Rise of the Warrior Cop by Radley Balko

Author:Radley Balko [Balko, Radley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781610392129
Publisher: PublicAffairs

THE ELECTION OF BILL CLINTON IN 1992 GAVE HOPE TO some in the drug reform community that an admitted pot smoker who had some ties to the counterculture during his college days might bring a less aggressive and less militaristic approach to federal drug policy. Those hopes were dashed pretty quickly.

Clinton and his appointees weren’t as bellicose as Reagan and Bush or Meese and Bennett, but the policies that Clinton implemented showed little understanding or appreciation of the Symbolic Third Amendment. In 1993, for example, the Justice Department and the Defense Department entered into a formalized technology and equipment sharing agreement. Not only were American police forces becoming more militarized, the thinking went, but in places like Korea the US military was taking on more of a policing role. It only made sense for the two institutions to work more closely together. Attorney General Janet Reno explained this strategy in a speech to defense and intelligence specialists. “So let me welcome you to the kind of war our police fight every day,” Reno said. “And let me challenge you to turn your skills that served us so well in the Cold War to helping us with the war we’re now fighting daily in the streets of our towns and cities across the nation.”

In 1997 the resulting Department of Justice and Department of Defense Joint Technology Program released a report on the new agency’s anniversary. Many of the projects the program developed seem relatively innocuous, such as using police and military experience to develop better body armor or developing technology to locate snipers, which could be of benefit to both institutions. But the report also includes some more troubling projects, such as developing “less lethal, faster acting pyrotechnic devices such as flash-bang grenades” and “a gas-launched, wireless, electric stun projectile with a self-contained power supply” that “adheres to clothing and imparts a strong electric shock.” The report discusses developing sound cannons for use in crowd control and a project to develop “miniature, low-cost, wireless, modular devices that can locate, identify, and monitor the movement of selected individuals.”

Most concerning, however, is the language in which the report describes the relationship between the police and the military. While acknowledging at the outset that the two institutions have very different roles, the report asserts that those distinctions are eroding, particularly with respect to the war on drugs and the war on terrorism.

In one particularly troubling passage, the report cautions that both institutions need to be less transparent about the use of force. Another factor in how the military and law enforcement apply force, the report notes, is the greater presence of members of the media, who are observing, if not recording, situations in which force is applied. Even the lawful application of force can be misrepresented to or misunderstood by the public. More than ever, the report concludes, the police and the military need to be highly discreet to keep applications of force out of the public eye.27

There were other indications that Clinton didn’t appreciate the distinction between the military and civilian policing.

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