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<p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><strong>To Terrify and Occupy:
</strong></span><br>
<span style="font-size: medium;"><strong><big><big>How the
Excessive Militarization of the Police is Turning Cops
Into Counterinsurgents</big></big><br>
</strong></span><br>
By <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/matthewharwood">Matthew
Harwood</a><br>
<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175881/tomgram%3A_matthew_harwood%2C_one_nation_under_swat/#more">http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175881/tomgram%3A_matthew_harwood%2C_one_nation_under_swat/#more</a></small></small></small></b><br>
</p>
<p>Jason Westcott was afraid.</p>
<p>One night last fall, he discovered via Facebook that a friend of
a friend was planning with some co-conspirators to break in to his
home. They were intent on stealing Wescott's handgun and a couple
of TV sets. According to the Facebook message, the suspect was
planning on “burning” Westcott, who promptly called the Tampa Bay
police and reported the plot.</p>
<p>According to the <em><a target="_blank"
href="http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/informer-not-neighbor-complaints-led-up-to-fatal-tampa-pot-raid/2187316">Tampa
Bay Times</a></em>, the investigating officers responding to
Westcott’s call had a simple message for him: “If anyone breaks
into this house, grab your gun and shoot to kill.”</p>
<p>Around 7:30 pm on May 27th, the intruders arrived. Westcott
followed the officers’ advice, grabbed his gun to defend his home,
and died pointing it at the intruders. They used a semiautomatic
shotgun and handgun to shoot down the 29-year-old motorcycle
mechanic. He was hit three times, once in the arm and twice in
his side, and pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.</p>
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The intruders, however, weren’t small-time crooks looking to make a
small score. Rather they were members of the Tampa Bay Police
Department’s SWAT team, which was executing a search warrant on
suspicion that Westcott and his partner were marijuana dealers. They
had been tipped off by a confidential informant, whom they drove to
Westcott’s home four times between February and May to purchase
small amounts of marijuana, at $20-$60 a pop. The informer notified
police that he saw two handguns in the home, which was why the Tampa
Bay police deployed a SWAT team to execute the search warrant.
<p>In the end, the same police department that told Westcott to
protect his home with defensive force killed him when he did.
After searching his small rental, the cops indeed found weed, two
dollars' worth, and one legal handgun -- the one he was clutching
when the bullets ripped into him.</p>
<p>Welcome to a new era of American policing, where cops
increasingly see themselves as soldiers occupying enemy territory,
often with the help of Uncle Sam’s armory, and where even
nonviolent crimes are met with overwhelming force and brutality.</p>
<p><strong>The War on Your Doorstep</strong></p>
<p>The cancer of militarized policing has long been metastasizing in
the body politic. It has been growing ever stronger since the
first Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams were born in the
1960s in response to that decade’s turbulent mix of riots,
disturbances, and senseless violence like Charles Whitman’s
infamous clock-tower <a target="_blank"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman">rampage</a>
in Austin, Texas.</p>
<p>While SWAT isn’t the only indicator that the militarization of
American policing is increasing, it is the most recognizable. The
proliferation of SWAT teams across the country and their
paramilitary tactics have spread a violent form of policing
designed for the extraordinary but in these years made ordinary.
When the concept of SWAT arose out of the <a target="_blank"
href="http://blog.phillypolice.com/2012/05/phillypolice-unit-profile-special-weapons-and-tactics-swat/">Philadelphia</a>
and <a target="_blank"
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=vTkTTIF1IpUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Rise+of+the+Warrior+Cop&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_KbGU6OKC-rnsAT60ID4CQ&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=D-Platoon&f=false">Los
Angeles Police Departments</a>, it was quickly picked up by big
city police officials nationwide. Initially, however, it was an
elite force reserved for uniquely dangerous incidents, such as
active shooters, hostage situations, or large-scale disturbances.</p>
<p>Nearly a half-century later, that’s no longer true.</p>
<p>In 1984, according to Radley Balko's <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1610394577/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20"><em>Rise
of the Warrior Cop</em></a>, about 26% of towns with
populations between 25,000 and 50,000 had SWAT teams. By 2005,
that number had soared to 80% and it’s still rising, though SWAT
statistics are notoriously hard to come by.</p>
<p>As the number of SWAT teams has grown nationwide, so have the
raids. Every year now, there are approximately <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599349-americas-police-have-become-too-militarised-cops-or-soldiers">50,000
SWAT raids</a> in the United States, according to Professor Pete
Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Justice Studies.
