The Problem of Policing: A Primer, Part I

Contemporary policing in the United States must be abolished as it is ineffective, harmful, a drain on resources, and disproportionately affects vulnerable communities. While many police unions and politicians would decry this statement as false or dangerous, this book will attempt to lay out sufficient evidence to prove the detrimental nature of policing as we know it.

A first, obvious problem, is that of the militarization of police against their citizenry. To better understand how we wound up with such a militarized police force in the United States, we need to know a bit of history. This immediately takes us to Smedly Butler and the military model that modern policing was built upon and still, despite contrary claims, continues in practice to this day. In 1924, Butler - a brigadier general with the US Marine Corps - was appointed head of the Department of Public Safety in Philadelphia. As one of the most decorated men in the Marines, Butler was considered as a viable option to lead the entire Marine Corps. However, Philadelphia’s mayor went to Washington and convinced the president to allow Butler to be dismissed from his duties and take over public safety for their city. “As a military man high up in the Marine command structure, Butler was used to unrestricted power. In no uncertain terms, he told [the mayor] that he would not accept the position as Head of Public Safety if he got anything less” (Leichtman, 2014).

During Butler’s time at the head of Public Safety, he implemented what is still commonly known as the “military model” of policing; meaning he developed physical requirements for all recruits, advocated for all of the latest technology, required uniforms, required martial and firearms training, established a fitness test, focused police forces in on the “war on crime”, and fought for full autonomy from the political machinations of the city. Butler even did away with the police training academy, arguing that officers learned their job on the fly, much like soldiers in battle. And Butler got much of what he wanted, despite his clashes with the local political order, including a bootlegging bust on a party filled with the city’s wealthy and elite.

As someone who valued order and organization, Butler made radical shifts in how local police departments operated via his successes in marshaling change within Philadelphia itself. Ultimately, Butler’s military model positioned the city as a country with its own commerce and borders, and it viewed the police force as that nation’s armed forces. The duty of Butler’s militarized police was to combat any “unAmerican influences”. This included anyone and everyone who broke a law, no matter how minor. “It was Butler’s position that a Marine enforces the law, whether he agrees with it or not,” (Leichtman, 2014). This belief and policy effectively tied the hands of any of the more “progressive” police officers on the force, by requiring them to act upon any perceived crime. Butler went so far as to consider any criminal an enemy combatant and thus an enemy of the state who would no longer be granted their full rights under his jurisdiction. These attitudes, unfortunately, did not stay within the Philadelphia city limits, and numerous police departments around the country began to copy much of Butler’s attitudes and organizations.

Though books have been written in great detail about Butler, there are a few policies and changes he brought about that need to be addressed in order to better understand the beginnings of police militarization, much of which can still be seen in policing today. First and foremost, Butler believed that all criminal organizations were intentionally subverting American capitalism and thus labeled them enemies of the state. Much like what can still be seen in contemporary policing, and will be covered in later chapters of this book, most of the individuals labeled as enemy combatants were simply poor immigrants who were seeking financial respite from crushing systemic issues. He was a firm believer in eugenics and used the “science” of eugenics to argue that those engaged in breaking laws deserved to be killed, just as a soldier would do to an enemy in a war. Despite pushback from progressive citizens and politicians alike, Butler called the act of police killing criminals “serving his city” and that they should not be required to justify themselves to the public. Such attitudes will ring familiar to anyone who has paid attention to policing in our modern era. From Michael Brown, to Sandra Bland, to Elijah McClain, to Breonna Taylor, police still continue to kill based on flimsy reasoning while facing few repercussions. Butler and his men were no exception, even laying the groundwork for today’s attitudes in policing.

A number of other policies that Butler instituted are still seen in policing today. For example, he was the first to set up police outposts, use armored vehicles, he broke the city into districts for police to work in, he utilized search lights, he set up police booths for faster communication among officers, and he even set up and organized specific routes for his men to follow on the way to crime scenes so that they would “pincer” and bootleggers or bandits fleeing from them. Essentially, Butler took all of his knowledge and organizational skills he developed as a high ranking officer in the Marines and implemented it into the police force. This is when policing truly began to become militarized.

Like many things, Butler’s style of policing didn’t last forever. In fact, there were many reformers who believed that policing could be changed to a community-based model; a model in which police officers immerse themselves into the communities they serve more fully and make personal connections with the citizenry. The idea being that if the police are an actual part of the community instead of an occupying force, citizens will be more willing to trust them and come to them with their concerns in a more proactive manner.

