For nine minutes, the knee of a Minneapolis police officer pressed on the neck of an unarmed African American lying on the ground leaving him killed. A small crowd gathered, recording the event on their smartphones, the video was rapidly shared, tweeted and broadcasted and ignited a series of protests and movements exposing racial inequalities embedded in American society and the arbitrary, unrestrained behaviour of the Police. The technique used in Minneapolis strikes an unfortunate resemblance with the tactics routinely used by Israeli police officers on Palestinians and anti occupation activists. A mere coincidence? No, the similarity is not casual. Every year American Police officers are sent to Israel to be trained by Israeli military and law enforcement officials as part of a program aimed at normalising the military application of force in quelling popular protests, gravely undermining constitutional and civil rights.
Police training in Israel is only an example of a growing trend that, over the past fifty years, has seen a shift from the traditional role of the Police in ensuring the safety of the communities to a military-style approach whereby police officers become soldiers combatting an endless “war on crime”, adopting the same equipment and techniques of the Army. This change has been labelled as the militarization of the police.
Two different roles:
Historically, Governments have always drawn a firm line between the military and the police. In the early 1800s, the founder of the modern policing, Sir Robert Peel is believed to have said: “the police is the public and the public is the police”. The purpose of law enforcement in a free society is to promote public safety and uphold the rule of law so that individual liberty may flourish. Trust and accountability between law enforcement and communities they are sworn to protect is essential to advancing these goals. Proper policing practices require that law enforcement builds positive relationships with their community, respect civil liberties and avoid tactics that encourage the use of excessive force against citizens.
This is in sharp contrast with the aim of the military, whose purpose is the protection the nation from a foreign threat and it is not concerned with engaging in the control of domestic civilians. Nonetheless, the transition of law enforcement towards a militarised approach blurs the line of demarcation between the two institutions with serious legal and sociological implications contributing to loss of confidence in police force and alienation of poorest communities.
History of Police Militarization:
Militarization of police force began to emerge in the 1960s when radical transformations threatened the white hegemonic status quo. In an attempt to secure the white hegemony, high profile politician began to connect civil disobedience and protests with street violence and black political activists with criminals. The new movement granted significant resources for law enforcement agencies to ensure greater control on minority groups. This “law and order” politics was quickly followed by the “Broken window” theory. Ignoring the structural causes that bring members of disadvantaging communities to offend, the new policing theory was based on the assumption that small infractions, if left unchecked, were symptomatic of disorder which could escalate in more severe crimes in the future thus justifying police behaviour that resemble an occupying army subjugating an enemy population.
The cornerstone of this new line of policing lies in the creation of the SWAT team in 1966 by LA police chief Daryl F. Gates to counter the guerrilla tactics used against the police during the Watts riots. Gates, to deal with the riots, assembled an elite unit of police officers – trained by the military in everything from crowd control to sniping – who could react quickly and forcefully to emergencies. The idea of a highly trained police force to handle critical cases was positively welcomed by politicians and the public opinion. In their very first raid, the LA SWAT team engaged in a high-profile shootout with the city’s Black Panther militia. Publicity from the stand- off won the unit widespread public acclaim. Gates’s team would again be featured in a celebrated standoff in May 1974, when SWAT officers traded gunfire with the Symbionese Liberation Army on live national television. This helped thrust the idea into popular culture, with TV shows.
The militarisation of the police took a turn when president Richard Nixon declared war on drugs. Law enforcement was given more powers such as the no-knock raid policy which allowed police officers investigating drug related offences to break into homes without the traditional knock and announcement. At the same time the number of SWAT teams proliferated.
With the presidency of Ronald Reagan the war on drugs began to adopt a more confrontational and militaristic approach with a widespread military-style policing.
The 1990s saw the creation of the Program 1033. Initiative of the Department of Defence, the program allowed police forces to receive dismissed military equipment (weapons, helicopters, vehicles). After 9/11 the so-called “war on terror” provided yet another new bevy of military equipment and tactics for police departments to use against American citizens. The passing of the Patriot Act into law provided further grounds for police departments to treat civilians as a foreign enemy within its own borders, giving broad legal cover for police to conduct all types of surveillance (such as reading emails and texts and requesting records of library books) which would have previously been unheard of. And then there’s all of the new military-grade weapons.
