Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Phillips Radley Balko at Vanderbilt: The Trouble with SWAT
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 7:38 AM
Monday night, famed libertarian Radley Balko (Huffington Post and his personal site) spoke to Vanderbilt's Young Americans for Liberty. He spoke about the militarization of America's police forces, especially SWAT teams.
If you've ever read Balko, you won't be surprised to learn that he's eloquent and thoughtful in person. One thing that he discussed that I don't think gets enough attention is that SWAT teams were designed to meet violent force with with violent force, but they are deployed in all kinds of situations where there is no threat of violence, no evidence of a violent situation. When the SWAT teams come in, therefore, they are creating the violent situation. He pointed out that we encourage our police forces to act like soldiers and aren't shocked when they treat members of their own community as enemies — though, obviously, it should be shocking.
He also described in detail the ways SWAT teams are rewarded for focusing on the "war on drugs" often to the detriment of victims of other crimes, who would like the crimes against them investigated. SWAT teams get money based on drug busts, but they're also able to get surplus military equipment without then having to follow the same rules of use for that equipment that troops in the field do.
He finished by saying that the solution isn't simply to blame the cops, but to address this at the policy level. But then he pointed out that Republicans love to be seen as tough on crime while Democrats love to be seen as friends of unions, including police unions. So there's not a lot of political incentive to introduce some level of sanity back into the situation.
Depressing? Somewhat. Informative and thought-provoking? Undeniably.
Comments (18)
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I would point out that Democrats have a unique opportunity to turn this around right now. With the GOP attacking the very existence of unions, Democrats can earn their police union support simply by defending FOP/PBA's (or whichever's) right to exist and negotiate salaries and benefits, without having to get behind the no-consequences-for-brutality stuff.
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Likewise the police unions can encourage things like constitutional search-and-seizure training and policy reforms and shed their bad reputations as defenders of corruption. The fact that neither the Democrats nor the unions are going to take the opportunity the GOP is giving them is unfortunate.
The monetizing of law enforcement is an issue that needs to be addressed. Why put resources into investigating rapes, burglaries, fraud, etc., when the police can make money off drug busts? Perhaps ALL funds recovered from drug busts should be put into rehab efforts, child services and health care. My guess is that law enforcement wouldn't focus on drug busts so heavily if that were the case. Or just totally reform the drug laws.
Antibiotics are sometimes administered pre-emptively, before infection develops. Happy Valentine's Day to the the SWAT teams. Thank you for putting your lives on the line for all of us.
If many libertarians had their way, we'd be living in utter chaos.
Just, uh, be sure you have the right address. #Not my house. ##Try the all-night band across the road. ###Please.
Next in Adventures in Militarization: the U.S. Postal Service.
If many authoritarians had their way, we'd be living in a police state. Let's put swat teams back to work solving crimes.
Legalise, regulate, licence and tax drugs. It will solve 80% of the crime problem
and improve the lives of those caught up in this BS. Strongly train the SWAT teams that they are police, not SEALS, policing civilians, not al-qaida.
CMaldonado,
Republicans may be opposed to public sector unions but it was never Republicans who called them 'pigs' and otherwise demonized them as a group rather than as individuals. Your comment about "the no-consequences-for-brutality stuff" reeks of the presumption that such behavior is somehow common, if not standard practice.
Similarly, "... encourage things like constitutional search-and-seizure training and policy reforms and shed their bad reputations as defenders of corruption" is a very broad stereotyping of an entire group, especially a group that operates in such a complex and dangerous field. Your comments are strikingly similar to the sort of rhetoric about Muslims that Pith likes to use to stereotype all conservatives as bigots.
Having spent several years working with Police Chiefs and Sheriffs across Tennessee and in several other states, I can tell you that the vast majority of them are deeply committed to improving the quality of their officers and eliminating the sort of behavior that you mention.
Packrat,
The focus on drug-related crimes has a great deal more to so with the influence of drugs on a multitude of other crimes and their appeal to young people than any property seizures. And do you really want the police to re-sell extremely fast cars, sophisticated bugging and debugging technology and guns to the public? Those things that do get auctioned go to help the various departments in dealing with their budgets not just more drug interdictions.
focus on drug-related crimes has a great deal more to so with the influence of drugs on a multitude of other crimes and their appeal to young people than any property seizures. And do you really want the police to re-sell extremely fast cars, sophisticated bugging and debugging technology and guns to the public?"