These community models have been touted as more progressive and kinder versions of policing that lead to more trust between police and the communities they operate within. This is often seen as the “liberal” model; using reforms to promote change. However, reforms tend to be short-lived, and the reforms that came to Butler’s style of policing are no exception.

Although Butler was fired after a very short stint with the police, his legacy and efforts have lived on. He was the beginning of organized police repression of all classes of people via militarization of the police force. But he was only the beginning. Even Steven Greenhut, the Western Regional Director of the right-wing think tank R Street Institute can be found quoting former police chief Joseph McNamara’s column for the Wall Street Journal in which he stated:

Simply put… the police culture in our country has changed. An emphasis on ‘officer safety’
and paramilitary training pervades today’s policing, in contrast to the older culture, which
held that cops didn’t shoot until they were about to be shot or stabbed. Police in large cities
formerly carried revolvers holding six .38-caliber rounds. Nowadays, police carry semi-
automatic pistols with 16 high-caliber rounds, shotguns and military assault rifles, weapons
once relegated to SWAT teams facing extraordinary circumstances. Concern about such
firepower in densely populated areas hitting innocent citizens has given way to an attitude
that police are fighting a war against drugs and crime and must be heavily armed (.
Greenhut, 2008).

This mentality of police seeing themselves as an occupying army and the city as their war zone, make for a cocktail of violence against citizenry, as we have witnessed with the major increases in police killings over the last several years. Not only do these killings continue to happen at an ever increasing rate, they are often seen as “correct police policy” (Greenhut, 2008).

This problem is only exacerbated by the existence of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams and the type of police officer who tends to fill those roles. In the 1970s and 1980s, SWAT units began to crop up after a few high profile incidents, such as the 1966 University of Texas clock tower shooting (Klinger & Rojek, 2008). Such SWAT teams were meant to combat more serious and dangerous types of encounters, such as hostage situations in a variety of scenarios and locations, or armed and barricaded individuals and groups. When surveyed about what makes an ideal candidate for a SWAT unit, it was revealed that police departments often look for former military personnel, or individuals trained by military personnel in special operations (Klinger & Rojek, 2008). Treating the job of policing as a military operation leads to the inevitability of seeing citizens as potential enemy combatants.


Beyond even this, police culture has been heavily influenced by one man in particular: Dave Grossman. Grossman claims to have taught seminars at all federal law enforcement agencies, Westpoint, and police departments across the country. That in and of itself isn’t the problem. The true problem lies in what Grossman not only condones, but encourages.

‘...killing is just not that big of a deal. For a mature warrior who has prepared their self's
mind, body and spirit for a lifetime, for a mature warrior whose killing represents a clear and
present danger to others, it's just not that big of a deal,’ Grossman said… Grossman also
enticed his audience by noting that killing can lead to great sex. ‘Both partners are very
invested in some very intense sex. There's not a whole lot of perks that come with this job.
You find one, relax and enjoy it,’ (McLaughlin, 2020).

Grossman knows his audience when it comes to this sort of thing. His trainings hit all of the talking points that are often heard about law enforcement and how dangerous it is to be a police officer. He parrots these debunked claims despite the fact that policing has a lower instance of injury and death than construction workers, loggers, and even taxi drivers (Kurtzleben, 2014). With no regard for the reality of the job, Grossman pushes his fear-based ideas and methods onto all who participate in his trainings. His goal? To get police officers to be quicker to attack and kill rather than taking time to fully assess the situations they are in; going so far as to motivate his seminar attendees with promises of better sex and feelings of machismo. “Officers need to be prepared to battle the communities they're told to protect, Grossman has said. And ideally in Grossman's eyes, officers need to learn to kill less hesitantly,” (McLaughlin, 2020).

And thus we see the paradigm shift come full circle. We stumbled into modern policing tactics with Butler, we shifted away with liberal reforms, and we came right back to militarization with Grossman. Grossman, who has cartoonishly named his system “Killology”, decries attempts at de-escalation or “guardianship” mentalities that many reformers push for. Thomas Nolan, a 27 year veteran of the Boston Police Department, stated that throughout his years in law enforcement, he has noticed, “that police culture tends to privilege the use of violent tactics and non-negotiable force over compromise, mediation, and peaceful conflict resolution” (Nolan, 2020). He goes on to explain that these attitudes are present for both real and perceived threats; meaning a police officer can take violent action, regardless of what is actually happening, but instead based on their intuition or feelings. Nolan attributes this to the militarization of police departments around the country.

