The “militarization” of police

Members of The Gazette Writers Circle met in June to discuss whether and how police militarization is affecting us locally.

It's right to focus on community policing and de-escalation

by Bob Elliott

Destructive situations, sometimes evolving into rioting and acts of terrorism, have been all too common across our nation in recent years. Enabled by a proliferation of guns and ammunition, they've been fueled by bigotry, racism, radicalized religious beliefs, and the too often overlooked factor of mental illness.

With law enforcement responsible for responding to these dangerous situations, the need was for police to protect themselves as well as the public. In increasing areas of the country those situations began spiraling into an 'us against them” mentality between some segments of the public and the police.

That's all upside down, because it's supposed to be the public supporting the police and police protecting the public.

Problems and causes contributing to that unhealthy friction between police and public are numerous. But I'm focusing here on that problem being compounded by the relatively recent advent of too many law enforcement systems being 'militarized.” I refer to the fact that over the past two to three decades, with increasing frequency, national news has reported police arriving at a disturbance in military combat gear, often with military-grade weapons, and sometimes in armored military vehicles. Too often that was a factor in turning disturbances into battlefields.

It's important to note that Iowa City and our corridor communities, and in fact the state of Iowa, have mainly refrained from that militarization and confrontational approach.

But it was emerging too frequently in other parts of our country. According to Christopher Coyne of the Independent Institute at George Mason University, the problem dates back to 1981, when Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act (MCLEA). It allowed the Department of Defense (DOD) to offer training, intelligence, vehicles, and equipment to domestic police forces.

Then, according to Coyne, in 1997 the DOD's Excess Property Program allowed transferring military equipment to local police departments. He wrote that by 2010, some $212 million in military equipment was being transferred to local police departments throughout the nation. Adding that within a year the amount increased to $450 million.

An especially toxic mixture was the use of military equipment in instances when law enforcement hiring and training failed to screen out individuals wanting to be a cop or deputy in order to achieve a position of power and an opportunity to use it.

I talked with Capt. Doug Hart of the Iowa City Police Department. It was much more positive than what I've been describing here:

'For more than decade, a paramount focus of our Iowa City training has been on what we identify as verbal de-confliction, with individuals and crowds,” explained Hart. 'In fact, that's been an emphasis with the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy since 1997.”

As police, sheriff's deputies, and state police are responsible for responding to disturbances at any level, there may be instances when access to defensive equipment and weapons may be needed to protect not only themselves, but the public. So while military combat equipment shouldn't be general issue, there may be a need to have it at least available on a regional basis.

But even more important, we need to see the widespread emergence in law enforcement hiring and training emphasizing community policing and de-escalation techniques for defusing heated situations. As in other professions, but especially in law enforcement, how you do something is often at least as important as what you do.

All of this is easy for me to write. I've never worn a police uniform or faced an armed suspect or an angry mob. But recent militarization in some law enforcement systems is a serious concern and needs to be seriously addressed.

' Bob Elliott and his wife have been Iowa City residents for 50 years. Comments: elliottb53@aol.com

The militarization of America

By Nick Johnson

Philadelphia police crowd control 30 years ago? Dropping a bomb from a helicopter; 60 homes burned.

Not the typical response of the thousands who do 'protect and serve.” But today's militarization of local police with hand-me-down Army equipment is worth examining - in context.

Because it's only a small part of the militarization of America.

We are the world's pre-eminent military power. Of the top ten military nations we spend more than the other nine combined. With our military presence in over 150 countries, and provision of weapons to others, we have militarized the world.

Expenditures reflect values. There is little political objection to the trillions of debt from credit card military adventures. We accept the opportunity costs as we reject universal, single-payer health care, starve our public schools, cut programs for the poor, and watch our infrastructure crumble. 'We're number one!” we cry, notwithstanding low international rankings for test scores, infant mortality, and life expectancy.