In other words, roughly 137 times a day a SWAT team assaults a
home and plunges its inhabitants and the surrounding community
into terror.</p>
<p><strong>Upping the Racial Profiling Ante</strong></p>
<p>In a recently released report, “<a target="_blank"
href="https://www.aclu.org/war-comes-home-excessive-militarization-american-policing">War
Comes Home</a>,” the American Civil Liberties Union (my
employer) discovered that nearly 80% of all SWAT raids it reviewed
between 2011 and 2012 were deployed to execute a search warrant.</p>
<p>Pause here a moment and consider that these violent home
invasions are routinely used against people who are only suspected
of a crime. Up-armored paramilitary teams now regularly bash down
doors in search of evidence of a possible crime. In other words,
police departments increasingly choose a tactic that often results
in injury and property damage as its first option, not the one of
last resort. In more than 60% of the raids the ACLU investigated,
SWAT members rammed down doors in search of possible drugs, not to
save a hostage, respond to a barricade situation, or neutralize an
active shooter.</p>
<p>On the other side of that broken-down door, more often than not,
are blacks and Latinos. When the ACLU could identify the race of
the person or people whose home was being broken into, 68% of the
SWAT raids against minorities were for the purpose of executing a
warrant in search of drugs. When it came to whites, that figure
dropped to 38%, despite the well-known fact that blacks, whites,
and Latinos all use drugs at <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.samhsa.gov/data/nsduh/2012summnatfinddettables/nationalfindings/nsduhresults2012.htm#ch2.7">roughly
the same rates</a>. SWAT teams, it seems, have a disturbing
record of disproportionately applying their specialized skill set
within communities of color.</p>
<p>Think of this as racial profiling on steroids in which the
humiliation of stop and frisk is raised to a terrifying new level.</p>
<p><strong>Everyday Militarization</strong></p>
<p>Don’t think, however, that the military mentality and equipment
associated with SWAT operations are confined to those elite units.
Increasingly, they’re permeating all forms of policing.</p>
<p>As Karl Bickel, a senior policy analyst with the Justice
Department’s Community Policing Services office, <a
target="_blank"
href="http://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/06-2013/preparing_officers_for_a_community_oriented_department.asp">observes</a>,
police across America are being trained in a way that emphasizes
force and aggression. He <a target="_blank"
href="http://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/06-2013/preparing_officers_for_a_community_oriented_department.asp">notes</a>
that recruit training favors a stress-based regimen that’s modeled
on military boot camp rather than on the more relaxed academic
setting a minority of police departments still employ. The result,
he suggests, is young officers who believe policing is about
kicking ass rather than working with the community to make
neighborhoods safer. Or as comedian Bill Maher <a target="_blank"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVywCqvmC0E">reminded</a>
officers recently: “The words on your car, ‘protect and serve,’
refer to us, not you.”</p>
<p>This authoritarian streak runs counter to the core philosophy
that supposedly dominates twenty-first-century American thinking:
<a target="_blank"
href="http://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/12-2013/will_the_growing_militarization_of_our_police_doom_community_policing.asp">community
policing</a>. Its emphasis is on a mission of “keeping the
peace” by creating and maintaining partnerships of trust with and
in the communities served. Under the <a target="_blank"
href="https://ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/114213.pdf">community
model</a>, which happens to be the <a target="_blank"
href="http://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/may_2008/policing_Ds.htm">official
policing philosophy</a> of the U.S. government, officers are
protectors but also problem solvers who are supposed to care,
first and foremost, about how their communities see them. They
don’t command respect, the theory goes: they earn it. Fear isn’t
supposed to be their currency. Trust is.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, police recruiting videos, as in those from
California’s <a target="_blank"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_rKA6ROAVk">Newport Beach
Police Department</a> and New Mexico’s <a target="_blank"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im66lCgZrbc">Hobbs Police
Department</a>, actively play up not the community angle but
militarization as a way of attracting young men with the promise
of Army-style adventure and high-tech toys. Policing, according to