But we cannot simply lay the blame at the feet of men like Grossman who are simply grifters looking to cash in on fear-based policing. While such trainings obviously contribute widely to police culture, militarization simply would not be possible without military grade equipment. So how do state, city, and even rural police departments wind up with armored vehicles, riot control gear, chemical weapons, and assault rifles? The Defense Logistic Agency’s 1033 Program is an excellent place to look to for the answer. The 1033 Program transfers federal weaponry and equipment to local police departments and other law enforcement agencies. The application for participation is a mere three page form, and incredibly easy for any able person to fill out (Join the 1033 Program, n.d.). Transferring military equipment from the federal government to local police departments directly is more than enough to drastically change the face of policing across the nation. However, this is not the only program that exists.

The Department of Homeland Security has a grant program set up in which any police department can apply for, and receive large chunks of funding for military weapons and equipment. There are two grant categories for law enforcement departments to take advantage of through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA); the State Homeland Security Program, which provides funding to the states to disperse as they see fit, and then through the Urban Areas Security Initiative metro and urban areas can directly receive federal funding for equipment purchases. These two programs eclipse the Defense Logistic Agency’s 1033 Program almost entirely. In 2013, the 1033 program gave out just under $500 million in equipment, while the Department of Homeland Security gave out more than $1.6 billion in grant money to be used for purchases of military equipment by the police (Ackerman, 2014).
If those numbers don’t seem as large to you as they should, it is with good reason. These are the numbers that were seen before the police killing of Michael Brown and the unrest that followed in Ferguson, Missouri on August 10, 2014. Since that time, the numbers have only ballooned. The Department of Homeland Security still gives out grants in excess of $1 billion annually (FY 2023 Homeland Security Grant Program Fact Sheet, 2023), while the Defense Logistics Agency boasts that since its inception in 1990 to 2023, it has given out $7.6 billion worth of equipment, which averages out to over $330 million per year; although much of that funding has come in more recent years (1033 Program FAQs, n.d.). The worst part, only 25% of that money even has to be used for “counter-terrorism or disaster preparedness” (Ackerman, 2014).

A truly negative aspect we have seen arise from this militarization is the draining of funds from areas with more and even dire needs in order to prop up the ever expanding police budgets. One glaring example of this siphoning of vital dollars would be the uses we have seen made of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021. President Biden announced the American Rescue Plan, often dubbed the COVID Relief Act, as a way to provide funding to those in need after COVID and temporary shutdowns financially crippled many. The White House website lists a variety of ways this act was meant to help, such as paying rent, paying employees, buying food, and getting health coverage and vaccines (Help Is Here With the American Rescue Plan, n.d.). While all of those sounds like good things to do, and while it seemed that the federal government was stepping in to make sure the citizenry was sufficiently cared for, it ultimately fell short thanks in no small part to police departments and the political pressure they wield over state and local lawmakers.

For example, the ARPA provided $52.6 billion as “revenue replacement”, or money that cities and states could use to make up for the shortcomings in tax revenue created by COVID restrictions. Almost half of these funds went directly to law enforcement agencies, although the full amount is not fully known, as not every line item in the following audits specifically mentioned law enforcement. Some cities labeled those law enforcement expenditures as “salaries”, “personnel expenses”, and “government service expenses”, while some cities didn’t report any specifics of how funds were used other than labeling them as revenue recovery. All of this was on top of the hefty $350 billion in new funds the Biden administration built into the bill to go directly to law enforcement agencies around the country (Cagle et al., 2022). Critics argue that that initial $350 billion could have been better spent on infrastructure, housing, and funding small business shortfalls during COVID restrictions. But a step further would have us also take a long, hard look at the roughly $26.3 billion taken from budgets meant to assist the common citizen, only to be handed over to the already bloated police budgets.

With the militarization of the police only increasing and seemingly endless funding from a variety of sources to keep it that way, we have to ask: does it keep us safer? Policing often takes the guise of public safety with slogans like “To Protect and Serve”, to placate politicians and citizens alike. But do these oversized budgets for policing truly make us as a society more safe than we would be without them?

