POLICINGWhy Police Resist Reforms to Militarization
Issues revolve around culture of viewing civilians as potential threats, concerns about self-protection in departments equipped with military-grade arms.
The mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, last year by a gunman armed with an AR-15-style rifle resulted in a searing loss of life — 19 young students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School. But equally stunning was the 77 minutes it took police to respond, despite having adequate firepower, equipment, and training to do so. The delay turned a spotlight on the militarization of U.S. law enforcement, how it can fail to protect individuals from the kinds of threats it was intended to thwart, and its tendency to foster a culture of self-protection that can result in unnecessarily violent or deadly responses, particularly in communities of color.
The issue is complex, and many law enforcement departments across the country have continued to resist reforms even amid a rising crisis of confidence in police and concerns over racism in the ranks. Jessica Katzenstein, an Inequality in America fellow who recently completed her Ph.D. in anthropology at Brown, has been analyzing police militarization in an effort to show how and why departments are resisting changes and the ways this resistance is not as straightforward as it’s often portrayed.
Put simply, police militarization consists of a decades-old federal government practice of making military equipment available to state and local law enforcement departments. The initial intent was to help arm police in the war on drugs and later to prevent terror attacks. Katzenstein said that many scholars argue that police militarization also includes SWAT teams, paramilitary teams and tactics, military bureaucracies, and militarized ways of understanding crime and criminality in which the default is for officers to see non-officers as potential threats or enemies, a particular problem given that communities of color tend to be more heavily policed.
During her field research, Katzenstein spoke with law enforcement officers, reform organizers, and others throughout Maryland about their views on militarization and proposed police reforms, such as the Baltimore Police Department’s consent decree with reforms on training, bureaucratic organization, and complaint mechanisms.
Officers made a distinction between good and bad militarization. Some criticized, for instance, “heavy-handed” responses during social justice protests, including those in Ferguson, Missouri, where officers rode armored personnel carriers and pointed rifles at crowds protesting the police killing of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown, Katzenstein said.
