March 26, 2014
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For nearly half a century, the general trend within
America’s police precincts has been toward greater militarization, a
transformation initiated by the culture wars of the 1960s and
facilitated by the war on drugs, fear of inner-city crime, and anxieties
over the threat of terrorism.
Fear of drugs, crime and
terrorism have been used to justify the expansion of SWAT programs and
the acquisition of military grade weaponry and vehicles in America’s
smaller towns. Citing previous work, investigative journalist Radley
Balko writes
that the number of SWAT teams in municipalities with populations
between 25,000 and 50,000 “increased by more than 300 percent between
1984 and 1995,” and that 75% of all of these towns had their own SWAT
teams by the year 2000. Small precincts acquired wartime weaponry and
a warrior culture was engendered among community police.
The ACLU is currently working on a major investigation
to illuminate the extent of militarization across America. Here are
four shocking examples of militarized police in America's small towns.
1. Keene, New Hampshire
A
town with a murder count of two since 2009, Keene’s city officials
surreptitiously accepted a $285,933 grant from the Department of Defense
in 2012 to purchase a Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter
Attack Truck, or BearCat.
The grant was offered through
the 1033 program, which was signed into law in 1997 and created a
pipeline for the DOD to pass surplus military gear to local police
precincts. It may seem preposterous that a sleepy New England town would
need to commandeer a tank intended to withstand IED attacks, but in the
post-9/11 era, nearly any degree of militarization can be justified
with the threat of terrorism.
“We don't know what the terrorists
are thinking,” warned Jim Massery, sales manager for the creator of the
Bearcat, Lencor Armored Vehicles, to investigative journalist Radley
Balko, before questioning whether residents who took issue with the
BearCat “just don’t think police officers’ lives are worth saving.”
A
series of town meetings led by city councilor Terry Clark revealed a
sizable number of city residents opposed the local SWAT’s acquisition of
a BearCat. “This is an agreement between the government and arms
dealers, essentially,” noted Clark after a representative for Lencor
revealed that the transfers of military equipment allow them to tap into
the DOD’s $34 billion terrorism budget.
Despite
resistance, the Keene police department put the BearCat to use, starting
in the fall of 2012, and it was used 21 times as of summer 2013: 19
times for training exercises, once in response to a barricaded person
and once in response to a person threatening suicide.
Surrounding
cities have signed pacts with Keene to borrow the BearCat when needed,
and support throughout the state for similar vehicles remains strong: A
state bill to halt the purchase of military equipment by New Hampshire
police departments was shot down in late March, making it likely that
more departments will seek BearCats from the DOD, in addition to the 11
that already have them.
2. Ogden, Utah
Ogden,
a medium-sized Utah town flanked by the Wasatch mountain range and the
Great Salt Lake, was for a long time little more than a junction point
for railroads crisscrossing the country. These days, it’s ground zero
for the debate over the use of SWAT in Utah, which has pitted fervent
proponents of aggressive paramilitarism against those who want
alternatives to the hyper-violent police confrontations that have roiled
the state in recent years.
The flashpoint for the
debate came in January 2011, when members of Ogden SWAT battered down
the front door of Matthew David Stewart’s home. When the army veteran
awoke to the sound of shouting voices and shuffling boots, he grabbed
his bathrobe and Beretta and began exchanging fire with the officers,
killing one and wounding seven while sustaining multiple gunshot wounds
himself.
This disastrous account of law enforcement
excess was bookended by death, starting with the raid fatality and
ending with Stewart’s own suicide in his prison cell shortly after a
judge threw out his self-defense claim. However, the questions raised
about the use of military tactics have endured, imbued with urgency by a
steady drip of fatal statewide SWAT encounters in the last two years.
Although
some in the state advocate more diplomatic means of apprehending drug
and other types of offenders, the zeal for Ogden SWAT remains stronger
than ever as the institution burrows itself deep into the community’s cultural DNA and swells into nearbyjurisdictions. Three separate bills
in the Utah legislature would limit the ability of SWAT to serve
“no-knock” raids (the deadly kind in which officers barge in the door
while bellowing “Search warrant!”) and increase the standard of
transparency that SWAT-equipped precincts must meet.
3. Columbia, South Carolina
Richland
County, where Columbia is located, caught the attention of some
activists in 2008 when its sheriff purchased an armored personnel
carrier from the DOD. Police in the area continued buying military-grade
vehicles unchallenged. Most recently, the Columbia Police Department
purchased a mine-resistant war truck from the DOD in the fall of 2013.
Unlike
Keene’s BearCat, Columbia’s “U.N. blue” has a turret that can be armed
with a 50-caliber machine gun. It’s also built to withstand any mine
blasts it may trigger in the streets of the "Capital of Southern
Hospitality.”
The Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected
Vehicle (MRAP) is valued at $658,000, but was handed off virtually free
to the Columbia Police Department under the 1033 program. The Nerve found
that the only costs incurred by the Columbia police for obtaining the
vehicle in September 2013 came to about $2,800: a $2,000 annual fee for
participating in the 1033 program, and $800 to actually transport the
vehicle from a military base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Under
the conditions of the 1033 program, the DOD technically retains
ownership of the military equipment it loans out, and recipients must
use the equipment for at least one year before it is returned. However,
the national ACLU confirmed with AlterNet that they’ve never heard of a
department returning equipment to the DOD.
Unsurprisingly,
drugs and terrorism were used to justify the presence of the vehicle.
The Columbia Police Department’s application for the MRAP explained that
the armored vehicle was needed to “protect our officers and the public
during high risk counter drug and counter terrorism operations within
the city of Columbia and the state of South Carolina.”
Victoria
Middleton, executive director of the ACLU-South Carolina, noted that
local news outlets failed to commit significant time to covering
militarization in Columbia. “There has been a huge distraction,” she
wrote to AlterNet in an email, “[with the] search for a new police
chief, turf issues with Richland County Sheriff department, [and] city
administration problems.”
Documents reviewed by AlterNet
reveal that the ACLU-South Carolina sent a FOIA request to the Richland
County Sheriff’s office in March 2013, demanding the disclosure of “all
1033 programs inventories created and maintained” by county police
departments. The sheriff’s office responded with a warning that
fulfilling the ACLU’s request “may result in a charge of several
thousand dollars,” which the ACLU immediately countered with another
letter.
To date, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department has not complied with the ACLU affiliate’s FOIA request.
4. Paragould, Arkansas
The
Paragould police chief attempted to turn a rising crime rate into a
carte blanche for sending fully outfitted SWAT teams into communities to
ask every single person in public for identification. The population of
the town is 27,000.
"To ask you for your ID, I have to
have a reason,” said police chief Todd Stovall at a town hall meeting
in December 2012. "Well, I've got statistical reasons that say I've got a
lot of crime right now, which gives me probable cause to ask what
you're doing out.”
The mayor stood by his police chief.
"They may not be doing anything but walking their dog, but they're going
to have to prove it,” he added to Stovall’s remarks.
The policy
of de-facto martial law captured national attention and inspired an
immediate response from the Arkansas ACLU. Stovall issued a statement justifying
police-state tactics as features of “proactive police philosophy
dedicated to managing problems before they become unmanageable,” and
gave limited lip service to the Constitution and rule of law in general.
The public outrage forced city officials to back away from the Orwellian initiative.
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