What is it about Prohibition not working that people don't seem to get? The War on Drugs should be called the Law Enforcement/Defense Attorney Full Employment Act.
Pack,
Spend some time with law enforcement leaders and line officers. Drug raids and many drug busts are always fraught with danger. As in remember the confiscated guns {frequently 'arsenals' would be more accurate} and the dysfunctional people wielding them?
Police and Sheriffs do not make the laws. They enforce them. They led the fight against 'guns in bars' and 'guns in parks' and 'guns in day care' for all the credit that they got.
Yes, the war on drugs has failed almost completely. We need a new strategery. Some legalization might well make sense. But your issues are not with Law enforcement.
So, Packrat, what's the balance? Barney with a bullet in his pocket? Mayberry done come and gone, baby. And little ole Maury County is a meth capital.
Have you seen the children who live in meth houses/trailers? Do you know what has happened to many of them?
Unarmed SWAT teams -- yeah, that's the ticket. You lead the way.
Our problem is not too much law enforcement. It is not enough. In a number of areas.
If you don't like the laws, change them -- or just wait for them to be unenforced and see how you like it. We're gettin' there.
I agree, change the laws. The war on drugs is a trillion dollar flop. Treat it as a public health problem rather than a law enforcement one. Donna, we have plenty of law enforcement, and it isn't working.
If society wanted to rid the country of drugs there would be a swift and sure death penalty for drug dealers. For the damage they do dealers deserve to die. Malaysia executes dealers and the country's drug problems are minimal. But, hey, too many people would rather see so many of our young destroyed than take the measures needed to eliminate the problem. Another way of looking at it is that many of our neighbors would rather see our children spiral into a drug-induced abyss than give up his own high; selfish, self-centered neighbors are like that. And these same neighbors like to say that if we legalize drugs we'd eliminate the problem, a belief which could be countered by asking, "Did repealing prohibition eliminate alcoholism and young people drinking?"
The problem is that the so called war on drugs has become a cash cow for the legal system.Th police and drug task force confiscate and keep lots of money and lots of new toys from bust.The lawyers make a ton defending the dealers or smalltime users.And the state probation makes a lot of money from probation fees.And now we have private probation companies contracting with the state and counties making money hand over fist.I have sat in the Sumner county courtroom and watched them run them thru like cattle attaching them to these probation services, some for just having a pack of rolling papers,( wich you can legally buy in any store , but if get caught with you get stuck with a paraphenalia charge) having to pay 1000$ dollar fines and a year on probation with some extravagant probation fees.I have been in the hall and listened to them threaten them with jail time if they dare not plead guilty and take probation.( I dare say there are a lot of kick backs going on).This is not just true on state and county levels but just think about the cash and property brought in on the federal level.Channel five just did a story on the police in Tennesse and how they are not looking for the drugs coming in, but are targeting the money going out, because it fills there coffers.It has shown in many articles that it possible to stem the flow of drugs into our country, but our goverment will try the methods that are more likely to work because they would alot revenue from the federal level all the way to the city level.I was one of the people who got caught in their trap, i was caught speeding on I-65 and I consented to search, they found 3500 dollars in my console i was going to buy a car with.They confiscated my money on suspicion of drug gains without even charging me,it cost me 1000 dollars in lawyer fees and over 6 months to get my money back. I got to checking and it turns out this is a very common thing to happen .They hedge their bets most won't fight to get their money back and from my checking it out on the internet they seem to get by with more times than not.Like I said it a cash cow for the goverment at all levels.
The US imprisons more people per capita than any nation on Earth. The US imprisons more people by count than any nation on Earth (~5% of world population, ~%25 of world prison population). The majority of those locked up are serving time for non-violent drug offenses at massive expense to our society.
Prohibition, "tough on crime," militarizing local police, bloated SWAT team budgets, etc. objectively DO NOT solve the drug problem and will never solve it, despite how well these policies scratch the authoritarian itch of many on this board (looking at you Donna & gast) and elsewhere. Donna, the meth problem in this country is unique and is very much another nasty sypmtom of our utterly failed drug policies.