recruiting videos like these, isn’t about calmly solving problems;
it’s about you and your boys breaking down doors in the middle of
the night.</p>
<p>SWAT’s influence reaches well beyond that. Take the <a
target="_blank"
href="http://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/11-2012/bdus-community-policing.asp">increasing
adoption</a> of battle-dress uniforms (BDUs) for patrol
officers. These militaristic, often black, jumpsuits, Bickel
fears, make them less approachable and possibly also more
aggressive in their interactions with the citizens they’re
supposed to protect.</p>
<p>A small project at Johns Hopkins University seemed to bear this
out. People were shown pictures of police officers in their
traditional uniforms and in BDUs. Respondents, the survey
indicated, would much rather have a police officer show up in
traditional dress blues. Summarizing its findings, Bickel <a
target="_blank"
href="http://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/11-2012/bdus-community-policing.asp">writes</a>,
“The more militaristic look of the BDUs, much like what is seen in
news stories of our military in war zones, gives rise to the
notion of our police being an occupying force in some inner city
neighborhoods, instead of trusted community protectors.”</p>
<p><strong>Where Do They Get Those Wonderful Toys?</strong></p>
<p>“I wonder if I can get in trouble for doing this,” the young man
says to his buddy in the passenger seat as they film the Saginaw
County Sheriff Office’s new toy: a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected
(MRAP) vehicle. As they film the MRAP from behind, their <a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8d5_1394417559">amateur
video</a> has a <a target="_blank"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_I4WgBfETc"><em>Red Dawn</em></a>-esque
feel, as if an occupying military were now patrolling this
Michigan county’s streets. “This is getting ready for f**king
crazy times, dude,” one young man comments. “Why,” his friend
replies, “has our city gotten that f**king bad?”</p>
<p>In fact, nothing happening in Saginaw County warranted the
deployment of an armored vehicle capable of withstanding bullets
and the sort of improvised explosive devices that insurgent forces
have regularly planted along roads in America’s recent war zones.
Sheriff William Federspiel, however, fears the worst. "As sheriff
of the county, I have to put ourselves in the best position to
protect our citizens and protect our property," he <a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/index.ssf/2014/04/prepared_for_disaster_mine-res.html">told</a><span
style="text-decoration: underline;"> </span>a reporter. "I have
to prepare for something disastrous."</p>
<p>Lucky for Federspiel, his exercise in paranoid disaster
preparedness didn’t cost his office a penny. That <a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/index.ssf/2014/04/prepared_for_disaster_mine-res.html">$425,000
MRAP</a> came as a gift, courtesy of Uncle Sam, from one of our
far-flung counterinsurgency wars. The nasty little secret of
policing’s militarization is that taxpayers are subsidizing it
through programs overseen by the Pentagon, the Department of
Homeland Security, and the Justice Department. </p>
<p>Take the 1033 program. The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) may be
an obscure agency within the Department of Defense, but through
the 1033 program, which it oversees, it’s one of the core enablers
of American policing’s excessive militarization. Beginning in
1990, Congress<strong> </strong><a target="_blank"
href="http://www.dispositionservices.dla.mil/leso/Pages/1033ProgramFAQs.aspx">authorized</a>
the Pentagon to transfer its surplus property free of charge to
federal, state, and local police departments to wage the war on
drugs. In 1997, Congress <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.nps.gov/legal/laws/104th/104-201.pdf">expanded
the purpose</a> of the program to include counterterrorism in
section 1033 of the defense authorization bill. In one single page
of a 450-page law, Congress helped sow the seeds of today’s
warrior cops.</p>
<p>The amount of military hardware transferred through the program
has grown astronomically over the years. In 1990, the Pentagon
gave $1 million worth of equipment to U.S. law enforcement. That
number had jumped to nearly $450 million in 2013. Overall, the
program has shipped off more than $4.3 billion worth of materiel
to state and local cops, <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.dispositionservices.dla.mil/leso/Pages/default.aspx">according
to the DLA</a>.</p>
<p>In its recent report, the ACLU found a disturbing range of
military gear being transferred to civilian police departments
nationwide. Police in North Little Rock, Arkansas, for instance,
received 34 automatic and semi-automatic rifles, two robots that
can be armed, military helmets, and a Mamba tactical vehicle.
