Police Militarization Gave Us Uvalde - The Atlantic

[erronis]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/police-training-militarization-mass-shootings-uvalde/661295/
Archived: https://archive.ph/PuDOB'

I would normally not post something from the RW George Mason Antonin Scalia Law School, but this is incredibly powerful and informative.

The cost of aggressive policing tactics and training can be measured in bodies: Atatiana Jefferson, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and others, I believe, died in part because of a policing culture that sanctions unnecessarily aggressive tactics in everyday policing situations. But there are other consequences. Thoughtful police leaders will tell you that frayed police-community relations—especially with communities of color—have become an impediment to good policing, and the problem is growing. Effective policing always depends on buy-in from the community. Every unnecessarily aggressive policing encounter, every viral video of people begging for their life, causes individuals to withdraw their willingness to aid police. A critical mass of everyday citizens at odds with their police is a disaster for effectiveness and democratic legitimacy.

What does this have to do with Uvalde—an event in which more, not less, aggression was called for? It would be insufficient to chalk up the tragedy at Robb Elementary to bad individual decision making. I think it reveals a hollowness that has always lurked deep within police militarization.

Having served in both, I can tell you that police aren’t the military. The intensity of the training, the resources put into developing unit cohesion, the careful cultivation of competent junior officers, the physical demands, the singular focus on obedience—military training is not simply “tougher” (in some ways) than police training; it is different in kind. This reflects the differing purpose and goals of the two institutions. That’s good; we shouldn’t want police to treat Americans like the military treats America’s enemies, and we shouldn’t train them to do so.

But in our ill-conceived attempt to refashion police into a cadet branch of the military, we have somehow managed to get the worst of both worlds. We have trained a generation of officers that being casually brutal in everyday encounters is acceptable, but these same officers show a disturbing tendency to fall back on jargon about “battlespace management” and “encounter tempo” to explain a slow reaction in the rare circumstance that really does require a rapid, all-out response. Especially in poor communities, the result has been the strange dynamic of “over-policing and under-protection” described by the criminologist David Kennedy, in which police are hypervigilant about petty offenses but unresponsive to more serious criminal activity.

Police militarization, it turns out, is largely swagger, and short on substance. What strikes me as I study the Facebook photo of the Uvalde SWAT team, standing in their tactical gear, is the theatricality of the whole thing. Any thoughtful observer of policing over the past 20 years has come to recognize the increasing childishness of the rhetoric about police militarization generally, and SWAT specifically. The journalist Radley Balko and others have documented police units’ use of military insignia and tough-guy mottos totally unsuited to civilian agencies (examples: “Hunter of men,” “We get up early, to BEAT the crowds,” “Baby Daddy Removal Team,” and “Narcotics: You huff and you puff and we’ll blow your door down”). Police education and training standards are abysmally low. In Texas, more training hours are required to be a hairdresser than a cop. National standards for SWAT training and tactics are essentially nonexistent.

[Hekate]

1. Thank you for this. I have been deeply troubled by the push to militarize police since 9-11...

There was a giveaway of military surplus, military hardware was sold or given to communities with no conceivable use for such gear, language changed and with it the mission changed —

The whole move was wrong on so many levels, and with such terrible and foreseeable consequences that I can hardly begin to enumerate them.

I went from being the kind of citizen who saw no reason to reflexively distrust the local police force, to a person who would have to think twice before asking for their help. I am white, to be sure, but also female and older, and this lack of trust leaves me with an added layer of vulnerability. What it must be like to be a minority in this country vis a vis the police is for me a chilling and heartbreaking thought.

[Novara]

2. Me too.

Yesterday I drove past a local cop shop with a massive ridiculous vehicle labeled "RESCUE." Rescuing WHAT, exactly?

[SharonClark]

3. I'm no expert on this issue but I hosted a group

of young Bosnian civic leaders and when we toured my local police facility, the officers were excited to show the Bosnians all their military equipment and a huge military vehicle that looked straight out of a military recruitment ad.

If I ever saw it on the street I would think we were under attack,

[jaxexpat]

5. What did the Bosnians seem to learn from the experience?

[crickets]

4. K&R for visibility.

[Lonestarblue]

6. The proliferation of military assault weapons has also made the job of policing more difficult.

And dangerous. So now police shoot first, usually to kill, and ask questions later. The War on Drugs has turned many police departments into drug enforcement agencies and caused enormous wreckage in the lives of the poor and minorities who are targeted by police instead of those in white suburbia who also use drugs. Yet, we just keep doing the same things that have proven not to work. The War on Drugs has not deceeased their use. Rather it has made violent drug cartels wealthy. The money should instead be spent on drug prevention and drug treatment.

Police officers face terrible risks in many situations when they face individuals who are armed to the teeth with weapons ready to kill. There is no such thing as safety because there is a good guy with a gun. If only bad guys had guns, police and society would be safer.

Then add the white supremacist infiltration in many police departments, and we have a recipe for utter disaster. And another disaster is politicians afraid to do anything at all, either about guns or militarized police. We have reached a sad state of affairs.

[NullTuples]

7. Let's not forget that ex-military trained to see "civilians" not citizens, get hiring priority.

We now have law enforcement in our country that essentially has very little in the way of checks and balances. Little if any accountability. Military equipment and training. And they have a strong, insular subculture that is white supremacist, CSPOA, and right wing Christian nationalist.

This should terrify you.

[JoeOtterbein]

8. K n R ! Thanks for posting!

I'm in the process of reading the whole article and I'm already gob-smacked.

Policing in America is a complete mess!

[Initech]

9. Conservatives have no solutions. Their solutions are to throw guns and/or money at the problem.

And hope that it goes away. Oh also if a problem becomes worse they will pray and hope that it goes away.

[UTUSN]

10. K&R