Battering Rams and Jackboots, Oh My!

The militarization of police in this country has gotten to a ridiculous extreme.  I first noticed it in ’06 when the story broke about a Cape Fear Community College student in Wilmington, NC who had his (unlocked) door beaten in by a SWAT team with a battering ram, and was shot in the head and chest by a deputy who confused his fellow officers’ ruckus with the battering ram for gunfire coming from inside the apartment.  All over a student who got beaten and robbed (2 PS3′s were stolen).  There was bad information from the county’s informant, who claimed everything from the student was a gang member to him being armed to the teeth.  As far as I can tell, no one has proven to this day that the victim and a friend even committed the crime.

In just 7 years, it seems to have gotten worse and worse.  Now we have police departments buying MRAPs from the Pentagon, SWAT teams being called out for domestic disputes, and police departments borrowing Predator drones for everything from cattle disputes (ND police borrowed one from DHS to help arrest a family that wouldn’t give up 6 cows that wandered onto their farm) to tracking armed suspects (Christopher Dorner, among others).  Everyday cops are now carrying AR-15s and semi-auto AK-47s, or even worse, M-16s and actual full-auto AK-47s (the true assault rifles).

Why are cops now arming up like this is downtown Kabul?  Supposedly because police are outgunned.  Yet less than one-eighth of one percent of crimes (including shootouts with cops) are committed with military-grade weapons.  And that has held true since it was first studied in 1991.  When did all this start?  Back in the late 60′s, in LA, as a result of the Watts Riots.  It took a few years for the idea to gain any traction, but in 1969 LA had the first SWAT team.  SWAT teams really became popular in the 70′s when Nixon declared the War on Drugs, and SWAT teams became even more heavily armed and ubiquitous in the 80′s due, again, to the War on Drugs, because under Reagan it was ramped up into high gear.  Now, you DHS feeding every police department in the country all the money for military gear any department could want, and the Pentagon helping, all to fight the War on Terrorism.  Not even getting into the fact that Wars on Nebulous Things never work (the War on Poverty has just hurt and stagnated the poor, the War on Drugs has done nothing except bolster organized crime (plus now 58% of Americans are in favour of legalizing marijuana)… so why is the War on Terrorism going to be any different?), but again, why do we need to fight guys in weed fields or trucks full of coke wielding AR-15′s with standard 10- or 30-round magazines, or old Savage shotguns with 5-round tube mags, or 9mm Glocks with 15- or 33-round mags, with tanks, drones, and grenades?  Mr. Drug Dealer’s Glock isn’t any better than Mr. Cop’s Glock.  If Mr. Cop is better trained than Mr. Drug Dealer, he should be a better shot and better able to handle his weapon in case of malfunctions anyway.

Which is another point: training.  If Deputy Long (the deputy in the story at the beginning of this blog) had had proper training, a) he wouldn’t have confused the bang of a battering ram for the sound of gunfire, and b) he probably wouldn’t have been twitchy enough to pull the trigger.  Do your own search on SWAT raids, or especially arrests performed by SWAT or heavily-armed cops, and see how many end badly (ie someone, usually the arrestee, dying).  Also note that none of the DHS grants that give money to buy military equipment give money for training.  As we see with stories of people who go out, buy a gun, and just leave it in the night-stand, then end up injured/killed by their own weapon, you need to train with a weapon to properly use it and be comfortable with it.  In the heat of the moment, with a potential perceived threat in front of you is not the time to suddenly get cozy with your gun (or tank, or whatever).  That’s when you make mistakes, because your trigger finger’s at its itchiest (fight-or-flight, it’s a basic fact), and handling unfamiliar equipment that both makes you nervous with its unfamiliarity and makes you feel invincible because of its power just greatly exacerbates the potential and extent of those mistakes.   So if we’re going to continue essentially putting troops on our streets, proper training is a must.

I would agree with the argument that police need these military weapons taken away from them altogether.  The question is, how?  In researching for this post, I came across a Yahoo article that argued for the Federal government stepping in and banning military-grade weapons for police forces.  No.  Top-down government is never the answer.  If we’re going to take the jackboots off the thugs, the solution is a bottom-up one.  Get involved in your local government.  Elect mayors, city councils, county commissioners (all these by whatever your local names for them are), and sheriffs who will fight the growing militarization of your city and county police.  Elect state senators and representatives who will stand against militarizing your state police.  And vote for federal senators, representatives, and presidents who will defund the DHS grants that give money to those lower-level police forces to buy military weapons and vehicles from the Pentagon.