Police in Gwinnet County, Georgia, received 57 semi-automatic
rifles, mostly M-16s and M-14s. The Utah Highway Patrol, according
to a <em>Salt Lake City Tribune </em><a target="_blank"
href="http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57358599-78/police-program-utah-1033.html.csp">investigation</a>,
got an MRAP from the 1033 program, and Utah police received 1,230
rifles and four grenade launchers. After South Carolina’s Columbia
Police Department received its very own MRAP worth $658,000, its
SWAT Commander Captain E.M. Marsh <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.wltx.com/news/article/255485/2/Columbia-Police-Debut-New-Armored-Vehicle">noted
</a>that 500 similar vehicles had been distributed to law
enforcement organizations across the country.</p>
<p>Astoundingly, one-third of all war materiel parceled out to
state, local, and tribal police agencies is brand new. This raises
further disconcerting questions: Is the Pentagon simply wasteful
when it purchases military weapons and equipment with taxpayer
dollars? Or could this be another downstream, subsidized market
for defense contractors? Whatever the answer, the Pentagon is
actively distributing weaponry and equipment made for U.S.
counterinsurgency campaigns abroad to police who patrol American
streets and this is considered sound policy in Washington. The
message seems striking enough: what might be necessary for Kabul
might also be necessary for DeKalb County.</p>
<p>In other words, the twenty-first-century war on terror has melded
thoroughly with the twentieth-century war on drugs, and the result
couldn’t be anymore disturbing: police forces that increasingly
look and act like occupying armies.</p>
<p><strong>How the Department of Homeland Security and the
Department of Justice Are Up-Armoring the Police</strong></p>
<p>When police departments look to muscle up their arms and tactics,
the Pentagon isn’t the only game in town. Civilian agencies are in
on it, too.</p>
<p>During a <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/20/local-cops-ready-for-war-with-homeland-security-funded-military-weapons.html">2011
investigation</a>, reporters Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz
discovered that, since 9/11, police departments watching over some
of the safest places in America have used $34 billion in grant
funding from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to
militarize in the name of counterterrorism.</p>
<p>In Fargo, North Dakota, for example, the city and its surrounding
county went on an $8 million spending spree with federal money,
according to Becker and Schulz. Although the area averaged less
than two murders a year since 2005, every squad car is now armed
with an assault rifle. Police also have access to Kevlar helmets
that can stop heavy firepower as well as an armored truck worth
approximately $250,000. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1,500 beat
cops have been trained to use AR-15 assault rifles with homeland
security grant funding.</p>
<p>As with the 1033 program, neither DHS nor state and local
governments account for how the equipment, including body armor
and drones, is used. While the rationale behind stocking up on
these military-grade supplies is invariably the possibility of a
terrorist attack, school shooting, or some other horrific event,
the gear is normally used to conduct paramilitary drug raids, as
Balko notes.</p>
<p>Still, the most startling source of police militarization is the
Department of Justice, the very agency officially dedicated to
spreading the community policing model through its Community
Oriented Policing Services office.</p>
<p>In 1988, Congress <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.ncpc.org/cms-upload/ncpc/File/Byrne%20JAG%20history.pdf">authorized</a>
the Byrne grant programs in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act,<strong> </strong>which
gave state and local police federal funds to enlist in the
government’s drug war. That grant program, according to Balko, led
to the creation of regional and multi-jurisdictional narcotics
task forces, which gorged themselves on federal money and, with
little federal, state, or local oversight, spent it beefing up
their weapons and tactics. In 2011, 585 of these task forces <a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.ncja.org/sites/default/files/documents/Taskforce-Performance-Measures.pdf">operated</a>
off of Byrne grant funding.</p>
<p>The grants, Balko reports, also incentivized the type of policing
that has made the war on drugs such a destructive force in
American society. The Justice Department doled out Byrne grants
based on how many arrests officers made, how much property they
seized, and how many warrants they served. The very things these
narcotics task forces did very well. “As a result,” Balko writes,
“we have roving squads of drug cops, loaded with SWAT gear, who
get money if they conduct more raids, make more arrests, and seize
