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<h1 class="articleOpinion-title">Urban Shield reignites
militarization debate in Oakland</h1>
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<div class="articleOpinion-inner articleOpinion-inner--bottom">
<p class="articleOpinion-standfirst article-standfirst">Activists
denounce police weapons expo, recalling Oscar Grant and Michael
Brown</p>
<div class="articleOpinion-dateByline article-dateByline">
<div class="articleOpinion-dateTime article-dateTime"> <span
class="date">September 4, 2014</span> <span class="time">5:00AM
ET</span> </div>
<div class="articleOpinion-containerByline"> <span
class="articleOpinion-byline"> by <a
href="http://america.aljazeera.com/profiles/m/anna-lekas-miller.html"
title="Anna Lekas Miller"
class="articleOpinion-byline--link">Anna Lekas Miller</a><br>
<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/9/4/urban-shield-policemilitarizationoakland.html">http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/9/4/urban-shield-policemilitarizationoakland.html</a></small></small></small></b><br>
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<p>OAKLAND, Calif. — The eighth annual <a
href="https://www.urbanshield.org/" target="_blank">Urban
Shield</a>, a special weapons and tactics exposition
showcasing the latest in law enforcement equipment, kicks off
in Oakland on Thursday. But local activists and community
members say the host city is an inappropriate choice, given
the fate of 22-year-old Oscar Grant, who was fatally shot by
Oakland transit police five years ago.</p>
<p>Urban Shield is a four-day event that brings together law
enforcement agencies from around the world — including Israel,
Bahrain, Qatar, Brazil, Guam, South Korea and Singapore. A
two-day trade show featuring the latest in policing and
surveillance technology is followed by two days of
emergency-preparedness training exercises throughout the Bay
Area. The event began in Oakland eight years ago and has
expanded to Boston, Austin and Dallas. </p>
<p><a
href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/10/28/at-swat-team-expoprotestersdecrypolicemilitarization.html"
target="_blank">Local community organizations protested the
event last year</a>, citing the Oakland Police Department’s
history of violence in the community.</p>
<p>“Oakland is a city with a very long history of resisting
police violence,” said Rachel Herzing, executive director of
Critical Resistance, one of the organizations pressuring the
city of Oakland to break off ties with Urban Shield. “People
are offended when the city would bring these kinds of
maneuvers and trade show to this city in particular.”</p>
<p>After weeks of protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after the
killing of teenager Michael Brown, the militarization of local
law enforcement has become a national concern. Amid the chaos
in Ferguson were images of police with armored vehicles,
assault rifles and SWAT uniforms that resembled battle
fatigues.</p>
<p>Although local activists criticize Urban Shield as an example
of a program that encourages unnecessary militarization of
local police forces, participants in previous years’ training
exercises say they were crucial in their ability to respond to
events such as the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.</p>
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<figure class="textImage-figure image"
id="cq-textimage-jsp-/content/ajam/articles/2014/9/4/urban-shield-policemilitarizationoakland/jcr:content/mainpar/textimage"
style="max-width:400px;"> <img
src="cid:part4.09080303.05090807@freedomarchives.org"
alt="Urban Shield simulation in Oakland"
class="cq-dd-image textImage-image
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<div class="textImage-captionContainer
image-captionContainer"> <figcaption
class="textImage-caption image-caption">A participant
playing a suicide bomber triggers a simulated explosive
during an aircraft interdiction scenario at the Oakland
International Airport at Urban Shield 2013.</figcaption>
<span class="textImage-credit image-credit">Stephen Lam /
Reuters / Landov</span> </div>
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<p>“We had been running the Urban Shield program for two
years prior to the Boston bombing,” said Urban Shield
programs officer James Baker. “So when the bombing did
occur, Boston was applauded with how efficiently and
quickly they were able to get all of the victims to local
hospitals, and that — other than the few killed upon
impact — nobody else died as a result of the bombing.”</p>
<p>While Urban Shield is officially billed as a
disaster-preparedness exercise, it is funded by the Urban
Areas Security Initiative, a Department of Homeland
Security program that mandates 25 percent of its funding
be allocated to counterterrorism activities.</p>
<p>For this reason, each training exercise must include at
least a “nexus to terrorism,” according to the Urban
Shield <a
href="https://www.urbanshield.org/index.php/2012-urban-shield-exercise/fire-usar-hazmat"
target="_blank">website.</a></p>
<p>So Urban Shield opponents were outraged when a
promotional video for the program showed SWAT teams
containing “domestic terrorists” in a <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7pn2czXGWw">simulation</a> of what
looks like an Occupy Oakland demonstration.</p>
<p>When it comes to the dramatic police response as seen in
Ferguson, Baker said the issue isn’t militarization but
lack of training.</p>
<p>“The question is, Are the forces receiving equipment from
Homeland Security being properly trained?” he asked. “Do
they know what to do with the equipment once they have
it?”</p>
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<div class="pullQuote-quote">Oakland is a city with a very
long history of resisting police violence. People are
offended when the city would bring these kinds of maneuvers
and trade show to this city in particular.</div>
<div class="pullQuote-attribution">
<p class="pullQuote-attributer">Rachel Herzing</p>
<p class="pullQuote-title">executive director, Critical
Resistance</p>
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<p>The militarization of U.S. police departments, of course,
dates to well before Ferguson.</p>
<p>In 1967, frustrated by the Los Angeles Police Department’s
response to the Watts riots and several mass shootings,
then–Inspector Daryl Gates formed the first SWAT team.</p>
<p>In his vision, SWAT would be a quasi-militaristic force to be
deployed in hostage or crowd control scenarios too dangerous
for ordinary police.<b> </b>Two years later, SWAT conducted
its first raid — and one of the largest shootouts in U.S.
