Thankfully, Radley doesn’t use his own blog for self-aggrandizement. But since I’m guestblogging, I can say nice things about the work he’s been doing on this blog and elsewhere and the impact it’s having.

Last fall, I was reporting on a story about Blackwater USA — the private military company. Though Blackwater is chiefly known for the mercenary/security work they’re doing in Afghanistan and Iraq, they also do a lot of military and law enfocement traing on their 7,500 acre compound in North Carolina. At the compound they even have an abandoned school bus and an entire firing range modeled after a high school(!) for SWAT training.

Anyway, I was interviewing one of Blackwater’s vice-president’s and I noticed that he had Radley’s Cato report on paramilitary police raids on his desk. I asked about it and from the ensuing conversation and I can tell you that Radley’s work was being taken seriously within the law enforcement training world.

Unfortunately, it’s not being taken as seriously within police departments. Later I asked the president of Blackwater CEO Erik Prince about the company’s law enforcement training business. He told me that almost all of the law enforcement training they do is for police officers and SWAT team members that are paying for their own training. Which shocked the hell out of me since while Blackwater’s training and facilities are very good, it doesn’t come cheap.

Maybe he was just trying to drum up business, but Prince also went on to tell me the lack of training is a problem that plagues police departments around the country (This post by Radley further seems to confirm this is problem). Everybody wants an imposing SWAT team and armored vehicle — city governments have no problem paying for that. But intangibles like police training? Forget it. Too bad that proper training is far more important then whether or not the Mayberry P.D. has a dozen M-4s and the latest kevlar body armor.

Anyway, what got me thinking about all of this was this SWAT team training video which I just stumbled across. After watching it, I feel safer — how about you?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 12:33 pm by Mark Hemingway 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.