more property, and they are virtually immune to accountability if
they get out of line.”</p>
<p>Regardless of whether this militarization has occurred due to
federal incentives or executive decision-making in police
departments or both, police across the nation are up-armoring with
little or no public debate. In fact, when the ACLU requested SWAT
records from 255 law enforcement agencies as part of its
investigation, 114 denied them. The justifications for such
denials varied, but included arguments that the documents
contained “trade secrets” or that the cost of complying with the
request would be prohibitive. Communities have a right to know how
the police do their jobs, but more often than not, police
departments think otherwise.</p>
<p><strong>Being the Police Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry</strong></p>
<p>Report by report, evidence is mounting that America’s militarized
police are a threat to public safety. But in a country where the
cops increasingly look upon themselves as soldiers doing battle
day in, day out, there’s no need for public accountability or even
an apology when things go grievously wrong.</p>
<p>If community policing rests on mutual trust between the police
and the people, militarized policing operates on the assumption of
“officer safety” at all costs and contempt for anyone who sees
things differently. The result is an “us versus them” mentality.</p>
<p>Just ask the parents of Bou Bou Phonesavanh. Around 3:00 a.m. on
May 28th, the Habersham County Special Response Team conducted a
no-knock raid at a relative’s home near Cornelia, Georgia, where
the family was staying. The officers were looking for the
homeowner’s son, whom they suspected of selling $50 worth of drugs
to a confidential informant. As it happened, he no longer lived
there.</p>
<p>Despite evidence that children were present -- a minivan in the
driveway, children’s toys littering the yard, and a Pack ‘n Play
next to the door -- a SWAT officer tossed <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.salon.com/2014/06/24/a_swat_team_blew_a_hole_in_my_2_year_old_son/">a
“flashbang” grenade</a><span style="text-decoration: underline;">
</span>into the home. It landed in 19-month-old Bou Bou’s crib and
exploded, critically wounding the toddler. When his distraught
mother tried to reach him, officers screamed at her to sit down
and shut up, telling her that her child was fine and had just lost
a tooth. In fact, his nose was hanging off his face, his body had
been severely burned, and he had a hole in his chest. Rushed to
the hospital, Bou Bou had to be put into a medically induced coma.</p>
<p>The police claimed that it was all a mistake and that there had
been no evidence children were present. “There was no malicious
act performed,” Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell <a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.ajc.com/news/news/breaking-news/toddler-critically-injured-by-flash-bang-during-po/nf9XM/">told</a>
the <em>Atlanta Journal-Constitution</em>. “It was a terrible
accident that was never supposed to happen.” The Phonesavanhs have
yet to receive an apology from the sheriff’s office. “Nothing.
Nothing for our son. No card. No balloon. Not a phone call. Not
anything,” Bou Bou’s mother, Alecia Phonesavanh, <a
target="_blank"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiijlS6th50">told</a> CNN.</p>
<p>Similarly, Tampa Bay Police Chief Jane Castor continues to insist
that Jay Westcott’s death in the militarized raid on his house was
his own fault. "Mr. Westcott lost his life because he aimed a
loaded firearm at police officers. You can take the entire
marijuana issue out of the picture," Castor <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/informer-not-neighbor-complaints-led-up-to-fatal-tampa-pot-raid/2187316">said</a>.
"If there's an indication that there is armed trafficking going on
-- someone selling narcotics while they are armed or have the
ability to use a firearm -- then the tactical response team will
do the initial entry."</p>
<p>In her defense of the SWAT raid, Castor simply dismissed any
responsibility for Westcott’s death. “They did everything they
could to serve this warrant in a safe manner,” she <a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/tampa-police-chief-times-article-left-out-key-facts/2189054">wrote</a>
the<em> Tampa Bay Times --</em> “everything,” that is, but find an
alternative to storming the home of a man they knew feared for his
life. </p>
<p>Almost half of all American households report having a gun, as
the ACLU <a target="_blank"
href="https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/jus14-warcomeshome-report-web-rel1.pdf">notes</a>
in its report. That means the police always have a ready-made
excuse for using SWAT teams to execute warrants when less
confrontational and less violent alternatives exist.</p>
<p>In other words, if police believe you’re selling drugs, beware.