history — at the Los Angeles offices of the Black Panther
Party. Officers launched tear gas canisters and fired rounds
of live ammunition until the people in the building
surrendered.</p>
<p>President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs in 1971,
bringing new meaning to a bill Congress passed two years
before authorizing no-knock raids for federal narcotics
agents, a practice that later become a hallmark of SWAT raids.
While the use of SWAT teams grew throughout the 1970s, it was
during the 1980s — and Ronald Reagan’s administration — that
they became synonymous with fighting the drug war.</p>
<p>In 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed the National
Defense Authorization Act. Two key provisions in the act laid
the foundation for the transfer and use of military-grade
weapons by local police departments. The first, the 1033
program, authorized the transfer of excess Department of
Defense supplies, giving police departments access to military
weapons. The second, the 1122 program, gave a series of grants
and discounts to local law enforcement departments to purchase
these weapons.</p>
<p>With the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in
2002 came another series of grants, this time intended to
fight the war on terrorism. One of these grant programs, the <a
href="https://www.urbanshield.org/index.php/bay-area-urban-area-security-initiative"
target="_blank">Urban Areas Security Initiative</a>, funds
Urban Shield.</p>
<p>Still, the majority of SWAT teams in the United States are
used to wage the drug war. According to an American Civil
Liberties Union <a
href="https://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform/war-comes-home-excessive-militarization-american-police-report"
target="_blank">report</a> released earlier this year, drug
searches account for 62 percent of all SWAT raids today. Poor
communities and communities of color are disproportionately
targeted, resulting in arrests, imprisonment and in some cases
death.</p>
<p>For activists and residents organizing and living in these
communities, there was nothing unusual about the Ferguson
police response to the protests.</p>
<p>“Nothing surprised me about Ferguson,” said Andrea James, an
advocate for incarcerated women<b> </b>in Roxbury,
Massachusetts, a community that, like Ferguson, is largely
poor and black.<b> </b>“Not that a police officer would pull
out a gun, not that 60 percent of the community is a community
of color, but they have an unreasonably low number of
[officers of color] because they could not find ‘qualified’
candidates.”</p>
<p>“The people’s reaction did not surprise me either,” she
continued. “The only thing that surprised me was that it
didn’t happen sooner.”</p>
<p>Efforts to scale back the militarization of police
departments brought to national attention by Ferguson are
beginning to take place nationwide. Last week the San Jose
Police Department announced it is getting rid of its <a
href="http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_26427806/san-jose-amid-militarization-furor-sjpd-jettisons-hulking"
target="_blank">M-RAP</a><b>, </b>a military-grade vehicle
designed to protect combat soldiers from roadside bombs,
citing community concerns over an increasingly militarized
police force. The Davis City Council, also in the Bay Area,
has given its sheriff’s office 60 days to get rid of Davis’
M-RAPs.</p>
<p>President Barack Obama has called for a federal review of the
1033 program, which has transferred more than $4 billion of
military supplies to local police departments with no
oversight. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., has scheduled a
congressional hearing for Sept. 9 to review both the 1033
program and the overall militarization of police.</p>
<p>Still, activists who oppose police militarization see
isolated criticism of programs like 1033 and Urban Shield as
only beginning to chip away at a much larger institution.</p>
<p>“We’re going to keep making the connections between the
militarization that is happening here in the Bay Area as well
as other repression that is happening across the globe,” said
Kamau Walton, an Oakland-based organizer with the War
Resister’s League.</p>
<p>“Increased militarization and increased policing is not the
response to increase safety.”</p>
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