Our national anthem celebrates 'the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air.” Our sporting events often begin with a vocalist and spectators singing that song. Athletic contests in many cultures serve, in part, to prepare young men for battle. Our most popular sport is our most violent: football. Those games sometimes begin with a flyover of military fighter planes.

We have a 'ready, fire, aim” militarized media, its cheerleaders for war ready to support every military action. Never mind we haven't been attacked, and there's no realistic threat. War coverage is dramatic and improves ratings, whether baby wars (Granada), 'pre-emptive” wars (Iraq), or perpetual wars elsewhere. TV stations used to 'sign off” at night with visuals of flags and fighter planes. As Mason Williams said, 'Every night, before it goes to bed, television gets down on its knees and prays to war.”

We have militarized our homes and ourselves. Our children play with video games that train them as military sharpshooters and drone operators. Roughly 40 percent are living in homes with guns. The U.N. reports America's gun death risk per 100,000 population is 20 times the average for other countries.

There are 50,000 suicides and homicides each year; 60 percent involve guns. (Homicide is the second leading cause of death of 15-25 year olds.) Some estimate guns in homes are 16 times more likely to harm occupants than intruders.

Given those odds, Americans must really love their guns a lot - a love that surpasses all understanding.

It's natural such a nation would have a National Rifle Association (NRA) opposing virtually every form of gun regulation, including restrictions on owning assault weapons, retention of databases of gun purchases, background checks on purchasers at gun shows and changes in the registration of firearms.

With the expansion of permits to carry, we see the militarization of other institutions as well. There are guns on college campuses, in schools, malls, movie theaters, bars and even churches. And there are the all-too-regular reports of deaths - genuinely grieved, but all too quickly forgotten.

We have militarized our politics and governing. Few elected officials are defeated for supporting increased defense appropriations or the NRA's agenda. Many have military bases or defense contractors in their districts. Coupled with the NRA's campaign contributions, large membership, and ability to defeat its opponents, military-industrial complex and NRA victories are not surprising.

We've already militarized law enforcement.

The 1878 posse comitatus act makes it a federal crime to use 'any part of the Army ... to execute the laws.” However, with many exceptions, plus the Insurrection Act, it's a low hurdle.

In 1932, President Hoover ordered Army General Douglas MacArthur and Major Dwight Eisenhower to use the infantry to disburse the WWI Bonus March veterans from their Mall encampments. President Eisenhower used the Army's 101st Airborne Division to integrate the Little Rock schools in 1957. When riots followed Dr. King's 1968 assassination, President Johnson ordered 2,000 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers flown to Washington.

Sometimes Army intervention aids big business. In the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, President Harding ordered the Army to support mine owners against 10,000 miners. Since the 1890s union organizing and strikes have often yielded to government force - including the Army.

In October 2002, the activation of USNORTHCOM marked the first time since George Washington that a military commander's mission is our own homeland.

Militarized nations need blanket surveillance of their civilians. We have that, too. The NSA plus 15 other spy agencies we know about.

That's the context. Now let's talk about the militarization of police.

' Nicholas Johnson, as U.S. Maritime Administrator, had responsibility for military sealift to Vietnam. www.nicholasjohnson.org, FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com, mailbox@nicholasjohnson.org

Police militarization is a self-fulfilling prophecy

By Kurt Michael Friese

It is not news that Americans are inundated with images of fear and violence every day. Some of it is intended to be entertainment (prime-time TV shows, movies, video games), and some of it is intended as information, in the form of what we broadly call 'news media.” Often this is the price of being informed about our world - we need to know if there is danger present. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, the information media, especially on cable news, has taken a more sinister tone.

The adage, 'If it bleeds, it leads” has been a staple of journalism for decades. Today though, there need not be any actual violence, merely the constant drumbeat of the perceived threat of danger is enough, filling the ceaseless 'news cycle” with endless loops menacing men with AK-47s waving black flags.

