Political Authority, Social Control and Public Policy

Cara E. Rabe-Hemp, Nancy S. Lind, Nancy S. Lind, Cara E. Rabe-Hemp

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781787560505
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politische Überwachung & Datenschutz

Political movements and citizens across the globe are increasingly challenging the traditional ways in which political authorities and governing bodies establish and maintain social control. This edited collection examines the intersections of social control, political authority and public policy. Each chapter provides an important insight into the key elements needed to understand the role of governance in establishing and maintaining social control through law and public policymaking. Close attention is paid to the roles of surveillance and dissent as tools for both establishing and disrupting the social control of political institutions. This collection examines the vast implications of increased participation in governance by citizens through dissent, revealing the ways in which this represents both a disruption of social control and a mechanism for increased accountability through surveillance and media. Through its examination of issues such as police militarization, police legitimacy, religion and the state, immigration, mental health policy, privacy and surveillance, and mass media and social control in a post-truth environment, this collection will prove invaluable for researchers, policy makers and practitioners alike.

PART I

FORMAL MECHANISMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL

CHAPTER 1

POLICE MILITARIZATION: IMPLICATIONS FOR COMMUNITIES OF COLOR

Ashley K. Farmer, Cara E. Rabe-Hemp and Jeruel Taylor

ABSTRACT

The militarization of police has garnered great attention in recent decades. Bolstered by the wars on drugs and terrorism, police agencies have been receiving military weapons and equipment since the 1033 Program was authorized by the Department of Défense. A recent American Civil Liberties Union investigation on police raids found that militarization has occurred with almost no oversight. They studied more than 800 paramilitary raids and found that almost 80% were for ordinary law enforcement purposes like serving search warrants in people’s homes; only 7% were for genuine emergencies, such as barricade or hostage situations. Most compelling, the raids disproportionately targeted people of color. This chapter traces the history of police militarization in America, and how it has targeted and adversely affected minority communities.

Keywords: Militarization; policing; race; police–community relations; 1033 Program; Velvet Glove and Iron Fist

INTRODUCTION

Since the 1033 Program of the National Defense Authorization Act authorized the Department of Defense (DOD) to transfer military-grade weapons to local law enforcement agencies, thousands of police agencies have received weapons and equipment to police American streets. This was mostly to provide police agencies with the power to fight the War on Drugs. While the militarization of police was happening long before this, these social control policies have had devastating consequences, increasing racial tensions between police and minority communities. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, society saw an increasingly militaristic police force, rife with military gear and new operational tactics including no-knock raids and using police para-military units for drug warrants. The tragic violence by police in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 has many Americans asking if the militarization has gone too far. This chapter will explore the history of the militarization of American police, the empirical and theoretical explanations for the militarization and conclude with the social, legal, and ethical implications of police militarization.

WHY POLICE?

When we think about the role of police, many of us consider the motto, “to protect and serve” that is engraved on police emblems. However, maintaining the mechanisms for social control, while meeting the needs of the people they serve, is one of the major dilemmas in policing today. Police serve as direct agents of social control by transmitting the values of the state (i.e., government) through the law and by punishing those who deviate. Through this role, police have a monopoly on state-sanctioned violence against citizens. With the increasingly public violence by police, symbolized by the shooting of Michael Brown (an 18-year-old African American man) by Darren Wilson (a white police officer) in Ferguson Missouri (New York Times, 2014), there is concern that the police are becoming too militarized. This is because in liberal democracies, such as the United States, constitutional and symbolic distinctions are made between the forces in “green” and “blue,” associating governments whose military police their citizens with more authoritarian regimes (McMichael, 2017). This separation is seated in the Constitution and in the Posse Comitatus Act, but is also a widely held assumption, as exhibited in Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky’s comments in Time Magazine that “there should be a difference between a police response and a military response” (Paul, 2014, p. 1).

So what is the difference? Militarization is the implementation of militarism, an ideology that focuses on use of force and threat of violence as a solution to a problem (Kraska, 2007). The military model outlines four dimensions of militarization: organizational, in how the department is structured; cultural, focusing on beliefs and values; material, consisting of equipment and gear; and operational, in how militarization is put into practice. Historically speaking, modern police structures grew out of early militia groups leaving a legacy of the quasi-military organizational structure in policing (Kraska, 1996; Kraska & Kappeler, 1997). For example, police officers are organized into ranks and operate under a top-down authoritarian command structure (Bittner, 1995; Jermier & Berkes, 1979). Furthermore, the language used to describe police work is increasingly militaristic. “War” is a military concept, and labeling problems as such highlights a sense of urgency and danger, but police are not soldiers (Lieblich & Shinar, 2017). Soldiers are trained to defeat or kill the enemy and are not constrained by constitutional norms in the way police should be (Foley, 2014). The war rhetoric fosters the attitude of “us versus them” among police officers (Foley, 2014).

