The State of the Police: Part 1

Another day, another non-indictment of a murdering cop. This is sadly becoming* the norm in our political system. Despite clear video evidence showing Eric Garner non-violently resisting arrest with his hands up, the cops forcibly took him down with a headlock/chokehold and then continued to hold his face smashed into the pavement despite several pleas that can all be heard on the video, "I can't breathe! I can't breathe!", he managed to choke out.
*Becoming or has it been this way for awhile and we're only just becoming aware of it due to advances in technology and the internet?

After a series of high profile cases of cops being accused of using excessive force to subdue alleged criminals, the public is getting weary of this "shoot now, ask questions later" mentality that seems to never hold anyone behind the badge accountable.

The good news is, this has finally brought to the forefront conversations about police militarization, racial profiling, and a dire lack of accountability in the system that have long dwelled in the shadows. People are finally sitting up and taking notice that there is something very, very wrong with how the police do business. The veneer of your friendly, neighborhood Andy Griffith type police officer humbly abiding by the motto "To Serve and Protect" is crumbling day by day as more of these Cops Gone Wild videos surface on social media sites like Cop Block and Photography Is Not a Crime.

How did we get here?

Journalist Radley Balko documents in his blockbuster book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, the startling transition of our police force, from early arbiters of justice trying to capture real criminals, to warriors, perhaps even the standing army our Founders warned us about, that have become increasingly aggressive and militarized in the wake of the War on Drugs, War on Poverty, and War on Terror with each of these domestic "wars" bringing more power to the police while simultaneously eroding our civil liberties in the name of "security".

Balko documents that the number of SWAT team raids conducted has dramatically risen from just a few hundred a year nationwide in 1975 to 3,000 a year in the early 80's to 50,000 per year as of 2005. Not coincidentally, these SWAT team raids have increased ever since Richard Nixon introduced the War on Drugs, which in turn introduced the concept of no-knock raids (at one point deemed unlawful), which have become a main feature of SWAT team style tactics today.

The War on Drugs has been a boon to police departments. There is no shortage of grants and funding to make sure these departments have all the resources available to them to carry on the wasteful and failed War on Drugs. Combine this with the extremely immoral (but not illegal) practice of civil asset forfeiture, in which law enforcement agencies are allowed to seize the assets of a person who has not even been charged with a crime. More often than not, these searches stem from suspected drug crimes and are frequently later determined to be completely without merit but for which the victim still must sue the police department at their own personal expense to get their assets back.

This creates a perverse incentive for police to seize as much property as possible, as they often get to keep the seized assets for themselves to use or auction off for cash for the department. Naturally, this is particularly harmful to the poor and minorities, who cannot afford to fight the system to get their wrongfully seized assets back. This is but one of many byproducts of the war on drugs that has created a rift between minorities and law enforcement.

Of course, a larger problem of the war on drugs is the rate at which it disproportionately targets and incarcerates minorities. Blacks are nearly 4 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites despite the fact that marijuana use for both groups is virtually identical. Mandatory minimum sentences for mere possession of drugs make blacks, who are much more likely to be arrested in the first place, a permanent fixture of the prison system, often requiring them to serve more time than people put in prison for real crimes with real victims like rapists, robbers, and batterers.

And many of us are all too familiar with the sentencing disparities between people caught with crack cocaine, primarily associated with poor minorities, and powder cocaine, much more expensive and frequently used by more well-to-do white people, including certain presidents of ours. After suffering through these injustices for decades, decimating generation after generation of black families in particular, it is not hard to understand why blacks have a natural inclination to be distrustful of the police, to feel victimized, and to feel targeted rather than protected through the perverse incentive system offered by civil asset forfeiture laws and the war on drugs.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the recent high profile cases of black men being killed by police officers, for reasons justified or unjustified, have ignited a slow burning fury within their community. The outrage that has emanated from the failure to hold anyone accountable for even more black lives lost has reached a tipping point.

Although the focus has been on Mike Brown, and certainly there are many who disagree with the grand jury's failure to indict, perhaps what the community is really protesting about is not simply a young man who was gunned down by a police officer, but decades of systemic targeting and destruction of their communities. This is not to confuse the issue with Darren Wilson's guilt or innocence or the actions that led up to Mike Brown's demise, but to say that there are much larger, long simmering issues at play here than just the death of one more black man.

The heavily militarized response from the police in trying to quell the demonstrations arising from Mike Brown's case brings to light yet another troubling trend in modern day policing and one in which I intend to shed more light on in Part 2 of 3 of this mini-series examining the state of policing today.

In part 2 I will take a look at how the Global War on Terror has led to the militarization of our police and painted America as a battleground and how that relates to the violence that happened in Ferguson. In part 3, we'll look at ways to move forward and possible alternatives to the government monopolized police system. Stay tuned for more good stuff to come!