TABLE OF CONTENTS :
KEEPING UP WITH THE CROOKS: The Militarization of the Police in American Cities and How it Did Not Erupt From A Vacuum INTRODUCTION Though not a particularly new phenomenon, the militarization of the police has become a buzzword in American political life in the past several decades, particularly the past decade. Heavily militarized responses to events like the 1999 anti-WTO protests (which were broadcast across the world) made the militaristic capabilities of the police well-known to the public. Los Angeles has seen its own police force armed to the teeth on some occasions, such as the 1965 and 1992 riots and, more recently, the 2000 Democratic National Convention protests and 2007 May Day demonstrations. I was blocks away from the 2007 event as it transpired. Following the decision not to file charges against St. Louis police officer Darren Wilson (who shot and killed Michael Brown), large-scale protests against police brutality and demands for policy changes became more frequent than ever before. The incidence of these protests increased still following the brutal death of George Floyd in May 2020 at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. As always, the presence of elite, paramilitary-like law enforcement units were a noticeable presence at these demonstrations. As with every other aspect of modern life, the militarization of the police has been adapted into a political agenda setting tool. Public officials have weaponized the funding and defunding of police departments across the nation, turning the very support for policing into yet another politicized aspect of American life. Further, many misleading narratives about policing and use-of-force have become mainstream in educational institutions, in the media, and within popular culture. This article points out how the militarization of police did not erupt out of a vacuum; rather, that it was the result of law enforcement’s need to compete with the disproportionate firepower, tactics, and malevolent intentions of criminal elements. It is not a complete account of the militarization of police, nor is it a justification or a condemnation of the militarization of the police. Rather, it explains how the militancy of policing increased as a response to the tactics of criminal elements, rather than emerging out of malevolent intentions on the part of the government. PRESS "Read More" BELOW TO CONTINUE READING I: MILITIAS, CONSTABLES, RATTLE WATCHES, AND SHERIFFS Generally accepted as the first incarnations of civilian law enforcement in the United States are the militias and posse comitatus conscription services established in the 17th and 18th centuries throughout the original Thirteen Colonies. [1] These forces were volunteer-run and relied on more of a “citizen watch” approach rather than active, armed patrols, bearing more of a resemblance to today’s neighborhood watch groups. In these low-population agrarian societies, the earliest American police forces enforced small, localized conflicts like land disputes and debts. Many “police” forces of early American history originated as a response to urbanity. Boston established their first “night watch,” called the Boston Watch, in 1631. Philadelphia’s Common Council established a watch for their budding city in 1700. New Amsterdam (now New York City) established a Rattle Watch in 1651, called as such because of the large rattling instrument that officers carried around as an audible alert system. The Rattle Watch was the first public safety agency to be paid (beginning in 1658) and the first to conduct armed patrols. It was established to enforce alcohol-related infractions, but soon expanded to include discouraging prostitution, panhandling, public intoxication, theft, and trashpicking. Constables (a British law enforcement title that carried over to the Americas) existed in many jurisdictions as well, performing land surveys, executing warrants, and enforcing punishments. [2] Early police forces and their precursors had very low (if any) firepower, as armament technologies had only come so far at the time. The British crown was known to repeatedly disarm the American citizenry during this time; however, in theory, the very same firepower and personal protective gear held by the government were generally available to the citizenry. Furthermore, no rifle or pistol in the 18th century was a repeating arm. That is, they were neither automatic nor semi-automatic, but completely manual. Muskets, carbines, and long rifles had to be loaded by hand, and maintenance to be performed frequently to prevent catastrophic failures caused by residual buildup. Lastly, and contrary to a very troubling narrative that has been widely disseminated, most police forces in America did not originate as runaway slave patrols. The first slave patrols in the United States originated in the southeastern United States around c. 1700-1705, a full 70 years after the earliest “police” forces were established throughout the urban and rural Thirteen Colonies. Certainly, it is accurate to say that many police forces in the Southern United States can trace their origins to slave patrols; however, this is untrue of nearly all police departments in the United States. II: MOBILITY The Second Industrial Revolution and the rise of urbanization economies made products cheaper, user-serviceable, and easier to assemble. This is relevant, for our purposes, in the context of automobiles and firearms. The improved capability of these products, combined