THE SWAT-IFICATION
OF AMERICA
have produced some catastrophic
results, like the mass drug raid
debacles in Tulia and Hearne, Texas, in the late 1990s.
But politicians love the Byrne
grant program. Congressmen get
to put out press releases announcing the new half-million-dollar
grant they’ve just helped secure
for the hometown police department. And everyone gets to look
tough on crime.
During the Clinton administration, Congress passed what’s now
known as the “1033 Program,”
which formalized and streamlined
the Reagan administration’s directive to the Pentagon to share surplus military gear with domestic
police agencies. Since then, millions of pieces of military equipment designed for use on a battlefield have been transferred to local
cops — SWAT teams and others
— including machine guns, tanks,
armored personnel carriers, helicopters, bayonets, and weapons
that shoot .50-caliber ammunition.
Clinton also created the “Troops
to Cops” program, which offered
grants to police departments who
hired soldiers returning from battle, contributing even further to the
militarization of the police force.
Even programs with noble
HUFFINGTON
03.31.13
aims have gone awry. Clinton
also created the Community-Oriented Policing Services program
(COPS), the aim of which was to
promote a less confrontational
SWAT RAIDS IN AMERICA JUMPED
FROM JUST A FEW HUNDRED PER
YEAR IN THE 1970S, TO A FEW
THOUSAND BY THE EARLY 1980S, TO
AROUND 50,000 BY THE MID-2000S.
style of policing. But subsequent
investigations by publications
in Portland, Ore., and Madison,
Wis., showed that those grants
often went to start or fund SWAT
teams. In fact, in interviews with
police chiefs as part of his study,
Kraska found that many of them
believed SWAT raids and militarized policing were perfectly consistent with a community policing approach to crime control.
There hasn’t been a major effort to quantify the militarization
trend since Kraska’s studies in the
late 1990s. That’s what the ACLU is
hoping to do with this investigation.
“You may remember the story
from late last year about Pargould,
Arkansas, where the mayor and
police chief announced that they