Many years ago, one of our Presidents, it might have been Johnson (actually, Jamie, it was Nixon, in 1971; sorry) declared a "War on Drugs." The dynamic of law enforcement was set on a new path -- or back on an old one reminiscent of the days of prohibition and anti-labor activities. In some places, it began even earlier. Not long after I was discharged from the Army, I was living in Greenwich Village, on MacDougal Street, sort of the Main Street of the Beat/Hippie/Folkie world at the time. I was managing a coffeehouse across the street that was, at that time, known as "The Cafe Feenjon" but had existed since the late '50s as "The Commons, "The Fat Black Pussycat" and perhaps other names now forgotten, at least by me.
Now all of this is to set the stage for a bit of history. In the late '60s -- I left the Army in September of '69 and moved to New York in early '70 to place it all in a chronological context -- the civil rights movement was taking a decidedly un-civil shift. There were the Black Panthers, The Black Liberation Army, The Symbionese Liberation Army and other, lesser-known Black radical groups and a lot of fringe folk with no real ties to any group, just a serious case of the mads with white people. In NYC, cops were being killed in larger numbers than anyone could remember. The Mafia pretty much had a rule that cops were off the table as targets because a cop-killing brought a lot of heat down in an area and often right into the middle of a healthy business operation. This was not a Good Thing. But the Black Militants had no such scruples. In one instance, in 1972, an undercover police officer was fatally shot at the #7 Mosque of the Black Muslims in Harlem. Two cops, one black and one white, were gunned down on the outskirts of the Polo Grounds Projects, a public Housing development on the site of the old NY Giant's baseball stadium -- and one-time polo field. The NYPD, fearing a continuation of what had been dubbed "The Long Hot Summer" re-energized the Tactical Patrol Force, originally created in 1959 to deal with a rise in crime rates.
By the time the unit was brought up to strength, staffed by young men, six feet tall and athletic in build, the City had cooled down and the incidents of the previous year seemed to be part of history. Once re-activated, however, TPF had to be used and it was, including in several incidents where a situation was created by officers in the target precinct triggering the call-out of TPF. They were also used for "crowd control" including keeping weekend foot traffic in Greenwich Village moving. They were not popular with many of the locals. I had a friend who served, for a time, with TPF until their use in incidents provoked to justify the use of TPF finally got to him.
Not long after, even small towns began to get "tougher on crime" and the feds were right there with Vietnam War surplus equipment. Many were offered helicopters and those that could field a pilot and a place to tie the 'copter down took the government up on their offer. As I said, war had been declared on drugs and the federal government, long unable to really make much of a dent in the drug trade, enlisted local law enforcement in numerous task forces and gave them military-surplus equipment with which to fight that war.
LAPD created SWAT in 1967 in response to the rise in racial tension during the Watts riots in 1965. (http://www.policemag.com/Videos/Channel/SWAT/2010/04/LAPD-s-Chief-Gates-on-Creation-of-SWAT.aspx is a brief comment on the formation of SWAT by Retired Chief Daryl Gates.) SWAT is, in a very limited fashion, a useful tool when dealing with barricaded subjects, violent, armed offenders and the like. But, as was true of TPF, once you have the tool, the tendency of bureaucrats is to use the tool in order to justify the expense.
Much is made in the press and the blogosphere of police departments getting what they always seem to call "tanks" but are usually armored personnel carriers of some type. Armored vehicles can serve a very useful, even critical, function in law enforcement. When dealing with the situations described just above, having a mobile armored base from which to operate or with which to move on a subject who is armed can be critical. It can save lives, allowing the officers to shield emergency responders while they remove an injured person. However, using an armored vehicle to serve every warrant? Along with the full SWAT team? Nah, I don't think so. But, they do.
There were a couple of Facebook postings recently from a friend -- who I would say is a trifle to the left of me on many subjects -- about the recent bestowing of military equipment as freebies to local cops. One is this, http://www.businessinsider.com/program-1033-military-equipment-police-2011-12#ixzz1fhfo82jd. The other was http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/12/05/120511-news-militarized-police-1-6/
In the second story, one of the recipients of the federal largess, Chief of Police Bill Partridge, who heads a 50-officer department in Oxford, Ala., said “If you’re quick on the trigger on the Internet, usually you can get what you want,” Partridge said, noting his department visited the program’s website “weekly or daily” to check for gear. “My philosophy is that I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”
The problem here being that recent history has shown us that "having it" is almost a guarantee of "using it" sooner or later and not always in the most appropriate manner.
I like "big boy" toys. I have been a shooter most of my life, from about eight, when I went to the shooting galleries in Times Square and Coney Island to pop targets in the arcades with .22 Shorts fired from old rifles. I like things that go whir and clank and bang as much as the next guy, and when I got to shoot fully-automatic weapons on some one else's dime at a conference in Seattle, I was a happy camper. All that said, I find the militarization of our police, to the extent to which it has progressed since the late '50s, is just plain wrong and it is also counter-productive. Cops have, as the articles mention, become pretty much an occupying army, distanced from the community they are supposed to serve.
I wore the nearly ubiquitous black battle-dress uniform and high-top boots, carried a high-capacity semi-auto pistol in a large caliber -- .45 ACP -- and was trained on other weapons, as well. There was a riot helmet in my locker and a 36-inch riot baton as well. I always wore my vest, even when I worked plain-clothes. But I was available to talk to the people who worked on my beat at the county hospital or the mental health clinics or, prior to that in the housing projects and the county welfare offices. I didn't let down my guard, but I tried, consistent with that, to be open and available to the people with whom I dealt. I had learned the concept of "Community Oriented Policing" long before it became a buzzword for a federally-funded program from a beat cop who worked in the 6th Precinct and patrolled the streets of Greenwich Village in the late '60s. Jimmy was approachable, pleasant to deal with and alert to what was going on. He was in stark contrast to the TPF cops who lorded it over the citizens, bohemian and tourist alike, on those crowded summer streets.
There is a major fundamental difference between the police and soldiers, although both are armed and may use similar equipment. The police, ideally, keep the peace and arrest wrong-doers. Soldiers maintain peace by killing the enemy and occupying territory. There is a huge difference. So, while I can see the need for some of the military-grade tools that local cops are getting and using today, I think a lot more discretion needs to be exercised in their use and a lot less use made of some if it.
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