Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to speak today.
I’m
here to talk about police militarization, a troubling trend that’s been
on the rise in America’s police departments over the last 25 years.
Militarization
is a broad term that refers to using military-style weapons, tactics,
training, uniforms, and even heavy equipment by civilian police
departments.
It’s a troubling trend because the military has a
very different and distinct role than our domestic peace officers. The
military’s job is to annihilate a foreign enemy. The police are
supposed to protect us while upholding our constitutional rights. It’s
dangerous to conflate the two.
But that’s exactly what we’re
doing. Since the late 1980s, Mr. Chairman, thanks to acts passed by the
U.S. Congress, millions of pieces of surplus military equipment have
been given to local police departments across the country.
We’re
not talking just about computers and office equipment. Military-grade
semi-automatic weapons, armored personnel vehicles, tanks, helicopters,
airplanes, and all manner of other equipment designed for use on the
battlefield is now being used on American streets, against American
citizens.
Academic criminologists credit these transfers with the dramatic rise in paramilitary SWAT teams over the last quarter century.
SWAT
teams were originally designed to be used in violent, emergency
situations like hostage takings, acts of terrorism, or bank robberies.
From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, that’s primarily how they were
used, and they performed marvelously.
But beginning in the early
1980s, they’ve been increasingly used for routine warrant service in
drug cases and other nonviolent crimes. And thanks to the Pentagon
transfer programs, there are now a lot more of them.
This is
troubling because paramilitary police actions are extremely volatile,
necessarily violent, overly confrontational, and leave very little
margin for error. These are acceptable risks when you’re dealing with
an already violent situation featuring a suspect who is an eminent
threat to the community.
But when you’re dealing with nonviolent
drug offenders, paramilitary police actions create violence instead of
defusing it. Whether you’re an innocent family startled by a police
invasion that inadvertently targeted the wrong home or a drug dealer
who mistakes raiding police officers for a rival drug dealer, forced
entry into someone’s home creates confrontation. It rouses the basest,
most fundamental instincts we have in us – those of self-preservation –
to fight when flight isn’t an option.
Peter Kraska, a
criminologist at the University of Eastern Kentucky, estimates we’ve
seen a startling 1,500 percent increase in the use of SWAT teams in
this country from the early 80s until the early 2000s. And the vast
majority of these SWAT raids are for routine warrant service.
These
violent raids on American homes, when coupled with the imperfect, often
ugly methods used in drug policing, have set the stage for disturbingly
frequent cases of police raiding the homes not only of recreational,
nonviolent drug users, but the homes of people completely innocent of
any crime at all.
Take a look at the map on the monitor (http://www.cato.org/raidmap).
This is a map of the botched paramilitary police raids I found while
researching a paper for the Cato Institute last summer. It is by no
means inclusive. It only includes those cases for which I was able to
find a newspaper account or court record. Based on my research, I’m
convinced that the vast majority of victims of mistaken raids are to
afraid, intimidated, embarrassed, or concerned about retaliation to
report what happened to them.
Pay particular attention to the
red markers on the map. Those are the approximately 40 cases where a
mistaken raid resulted in the death of a completely innocent American
citizen.
The most recent example of course is the drug raid in
Atlanta last fall that killed 92-year old Kathryn Johnston. Ms.
Johnston mistook the raiding police officers for criminal intruders.
When she met them with a gun, they opened fire and killed her. The
police were acting on an uncorroborated tip from a convicted felon.
I’d
estimate I find news reports of mistaken raids on Americans homes about
once a week. If you’re wondering, yes, there was one just this week.
This past Saturday, in Durango, Colorado, police raided the home of
77-year-old Virginia Herrick. Ms. Herrick, who takes oxygen, was forced
to the ground and handcuffed at gunpoint while officers ravaged through
her home.
They had the wrong address. In just the last month,
there have been mistaken raids in New York City; Annapolis, Maryland;
Hendersonville, North Carolina; Bonner County, Idaho; and Stockton,
California.
In each case, innocent American citizens had the
sanctity of their homes invaded by agents of the government behaving
more like soldiers at war than peace officers upholding and protecting
our constitutional rights.
800 times per week in this country, a
SWAT team breaks open an American’s door, and invades his home. Few
turn up any weapons at all, much less high-power weapons. Less than
half end with felony charges for the suspects. And only a small
percentage end up doing significant time in prison.
Mr.
Chairman, I ask that the Congress consider ending the federal
incentives that are driving this trend, and that the Congress reign in
the copious use of SWAT teams and among federal police agencies.
There
are appropriate uses for these kinds of tactics. But the bulk of the
dramatic rise in paramilitary police operations is attributable to
inappropriate use of SWAT teams for routine warrant service.
It’s
time we stopped the war talk, the military tactics, and the military
gear. America’s domestic police departments should be populated by
peace officers, not the troops of an occupying military force.
Radley Balko is a senior editor for reason. He gave this testimony before the House Subcommittee on Crime on June 21, 2007.
Discuss this article online.