SWAT teams in the US increased from one to more than 500 by 1975. During the 1970s SWAT teams were held in reserve for emergencies in which lives were at risk, but in the early 1980s, the US war on drugs changed everything.
The US war on drugs gave impetus to the police department to use more militarized weapons and tactics. And at that time President Reagan called for the military to work more directly with the police for the War on Drugs.
President Reagan said,” Drugs are menacing our society… We must move to strengthen law enforcement activities.”
Congress agreed and this initiated a series of bills which were passed over the next few years:
1. Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act: This act was passed in 1981 that allows the military to assist with domestic and foreign law enforcement agencies.
It means that this act allows the US military to give law enforcement agencies access to its military bases and its military equipment.
It supports law enforcement in operations as well as assistance in counterdrug operations, special security operations, and assistance for civil disturbances, related activities.
2. National Guard Drug Law Enforcement Assistance Act: It was introduced in 1988 which allows National Guard to assist police with drug operations.
3. National Defense Authorization Act of 1989: In this act, it allows the military and police to train together.
4. 1033 Program: This program is operated by the Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO), a division of DLA Disposition Services, which transfers the excess military equipment to civilian law enforcement agencies.
This modern program was started during the H.W Bush administration, in Section 1208 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Years of 1990 and 1991, which allowed surplus DOD equipment, tactical vehicles, and weapons, to be transferred to law enforcement for the War on drugs.
Until 1997, it was called the 1208 program but with the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997, the 1208 program was expanded to the 1033 program allowing the military to transfer “property… including small arms and ammunition… suitable for use by the agencies in law enforcement activities, including counter-drug and counter-terrorism activities”.
As of 2020, 8,200 local law enforcement agencies have taken part in the program that has transferred $5.1 billion of military material to law enforcement agencies since 1997.
Data from 2006 to 2014 shows that local and state police departments obtained tactical armored vehicles or MRAPs, helicopters, aircraft, night-vision sniper scopes, bayonets, knives, rifles, and weapons including watercraft, grenade launchers, among other military equipment.
So the Police department got assault rifles like M16s, armored trucks, and even grenade launchers. . And before long, it began to have an effect on how police departments started to adopt a soldier’s mindset.
We can see that in the number of times, the SWAT teams were used. In the 80s SWAT teams were deployed once a month which was increased in 1995 by using SWAT teams more than 80 times a year and now SWAT teams are deployed 50,000-80,000 times every year.
And almost all of these deployments were for drug-related search warrants, generally as forced entry searches called “no knocks warrants”.
The police were becoming militarized and people noticed. In 1997, A Washington Post article of June 17 said, it made the police look like “an occupying army”.
On 28 February 1997, two men robbed a bank in North Hollywood, LA. They had fully automatic AK-47-style weapons and police Kevlar vests.
And the police officers at the time were normally armed with their standard-issue 9×19mm or .38 Special pistols, with some having a 12-gauge shotgun available in their cars.
By the time it ended, a dozen police officers were wounded.
In the aftermath of this shootout, the California police appealed, they should be equipped with assault rifles like AR-15. And so did the police in places from Florida to Connecticut.
And that same year the 1033 program was extended, dropping a condition that police departments use the equipment for drug-related enforcement.
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Now any law enforcement, even University police could access leftover military weapons, for any weapon.
The retired police chief of New Haven, Nick Pastore told The New York Times that, “I was offered tanks, bazookas, anything I wanted.”
So while under the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement officers must acquire written permission from a court of law or the otherwise qualified magistrate, to lawfully explore and seize evidence while
investigating criminal activity.
But the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. gave a new impetus for further police militarization.
This requirement changed after the September 11 attacks, with the 2001 Patriot Act which permitted law enforcement officers to search a home or business without the owner’s or the occupant’s consent or knowledge, amongst other provisions, if the terrorist activities were suspected.
This chart shows how much police departments still have 1033 program equipment from each year, it was given out.
And you can see steady growth in the program for most of the 90s and 2000s. But from 2011, everything change.
Because in 2011, the US military formally withdrew its troop from Iraq. That meant the military have a lot of equipment, and one less war to use it on. So it became accessible to the police.
This is a Mine resisted Ambush protected Vehicle or MRAP.
It’s among the most controversial equipment that was given out under the 1033 program.
This chart shows the number of 1033 program MRAPs currently held by law enforcement agencies.
And you can see from the data that police departments still have several hundred MRAPs that they got in 2013 and 2014. But none from 2015. That’s because, in August of 2015, the 1033 program became national news.
A police officer in Ferguson, Missouri had shot and killed an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown in 2014. Afterward, the community’s protests were met by heavily militarized police, who pointed sniper rifles at them as they marched.
President Obama countered with an executive order curbing the 1033 Program. And President Obama said, “We’ve seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like it’s an occupying force as opposed to a force that’s part of the community that’s protecting them and serving them … So we’re going to prohibit equipment made for the battlefield that is not appropriate for local police departments.”
In 2017, President Trump’s administration announced the lifting of restrictions on the transfer of military equipment to law enforcement agencies.
But by that point, the 1033 Program had become a lot less significant anyway.
This chart shows that by 2016, most MRAPs were given out to smaller police departments.
That means when larger cities today have MRAPs and other military gear, it’s often because they’ve bought it themselves.
And that’s because police having military gear and weapons no longer depends on any one government program. It’s now a part of how police forces see themselves.
Arthur Rizer, a former military police officer, former civilian police officer, and now studies police militarization. A big part of his research is about the mentality of police officers. And he
shared a poll he did of police officers with Vox Media.
One of the questions he asked officers, “Do you have any problem with police officers routinely on patrol, carrying military-grade equipment, or dressing in the military type of uniforms?”
And the vast majority of those officers, around 94%, said, “No, I have no problem”.
The second question Rizer asked, “Do you think it changes the way that officers feel about themselves and their role in policing?”
And the vast majority of officers, around 77%, again, said “Yes.” And what they said was, “It makes them more aggressive, more assertive, and it can make them more violent”.
And then finally, He asked them, “How do you think the public perceives you?”
And the vast majority, around 83%, said, “It scares them.”
Rizer also said, “They know that it scares the public. They know that it makes them more aggressive or more assertive. And that can be dangerous. But they don’t seem to care.”
There are definitely times when it’s been more clearly helpful for the police to have this equipment.
For example, during the Pulse Nightclub shooting in 2016, Orlando police used an armored military vehicle to stop the shooter. But those moments tend to be the exception.
Today, this equipment is still mostly used by SWAT teams for executing drug-related search warrants.
And more than half of those are still no-knock warrants, the kind that Louisville police were executing when they killed Breonna Taylor.
And in the case of the Ferguson protests, the Department of Justice established that the heavily militarized presence “served to escalate rather than de-escalate the overall situation.”
So today that equipment is standard in American police departments. But what’s changed since the 90s is that 1033 Program no longer drives the militarization of police. Today the culture of militarization is baked into how the country’s police perceive themselves.