As discussed in the previous essay, encouraged by grants from the Vets to Cops federal program, police departments have actively recruited Iraq and Afghanistan veterans as candidates. The similar command structure of most police departments to that of the military along with veterans' knowledge of firearms, would make it appear that there is a logical transition for veterans to policing. This is just one small example of how militarization has come to our local police forces.

But the militarization of policing goes beyond just the recruitment of veterans for police jobs. Militarization of the police in one form or another has been with us for decades. What is different now is that previously, this militarization was mostly behind the scenes or limited to a very narrow scope within the day to day conduct of police business.

Many experts trace the increasing militarization of police to the failed war on drugs which began under President Nixon in 1971.

In June 1971, President Nixon declared a "War on Drugs." After that declaration, federal drug control agencies' resources and authority were dramatically increased and Congress implemented measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants. Then, in 1996, Congress mistakenly gave the Department of Defense expanded authority to provide excess military equipment to law enforcement. Today, the program known as "1033" has provided a large number of small towns with tank-like MRAPs while others have received grenade launchers and high-caliber assault rifles. Even campus police are receiving advanced equipment and weaponry from the program for free.

Radley Balko, who authored Rise of the Warrior Cop, is recognized as one of the foremost authorities on the militarization of police. Balko traces the first overt militarization of police to the development of SWAT teams back in the 1960's.

There's certainly a lot of overlap between the war on drugs and police militarization. But if we go back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were two trends developing simultaneously. The first was the development and spread of SWAT teams. Darryl Gates started the first SWAT team in L.A. in 1969. By 1975, there were 500 of them across the country. They were largely a reaction to riots, violent protest groups like the Black Panthers and Symbionese Liberation Army, and a couple mass shooting incidents, like the Texas clock tower massacre in 1966.

Since the development of the first SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams in the 1960's, the growth thereof and the use of these militarized police units has exploded.

In 1980 SWAT teams across America were deployed around 3,000 times. Deployments are estimated to have risen nearly seventeen-fold since, to 50,000 a year. Tactical police units are not just common in big cities: though nearly 90% of American cities with populations above 50,000 have SWAT teams, so do more than 90% of police departments serving cities with 25,000 to 50,000 people—more than four times the level from the mid-1980s.

These SWAT teams which were originally developed to address specifically dangerous situations are now being deployed in ways for which they were never originally intended to be used, such as executing search warrants. And they are disproportionately being used upon people of color.

In addition to militaristic techniques used in the deployment of SWAT teams, the US government has contributed significantly to the militarization of police forces through the 1033 program which gives used military equipment, such as bomb suits, other protective gear such as Kevlar helmets and vests, night vision goggles, battering rams, surveillance equipment, Bear Cats, MRAPs, APCs and other similar vehicles, drones, helicopters, and military grade rifles such as M14's and M16's.

The Department of Defense operates the 1033 Program through the Defense Logistics Agency’s (DLA) Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO), whose motto is “from warfighter to crimefighter.” According to LESO, the program has transferred $4.3 billion worth of property through the 1033 Program.

Once the equipment is distributed, there is absolutely no oversight on any level as to how it is being used. Further, the equipment can be transferred from one law enforcement agency to another without any additional oversight. And amazingly, over one third of the equipment distributed under the 1033 program is brand new.

The 1033 statute authorizes the Department of Defense to transfer property that is “excess to the needs of the Department,” which can include new equipment; in fact, 36 percent of the property transferred pursuant the program is brand new. Thus, it appears that DLA can simply purchase property from an equipment or weapons manufacturer and transfer it to a local law enforcement agency free of charge. Given that more than a third of property transferred under the program is in fact new, it appears that this practice happens with some regularity.

The ACLU has studied the use of militarized policing and compiled their findings in a June, 2014, report on the militarization of police titled War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing. In particular, the ACLU's report focused heavily on the overuse of SWAT teams and the tragic consequences that can accompany the use of military techniques in the civilian arena.

(note: my bolding in the quote below)

...the overwhelming majority of incidents the ACLU reviewed—79 percent of the incidents the ACLU studied involved the use of a SWAT team to search a person’s home, and more than 60 percent of the cases involved searches for drugs. The use of a SWAT team to execute a search warrant essentially amounts to the use of paramilitary tactics to conduct domestic criminal investigations in searches of people’s homes.

Generally, these SWAT team raids consist of as many as twenty or more officers armed with assault rifles and grenades, bursting into a home using a battering ram and breaking windows, often doing extensive property damage along with shooting pets, and throwing flash grenades at the occupants, which can lead to severe injuries if a person is hit by one. Far too often the carelessness with which SWAT teams have been deployed has resulted in severe injury or death to innocent victims.

Kara Dansky, senior counsel at the ACLU, was the primary author of a 98 page report titled War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing.

The ACLU has long examined incidents of excessive force and discriminatory policing tactics, and during her 2012–14 
tenure at the ACLU, Dansky says the organization kept hearing anecdotal stories of SWAT raids gone wrong—pets killed, children injured, people killed—and decided to seek raw data about such deployments.

The full report from the ACLU is available here. It is in pdf file format and is 98 pages long.

In an interview with Johns Hopkins Magazine, Dansky elaborates upon how the public and the press is now beginning to understand the concerns of the ACLU over the militarization of the police.

Prior to Ferguson, Dansky says initial press interest was about police forces having, say, mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles, aka MRAPs. "We were very careful to explain that, from our perspective, the militarization of policing has been happening in black communities to fight the war on drugs for decades. It's a systemic problem, it's not just a handful of MRAPs. And then Ferguson happened, and everybody was like, Oh, that's what you mean. So the conversation shifted from MRAPs to, How can this happen in America?"

In recent decades, militarization of police forces has become increasingly intensified and overt. The shocking pictures out of Ferguson, Missouri, brought the issue of militarized police to the forefront of public attention. Many Americans outside the communities of predominately black and people of color were shocked when they saw the pictures from Ferguson, Missouri.

But it took a major news event for the ACLU report to get noticed. It came out last June, but it wasn't until Michael Brown was killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014, that mainstream media started calling. The police response to the peaceful protests that followed Brown's shooting shoved the militarization of American police forces into the national spotlight thanks to images of officers in full battle dress pointing assault rifles at unarmed citizens.

And many veterans criticized the police of Ferguson for their militaristic response to the protesters.

Veterans have criticised police in Ferguson for intimidating the crowd rather than controlling it, for failing to share information with citizens and for escalating the standoff. One veteran noted that "we went through some pretty bad areas in Afghanistan, and we didn't have that much gear."

While poor communities and people of color have been disproportionately subjected to SWAT team raids and other effects of the militarization of police, increasingly, white and middle class Americans are becoming alarmed at the militarization of our police forces that is turning our cities and towns into battlefields.

In the next essay, I will examine the effects of militarization of our police forces have had upon our communities and the relationship we all have with those who are supposedly charged with serving and protecting all of us.