with their availability to the general public, meant that police agencies around the country now had to keep up with the weaponry, wheels, and other capabilities of criminal elements. Though the automobiles of the day were not factory-tuned with performance specifications, hobbyists (and crooks) could simply modify their cars for extraneous (or clandestine) uses. Beginning in the 1920s, hotrodders began altering their camshafts and manifolds to increase power output. They removed extra accessories to reduce weight. Some hobbyists installed flatties (a powerful Ford V8 engine manufactured from 1932 to 1954) in passenger vehicles far smaller than what a flatty would normally power. Concurrently, criminal elements even began to armor their cars against munitions and used them to transport contraband or cash. To partly remedy this, Ford introduced the Police Model 18. Though fitted with a V8 engine, better suspension for improved handling and elongated to support more personnel, these early cop cars were not much different from stock civilian vehicles. Meanwhile, the aftermarket mods being performed on civilian vehicles gave both hobbyists and criminal elements a mobile advantage over law enforcement. The ongoing battle to create the perfect police car had begun, and over the past century, iconic police cars such as the Chrystler Windsor, Chrystler Enforcer, Chevy Caprice, Dodge Polara Pursuit, Dodge Coronet, Fastback Mustang, Ford Crown Vic(toria), and Plymouth Belvedere have been produced. The squad car, as it became known, essentially adopted the role of “home base” for patrol officers. Many police codes (such as Codes 2, 3, 5, and 6 for LAPD) illustrate an officer’s status relative to their vehicle, or their “shop,” as it has become known. As crimefighting techniques have improved (and depending on the budget of the agency), squad cars have gone from being essentially bare to containing computers, radio systems, additional armaments, medical equipment, and more. Many squad cars can resist penetration from munitions up to a certain power. As we will read, there are compelling reasons for the development of paramilitary-like squad vehicles. III: ARMAMENTS As stated in Part I, for many years the citizenry and the police were on equal footing in terms of their armaments. Repeating arms (e.g. revolvers, shotguns, or magazine-fed weapons) were not developed until the mid-19th century. Moreover, these weapons were inaccurate (owing to their smooth bores) and required meticulous maintenance to prevent catastrophic failures. Parts, and even caliber sizes, were often not standardized. Heavy tactics by either the citizenry or law enforcement were out of the question, and the robustness of a police force (or vice organization) was largely determined by the number of personnel. As was the case with automobiles, the Industrial Revolution (namely the development of interchangeable parts and new methods of production) enabled guns to be mass-produced in greater numbers, as well as distributed and exchanged amongst the citizenry. The calibers of guns were improved…as were their functionality. By the turn of the 20th century, repeating arms began to take on the forms that they have today. And yet, for decades, heavy armaments were only carried by elite units of police forces, such as the LAPD’s pivotal SWAT team, established in 1965. It took many violent incidents, in which law enforcement personnel were vastly outgunned in a fight for their lives, for municipal governments to realize the need to give officers heavier armaments to compete with crooks. Many of these incidents happened right here in Southern California. On April 5th, 1970, four California Highway Patrol officers (George M. Alleyn, Walt C. Frago, Roger D. Gore, and James E. Pence, Jr. ) and one civilian engaged two heavily armed serial criminals on a dark roadway in the then-rural Valencia area. The officers were armed with Colt 1911s, chambered in .45 Automatic, as well as .357 Magnum and .38 Special revolvers; one officer also had a pump-action shotgun. However, standard Colt 1911 magazines only hold 7 rounds, and the revolvers issued to the officers did not come with speed-loaders. At any rate, the handgun and revolver calibers did not hold up against the assailants’ .44 Magnum and .30-06 rifles, and most bores of shotgun shells lose their effect after ±90 meters. All four officers lost their lives, owing to the general element of surprise, low-powered armaments, and lack of body armor. On May 9th, 1980, five heavily bank robbers overtook a Security Pacific Bank branch in Norco, California. Riverside County and San Bernardino County Sheriffs put up a strong fight in a gunfight and chase that spanned two counties. One deputy, Glyn Bolasky, managed to kill one robber and disable their vehicle, but the other robbers retaliated by ambushing and killing Deputy Bolasky. Again, and in spite of their large numbers, the Riverside and San Bernardino County Sheriffs were vastly outgunned by the small group of heavily armed assailants. On April 11th, 1986, eight FBI agents attempted to detain two serial robbery and murder suspects in unincorporated Miami-Dade County. Both suspects had military pasts and exhibited military tactics during their takeovers of banks, armored cars, and civilian vehicles. One suspect was armed with a Ruger Mini-14 (chambered in .223 Remington caliber, the same as an AR-15) and the other was armed with a 12-gauge shotgun. The agents, meanwhile, were armed with various