Deroy Murdock at the National Review puts together a survey of SWAT raids, full battle uniforms and weaponry, over such heinous allegations of criminal conduct as unpasteurized milk and theft of koi.
FBI agents and U.S. marshals understandably are well fortified, given their frequent run-ins with ruthless bad guys. However — as my old friend and fellow columnist Quin Hillyer notes — armed officers, if not Special Weapons and Tactics crews, populate these federal agencies: the National Park Service; the Postal Inspection Service; the Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Labor, and Veterans Affairs; the Bureaus of Land Management and Indian Affairs; the Environmental Protection Agency; and the Fish and Wildlife Service. Even Small Business Administration and Railroad Retirement Board staffers pack heat!
These “ninja bureaucrats,” as Hillyer calls them, run rampant. They, and often their local-government counterparts, deploy weapons against harmless, frequently innocent, Americans who typically are accused of non-violent civil or administrative violations.
Why Murdock gives up the ghost to FBI and marshals so easily isn’t quite clear. I suspect that those on the outside still harbor what can be kindly described as a charming naivete when it comes to those things that remain distant, like “real” criminal law enforcement, and only see the insanity of those things about which they’ve become slightly familiar. The need to believe in normalcy and reason by overarmed people is strong, even when the pigeonholes don’t quite fit.
Murdock’s focus is on the agencies of government whose functions aren’t directed toward law enforcement per se, yet maintain their own bureaucratic armies. Whether SWAT per se, or merely a merely a police force of their very own, it properly strikes home that there isn’t a great need for the Railroad Retirement Board to be capable of mounting an counteroffensive to the marauding Russian army. Yet, they’re prepared.
After watching a video of a police officer, a former Marine, smack a less-than-obsequious victim, a former army reservist, for his failure to sufficiently respect his authority, I began to realize a connection that had previously not occurred to me. It starts with the volunteer military.
In 1973, the United States ended the draft, going to an all-volunteer military. At the time, post-Viet Nam, the draft was extremely unpopular, and the end of conscription was hailed as a huge step forward. But the end of the draft also meant that the military was a career choice for young people. Rather than college or carpentry, young men and women elected to go from high school into the army (used in the generic sense of military service rather than a branch of the military), where they would be trained and indoctrinated into their future careers.
These young people were handed over to the army at an impressionable age, meant to be molded into a fighting force to safeguard the nation. To accomplish this, it was necessary to instill a blind acceptance of rank and authority, honoring the chain of command without question. They are taught methods and tactics, and told that these are the way their lives are saved, and these are the ways they save the lives of their mothers and fathers. The training is like a religion, to be accepted without question. It’s very effective training.
After these impressionable youths have grown up a bit, to the point where they grow whiskers and have children, they need to leave the womb of the military and make their way in the real world; earn a living, buy a home and raise their children. As they walk away from a world that makes perfect sense to them, they need to apply the skills they learned in their secondary education, the army, to the civilian world. There aren’t that many jobs that require field-stripping an automatic rifle or rushing into oncoming fire.
Of course, there is one civilian job that fits the bill quite well. Law enforcement. It obviously can’t absorb every former soldier, but ex-military are extremely well-suited to the task in many ways, the ways that people who seek law enforcement personnel value. They follow orders. They respect the chain of command.
They bring other things to the Job as well. They bring the mental separation of us-and-them needed to kill people. They bring the tactics they were taught kept them alive. They bring the belief that overwhelming power, shock and awe being an example, serves them and their strategy. In other words, they bring all the things that were strengths in the military but are dubiously employed against their fellow citizens, their brothers and sisters at home.
Obviously, there aren’t enough jobs in law enforcement to absorb every former soldier, and those who reflected the greatest dedication to the religion are most valued in law enforcement. They are fierce warriors. They take no prisoners. They know how to control and subdue an enemy. They become our police, whether in local departments, the Fish and Game Administration or the U.S. Marshals’ Service.