Joseph Doherty (2017) argued that “it is clear that a growing ‘us vs. them’ mentality has pervaded America’s civilian police departments and that these departments now behave like small armies occupying an enemy territory” (p. 39). Today, police are increasingly seen wearing “Kevlar helmets and battle fatigues and possess sophisticated weapons” (Kappeler & Kraska, 2015, p. 274), due to an equipment sharing program with the DOD starting after the Cold War. Over 5.1 billion dollars in military surplus equipment has been transferred to local law enforcement agencies (Rahall, 2015). This equipment may be used by paramilitary groups within police agencies, typically defined as Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams, or by everyday line officers (i.e., patrol officers). The increased use of paramilitary groups to complete everyday police tasks is important to this conversation. Today, police conduct up to 80,000 SWAT raids a year, up from 3,000 a year in the early 1980s, according to Peter Kraska, who argues that this number is likely to continue growing (Balko, 2014).

In sum, there is little debate about if the police have become more militaristic. Instead, the debate is in the futility for the militarization of policing. In other words, what factors have prompted the militarization of the police? There are two general explanations for this futility or purpose of modern police militarization. The first is that the increased militarization by police is in direct response to the nation’s increasingly complex crime problems, such as the drugs and terrorism and the natural progression of the professionalization of the tasks of law enforcement. The other explanation is that police militarization is an example of the usually hidden role that police play in state repression, economic exploitation, and structural racism in the capitalist endeavor (Center for Research on Criminal Justice, 1977). This perspective argues that police have always had a hand in “facilitating authoritarianism and state violence,” but right now it is much more visible. This debate is one of the most defining political issues of this decade. Even the American people are divided on this issue. In a recent CATO poll, 54% of Americans said that police using military weapons and armored vehicles is “going too far,” while 46%said that these tools are “necessary for law enforcement purposes” (CATO, 2017, p. 1). This chapter examines this debate, as well as the history of the militarization of American police, concluding with the social, legal, and ethical implications of this movement.

HISTORY OF POLICE MILITARIZATION

Posse Comitatus Act

Posse Comitatus was designed to limit the President’s power to use the military forces in times of peace. Public hostility regarding the use of military forces against American citizens dates back to the American Revolution when the British used military troops against American colonies. This separation of military and police duties was included in the Constitution and formalized in 1878 when President Hayes signed into law the Posse Comitatus Act, which reads:

From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section and any person wilfully violating the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years or by both such fine and imprisonment.

The posse comitatus refers to any group of armed men. Excluded from this law is the National Guard and any orders they receive from the state. The initial purpose of the Act was to limit the ways in which the federal government could use military forces to administer law and policy in the United States and prevent military involvement in police issues (Kraska, 2007). This is an important starting point to understanding the militarization of the police, as these lines between police and military have continued to blur and the Act itself has become weakened in practice and policy. This has led to, at the very least, indirect military involvement in state security and policing matters (Kraska, 2007).

The 1960S

In his farewell address in 1961, President Eisenhower cautioned Americans about the growing influence of militarism in the United States, warning of misplaced power and its threat to democracy (Kraska, 2007; NPR, 2011). His warning fell on deaf ears. Instead, the blurring between the military and the police initially began in the 1960s when the military began getting rid of their surplus supplies that had been stockpiled during the Cold War, including weapons, armored vehicles, and technology. The DOD began donating or selling them to police agencies (Lieblich & Shinar, 2017).

At the same time, racial unrest was becoming more prominent in America. The most infamous of the resulting riots in the 1960s, the Watts uprisings, happened in Los Angeles, where thousands of black citizens protested unequal treatment and violence at the hand of the police. The government responded with increased police power (Gamal, 2016). At this same time, the Los Angeles Police Department was consulting military officials that were part of the Marines to learn effective techniques in dealing with snipers. Realizing their poor preparation in response to civil unrest, we saw the creation of the first SWAT team (Beck, 1972; Gamal, 2016). The creation of SWAT teams was justified to have a unit prepared to deal with high-risk scenarios, such as active shooters, barricades, riots, and hostage situations. Soon, the role of SWAT teams would be expanded.

The War on Drugs and 9-11

While the 1960s marks the start of militarization, scholars generally agree that the War on Drugs resulted in a significant increase in militarizing police forces (Balko, 2013; Foley, 2014; Kraska & Cubellis, 1997; Lieblich & Shinar, 2017). This “war” was initially declared by President Nixon in 1971, when he referred to drugs as “public enemy number one” (Vulliamy, 2011). Before this war became a permanent fixture in American politics and policy, however, the Reagan administration began reducing funding spent on social services, housing, and employment, while simultaneously ramping up the War on Crime (Meeks, 2006). Communities of color were hit the hardest by these policy decisions, as they already suffered from higher rates of unemployment or underemployment and problems with public education. While these programs and services were being cut, funding was instead being diverted to law enforcement needs (Meeks, 2006). “Weed and seed” programs were developed that focused on inner cities, but predominately used funds for crime control efforts and not social programs as was intended (Meeks, 2006).

Nancy Reagan’s highly publicized “Just say no” campaign launched numerous zero-tolerance drug policies and incarceration rates soared. The newly publicized War on Drugs prioritized drug offenses and ultimately changed the way SWAT units were utiliz...