猫咪社区

The unrest sparked by the  has left parts of U.S. cities looking like battle zones.

Night after night, angry protesters have taken to the street. So too have police officers dressed in full riot gear and backed by  that any small military force would be proud of: armored vehicles, military-grade aircraft, rubber and wooden bullets, stun grenades, sound cannons and tear gas canisters.

The militarization of police departments has been a feature of U.S. domestic law enforcement . What is clear from the latest round of protest and response is that despite efforts to promote de-escalation as a policy, police culture appears to be stuck in an 鈥渦s vs. them鈥� mentality.

Setting up the enemy

As a former police officer of 27 years and a  who has , I have observed the militarization of the police firsthand, especially in times of confrontation.

I have seen, throughout , that  to privilege the use of violent tactics and  over compromise, mediation, and peaceful conflict resolution. It reinforces a general acceptance among officers of the use of any and all means of force available when confronted with .

We have seen this play out during the first week of protests after Floyd鈥檚 death in cities from Seattle to Flint, Michigan, to Washington, D.C.

The police have deployed a militarized response to what they accurately or inaccurately believe to be a threat to public order, private property, and their own safety. It is partly because of a policing culture in which protesters are often  Indeed, teaching cops to  has been part of a  program popular among some police officers.

Arming up

Police militarization, the process in which law enforcement agencies have increased their arsenal of weapons and equipment to be deployed in an array of situations, began in earnest in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

In the years that followed, domestic law enforcement in the United States began a strategic shift toward tactics and practices that employed militarized responses to even routine police activities.

Much of this was aided by the federal government, through the , which allows the transfer of military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, and the , which gives police departments funding to buy military-grade weapons and vehicles.

 have suggested that the message sent to police through equipping them with military equipment is that they are in fact at war. This to me implies that there needs to be  In cities and, increasingly, suburban and rural areas, the enemy is often those 鈥渙thers鈥� who are perceived to be criminally inclined.

The consequences of this militarized police mentality can be deadly, especially for Black Americans.

A study of  found that on average, police kill 2.8 men every day in the U.S. The risk of death at the hands of an officer was found to be 3.2 to 3.5 times higher for Black men compared to White men.

And a correlation appears to exist between militarization and police violence. A  analyzed spending by police departments against police-involved fatalities. Summarizing their , the authors of the study wrote: 鈥淓ven controlling for other possible factors in police violence (such as household income, overall and Black population, violent-crime levels and drug use), more-militarized law enforcement agencies were associated with more civilians killed each year by police. When a county goes from receiving no military equipment to $2,539,767 worth (the largest figure that went to one agency in our data), more than twice as many civilians are likely to die in that county the following year.鈥�

And it isn鈥檛 just individuals who suffer. Behavioral scientist  has studied the community effect of police violence. Writing in the Boston University Law Review earlier this year,  that 鈥渧iolent encounters with police produce a strong ripple effect of diminishing the health and well-being of residents who simply live in areas where their neighbors are killed, hurt, or psychologically traumatized.鈥�

The trauma from the  is evident in the reaction it has provoked.

The need to address the escalation of police confrontations鈥攂oth during protests and in individual encounters鈥攚as a focus of the last big push for police reform, after the killing of an unarmed Black man in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. As with the case of George Floyd, it led to violent scenes in which protesters confronted militarized officers.

Just months after the Ferguson unrest, President Obama set up his . It recommended the implementation of training and policies that 鈥渆mphasize de-escalation.鈥� It also called on police to use tactics during protests 鈥渄esigned to minimize the appearance of a military operation and avoid using provocative tactics and equipment that undermine civilian trust.鈥�

By the evidence of the last few days, a number of police departments have failed to heed the message.

This article was originally published by . It has been published here with permission.