War on our Soil: The Hyper-Militarization of Law Enforcement Agencies in the United States

War on our Soil: The Hyper-Militarization of Law Enforcement Agencies in the United States

Author, Mari Faines

Abstract

Three years removed from the murder of George Floyd, the world remembers the Summer of 2020 filled with protestors in the streets, calling for equity and justice. The world was forced to grapple with the images of tanks, guns, and tear gas as militarized police forces crowded United States urban areas. The US sent a clear message to Black people and those of whom supported the cause, we will meet your calls for justice with violence and hyper-militarization. American wars have always been unjust, inequitable, and disproportionately destructive for Black communities at home and abroad. That summer was no different. Decades of segregation, criminalization, and systemic disenfranchisement has led to what the Kerner report forcased as “two separate and unequal societies' ” . (Embrick 2015) Black citizens in the United States have not been recognized as full citizens or afforded the same safeties under US federal laws. For some Americans police are a symbol of safety and security, while for Black communities, they ’re a symbol of surveillance and a wartime occupying force (Mummolo 2018). With white supremacy and nationalism being recognized by the federal government as a domestic threat, we can no longer spend over one trillion on endless wars, policing, mass incarceration, immigration, ect. (Lee, HR RES_, 8). The United States hyper-militarization of police in Black communities is destabilizing. It's time to re-think the framework for what safety and security looks like in Black communities. We must create policies that emphasize people and prevention rather than retribution and reaction.

Background

Historical Framework There are a multitude of ways that sovereign states wield their powers to govern citizens, especially by analyzing the ways in which they regulate their behaviors and revoke their citizens' freedoms. If one looks specifically at the US political system, we must question the tactics and culture that centers violence at the hands of police and other agencies of the state in the name of “ safety ” and security (Gunderson, Cohen, et al. 2019). This violence wields a particularly rough hand when looking at policing and militarization in communities of color. Since the early 20th century, Black scholars have acknowledged the distinct differences between the ways in which the United States’ police Black and Brown communities versus the rest of America. W.E.B Dubois, in his 1903 work, Souls of Black Folk noted, the color line as a indicator of difference in the ways Black and white citizens were treated by systems in America, noting, “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. ”(Dubois, 1903). In the context of systemic policing, the color line is an explanation for the reasons for the difference in treatment between, white and Black people in the US. James

Baldwin took this understanding of systematized racial difference to a new level, when he noted that urban police were “ occupying forces'' in Black communities (Mummolo, 2018). Today, that has not changed. America has continually created systemic differences that allowed for the stigmatization and criminalization of communities of color (Haviland-Eduah, 2015). As Michelle Alexander noted in her book The New Jim Crow, since the end of slavery we have seen prisons get darker and younger over time (Alexander, 2010). Policing as a practice was created in the South due to the need for fugitive slave catchers, but as cycles of surveillance changed in Black communities so did the forms of control. Violence toward Black people by the US has always been a key function of control, but with the growth of police departments in the 1960s, police became the sole agencies that held social control for Black and brown bodies (Bonilla-Silva, 2001). By the end of Jim Crow in the late 1960s, the inception of the War on Drugs and today during mass incarceration there has been a transition to the heightened version of modern day police militarization in Black communities (Alexander, 2014). America has told the narrative that Black people are violent perpetrators, allowing for the social controls of extreme police force and brutality, and in certain cases the specatacle of the modern day lynching at the hands of the US (Alexander, 2010§; smith, 1995). In order to be tough on crime, policing became proactive about catching the “ criminals'' , entering a new type of police–Militarized.

