Book Review: Rise of the Warrior Cop

Of all the frightening and heartwrenching reports about the situation in Ferguson, I found this one particularly poignant. It's a series of Twitter quips from army veterans comparing the equipments and tactics used by the police in Ferguson to their experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Here's just one example:

These army veterans are stunned to see military vehicles, weapons, and tactics used in a domestic situation against civilian population. But these horrific incidents are simply exposing something that has been going on for several decades: the increasing militarization of the police force. This was a good enough reason to finally get to read Radley Balko's new book Rise of the Warrior Cop (2013), which provides history and context to this phenomenon.

Balko starts his narrative with ancient Rome, where freedoms (and an early type of policing) was put in place specifically to prevent the army from overtaking the government. He then places much of what we know as Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure in historical context, explaining why in Medieval and Early Modern Britain (and, as a result, in its colonies) many of these protections--namely, provisions against quartering and the castle doctrine--were important to prevent bloodshed. Until the mid-19th century, troops were seldom used in the context of internal domestic conflicts, but the conflict over slavery changed this restraint and led to full-blown war. After the war, troops in Southern states, stationed there to prevent retaliation (and technically an occupying force of sorts) presented yet another challenge to the Third Amendment. Despite the emergence of police forces (as a new phenomenon), occasionally troops were sent to quell civil riots, such as in the context of school desegregation. While, in the 1960s, the National Guard played a role in such situations, there was common public distaste for the use of military forces in a domestic contest. However, as this happened, the police transformed itself through military education, tactics, and technologies, into a quasi-military force. Some of the 4th Amendment litigation in the1960s--mainly in the area of warrantless searches, knock-and-announce, and the like, revolved around the use of quasi-military techniques in policing.

The 1960s were periods of rising violent crime rates and notable violent incidents (such as the Whitman shootings and labor protests) that raised the question whether the police was appropriately equipped to deal with them. These incidents led to the the rise of police innovator Daryl Gates, who created the first paramilitary police units: SWAT teams against the resistance of more traditional policing experts. The initial units trained in secret. They would later receive more legitimation with further developments: the backlash against Johnson's taskforce on crime (The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society), race riots following MLK Jr.'s murder, and, of course, Richard Nixon's presidential victory, which was based on a platform of crimefighting and police empowering.

The Nixon administration targeted primarily drug crime and started using SWAT teams and break-in techniques that did not include knocking and announcing. These paramilitary technologies were used to combat, among others, the Black Panthers, who not only were on the receiving end, but also organized themselves in a quasi-military fashion. The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act reformed not only street tactics, but also surveillance methods, making wiretapping easier and more popular. The Nixon administration invested in treatment and reform, too, and saw some decline in crime attributable to those, but deliberately repressed reports on that angle, because that would undermine the efforts to allow for more repressive crime control.

The 1970s saw more professionalization in paramilitary policing. The commander would storm in front of the men, as in military units, and the units would hide out of sight, which was deemed to be more effective in conflict dispersal than presence on the scene. Anti-drug policing techniques found their way to state legislatures following an all-out PR campaign on crime and drugs.

The introduction of the Reagan-era War on Drugs in the 1980s intensified the use of these military techniques. In particular, that decade saw the introduction of armored carriers, as well as the emergence of national databases and interjurisdictional collaboration. But not only did these technologies not eradicate drug trafficking, they led to an increasing culture of alienation of the police force from its community. People were less and less inclined to collaborate with the police, report, and testify about crime. At the same time, police officers became more and more reified in law, so that lawsuits against them were increasingly difficult and any violence against them unjustifiable and worse than against non-police victims. This alienation made the police force in the community even more akin to a foreign occupying force operating among the enemy.

Balko's book is exceedingly well-written, full of fascinating examples, and pays a lot of attention to detail while not losing the bigger narrative. It bounces back and forth between anecdotes, general trends, police innovations, and legislation. There are a few complementary themes that are missing from his narrative: for example, he leaves his narrative of the National Guard aside, not asking the question whether it's the police that's become more army-like or the military that is increasingly busy in policing missions. His narrative also stays domestic, for the most part, while his argument could be fortified by presenting DEA activities in Mexico as one more example of militarization--crossing borders to fight wars that look like the traditional violent international wars of yesteryear (more on that in our forthcoming review of Ioan Grillo's El Narco). Balko also does not focus on countertrends, such as community policing, that have tried to humanize the police and make it an ally of the community. Nonetheless, the book is an excellent primer to those who want to understand more about why the images from Ferguson are so reminiscent of images from Afghanistan and Iraq. This did not start yesterday, nor is it likely to end without thoroughly rethinking the role of policing and the futility of an all-out war on drugs.