Sadly, militarization of our police grew under Bill Clinton's encouragement.

[Grasswire2]

Last edited Sun Jun 7, 2020, 09:32 PM - Edit history (1)

I know this for a fact.

I worked in D.C. at the time in a position that sent me to many meetings and provided much material. I was an editor in an influential non-profit organization seeking criminal justice reform.

I have a copy of the memo of agreement (signed by Janet Reno) between the DoJ and the DoD -- a memo of cooperation to encourage defense contractors to develop weapons to be used against URBAN HOSTILES in this country. (We all can translate that term.)

I have the literature packet from the meeting that ensued.

This was under Bill Clinton's watch. That fact sickens me now.

[Budi]

1. Somehow I cannot see BC with the same mindset as Barr

There's more to this story.

[elleng]

12. Much more to this story, and Bill Clinton had nothing like barr's mindset.

See Ocelot's post below.

[Hortensis]

34. ALSO, most AA and Hispanics were DEMANDING crime rates be brought

down. Crime was increasing as a result of the neglect of the Reagan era, and the mood of the time was to get criminals off the street and keep them locked up. Everyone needed safe neighborhoods to live in, but plus, half and sometimes more of everyone, including AA and Hispanics, lean conservative by nature. And the mood of the times was conservative.

Strengthening of anti-crime laws, including the three-strikes laws at state and federal levels, had overall very solid approval among residents of neighborhoods that had developed unacceptable crime levels. And people liked the looks of those tanks also.

These intrinsically conservative "answers" also had strong support in affluent middle class neighborhoods whose residents could be counted on to prefer anything to raising their own taxes to pay for better policing of other parts of town. Again, conservative mood ruled.

One neighborhood in particular makes me very sad to remember. I would have loved to move there and raise our children with our friends'. Very healthy, happy neighborhood, diverse, full of children and families who knew and played together. By the '90s, it had gone socially toxic; literally too close to a Superfund site in the next community so that home values had plummeted, the tax base and involved voters to demand adequate policing had plummeted with them, conservative-leaning governments had abandoned proactive efforts, and gang activity moved in.

Those were the times and environment where this took place. Remember, our nation had swung away from the liberalism of the New Deal era to the conservatism of the Reagan era at the end of the 1970s, and the RW then accelerated far right beginning in the 1990s, and in this century to their current extremist insanity.

[Demsrule86]

2. Attacking a Democrat really?

[Ferrets are Cool]

5. I guess we don't see eye to eye on this one.

None of our representatives have been perfect. I voted for President Clinton and he did some great things, but he was far from perfect. Was the OP and attack? I don't believe it was.

[Grasswire2]

13. I supported Bill Clinton to the end of his term, throughout the unpleasantness that was his lot.

When I saw the VRWC deployed against him, I was a constant fighter against those forces.

But I also know what I have seen with my own eyes and ears, and in source documents.

[delisen]

21. Publish away.We remember the domestic terrorism of 1990s

And its roots in the Bush senior adinistration and his Iraq War that radicalized Timothy McVeigh who bombed the Federal Building and murdered so many children in their day care center.

We remember how Clnton's new AG Janet Reno a few short months into the new administration
signed off on the plan devised by Bush's ad minisration plan to attack the militarized Waco compound of the violent religious cult leader and child rapist David Koresh.

We haven't forgotten the anguish of our Dem administration trying to figure out how to preserve rights and protect lives of innocents while combatting the violent white domestic terrorists.

But it seems you have forgotten'- so publish wherever and we will set the record straight for
you.

Wr fear no truth and we confront lies and propaganda.

You have amassed an amazing number of posts in short period of time. I am impressed. You must tell us your secret!

[Grasswire2]

25. well, I've been here since 2002, w/ a short absence

I don't think I've encountered you before, and I sure don't understand the hostility. But carry on, son.

[rusty fender]

41. The truth is "bashing"?

Really?!!

[Demsrule86]

46. I don't consider it to be true.

[rusty fender]

48. Alternative facts

Huh

[USALiberal]

42. Alert it or deal with it! Nt

[Demsrule86]

43. Clinton is a Democrat and blaming him for the militarization

of the police while giving Trump and Shrub a pass...why? Should we attack former presidents and other Democratic elected? Ah pure and perfect Democrats are the only good Democrats. Any Democratic presidential administration can be nitpicked...but who does it help? Well it doesn't help Democrats.The 90's were a time of increased crime. Clinton stopped 12 years of GOP rule and gave us Ginsberg...I hate those who attack him who are on our side...I rarely alert by they way...preferring to argue a topic.

[soothsayer]

3. Either way, the experiment failed

Time to undo it.