So what does work? Portugal decriminalized (not legalized) _all_ drugs across the board in 2001 and in the 10+ years since hard drug usage has dropped by half, police & courts have been freed up to focus on actual crimes with actual victims, 40,000 people now receiving treatment instead of 100,000 locked up at much higher cost, etc. Further, not one single negative prediction made by the usual pro-prohibition crowd came to pass: no drug-tourism industry, less open drug use on the streets, lower drug use among children & teens. The list goes on and on and on; if this interests you please go do some reading about this wildly successful policy change. No popular politicians in Portugal would dare advocate a return to the old criminalization scheme these days -- it would be career suicide.
If you really care about policies that address the drug problem and value personal liberty, you would NEVER advocate for our current system (much less for its escalation as Donna & gast are wont to do) as it is worse than a failure and has taken a horrific toll on millions of lives. Bill Hicks nailed it when he said, "It's not a War on Drugs, it's a War on Personal Freedom. Keep that in mind at all times."
Mark, nice to see you at least open to the idea that "some legalization" might be useful when it comes to drug policies. See my previous comment about Portugal or check out some articles about their successes in reforming drug policy; there's a good one from July of last year in that bastion of liberal media known as Forbes.
Having said that, I think it takes a rather great deal of willful denial to not see systemic patterns of abuse within the law enforcement community. Yes, it is true that there are many great men & women amongst their ranks who are committed to the good of their communities. It is also true that there is a problem that goes _way_ beyond that old "a few bad apples" trope.
The bottom line is this: police are effectively totally unaccountable when they do abuse their power and engage in corruption. So spare us the speech about how they don't make the laws. Didn't we establish with the Nazis at Nuremberg that "just following orders" does not on any level absolve someone of responsibility for their actions?
For just one out of countless examples: The THP are well aware of the "right of the people peaceably to assemble," but that didn't stop them from wrongfully imprisoning (on two occasions) dozens of Nashvillians for doing just that. And have any of those officers seen even the most minor of consequences for their actions? Since you hang out with them soooo much maybe you could find out for us. I do not expect to be surprised by the answer.
Kevin, I'm a fan of law and order, but "authoritarian" doesn't accurately describe me. I'm not one-dimensional. Like most Americans, I'm a mix of views. Depends on the issue.
I would support some legalization of a few currently illegal substances, though not for people under age 21. And I'd like to see some legal drugs, such as hormone replacement, available over the counter, without prescription.
The United States is not Portugal. In any way. I don't think we can use that country, or any other, as a guide for what would happen here.
Kevin,
Drug legalization, at least the legalization of some drugs, was supported by William F. Buckley Jr., a True Conservative as opposed to the ideological yet idea-challenged posers of today. I can appreciate the merits of allowing people to smoke marijuana {or eat pot brownies} or drop the occasional tab of acid. But when you get into the various drugs that require an increasing dosage in order to achieve the desired 'high,' that becomes problematic.
For example, is there such a thing as recreational heroin use? Do heroin users come home after a hard day and shoot up once? Are there heroin users who only shoot on weekends? If that is the majority of heroin users, then you have a case. But how can one justify the legalization of something that will necessitate greater and greater usage while taking a toll on their bodies?
Are you a supporter of single payer health care? How are you going to rationalize the inevitable increases in health care costs for drug users? Should we tax them at higher rates than non-users?
And what impact on children would result from legalization? I can see that parents smoking pot are still able to take care of their children. But with our current crisis in parenting, will having more parents using cocaine or heroin or crack or meth help our children?
Most officers live in their communities. You think that they don't live with the consequences of their actions? There is an old rule in politics that applies equally well for law enforcement. It goes like this: Do a hundred things people like over several years but do one thing they don't like and that is what they will remember.
As far as Kevin's assertion that I'm authoritarian: I would like to be king - I admit that - but I'm not a fan of police in general because too many seem corrupted by the power of their position. Or perhaps they were corrupt before they became cops. The only mitigating factor in their behavior is the bozos they deal with day after day. I'd get tired of being mister nice guy, too, if I had to deal with bad people all the time and it would be hard to adjust one's attitude to differentiate in the treatment of Joe Citizen, who is just having a bad moment, after one has just jailed Joe Creep, the thug who fought you. But Kevin is being a little disingenuous when it comes to Portugal's drug problem. For drug users, jails have been replaced by detox centers with rules . And drugs are still illegal, of course, and drugs are still a problem. I go back to an earlier premise: Kevin is one of those who do not care about the influence of his vice upon young people as long as he can get his high going. Execute the dealers and the problem is solved. The world is going to have a population problem anyway, and I can't think of a better way to start thinning the herd.
