Thread by @igorvolsky

"If even the earliest attempts at centralized police forces would have alarmed the Founders, today’s policing would have terrified them." -- @radleybalko
writes in Rise of the Warrior Cop

@radleybalko "Aggressive, SWAT-style tactics are now used to raid neighborhood poker games, doctor’s offices, bars and restaurants... This sort of force was once reserved as the last option ...[now it's] increasingly used as the first option to apprehend people who aren’t dangerous at all"

@radleybalko "In the 1990s and 2000s, the company Heckler and Koch marketed its MP5 semi-automatic weapon with the slogan “From the Gulf War to the Drug War—Battle Proven.”

@radleybalko "Bad cops are the product of bad policy. And policy is ultimately made by politicians. A bad system loaded with bad incentives will unfailingly produce bad cops." - @radleybalko

@radleybalko "One of [America’s] greatest strengths is...that we do not allow the Army, Navy, and the Marines and the Air Force to be a police force. History is replete with countries that allowed that to happen. Disaster is the result." - Marin LT Gen. Stephen Olmstead in 1987

@radleybalko "It was the predictable fallout from positioning soldiers trained for warfare on city streets, among the civilian populace, and using them to enforce laws and maintain order that enraged colonists."

Reminder: wartime troops in the streets helped trigger the American Revolution

@radleybalko "Ultimately, the Founders decided that a standing army was a necessary evil, but that the role of soldiers would be only to dispel foreign threats, not to enforce laws against American citizens."

“The first real organized policing systems in America arguably began in the South with slave patrols . The patrols were armed and uniformed, and typically had broad powers to arrest, search, and detain slaves. “

“By the middle of the eighteenth century, every Southern colony had passed laws laws formalizing slave patrols. It became the primary policing system in the South. In many jurisdictions...slave patrols would eventually morph into the official police force.”

“The first modern-style police department in the United States was established in New York in 1845...Fearing that the London force was already too much like an army, the New York cops began their patrols unarmed, and without uniforms.”

“Cops were required to live in the wards they patrolled. All of this tended to make early police departments more like service agencies...In some neighborhoods, police officers ran soup kitchens and homeless people were given shelter in police stations to sleep.”

At end of 19th century, by adopting best practices, job of police officer transformed “from a perk of patronage to a formal profession with its own standards, specialized knowledge, and higher personnel standards and entry requirements.” To be a police officer became a career.

During Prohibition, “as the bootleggers obtained bigger guns to war with one another, law enforcement agencies felt that they needed bigger guns to go after the criminals. In larger cities, the ensuing arms race produced heavily armed police forces.”

The National Guard Act of 1903 made state governors more likely to request military help from the president and more reliant on the use of the military to quell disruptions. Military leaders weren’t keen on this; knew that sending soldiers to dispel citizens sowed ill will.

US Army’s Basic Field Manual from 1935 included a section on strategies for handling domestic disturbances & suggested firing into crowds, instructions on the use of chemical warfare, artillery, machine guns, mortars, grenades, tanks, and planes against American citizens.

Public outrage over the manuel grew loud enough that in early 1936 it was retracted. “By 1941 much of the offending language had been either removed or replaced with instructions emphasizing the use of nonlethal force.”

“The biggest threat to the Symbolic Third Amendment today comes from indirect militarization. Instead of allowing our soldiers to serve as cops, we’re turning our cops into soldiers. It’s a threat that the Founders didn’t anticipate, that nearly all politicians support”

Love this quote from Churchill at the beginning of Chapter 4: “Democracy means that if the doorbell rings in the early hours, it is likely to be the milkman. “

Watts riots = 1st major incident to nudge the US toward more militaristic policing:

“Watts made middle America begin to fear crime as never before. Much of white, middle-class America spent 5 nights watching their TVs as black people looted and burned their own neighborhoods.”

“To them, Watts and the riots in Baltimore, Newark, Washington, and Detroit in the following years were signs of a rising criminal class that was increasingly out of control.”

What Nixon called “the Silent Majority” would influence policy for generations.

LAPD’s point man responding to Watts riots was 39yo Daryl Gates. "The riots left Gates feeling that police training and tactics at the time were inadequate to address the sort of threat posed by the snipers, rioting, and violence he witnessed in Watts"

"At the time, the US military’s foe in Vietnam was using real guerrilla warfare."