Suspicion is all they need to turn your world upside down. And if
they’re wrong, don’t worry; the intent couldn’t have been better.</p>
<p><strong>Voices in the Wilderness</strong></p>
<p>The militarization of the police shouldn’t be surprising. As
Hubert Williams, a former police director of Newark, New Jersey,
and Patrick V. Murphy, former commissioner of the New York City
Police Department, <a target="_blank"
href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/121019.pdf">put it</a>
nearly 25 years ago, police are “barometers of the society in
which they operate.” In post-9/11 America, that means police
forces imbued with the “hooah” mentality of soldiers and acting as
if they are fighting an insurgency in their own backyard.</p>
<p>While the pace of police militarization has quickened, there has
at least been some pushback from current and former police
officials who see the trend for what it is: the destruction of
community policing. In Spokane, Washington, Councilman Mike Fagan,
a former police detective, is<a target="_blank"
href="http://www.kxly.com/news/Spokane-Councilman-thinks-new-uniforms-may-help-Police-PR-crisis/9224338">
pushing back</a> against police officers wearing BDUs, calling
the get-up “intimidating” to citizens. In Utah, the legislature <a
target="_blank"
href="http://le.utah.gov/%7E2014/bills/static/hb0070.html">passed</a>
a bill requiring probable cause before police could execute a
no-knock raid. Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank has been
a vocal critic of militarization, <a target="_blank"
href="http://perspectivesonthenews.blogs.deseretnews.com/2013/07/10/militarization-of-local-police-nationwide-worries-salt-lake-city-chief-chris-burbank/">telling
</a>the local paper, “We’re not the military. Nor should we look
like an invading force coming in.” Just recently, Chief Charlie
Beck of the Los Angeles Police Department<strong> </strong><a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-le-the-police-chiefs-thoughts-on-swat-20140715-story.html">agreed</a>
with the ACLU and the <em>Los Angeles Times</em> editorial board
that “the lines between municipal law enforcement and the U.S.
military cannot be blurred.”</p>
<p>Retired Seattle police chief Norm Stamper has also become an
outspoken critic of militarizing police forces, noting “most of
what police are called upon to do, day in and day out, requires
patience, diplomacy, and interpersonal skills.” In other words,
community policing. Stamper is the chief who green-lighted a
militarized response to World Trade Organization protests in his
city in 1999 (“<a target="_blank"
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175168/tomgram:__rebecca_solnit,_writing_history_in_the_streets/">The
Battle in Seattle</a>”). It’s a decision he would like to take
back. “My support for a militaristic solution caused all hell to
break loose,” he <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.thenation.com/article/164501/paramilitary-policing-seattle-occupy-wall-street">wrote</a>
in the<em> Nation</em>. “Rocks, bottles and newspaper racks went
flying. Windows were smashed, stores were looted, fires lighted;
and more gas filled the streets, with some cops clearly
overreacting, escalating and prolonging the conflict.”</p>
<p>These former policemen and law enforcement officials understand
that police officers shouldn't be breaking down any citizen's door
at 3 a.m. armed with AR-15s and flashbang grenades in search of a
small amount of drugs, while an MRAP idles in the driveway. The
anti-militarists, however, are in the minority right now. And
until that changes, violent paramilitary police raids will
continue to break down the doors of nearly 1,000 American
households a week.</p>
<p>War, once started, can rarely be contained.</p>
<p><em>Matthew Harwood is senior writer/editor at the American Civil
Liberties Union and a </em><a target="_blank"
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175822/tomgram%3A_crump_and_harwood,_the_net_closes_around_us/"><em>TomDispatch
regular</em></a><em>. You can follow him on Twitter <a
target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/mharwood31">@mharwood31</a>.
</em></p>
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