Wired did a blistering expose of the transfer of federal military equipment to local law enforcement. There are many elements of the story that make sense in terms of a military-industrial-congressional complex predicted by President Eisenhower. Apparently the lobbyists figured out that a good way to expand federal government spending on military equipment is to setup domestic distribution channels.

On the one hand we should expect to hear arguments along the lines of “if this saves just one life, it’s justified”. That’s a hard point to argue against if a life will actually be saved but it’s mostly speculation. Speculation aside, a good counter-argument is that the move from civilian to military tactics tends to create an imbalance that will seriously damage relations with citizens. If we agree that the police become less effective as they lose respect then the question should be how military equipment affects respect.

I suspect police will have a harder time maintaining respect (aside from respect that comes through intimidation and fear) when they show a need to rely on military-grade technology to solve problems; it will make them appear tactically weak. After all, they are not funded to have the time and resources to maintain a military training program. Without the federal funding to acquire the equipment it would not be possible, but then comes the real costs of ownership. The simple act of acquiring a tank is very different from the complexity of securely storing, maintaining and training with a tank to use it effectively.

So while police departments across the nation may see the military supplies windfall like kids in a candy store, their local citizens undoubtedly will grouse about a much darker or even sinister downside. Wired says some police understand this effect and have warned about it already.

“There’s been an unmistakable trend toward more and more militarization of American law enforcement,” Norm Stamper, former Chief of the Seattle Police Department and author of Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing, told Danger Room. During his tenure in Seattle, he clamped down on the WTO protests in 1999, the infamous “Battle in Seattle.” It’s a response he now calls “disastrous.”

According to Stamper, having small local police departments go around with tanks and military gear has “a chilling effect on any effort to strengthen the relationship” between the community and the cops. And that’s not the only danger. “There’s no justification for them having that kind of equipment, for one obvious reason, and that is if they have it, they will find a way to use it. And if they use it they will misuse it altogether too many times,” said Stamper. What happened a year ago in Arizona, when army veteran Jose Guerena was shot down during a drug raid that found no drugs in his house, could very well be an example of that misuse.

If people want to make the argument that the equipment could save a life, they also must confront the growing number of examples where the equipment has caused unnecessary loss of life and property. Wired points out that the equipment is more often used in vain and causes more damage than good.

Wired also gives a long list of cities that already have been buying large amounts and types of military supplies. In a surprise move the Berkeley campus police just applied to get on the military-industrial-congressional complex program; it can now be added to that list.

The University of California – Berkeley Police Department (UCPD) has acquired a $200,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security to purchase an “Armored Response Counter Attack Truck,” a police department spokesman told Campus Reform on Friday.
The eight-ton vehicle, commonly referred to as a “Bearcat,” is used by U.S. troops on the battlefield and is often equipped with a rotating roof hatch, powered turrets, gun ports, a battering ram, and a weapon system used to remotely engage a target with lethal force.

[…]

Tejada said that although he does know of any incident in the university’s 144-year history in which such a vehicle would have saved a life, the police department would have have liked to deploy it in an incident last year when they mistakenly believed a man had an AK-47 assault rifle.

Clearly the military equipment makes some police feel more prepared to face their worst fears. The issue will soon become whether these police also have calculated how much less safe citizens will feel and what militarization means for an overall objective of keeping the peace. Who really benefits from this trend, aside from the manufacturers? Furthermore, as the police completely change risk calculations have they properly calculated the costs to manage insider threats and to prevent the equipment from being stolen, abused or misused? Consider the recent armored car robbery…it’s a bigger gamble than they might realize and they could soon wish they had never been “given” military tools.