[Demsrule86]

44. Shrub not Clinton militarized the police after 9-11.

[lapucelle]

4. What year was that? N/T

[Ms. Toad]

29. The 1033 program, that puts surplus military equipment in the hands of local government

was started in 1997.

[lapucelle]

30. I meant the memorandum of agreement. N/T

[jmg257]

6. Was this part of the '94 Crime Bill?

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, H.R. 3355, Pub.L. 103–322 is an Act of Congress dealing with crime and law enforcement; it became law in 1994. It is the largest crime bill in the history of the United States and consisted of 356 pages that provided for 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons and $6.1 billion in funding for prevention programs, which were designed with significant input from experienced police officers.[1] Sponsored by Representative Jack Brooks of Texas, the bill was originally written by Senator Joe Biden of Delaware and then was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

[Ms. Toad]

28. It was a separate bill - it's called the 1033 program.

Enacted in 1997, part of Clinton's National Defense Authorization act.

[Demsrule86]

45. Giving surplus military stuff... but only certain stuff.

It should end for sure.

[Ms. Toad]

47. The original bil was very broad.

It was scaled back by subsequent legislation/regulations/executive orders.

But it is the source of tanks with gun turrets in Ferguson, in the wake of the murder of Michael Brown.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. A couple of factors that existed then:

There was a significantly increased crime rate in the '90s, which influenced the passage of the controversial crime bill. Democrats, especially, couldn't allow themselves to be seen as "soft on crime." In addition, a lot of surplus military equipment became available during the '90s (probably Gulf War I leftovers), and federal legislation made it possible for police departments to acquire it. This was intended as part of the overall crackdown on crime. In fact, tanks and all that other shit aren't necessary for ordinary crime control in cities, but once you start getting toys like that you're going to want to use them.

[Ms. Toad]

27. It's not just that you are going to want to use them,

I believe they were required to as part of the program. (I can't find the details right now, but I worked with an organization that got a bipartisan bill introduced to severely limit the program perhaps a decade ago.)

[OilemFirchen]

9. Began? No fucking way. Escalated? Yep. As with every president since Eisenhower.

Experts say there is a long history of militarization of the police, dating back to race riots that broke out in a handful of U.S. cities in the 1950s and 1960s. Some believe that the seeming success of SWAT teams deployed to curtail the 1965 Watts Riots -- a six-day race riot sparked by conflicts with the Los Angeles police that resulted in 34 deaths -- gave way to the trend of arming and equipping police forces with battlefield weapons. A massive expansion of police militarization came after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, where law enforcement agencies stressed the readiness of local police forces, in the event of another domestic terror incident.

Bonnie Bertram, who chronicled the rise of SWAT teams in a investigation for Retro Report last year, said tactical units were quickly put into place following the race riots, but over time their deployment among police forces shifted away from civil unrest. “[During] this 50 years of evolution, they really changed from their initial intent," Bertram told the Huffington Post. “They were designed to deal with very violent confrontations starting primarily in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was ramping up the drug war and these … federal grants [were] coming in to take military surplus goods and transfer them to local police forces. Those two things sort of coalesced.”

Police Militarization History Stretches Back To Civil Rights Movement

[malaise]

18. THIS

but it did escalate with that bill

[Grasswire2]

26. The distinction, as I have noted multiple times now..

..was the development of new generation weapons by defense contractors specifically for crowd control of urban hostiles.

[lapucelle]

31. Do you have any additional information about that? N/T

[stillcool]

10. there are many, many, studies, articles etc.,

that disagree. This is one such that I picked at random. Some date it back even further.

But the modern militarization of police forces — the porousness of the conceptual border between civilian law enforcement and military tactics and equipment — began in earnest as a response to rising racial tension in the 1960s. It was because of the Newark and Detroit riots that President Johnson signed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. As political scientist David Schultz writes, “The Act created the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, which made available grants to local governments to develop and purchase military-type resources to suppress the riots. The money facilitated the development of SWAT and other heavily armored police forces which had developed in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and other cities to counteract so-called black insurgency.”
_________________________________

Militarization of the police continued unabated, of course, through the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s. Nixon and Reagan’s war on drugs kept up the pretense of an embattled country that required an internal, domestic army to protect it from itself, in the form of heavily armed local police departments. The racial overtones in this “war” remained obvious. But the war on drugs also emphasized civil forfeiture, the police confiscation of property allegedly used in crimes, which of course created a material incentive for those very same departments to keep the war hot. Upheld by the Supreme Court in a 1996, civil forfeiture would allow police departments to finance buying even more exotic military equipment to use on American civilians, almost always of color.

https://timeline.com/police-militarization-race-1967-ae022323b7bc

[Grasswire2]

16. okay, there may be differences in the term "began"

But I know, and know how I know, that the literature of the meeting wherein the DoJ and DoD of Bill Clinton's administration proposed to encourage defense contractors to develop weapons (many non-lethal but debilitating such as the sound cannons used this past week somewhere in U.S.) is the understanding that weapons were desired to use against "URBAN HOSTILES".