Police Militarization & the Law:
Police officers increasingly acting as soldiers raise some constitutional concerns for the protection of constitutional and civil rights.
Questions are raised in relation to a possible interference of militarised police with the Posse Comitatus. The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits U.S. military personnel from direct participation in law enforcement activities such as conducting surveillance, searches, pursuit and seizure and making arrests on behalf of civilian law enforcement authorities. The rationale of the legislation lies in the long-standing US law and policy limiting the military’s role in domestic affairs. However, the US Congress has enacted a number of exceptions to these general prohibitions that allow the military, in certain situations- such as in case of insurrection , to assist civilian law enforcement agencies in enforcing the law of the nation.
Another legal issue is how to reconcile the growing militarisation of the police with the provision of the 3rd Amendment. According to Roger Roots these modern policing techniques have fundamentally altered the balance of power between the citizen and the state in a way that would have been seen as constitutionally invalid by the Founders. The 3rd Amendment prohibits the quartering of soldiers in private homes without the owner’s consent, in other words , it ensures citizens’ rights to the ownership and use of their property without intrusion by the government. The increasing militarisation of police forces raises difficulties in the interpretation of 3rd Amendment provisions in relation to the quartering of a private home by SWAT teams, since they are increasingly acting more similar to the military in their tactics.
Even older than the Constitution, the Castle Doctrine, firmly established in English law by 1572, held that, “before entering without permission, government agents must knock, announce and identify themselves, state their purpose, and give the occupants the opportunity to let them in peacefully”. British violations of this doctrine inspired the American Revolution. This principle stands in stark contrast to approximately fifty thousand SWAT raids conducted annually in the United States, the vast majority to arrest suspects for victimless crimes, in some instances even without warrant
Consequences of Police Militarization:
When police militarize, their individual and collective psychology increasingly adopts the view that violence solves everything. They see themselves as soldiers fighting on the front line of a war, outnumbered, out-gunned, and responsible for occupying what they see as dangerous enemy territory. A soldier’s job is to confront, fight, and destroy the enemy. It is not to engage in public service. Thus, more militarized police officers see bureaucratic functions such as providing public goods and services to be secondary to fighting against their enemy. In the case of police, however, the “enemy” are the citizens within the agency’s jurisdiction, or a subset thereof. it is a transition that involves the use of violence to solve problems police encounter becoming more acceptable and even more desirable
Studies have shown no correlation between higher militarisation of law enforcement and a decline in crime rate, however evidence demonstrates that this new policing approach undermines police legitimacy and contributes to a loss of trust in the police by communities. These consequences are enhanced in marginalized communities, which see the most militarized forces. In these communities that feel targeted by militarization, police will naturally be approached with suspicion or not approached at all, thus undermining their effectiveness.
Militarization thus entails a presumption that the policed community poses a certain level of threat, so intense that it requires the availability of combat-ready forces.
The institution of the Police is frequently perceived as a part of that white hierarchy which – with its militarisation.- is responsible to the still present racial inequalities within society.
It is not controversial to state that a racial hierarchy with Whites in the dominant position is an important part of social organization in the United States, or that government institutions in the United States play a role in reinforcing that hierarchy . The police are a part of that process. As an institution of government, the police role is to maintain public order. They capture people who disrupt that order and separate them from the rest of society. Within a society based on racial hierarchy, maintaining order means maintaining the hierarchy. To facilitate this role, the public empowers police with significant authority and discretion. Although police are street-level bureaucrats, their power is considerably greater than others. Police frequently must make quick decisions in what may be life-or-death situations, so a degree of discretion is necessary to perform this function.
Within a racialized society like the US, relationships between racial groups is the product of their relative position with regard to areas of public life such as the economy and politics. As minority groups improve their competitive position, the dominant group reacts with greater hostility. In fact, the threat does not even have to be real: the dominant group only needs to perceive a greater threat for hostility to increase. Because police are agents of government, and government is an agent of the dominant racial group, police act as agents of that group by supporting the dominant position of Whites at the top of the hierarchy.
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