handguns and revolvers chambered for the .357 Magnum, .38 Special, and 9-millimeter calibers. Outgunned, and owing to the up-close nature of the confrontation, it was hard to land a shot on the heavily armed suspects. Two agents, Benjamin Grogan and Jerry Dove, were ambushed and killed while loading their revolvers, a process that takes about 15 to 30 seconds without a speedloader (which, again, neither were provided). Capping it all off on February 28th, 1997 was the North Hollywood Shootout. Two extremely heavily armed (and heavily armored) serial robbers and murderers overtook a Bank of America branch in North Hollywood. They were quickly spotted and proceeded to engage dozens of Los Angeles police officers in a firefight that lasted the infamous 44 minutes. Twelve officers and eight civilians were wounded, but incredibly, nobody died in the attack except for the shooters. Once again, officers were equipped with then then-standard issue .38 Special Smith & Wesson revolvers and 9-millimeter Beretta handgun. At the officers’ distances--up to 355 feet—these rounds were less accurate than what they are rated for. Furthermore, neither caliber is remotely close to what is needed to penetrate the shooters’ Type IIIA body armor. The eighties and the nineties were the most violent decades in Los Angeles, fueled in large part by the drug trade. Just months before the North Hollywood standoff, the Mayor of Los Angeles denied a request to provide officers with heavier armaments like rifles and shotguns. The disastrous consequences of this denial were broadcast to the nation like few other law enforcement incidents up to that point, garnering much political support for heavier arms and other apparatuses for law enforcement. IV: RADIOS AND COMMUNICATION Police radio technology was slowly implemented throughout the 1920s and 1930s. in the midst of crime waves all over the United States, particularly in the cities. The history of police communications can be split roughly into two epochs: before the radio and after the radio. Communication systems prior to the invention of the telephone and the radio included the bells or “rattles” carried by rattle watches and constables. Even after the radio was invented, several decades would pass before they were adopted by public safety agencies. Part of this was due to the lack of sophistication, and part was due to a reluctance on the part of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to allow radio equipment to be operated in a mobile manner. One-way radios, for receiving calls only, were in use by the 1920s. In 1928, Detroit Police Officer Kenneth Cox and engineering student Bob Blatts installed first one-way radio dispatch systems in certain department vehicles. As a forerunner to police radio, some agencies of the time simply interrupted AM radio broadcasts to put out “calling all cars” alerts. There is some debate over who deployed the first two-way radios for police use. Some sources point to the police department of Victoria, Australia in 1923 [3]. Most sources, however, settle on the police department of Bayonne, New Jersey in 1932 as the originators of practical two-way radio systems. Police Lieutenant Vincent J. Doyle and Frank Gunther found a way to make the installation of two-way radios in patrol cars less unwieldy, contrasting with the backseat-sized transmitters in the police cars of Victoria, Australia. In spite of their improvements, early in-car radio systems from the 1920s and early 1930s were fragile, vulnerable to interference, and bulky, owing to their being powered by vacuum tubes. Starting in the early 1930s, tuning crystals, a form of solid-state technology, began to be implemented, eliminating the need for vacuum tubes. At last, in the mid-1930s, manufacturers like Bosch, RCA, and Motorola began designing compact solid-state radios and competing for their products to be purchased by public safety agencies. Motorola came out on top, and they remain industry leaders to this day. In the late 1940s, the FCC reversed their 1920s-era policy discouraging in-car police radio systems and allocated AM frequency ranges to be used specifically for public safety agencies. Improvements upon police radio communications continue to the present day. Even after solid-state technology was introduced, apparatuses were downsized, and operation was supported by the FCC, police radios now had to adapt to sabotage attempts (and successes) by criminal elements. Radio jamming devices, which deliberately release signals that interference with authorized radio frequencies, became common during the 1960s. Additionally, the analog broadcasting suites of the 20th century had limitations in bandwidth and broadcast capabilities. To address both of these issues and numerous others, many agencies around the world have adapted the digital-based P25 (Project 25) platform, which enables personnel to transmit not only voice, but text and encrypted data as well. SOURCES:
[1] Archbold, Carol A. (2013). Policing: A Text/Reader. Sage Publications. [2] "Cops of History: A Law Enforcement Timeline". Virginia Wesleyan University. https://online.vwu.edu/news/criminal-justice/law-enforcement-timeline/ [3] https://psc.apcointl.org/2018/07/19/public-safety-grade-communications-radios-then-and-now [4] https://site.ieee.org/sb-uol/the-prohibition-era-origins-of-the-police-radio/ 9/13/18 [5] https://www.cityofirvine.org/ipd-divisions-bureaus-units/history-police-communications
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