'Demilitarize the Police!'

AS A FORMER reserve police officer who has taught ethics at two police academies, I followed the news very closely after 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot to death by police officer Darren Wilson in nearby Ferguson, Mo. When I saw the military equipment of the St. Louis County Police—especially the sharpshooter on top of an armored vehicle aiming his rifle at the protesters—I said to my wife, “This may turn out to be very, very bad.”

Sen. Claire McCaskill argued in the midst of the protests that St. Louis County should “demilitarize the police response” in Ferguson, telling reporters, “The police response has been part of the problem.”

The militarization of police has been trending over the past few decades. When the thin blue line resembles an occupying force, it exacerbates racial tensions in neighborhoods and communities, making things worse for everyone, including the police.

Some communities are starting to push back. For instance, the city council of Davis, Calif., recently directed its police department to get rid of a mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle (worth $700,000) that it had received free from the U.S. military’s surplus program.

HOW DID THE militarization of the police happen? Radley Balko, in his troubling book Rise of the Warrior Cop, observes, “No one made a decision to militarize the police in America. The change has come slowly, the result of a generation of politicians and public officials fanning and exploiting public fears by declaring war on abstractions like crime, drug use, and terrorism. The resulting policies have made those war metaphors increasingly real.”

Beginning in the early 1970s, police agencies received grants and equipment from the federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, an agency in the Department of Justice. Agency director Don Santarelli worried that police departments “didn’t value education or training. They valued hardware.” At that time Birmingham, Ala., asked for an armored personnel carrier, and Los Angeles even requested a submarine. Cities across the country wanted training and gear for SWAT (special weapons and tactics) teams.

In 1987, an office in the Pentagon was established to oversee transfers of war equipment to civilian law enforcement agencies. After 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security began to provide police departments funding to purchase armored vehicles, body armor, aircraft, and other military equipment. Companies that make and sell military-grade hardware make quite a profit on the program.

The problem with the military metaphor for policing is that citizens are viewed as the enemy. Coercion, rather than persuasion, is central. Conflict, rather than cooperation, is expected. These, in turn, increase the likelihood of police brutality and excessive force.

The modern institution of policing began in 1829 with the establishment of the Metropolitan Police of London by Sir Robert Peel, who made sure his police were different from the military. The police were not armed in the same way, and officers were citizens who knew and interacted with their fellow citizens. The use of force was governed strictly and considered a last resort.

Such a model is commonly known today as community policing, which involves police presence in the community, working with fellow citizens, and treating others respectfully. Community policing can be very effective at re-establishing trust within society as well as at protecting people.

To be sure, policing in U.S. cities can be very dangerous, especially with so many guns circulating in our society. “Officers must be protected,” David H. Bayley and Robert M. Perito argue in their book The Police in War, “but in doing so the impression should not be created that they are going to war. War is not their business.”