 We have seen something like Ferguson, Mo., before. A police officer shoots and
kills a young black man, which touches off protests and looting. Which prompts
headlong rushes to judgment about the actions of everyone involved — the cops,
elected officials, activists and the media. Which causes us to question our
progress on race, our politics and our national character.
We saw it with the beating of Rodney King in 1992 in Los Angeles. We saw it
again with the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012 in Sanford, Fla.
What’s different this time is police officers armed with equipment and weaponry
normally associated with overseas military operations.
And a lot of Americans don’t like what they see.
“In Ferguson and beyond, it seems that some police officers have shed the blue
uniform and have put on the uniform and gear of the military, bringing the
attitude along with it,” wrote Paul Szoldra, who served in the Marines in
Afghanistan.
IT HAPPENED: member of the St. Louis County Police Department points his weapon
in the direction of a group of protesters Wednesday in Ferguson, Mo.
For years the federal government has been providing surplus military equipment
to local law enforcement through the 1033 Program which has, since its inception
in 1997, delivered $5.1 billion in weapons, Humvees, 30-ton Mine-Resistant
Ambush Protected vehicles, and even helicopters and drones to cities and towns
across the country.
The pace of the military equipment dispersal has quickened with the winding down
of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In 2013 alone, the 1033 Program transferred more than $449 million in equipment,
weapons and vehicles to local law enforcement.
“The only cost we incurred was the gas it took to drive it back,” the police
chief in Ruidoso, N.M. — population 8,005 — told New Mexico Watchdog in June of
the practically mint-condition MRAP his department picked up in Sealy, Texas.
“The cost was zero dollars.”
But carrying out a military operation is a lot different than local policing.
“There’s a blurring of the military mission and the civilian police mission and
that is a dangerous thing,” Tim Lynch, director of the Project on Criminal
Justice at the Cato Institute, said two months before the Ferguson unrest. “We
want our civilian police departments not to lose sight of the fact that they are
dealing with people on a day-to-day basis with constitutional rights, and we
want them to use a minimum amount of force to bring suspects into a court of
law.”
A SPARK: Protesters try unsuccessfully to light a Molotov cocktail, Wednesday in
Ferguson, Mo.
Arming civilian police forces with military gear runs the risk of conditioning
“police officers to see the people they serve — the people with whom they
interact everyday — as the enemy,” Radley Balko, wrote in his 2013 book, “The
Rise of the Warrior Cop.”
The hyper-arming of police has been going on in big cities and small towns.
Little Preston Idaho, population 5,000 has a MRAP, as a Watchdog.org reporter
found.
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Nearly 20 communities in New Mexico and New Mexico State
University’s campus police now have MRAPs, New Mexico Watchdog
discovered. The police department in Hobbs was so proud it produced
a 30-second commercial featuring the vehicle and its officers in
military gear, weapons drawn, bursting through the door of a house.
Federal agencies in growing numbers field their own law enforcement
departments, Watchdog reported in April. These departments protect
at taxpayer expense such security risks as the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Department of Education.
Police chiefs who have solicited our excess military hardware
insist it is helpful, especially in violent situations.
Like a domestic violence incident in May in Los Lunas, N.M. The
bullet-proof MRAP protected officers and the public from 70 rounds
fired by a suspect barricaded in a house, Police Chief Naithan
Gurule said.
The wholesale rioting and chaos in Ferguson, Mo., was potentially
far more deadly. However, watching a St. Louis suburb morph into a
scene from Black Hawk Down has some Americans weighing concerns
about lawlessness in equal measure with the armed might of lawmen.
“The militarization of our law enforcement is due to an
unprecedented expansion of government power in this realm,” U.S.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., wrote in Time magazine. “It is one thing for
federal officials to work in conjunction with local authorities to
reduce or solve crime. It is quite another for them to subsidize
it.”
Since Paul’s commentary was posted Thursday the national debate on
militarized police has metastasized.
And that’s a good thing. A full-throated argument — even an angry
one full of distortion and political bias — has been long overdue.
After all, local police forces are funded with tax dollars that come
from each and every one of us. Police are public servants, first and
foremost, just like our elected public servants, our mayors, city
councilors and clerks.
AP photo
AP photo
A MOMENT OF PEACE: Demonstrators hold candles and signs Thursday,
Aug. 14, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo. Hundreds of people protesting the
death of Michael Brown marched through the streets of Ferguson
alongside state troopers Thursday after county law enforcement were
relieved of duty.
Rob Nikolewski
Since 2010, Rob Nikolewski has covered New Mexico politics and
investigated fraud, waste and abuse in government. He also writes an
opinion column in the Sunday editions of the Santa Fe New Mexican.
Rob joined New Mexico Watchdog after 20 years in television as a
sports anchor and reporter. He anchored at MSNBC, New York City,
Boston, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Reno and Boise, winning three regional
Emmy awards along the way. He holds a master's degree in journalism
from Northwestern University, a master's in public administration
from Columbia University's School of International and Public
Affairs and a bachelor's degree in journalism from Trinity
University in San Antonio.
[This
article courtesy of
Watchdog.]
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