Where the uniforms were once blue, they feel more comfortable in battle gear. Where the weapons were once pistols, they were trained to love their automatic rifle. They will never forget the catechism they were taught in basic training. Given the option of going into battle the way they were trained, they will choose to do so.
Radley Balko’s upcoming book, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, will no doubt address this in far greater depth than a mere blawg post, ranging from the distribution of military weaponry to local police departments, which are then used because, well, they’re there, to the adoration and glorification shown when law enforcement’s terrible high tech gadgetry is used to stop a threat, whether real or perceived. This strikes me as another piece of the puzzle of what has gone so horribly wrong.
A self-selected segment of our children have chosen to be made into warriors, and we praise them highly for their choice. When later they change employers, they don’t change their religion or understanding of their place in the world. They are what we made them to be, even though the new enemy is us.
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Have you considered that also military training has changed? Traditionally, most members of the military received their basic training which centered on the skills needed to survive and act on a symmetric battlefield. At least since 2005, the US armed forces have trained every soldier, marine and, I think, airman and sailor to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan.
The individual skills you need when fighting against an equivalent mechanised enemy are, happily, not very applicable in law enforcement. However, the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan wars resembles law enforcement, but with all constitutional protections removed. Essentially: you are interacting with the civilian population and if someone dies when you raid someone’s house without reason, it is not a big deal. The mentality is that any civilian can be a disguised enemy, any vehicle a car bomb. These lessons are very applicable in civilian, domestic law enforcement. Combined with the small arms doctrine based on overwhelming firepower, i.e. “spray and pray”, it produces ugly results.
You are absolutely right. We went from a uniformed enemy on a battlefield to a civilian enemy in their homes and streets, which transfers almost seemlessly.
Radley’s writings suggest a different, or at least a more complex, explanation. He wrote a blog post in 2010 called “More Militarized Than the Military” which paints the regular military forces as pretty restrained when it came to conducting raids in Iraq/Afghanistan. Problems only arose when reserve forces, consisting mainly of cops, were deployed.
I’ve also read elsewhere that those who can’t make it into the military often become cops instead.
Of course, ex-military become cops too, and as we saw in the video, they can be bad cops. But instead of them bringing their attitudes in, perhaps they’re being corrupted by the existing atmosphere. Take away the military discipline they’re used to and throw them in with a bunch of wannabe military and it probably doesn’t take long for their restraint to melt away.
This post was meant to discuss an aspect of the problem, not (as many people prefer to characterize things), the real problem.
I tend to disagree at least in part. The military is made of a pretty even cross section of society. There are ex-gang members, jocks, nerds, zip heads…
Many in law enforcement have never been in the military but hear all of the stories and see all of the pictures of those who have. I’m certain that there is a bit of “wannabeism” that follows.
From their recruit training and every year that follows, servicemen get refresher courses in rules of engagement and the like. They also receive training in what constitutes a lawful order. (Whether they stay awake during this training is another story.)
In short, servicemen – who don’t have guild or union to represent them – are taught to question orders and are expected to disobey and report an unlawful one. That single point does not transfer to law enforcement.
I think your idea of a cross-section of society and mine may differ. I agree about the wannabees, but add that nothing is so absolute as meant to cover every cop under every situation. As to the significance of teaching soldiers to disobey unlawful orders, I defer to those more knowledgeable about the actual impact than I am.
I think that Mr. McManus has a valid point here. I can tell it from experience. In Finland, where we have a rather universal draft, it is usually the high school students that have military fantasies about special units etc. Those who have served their time (e.g. most male college students) are much more realistic and adult about the use of weapons and violence. The difference is marked when there is, in a group of students, a guy who hasn’t served. Usually, his attitude towards military is childlishly naive, regardless whether it is positive or negative.
From my experience with the Americans, the armed forces veterans usually have an attitude towards military which closely resembles the attitude prevalent in Finland, while the general population resembles Finnish male high school students.
Nothing is more informative than Finnish speculation of American inference.