Military Equipment One of the ways in which law enforcement agencies funded their more militarized police forces was through the 1033 Program. This program originated with H.R 3230, originally signed by President Clinton during the 1997 Fiscal year which provided the power for the “Secretary of Defense to sell or trade excess military equipment to local Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAS)” (Delehanty, Mewhirter, Welch et.al, 2017). These weapons included (but were not limited to), high-caliber weapons, armored vehicles, aircrafts, tanks, and similar military equipment that were delivered for minimal prices, often with minimal oversight from civilians (Musgrave, Meagher, and Dance 2014). There are a multitude of LEAS which received these weapons, expectantly sheriff and police departments, but most shockingly schools and universities. Since the inception of the program in ’96, nearly 10,000 jurisdictions have received more than seven billion dollars of equipment (including non-lethal equipment and office supplies) (Lawrence, O’Brien 2021). The number of funded jurisdictions and military equipment sold decreased during the Obama-era with reforms such as Executive Order 13688, implemented in the wake of the use of military force in cities including Ferguson, MO in 2015 (Lawrence, O’Brien 2021). Unfortunately, during the Trump administration we saw those reforms overturned, and we have seen that very little has been done to quell militarization, particularly in Black communities today.

Culture of Militarization

Militarized policing is not solely about gear and weaponry, it is also a mindset that has inundated modern day policing. The increase of recruitment and training of military veterans as police officers (Weiss, 2011), among other factors, has changed the mindset of those who are expected to “ protect and serve” . As noted by one scholar, “ most of these guys just like to play war; they get a rush out of the search and story missions instead of the bullshit they normally do” (Kraska 2001, quoted in Balko 2014, quoted in Delehanty 2017). With the introduction of militarized weapons also came a militarized mindset and culture, both organizationally and operationally (Kraska 2007, quoted in Delehanty 2017). SWAT and other teams were created to work with military grade weaponry in the most hostile situations. Unfortunately, over time issues including lack of regulation, have allowed them to be used in more mundane police encounters. As noted in Maryland , roughly 90% of SWAT deployments in the state over 5 fiscal years were used to serve drug warrants (Mummolo, 2018). Across the country militarized police units are most often deployed in communities with large Black populations, and in many cases diminish police reputation, rather than enhancing safety or reducing crime. The presence of this militarized policing is incredibly disruptive to the lives of citizens, they often include extensive property damage and can even include physical and potentially deadly harm to mistaken or intended civilians (Mummolo, 2018). While much of the analysis surrounding the effects of militarized policing are anecdotal, there is still scientific and journalistic scholarship that support the claim that there is no evidence that SWAT teams or militarized police lower crime or promote public safety (Mummolo, 2018). More often than not it creates a negative image of police, normalizes the criminalization of Black communities, and diminishes the relationship between the state and their citizens.

Recommendations

In President Biden’s 2021 State of the Union address he noted,

“We should all agree, the answer is not to defund the police. The answer is to fund the police. Fund them. Fund them!”(Bouie, NYT, March 4th 2022), but this is not the answer. For Black communities the continued investment in police, particularly military investment has done much more harm than it has ever done good. In order for our country to get to the place of equity and anti-racism espoused by this administration, demilitarizing law enforcement agencies is the place to start. There needs to be a radical shift in the relationship between community members and LEAS in order to improve the relationships between the police and the communities they serve. Policies must be made that move the police force away from being as a surveilling entity, rather implementing social services that help communities. Most importantly, Black and Brown communities who are negatively impacted by the over militarization of their communities have to become central to both the policy and the political conversation. Resolutions by Congresswomen Lee and Jaypal, have already identified up to 350 billion in defense spending cuts that would both save resources and keep our country safe; through divesting in surveillance, policing, mass incarceration, and deportation and instead investing in social structures that make communities stronger (Lee, HR RES_). Militarized policing is a top down problem, therefore redirecting military spending, carceral spending, and implementing new

forms of taxation and ways to use the deficit for social services for communities in need would greatly improve communities way of life (Lee, HR RES_). Further, as noted by the NAACP, ACLU, Movement for Black Lives, and other advocacy groups there must be a repeal of 1033. The “law of instrument” states that, the access to certain tools increases probability for their use in action (Maslow, 1996), therefore LEAS access to military weapons increases the possibility of violent responses (Delehanty, Mehrirer, Welch, et al 2017). If the United States is truly trying to move forward in hopes of peace, justice, and equity for all, it needs to give all of its citizens the same rights under the law, starting with safety and security rather than surveillance. Therefore, we must remove these weapons of war from our communities.

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