A study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that between 2012 and 2018, police killed 2.8 people per day. Black people were found to be up to 3.5 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than white people, placing black communities at an even greater risk for police violence (Edwards et al., 2018). To take matters even further, in 2017, a study was conducted that discovered police departments that received military style equipment killed up to 129% more civilians than departments without military equipment. The part that is often overlooked is that even just a little bit of militarization in a law enforcement department increases police killings. The killings correlate with the spending (Delehanty et al., 2017). One of the authors summarized their findings in an article for the Washington Post stating: “Even 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” (Welch, 2017).

With all of the research having been done already, and with the evidence illuminating the fact that more money and militarization don’t actually make communities safer, why do we continue to do it? What is it about arming our police with better, more effective tools for hurting that makes us feel safe? In order to better understand this phenomenon, we will need to dip our toes into the history of policing, and why police departments were originally formed, and what has been baked into the very culture of policing from the beginning.

References
Ackerman, S. (2014, August 20). US police given billions from Homeland Security for 'tactical' equipment. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/20/police-billions-homeland-security-military-equipment

Cagle, S., Valeeva, A., Li, W., Lartey, J., Neff, J., Santo, A., Mahajan, I., Dissell, R., & Schwartzapfel, B. (2022, September 7). How ARPA Turned into Funding for Police, Prisons and Courts. The Marshall Project. Retrieved February 14, 2024, from https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/09/07/how-federal-covid-relief-flows-to-the-criminal-justice-system

Delehanty, C., Mewhirter, J., Welch, R., & Wilks, J. (2017). Militarization and police violence: The case of the 1033 program. Research & Politics, 4(2). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2053168017712885

Edwards, F., Esposito, M., & Lee, H. (2018). Risk of Police-Involved Death by Race/Ethnicity and Place, United States, 2012–2018. American Journal of Public Health, 108(9), 1241-1248. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304559

FY 2023 Homeland Security Grant Program Fact Sheet. (2023, September 6). FEMA. Retrieved February 14, 2024, from https://www.fema.gov/grants/preparedness/homeland-security/fy-23-fact-sheet

Greenhut, S. (2008, March 1). The Militarization of American Police. Foundation for Economic Education. https://fee.org/articles/the-militarization-of-american-police/?fbclid=IwAR1bO5yjTMe19X4qxReJEKcthUfk7wLmxolweWZvKW8Lc01Pi9-cb-sQlFY

Help is here with the American Rescue Plan. (n.d.). The White House. Retrieved February 14, 2024, from https://www.whitehouse.gov/american-rescue-plan/

Join the 1033 Program. (n.d.). Defense Logistics Agency. Retrieved February 14, 2024, from https://www.dla.mil/Disposition-Services/Offers/Law-Enforcement/Join-The-Program/

Klinger, D. A., & Rojek, J. (2008). Multi-Method Study Of Special Weapons and Tactics Teams. Office of Justice Programs. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/223855.pdf

Kurtzleben, D. (2014, August 22). Being a police officer is dangerous. These jobs are more dangerous. Vox. https://www.vox.com/2014/8/22/6053627/being-a-police-officer-is-dangerous-these-jobs-are-more-dangerous

Leichtman, E. (2014). SMEDLEY D. BUTLER AND THE MILITARISATION OF THE PHILADELPHIA POLICE, 1924-1925. Law, Crime and History, 4(2), 48-69. https://lawcrimehistory.org/journal/vol,4%20issue2%202014/Leichtmann%20%20final-.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2zllGp7PZvAWLdip1R9BY_4DjTD2lNE89CA_UIOg2uW0bNGw9l_of3kVA

McLaughlin, K. (2020, June 2). One of America's most popular police trainers is teaching officers how to kill. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/bulletproof-dave-grossman-police-trainer-teaching-officers-how-to-kill-2020-6?fbclid=IwAR1X8mYcSWuk-L_jgPTbvDhoJEctO07MxUazpCdIOmV-cIdcPeTN_P5psoo

Nolan, T. (2020, June 2). Militarization has fostered a policing culture that sets up protesters as 'the enemy'. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/militarization-has-fostered-a-policing-culture-that-sets-up-protesters-as-the-enemy-139727

1033 Program FAQs. (n.d.). DLA. Retrieved February 14, 2024, from https://www.dla.mil/Disposition-Services/Offers/Law-Enforcement/Program-FAQs/

Welch, R. (2017, June 30). Analysis | Does military equipment lead police officers to be more violent? We did the research. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/30/does-military-equipment-lead-police-officers-to-be-more-violent-we-did-the-research/