This problem is unbelievably deep, and many points have already been addressed. You’ve got to dissect it into its several parts, and treat each differently. Police are far from one homogenous population, but you’re right saying that the military does play in this. Let’s look at a few.
Percys. These are the bully’s who gravitate to law enforcement because they want to exercise power over other people. They are typically rejected by the military for various reasons. Frankly, I don’t see a lot of Percys entering SWAT teams because they are uncomfortable around SWAT types and typically physically unable to perform the tasks. However, when one make it through, look out. Prepare for lots of buttstocks to craniums.
Wannabes. These are folks who wanted to be in the military but were rejected for one or more reasons. The difference between them and Percys is that they don’t feel a need to have power over others. They just want to be cool. They want the yee haw and glory. What better way to obtain that than in a SWAT team. Parking ticket duty certainly won’t do.
Hoo-Rah Prior Service. These are individuals who served in the military and obtained the benefit (and arguable drawbacks) of that training. They were trained to be proficient in assault weapons and gear. Because of their prior training, they are able to demonstrate instant proficiency. This contributes to a bit of an ego boost, and who doesn’t want that? Whereas they are one of the crowd in ordinary police stuff, they are exceptional when it comes to assault-related activities. When you are exceptional at something, you want to keep doing it, and you look for opportunities to show your abilities, even if these opportunities are questionable (or even unnecessary). They succeeded in the military (usually) and now have an opportunity to parlay that into LEO success. Can they be blamed? Everyone wants to be successful, after all.
Andy Griffiths. BORING. These guys recognize that they are part of a community and have a duty to make that community safe and livable. The rule of law guides their actions. These guys are boring. How many times do you hear about someone getting a meritorious award for being “an even-keel officer who established himself as a quiet professional?” Sometimes, but not often. These guys are boring. Opportunities for glory are few (if ever). They may or may not have military experience. if they did, they realize that being a LEO is different and adjust accordingly. Yet, they are painted as soft, uninspiring, and not fun. Others on the force often fail to recognize that quiet, thoughtful, take-a-deep-breath-before-acting folks have value to a community.
Who do the Percys and Wannabes want to follow? You guessed it, the Hoo-Rah guys. Why, the Percys want the skills. The Wannabes want the glory. The mix of personalities is potentially deadly.
So, there’s my incomplete take in the few minutes it took to read your post and write this response. Cont.
Continued….
Assault gear and weaponry requires constant training and familiarization. It is a full-time job. Even with constant and dedicated training, military leaders can still identify areas that need improvement. The average police officer must manage too many core disciplines to perfect the use of assault weapons and gear. They must balance several priorities. Without that constant training and proficiency, problems are bound to occur with assault-oriented weapons.
Complicating matters is the fact that most prior military are taught that, if an assault is necessary, complete neutralization is largely acceptable. True, there are exceptions, but in my Infantry days, I was taught to “close-with and destroy the enemy.” This should never be a mantra accepted by LEOs. There can never be enemies, only varying degrees of citizenry present.
During one of Hussein’s saber-rattling episodes in the mid-90s, I remember one of my soldiers saying “Pray for war, baby!” When I look back at that, I can’t help but think that we were all training with our equipment for something that we should never want to happen. One of my fears domestically is that a highly-trained SWAT force is sitting around itching for action. I feel that they should feel similarly about their skills and equipment, hoping it never left the training grounds.
When ego and boredom and a desire for glory drive the use of assault equipment, the results are never pretty or of a nature to inspire pride and confidence–even when done by the military in combat.
My least favorite example of this was the use of Bradley Fighting Vehicles at the Koresh Bed and Breakfast in Waco. To anyone who has seen (or understands) the proper tactical deployment of fighting vehicles, video from this event is positively cringeworthy.
I’d rather watch a constant loop of episodes of “JAG” than endure video from that boondoggle. And that’s saying a lot.
Any thoughts?
My fingers hurt.
Tenderfoot.