Warrior Cop – Book Review

From Here & Back Again

By Jim Coufal

(Dec. 2014) Throughout our history, the police and military have been used to “break up riots,” peaceful or otherwise, control crowds, reduce the outcry of honest public sentiment and in other ways. In the era of Ferguson, remembering the Occupy movement and Kent State University, and in the midst of drug and terrorist wars, I suggest everyone should be interested in Rodney Balko’s book, “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The militarization of America’s police forces” (2013).

Balko is most concerned with the recent and continuing militarization of the police and starts by putting it in the context of history. He starts with a brief history of ancient Rome and moves quickly to the Enlightenment, our Revolutionary times and the first writs and the start of warrants being required to enter and search, based on the commonly held idea that “a man’s home is his castle.”

The castle doctrine is enshrined in our Fourth Amendment, which Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called “the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men” (1928). The rest of the book focuses on how the castle doctrine has been broached and continues to be eroded.

Chapters 2 and 3 review how soldiers were used on civilian matters early in our history and a quick history of police in America. Because they are taken as a given, it’s likely most of us never knew that the first police force as we know it today was created in London in 1829, and the first U.S. police force followed in New York City in 1845.

Balko describes the professionalization and bureaucratization of the police and, using historical anecdotes, the how and why certain laws were based, how the military was used in civilian matters and the first militarization of police forces. Here he also defines two forms of police militarization: first, direct, which is the direct use of the standing military for domestic policing; and second, indirect, where police forces take on the characteristics of an army.

It is the latter with which he is most concerned.

Chapters 4 through 8 cover the growth of militarization by decades, the 1960s through the 2000s. He describes how government-inspired fear, rallied over the years by inspiring fears of communism, civil rights, liberalization and Vietnam, drugs and, most recently, terrorism, have led to presidential efforts (and he spares no president), legislation and Supreme Court decisions that have brought about nearly complete abandonment of the Fourth Amendment.

As early as the 1980s, Justice William Brennan said “It appears that…victory over the Fourth Amendment is complete,” but it has gotten worse since then.

Heavy with citations, Balko describes how the misuse of laws, like the RICO Act and the creation of new acts, such as the Patriot Act, have invaded our privacy and our castle. He also points out how some administrations and legislators wanted to go even further. Reagan, for example, wanted to do away with the exclusionary rule, override Miranda, abolish bail and parole and increase the role of the military in civil policing.

Even when such laws failed to pass, the creation of drug czars, homeland security and the increased blending of the military and police, especially via laws that give “surplus” weapons and equipment from the military to the police, have seen the rise of increased police raids carried out by robo-cops.

Police forces of all sizes have been given military weapons: automatic rifles, grenade-launchers, armored vehicles and even tanks. Given new toys, humans want to use them. Given the incentives of seizing assets and receiving more toys means such items are likely to get used.

Only a few examples from Balko’s book can be noted here. In 1980, the approximate number of paramilitary police raids in the U.S. was 3,000. By 2001, it was 45,000. The increase of SWAT teams is closely related to this. In 1982, about 59 percent of police departments in cities of 100,000 or more had a SWAT team. In 1995 it was 89 percent.

A high percentage of SWAT raids have been to serve warrants, many wrong addresses have been raided, and innocent people, including children, have been killed. And while the justice system closes ranks around its own, a significant amount of dollars have been awarded for police misconduct. And guess from whom the money comes?

The media is beginning to cover this problem. A recent Washington Post article discussed the emerging problem of “highway interdiction.” After Sept. 11, 2001, the Homeland Security Department encouraged police to become more aggressive. As part of this, Homeland Security trained police, and a cottage industry has grown to keep training in highway interdiction going.

Meant to be aimed at drug kingpins and terrorists, it is now used on ordinary citizens, you and me. Now, everything on one’s tattoos, Social Security number, arrest record and ad infinitum goes on via computerized sharing among police forces. A police officer making a stop for a traffic infraction can easily find reason to confiscate property, take it without proof and put you into the system where you then must prove what was taken was legally acquired. Since Sept. 11, 2001, there have been 66,998 such cases, taking $2.5 billion worth of property.

A Sept. 9 Huffington Post article reported on a recent Senate committee hearing where Homeland Security, Justice Department, Police Officer Associations and others were grilled.

The committee members were incensed to find no screening was done for the donation of military equipment, little training was offered, there was no follow-up on how the equipment was used and how much buck-passing went on.

They were also told there are now about 60,000 SWAT raids a year, and police departments exist even in towns of just 2,000 to 3,000. Police departments have received $50 billion in military gear and grants in recent years.

One might question our military spending if there is that much to be given. And guess who pays for it?

Balko’s book may sound intimidating and frightening. It really reads like a police procedural novel. And what is happening is frightening. Only by exposing it will something be done about it.

Secular Humanist Holiday Prayer

Many prayers begin with a request to bow your heads. As we join to celebrate the wonders of the Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas, Eid and Kwanza, I ask that you do not bow your heads, but rather take a moment to look around at all the wonderful men and women here, in this moment of sharing together the extraordinary experience of being alive, of coming together in friendship and learning, and of growing – even at our age.

Philosopher Holmes Rolston said the rarest thing in the universe is life. I go a step further and say its intelligent life.

This room, and all the other delightful homes and rooms we gather in, is a place of being challenged by great minds, where there are religious, philosophical and ideological differences that are expressed and honored. But as my secular humanist tradition stresses, by the very fact of being human, we have much more in common than we have in differences. We have the same spectrum of potential for care, for compassion, for fear, for joy, for wonder, for love … for the smile of a child or the cry of a child, for sunrise and sunset, for being alive…

There is, in the process of living, great joy as well as great pain. Carl Sagan once wrote, “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.”

In this room and elsewhere, let us cherish and celebrate our shared humanness, our shared capacity for reason and compassion, our shared love for all people and for all peoples, for our country and our Constitution … Let us root our words and actions in values that are relevant to all humankind, regardless of religious belief or non-belief. In gratitude and in love, in reason and compassion, let us work together as we share our journey through life.

Adapted from Juan Mendez Invocation to Arizona State Legislature, 2013

Jim Coufal of Cazenovia is a part-time philosopher and full-time observer of global trends. He can be reached at madnews@m3pmedia.com.