FINAL PUBLISHED PUBLIC SOCIOLOGY BLOG

“Police Militarization in America”

Raghav Sharma

Prof. Buyco

SOCI 100W-01

30 November 2018

Word Count: 792

“Police Militarization in America”

More people demean law enforcement’s use of military-grade equipment and tactics that are passed down from the federal government to states in order to combat crime.

The advent of terrorism and organized crime pressure law enforcement to raise efforts to protect their communities. Essentially, we must know if militarized police departments improve community relations and public safety. However, recent developments unveil police departments intimidating ethnic minorities with ineffective militarization.

The federal government provides equipment to local police departments from an unlimited pool of military ordinance. After 9/11, military resources were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. Decades later, the federal government faced an issue of military resource relocation as the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan decreased. The government temporarily stored their resources in warehouses, until they ran out of space. So the federal government stated that “there is a need to dispose of material” from these warehouses (Lindsay-Poland, John. 2016). This forced a federal institution like the Pentagon to create “[program] Section 1033”to get rid of any “…military gear, including firearms, aircraft, grenade launchers, armored vehicles, body armor, and other material” from government warehouses (Lindsay-Poland, John. 2016). The Pentagon saw domestic terrorism and organized crime as an excuse to redistribute serious military hardware to police departments across the nation trying to increase public safety.

For instance, the extremely infamous police shooting of an unarmed African-American in the 2014 Ferguson, Missouri unrest drew thousands of protestors as well as a large group of heavily armed police. Police brought gear like: “armored personnel carriers, semi-automatic rifles, ballistic shields, tear gas launchers… ” to control the situation (Bieler, Sam. 2016.). Moreover, the arrest footages showed the aggressive military techniques to place people in handcuffs. Officers were seen “dragging citizens by their arms, placing citizens into intense arm locks, and pepper spraying many citizens” as they approached the police line (Bieler, Sam. 2016.). The police believe that large crowds can be controlled with force. In reality, the situation worsened with many arsons, vandalism, thefts, and violent crimes that were seen on the news. The media showed police arresting protesters, but highlighted other crimes impacting the city.

As the government militarizes the nation’s law enforcement, “the dividing line… which has prevented the military from interfering in law enforcement, has slowly eroded…instead of the military taking on police functions within the United States, police have become more like the military”(Lindsay-Poland, John. 2016). The Ferguson incident proved that militarization was ineffective in handling the overwhelming amount of crimes when people told the media they felt unsafe. As the police become more militarized, they invade and intimidate the general public.

Militarization includes recruiting seasoned veterans to join police departments so the police can gain military knowledge to assist in tactics and control. The military is generally known to provide aggressive training to soldiers. Moreover, police departments hire veterans that use their training in a civilian environment yielding brutal outcomes. Therefore,“…[when] U.S. military personnel [return] home, they become an important [target for police recruitment], typically without retraining for a distinct law enforcement mission, or receiving treatment for traumas sustained in overseas operations….”(Lindsay-Poland, John. 2016). The training and career experiences that veterans contribute are favorable traits for becoming strong police officers in highly stressful environments. However, the police become quasi-military when hardened veterans deal with the nation’s social problems.

Crime researcher, Jonathan Mummolo tried finding successes with militarization gaining community trust through crime reduction. The entire study utilized “a nationwide panel to estimate the effects of acquiring a SWAT team on violent crime … and assaults…to test whether the increased deployment of SWAT teams affects these outcomes… [placing a] focus on violent crime because of the asserted link between militarized policing and public safety…” (Mummolo, Jonathan. 2018.). This study compared a local police department with others across the nation by tracking encounters between the police and citizens over time. By contrasting pro-militarization claims with citizen complaints of police’s use of excessive force in local communities Mummolo concluded that “… militarized police units are more often deployed in areas with high concentrations of African Americans [with] no firm evidence that SWAT teams lower an agency’s violent crime… through presence and intimidation[…] using national survey experiments […to show] that citizens react negatively to the appearance of militarized police units in news reports and become less supportive of having police patrols in their own neighborhoods” (Mummolo, Jonathan. 2018.)

This issue reveals how the federal government developed another military force within the United States for years. The initial reason to redistribute surplus military hardware to civilian police with less warehouse space brings needless militarization. Governments try protecting their people but using military equipment and hardened veterans yield bad results. In turn, police powers must be limited or citizens cannot feel safe. Police militarization is ineffective in helping people.

Works Cited

Lindsay-Poland, John. 2016. “Understanding Police Militarization in the Global Superpower.” Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 28:(2): 151–157.

Bieler, Sam. 2016. “Police Militarization in the USA: the state of the field.” Policing: An International Journal, 39: (4): 586–600.

Mummolo, Jonathan. 2018. “Militarization fails to enhance police safety or reduce crime but may harm police reputation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115:(37): 9181–9186.

Related posts:

Having a website that is optimised for search is essential when looking to increase your online ranking on Google. Optimising your website for search will make it so much easier for users to find…

Digital marketing as a business approach is getting more popular every day. Business leaders arealso getting more and more farmiliar with digital marketing, at least to some extent. The leaders could…

The Eastern Education Foundation is currently selling tickets to the Joe Conklin Comedy Show on Friday, Jan 25 at 8 p.m. at Eastern Regional High School. The ‘Man of a Thousand Voices’ will be at the…