A well-qualified fellow* weighs in on militarized policing:

Your article may provoke some further discussion of paramilitary and SWAT Teams. Policing in America is very decentralized with perhaps 17,000 independent jurisdictions. Few police forces can sustain the level of training necessary to support these types of units. It is important to note that when these units are deployed, it appears that rarely are nonlethal weapons such as TASERS and kinetic weapons (bean bags, rubber bullets) used in conjunction with the other weapons. The result is that the deployment of the team means that no alternatives are available.

While the police may become proficient at the tactical level, if you review police publications, there is little discussion about the role of these units. The publications are filled with different types of weapons and equipment, but never a discussion of how to justify, train and employ this level of force.

If you compare the development of the military with the police, you will see a transition in the military is now taking place for doctrine and training to function more effectively in the post cold war environment. While the military will continue to have tanks and artillery, it is now moving towards developing the capacity for peacekeeping and other civil military operations where alternatives to force are being developed. A debate is going on about how to best make the transition from conflict to stability and hopefully some form of democratic rule.

In contrast, we see the police becoming more heavily armed and more willing to use force. No public debate or research from the National Institute of Justice or other national level agency such as the FBI, appears forthcoming to determine what the appropriate level of this type of force is needed and the conditions under which it should be used.

This is an important point. Just as we’re militarizing the police, we’re also (in the words of Prof. Peter Kraska) “police-isizing” the military. Neither is a good idea. The military is trained and charged to blow stuff up and kill people. The police are trained and charged to “protect and serve,” or to protect us from harm while securing our rights. Lose sight of the difference between the two, and U.S. citizens get treated like citizens of enemy nations.

(*Michael Wiatrowski, Ph.D. is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel who served as a Military Police, Military Intelligence and Civil Affairs Officer in Vietnam, Bosnia and Haiti. He is also a retired professor of criminal justice who has published in the area of democratic policing. With Dr. Nathan Pino, he is the coauthor of Democratic Policing in Transitional and Developing Countries to be published by Ashgate Press.)

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2006 at 11:49 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.