That is different from the other movement, which was to equip local PDs as well as military units are equipped in terms of deadly force response.

[stillcool]

20. I don't doubt that a bit...

we are a warring nation. It's who we are, and it's what we do. The whole frigging county is weaponized. Blame whoever you want.

[lapucelle]

32. Is the "literature of the meeting" publicly available? N/T

[Grasswire2]

36. not that I am aware of, and I have searched for it online

I have a copy. I will find it in my files maybe today, and review particularly the sections on new generations weapons development to be used against what were termed "Urban Hostiles." I have never forgotten my shock at seeing that description.

[tulipsandroses]

11. This did not start with Clinton.

Faced with a bloated military and what it perceived as a worsening drug crisis, the 101st Congress in 1990 enacted the National Defense Authorization Act. Section 1208 of the NDAA allowed the Secretary of Defense to "transfer to Federal and State agencies personal property of the Department of Defense, including small arms and ammunition, that the Secretary determines is— (A) suitable for use by such agencies in counter-drug activities; and (B) excess to the needs of the Department of Defense." It was called the 1208 Program. In 1996, Congress replaced Section 1208 with Section 1033.

The "war on drugs" certainly pushed it further - then 9/11
Quite frankly - many of our politicians have just been plain wrong on this.

[link:https://www.newsweek.com/how-americas-police-became-army-1033-program-264537|

[Grasswire2]

37. yes, the war on drugs and the war on crime were merely profit centers for TPTB.

...and profited largely on the backs of people of color, of whom there was no end of folk who could be shoved into the system, defenseless.

[Lars39]

14. The North Hollywood Shootout sure didn't help.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout

[LanternWaste]

15. It began under Truman.

(MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War by H. W. Brands)

It may assist you to know that simply because we become aware of thing for the first time in no way denies the prior existence of that same thing.

[Grasswire2]

17. as I have noted above...

I don't believe that the unique category of "URBAN HOSTILES' was ever previously the intended target for the (new generation) weapons being developed in the cooperation between DoJ and DoD and signed by Janet Reno.

And don't patronize me.

[delisen]

22. Ah give us your take on McVeigh and Koresh do not fear publishing

Let us not do the "I have secret documents "! bit . Too McCathyesque or Roy Cohen or Trump- Like

Feel free to respond to my post above. Cheers
and good wishes to you.

[Kingofalldems]

19. It started in the 70's.

[GulfCoast66]

23. Here in the South it started in 1877 when reconstruction ended.

Police forces became an enforcement arm of repression of black folks. They were the driving force in the lynching movement which reached its apex after African American soldiers returned after WWI.

And they came out of sanctioned groups of white males organized to stamp out slave rebellions.

My Grandfather would roll over in his grave if he knew I was about to type this, but Nat Turner was as great an American hero as ever existed. His legacy is still being smeared with shit about him following a voice from god and other crazy stuff. But if there were a god, which I’m neutral about, is there anything more just than slaves killing their enslaver?

Do we need a force to insure our laws are following and people are not harmed? Of course.

But we don’t need an occupying army enforcing everything little thing with instant violence for lack of immediate compliance.

[gulliver]

24. Thanks, but it's not exactly what I would call conclusive.

[lostnfound]

33. Anti-globalization activists - "Battle in Seattle" 1999

[Mike 03]

35. I lived in Los Angeles when this happened:

The North Hollywood shootout was a confrontation between two heavily armed and armored bank robbers, Larry Phillips Jr. and Emil Mătăsăreanu, and members of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in the North Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California, United States on February 28, 1997. Both robbers were killed, twelve police officers and eight civilians were injured, and numerous vehicles and other property were damaged or destroyed by the nearly 2,000 rounds of ammunition fired by the robbers and police.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout#:~:text=The%20North%20Hollywood%20shootout%20was,States%20on%20February%2028%2C%201997.

After this shootout occurred I remember the police saying they were outgunned by criminals (although these were bank robbers, the police also were beginning to be "outgunned" by drug gangs/cartels in Southern Cal too) and there was a push to equip them with heavier armaments. This was a huge story in Southern California; I don't know if it was part of the push to militarize, but it's' hard to overstate the impact this shootout had in our area. It completely changed the conversation Law Enforcement was having with civic leaders.

[ecstatic]

38. I think everyone understands the issue now. So what is the solution?

We need real solutions.

[Grasswire2]

39. shift 40% of police funding back to social services that prevent LEO from non-crime activity...

...and put brakes on excessive force and excessive police contact, through various restrictions.

That's a start.

[ecstatic]

40. +1000. nt