Gates asked military for guidance & found the tactics & training he thought could help put down the next wave of rioting

Gates created a phenomenon that would reach virtually every city in America

In 1968, SCOTUS ruled 8-1 that police can stop, detain, and frisk someone based on no more than 'reasonable suspicion' that the person is engaged in criminal activity or about to commit a crime"

Stop & frisk would become a widely used, controversial, often abused police tactic.

Between the University of Texas Tower Shooting in 1966 & the epidemic of urban riots, "police leaders across the country started to consider whether they were prepared to respond if such incidents happened in their own cities, towns, and counties."

After the University of Texas shooting in '66, “the country’s police chiefs knew...they needed a unit that could be called in at a moment’s notice and plans that could be carried out immediately.”

The U of TX massacre “marked the birth date of the modern police SWAT concept"

"The riots in Watts and other urban areas may have instilled in middle America fears of a rising black criminal class, but there was still some sense of safety in the suburbs. Whitman’s [U of TX shooter] rampage on a college campus popped that bubble."

"The criminal threat no longer seemed to be limited to the inner cities. The victims were no longer urban toughs fighting among themselves. Both the AP and United Press International called Whitman’s mass murder the second biggest story of 1966, behind only the Vietnam War"

When the LA Police Department first envisioned its hyper-military SWAT force, its leader thought SWAT should stood for:

“Special Weapons Attack Teams”

Folks objected to "Attack" & it was changed to:

"Special Weapons And Tactics"

Some LAPD officers were offended that "SWAT operates like a quasi-militaristic operation" & the team had to train in secret on city-owned farmland in the San Fernando Valley. They also began working directly with Marine units.

.@UniStudios also helped train the very first SWAT team in LA, allowing SWAT members to "hone their special forces skills on the replica storefronts, buildings, and houses on its back lot in Burbank"

@UniStudios The SWAT team was met with resistance, initially: "officials balked at police using fully automatic weapons. The standard cry was, “Hey, the LAPD is supposed to be a civil police force. Their job is to relate to the community, not put on combat boots and assault the community.”

@UniStudios But police departments across the country began to follow LAPD's example: "In March 1968, the Associated Press conducted a national survey and found that, “in city after city across America, the police are stockpiling armored vehicles, helicopters, and high-powered rifles"

@UniStudios In 1968, as police departments feared summer riots: Florida AG Paul Antineri instructed police officers to “shoot to kill” if they spotted anyone committing or about to commit a felony. NJ police told AP, “We’re following through on the military concept in attacking this problem”

@UniStudios At the 1968 DNC Convention, police in Chicago would instigate a riot, then indiscriminately beat liberal protesters..."a Gallup poll taken a few weeks later, 56 percent of the country supported the crackdown, and just 31 percent were opposed."

@UniStudios In 1969 Newsweek poll found:

- 85% of whites thought that black militants were getting off too easily

- 65% thought unemployed blacks were more likely to get government aid than unemployed whites

- 66% thought that police needed to be given more power

@UniStudios America’s very first SWAT raid took place in December 1969 at the Los Angeles headquarters of the Black Panthers.

"Practically, logistically, and tactically, the raid was an utter disaster. But in terms of public relations, it was an enormous success."

@UniStudios LAPD got special permission from Dep of Defense to use grenade launcher on Panther building

"The story is remarkable because of the procedures, the caution... that went into procuring the grenade launcher"

20yrs later, Pentagon would give out grenade launchers for everyday use!

@UniStudios Ultimately, all 6 Panthers who were charged were acquitted of the most serious charges, including conspiracy to murder police officers.

**It’s nearly unthinkable that a self-defense claim under similar circumstances would be successful today**

@UniStudios "The same broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause that allowed the federal government to integrate private businesses in the South" gave Nixon authority to wage the War on Drugs...which over the "next 40yrs had some devastating consequences for large swaths of black America."

@UniStudios By 1970s, police began requesting military equipment from the feds

“They didn’t value education or training. They valued hardware”

-an armored personnel carrier
-tanks
- submarine

“Anything the police chiefs could dream up to make themselves look more fearsome, they wanted"

@UniStudios "They were also requesting the gear and military training to start their own tactical teams, like the one quickly becoming famous in Los Angeles."