Terrorism is a tactic meant not to kill so much as to instill fear, and then let the fear do the damage. And it is working. Nowhere is this clearer than in the general complacency Americans have shown toward the militarization of our municipal, county, and state police forces. We blithely accept it as necessary, so anxious have we become about the mere professed threat of violence. Up-armored vehicles carrying up-armored police, who look more like soldiers than law enforcement officers, may be meant to make us feel more secure, but they actually become self-fulfilling prophecy.

Take as anecdotal evidence the city of Keene, New Hampshire, which in 2012 asked for and received a federal grant from the Department of Homeland Security to acquire a Lenco Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck (BearCat). In the application, the city of 23,419 people cited the potential terrorist threat to the 70,000 people it attracts every year to its annual Pumpkin Festival. Despite vocal opposition, they received the nine-ton truck, and in 2014 drunken rioters disrupted the heretofore-placid festival, smashing pumpkins and chanting, 'Bring out the BearCat!”

According to NBC News, reporting after the incident: 'Soon after the BearCat arrived in Keene, Terry Clark, a city council member who had opposed the purchase, told The Boston Globe the ‘danger of domestic terrorism' was ‘just something you put in the grant application to get the money. What red-blooded American cop isn't going to be excited about getting a toy like this?' said Clark. ‘That's what it comes down to.'”

On a more serious front, there are many who speculate that the rioting in Ferguson, MO, last year was exacerbated (if not instigated), rather than quelled by the presence of heavily armed and armored police, and military-style vehicles.

The media's terrorism-based fear mongering is far from the sole cause of this militarization of civil law enforcement. The war in Afghanistan that resulted from the 9/11 attack, as well as the invasion and occupation of Iraq, have been a boon to what President Eisenhower famously dubbed 'the Military-Industrial Complex,” and as those wars slowly wind down, they must find uses for all that excess military gear. What better place than local law enforcement, which is often staffed by former military personnel? They are, after all, familiar with such equipment and trained in its safe and proper use.

Here at home, quite a stir was caused when the Johnson County Sheriff's Department took possession, through a grant program like the one used in Keene, of a former military-owned Mine Resistant Ambush Protection - or MRAP - vehicle, one of over 12,000 deployed between 2007-2012 to the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters. Three times the size of Keene's BearCat, the 26-ton truck is designed, as its name makes clear, to survive improvised explosive devices and other forms of surprise assault. There being far less likelihood of that in Iowa City, the Sheriff's department has used it, thus far, solely for flood rescue. Fifteen other county and local law enforcement agencies in Iowa have similar vehicles.

Americans have seen the police using military-style weapons and tactics since at least the 1970s, when a popular TV show placed the term 'SWAT,” (Special Weapons and Tactics) into the popular vernacular. As the use of these special weapons and tactics increases, so too does their abuse. The examples abound of accidental shootings, both of bystanders and of police, as a doctrine of overwhelming force evolves into the rule, rather than the exception.

In May of this year, in St. Augustine, Florida, police responded to call to a non-emergency center meant for beginning the process of involuntary committal of family members struggling with addiction. They entered the premises with their M4 rifles shouldered, and without anyone trained in treatment to talk to Justin Way, who had a knife and was threatening suicide. Minutes later, he was dead on his bed, shot at close range with those M4s. While we will never know for certain if a more restrained approach may have saved this despondent man's life, it certainly appears likely. Police will review, study and debate this incident, but one thing is clear, when you have an abundance of hammers, most problems begin to look like nails.

We cannot force cable news to stop ginning up fear and doing the terrorists' job for them, but we can turn off the TV. We cannot un-spend the blood and treasure of the last 15 years, but we can choose to elect people who will work to reverse the course of answering violence with violence. We cannot snap our fingers and make either these armaments nor the perceived threats vanish. There is no instant fix, but the first step in solving a problem is admitting you have one.

' Kurt Michael Friese is an Iowa City business owner. Comments: KurtFriese@gmail.com