According to a story by the Washington Post’s Radley Balco, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently released a report entitled: “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing”, within which the ACLU concludes, among other things, that:

“American policing has become excessively militarized through the use of weapons and tactics designed for the battlefield. Militarization unfairly impacts people of color and undermines individual liberties, and it has been allowed to happen in the absence of any meaningful public discussion.” (p. 45)

The ACLU report runs 96 pages, but about half of that is acknowledgements, appendices, endnotes, source citations, and a touching memorial to a young child—Bounkham (“Baby Bou Bou”) Phonesavanh—currently in an induced coma in an Atlanta hospital as the result of police actions during an arrest warrant service. Baby Bou Bou’s tragic story begins on page 14 of the ACLU report.

There can be no doubt that police weapons, equipment, and tactics have evolved considerably over many decades, not only throughout the United States, but in California and Long Beach as well. Like most all large cities, Long Beach has a SWAT unit. LBPD’s SWAT unit is comprised of several “teams” but, unless something has changed in the last four years or so, only a couple of these personnel are assigned to those duties full time.

LBPD’s SWAT unit is among the best-trained and equipped and most capable in Los Angeles County, if not all of California. There exist both regional and national SWAT competitions in which LBPD’s unit typically acquits itself better than most. According to the LBPD website: “The SWAT Team responds to 50+ incidents per year. These incidents include, Hostage Situations, Sniper Incidents, Barricaded Suspect, Skyjacking, Terrorism, Active Shooter Incidents, Search Warrants, Dignitary Security and Operations Orders.”

One aspect of this topic that both the Post story and the ACLU report seems to spend little or no consideration on is how this “militarization” actually occurred. The article doesn’t mention it at all, and the report states only:

“SWAT was created to deal with emergency situations such as hostage, barricade and active shooter scenarios. Over time, however, law enforcement agencies have moved away from this original purpose and are increasingly using these paramilitary squads to search people’s homes for drugs.” (p. 2)

and

“The militarization of American policing has occurred as a direct result of federal programs that use equipment transfers and funding to encourage aggressive enforcement of the War on Drugs by state and local police agencies.” (p. 16)

Both of these quotes are woefully superficial and, especially in the second case, blatantly inaccurate and misleading. The “militarization” of American policing can be said to have commenced long before President Nixon’s ill-conceived “War on Drugs” (a “war” perpetuated and, indeed, escalated by virtually every president since).

Commencing in the late 1920’s Alfonse Capone and other gangsters began to use .45 caliber Thompson sub-machine guns (“Tommy Guns”) and hand grenades against one another and local and federal law enforcement. These were military-style weapons and tactics which law enforcement had not previously faced and to which police agencies found they had to quickly adapt or remain woefully outmatched.

Since that time, law enforcement’s adoption of more “militaristic” weapons, equipment, and tactics have, in virtually every case, been in direct response to increasingly more militaristic weapons, equipment, and tactics used by criminals against them. Unlike the authors of the Post article and the ACLU study, I think it is important to understand the true origins of this situation, and its relationship to modern policing in Long Beach.

Both the article and the study are chockfull of statistics about the pain and suffering of people which can be attributed directly to police action—regrettable and sometimes completely avoidable pain and suffering. Yet not a word about the casualties suffered by law enforcement personnel every year in the performance of their sworn duties to their communities. Not a word about the number of people protected, saved, and rescued, each year, through the use of these more “militaristic” weapons, equipment, and tactics.

I think those numbers are important to consider also.

What do you think?

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