Thomas Morton visited Ferguson, Missouri to observe first-hand the militarization
of America's police forces.
This is his debrief.
Well to start with, every time I've been in an area with,
with violence whether it was, you know, like a conflict or just like heavy crime,
it's the only two places I can think of really are like distant lands like,
like extremely foreign environments other countries that were either at wars,
had a lot of crime or deep inner cities in America like Chicago Southside.
What was striking about Ferguson was it was the suburbs, it wasn't just like it
wasn't a run-down area, like it kinda I guess assumed from the reporting we'd seen
before we went out there, it looked a lot like the suburbs I grew up in in Atlanta.
And so, it was it was very jarring to see such unrest and
such violence in such a familiar setting.
And one that I associated with just thought, you know, comfort and
complacency.
Second one that didn't compare is I've never been gassed before.
I guess in armed conflict a lot like U.S.
Army doesn't use tear gas and I've never gotten a clear reason for that, but
I think it's probably for the very reason that the police forces do use them and
that's it disorients and freaks people out.
When the gas went off and they started firing the flash-bangs, like, what had
been a pretty orderly crowd in Ferguson suddenly turned into a chaotic stampede.
Everybody was going in every direction.
The cops gave no warning as to which way they were shooting or which, you know,
like who needed to move where.
There was zero communication, and it just led to pandemonium.
A number of officers and ex-officers we talked to were were pretty clear on
the distinctions between soldiers and police.
A soldier's role is to, you know, fight and occupy a country and
to control it, you know, through, through direct violence and through, you know,
the threat of violence the police officer's role is to keep the peace.
They're more or less directly opposed to each other,
even though they both carry guns and sometimes have to fight.
On top of that a soldier's role is to, as Norm Stanford puts it, to follow orders.
To, you know, just carry out what his superiors want him to do, whereas a police
officers, one of his main tools is supposed to be his discretion, his mind.
He's supposed to engage with the people he is policing.
And, you know, if not solve cases like a detective would,
at least figure out, you know, who's lying, what's actually happening, who,
if anybody, deserves to be, you know, arrested or ticketed.
And, you see with, like,
the increasing kind of soldier-like role of police is that discretion goes away.
And they rely, you know, one,
on a kind of zero-tolerance kind of application of certain rules and laws.
They take it very heavily in a lot of areas, including in Ferguson.
They also rely on their their physical tools a lot more than
they do on their mind.
They, you know, if they don't draw a gun, they draw a taser,
there's Norm Stamberg talked to us, he said and it's a little like nostalgic, but
when he got out of the academy they gave him, you know,
a ticket book some cuffs, like a night stick and a gun.
And it's like, if you didn't use, he'd use the gun for the nights,
you got to figure out, you had to sue your mind, to figure out what you do.
Now there's this whole range of gear that they can rely on,
starts from like lethal force with a gun to like degrees of less lethal,
like the taser and and riot situations with rubber bullets.
Different crowd control devices, that are,
you know, very soldierly in appearance and kind of an application.
They don't, they don't rely on communication as much as cops once did.
There's not really a tactical point of having camouflage on officers.
That was one of the funny things we saw in Ferguson Missouri was that we,
we were in the suburbs we were, you know, against buildings and people we were
wearing Real Tree Camouflage as if, you know, we're out in the woods.
It actually made them stand out more, I think the real point of the camouflage is
just that it looks cool, it looks tough, it presents an aggressive image.
And that all ties in, you know,
with the militarized mentality, that folks like Radley Balco talk that, you know,
this gear that he commonly associates with soldiers, when you put it on, you start
to, you know, you're dressing the part and it starts to invade your thinking.
You start to act like a soldier.
So the sheriff's department that puts on those like SWAT team Olympic Games almost.
They stage their different scenarios in different parts of town.
That one was in a local college and they'd hired a bunch of students to be extras.
I don't think that, they didn't get paid, they got some food and
they got to wear cool makeup.
And, you know, one or two of them may have gotten to play the villain and
fire those little fake guns at the officers before they got shot.
But the college's stage department too I believe, rigged the lighting and sound.
And that's why you had like that scream,
like that screaming soundtrack that would come in like you're at a cool haunted
house and a similar lighting scheme on the stage.
Which I don't think would be the case in an actual active shooting situation.
Pretty sure the shooter would leave the lights alone, or just turn them all off.
Certainly would strobe them like we saw.
Unless they were, you know, club kids or something.
I mean I think there is hope of reversing the trend, but it's kind of reliant
on the police departments themselves, and you're up against two major hurdles with
the policemen who adopt these, you know, militaristic sort of uniforms and
gear and mindset, and one is they're afraid for their safety.
They see this gear as, you know, necessary to protect them from gunshots,
from explosives, from, you know, all the dangers of the job.
Which are, in a lot of cases, actually legitimate if, you know,
rare, and if infrequent, yeah.
Second problem is all this tactical gear is extremely cool.
I mean, it's what you see in movies when like the SWAT team goes in or,
you know, the Delta Force attacks somebody,
and it's a lot of these cops are just, you know, grown boys.
And they've picked a job that, you know, alliance with you know,
specifically these kind of toys, with with, with weaponry and tactical gear.
I mean, even my camera crew were at Urban Shield and, like, little shopping section
in the convention hall were, you know, very allured by a lot of the displays.
Even if it was, you know, basically like gun cases,
and like breacher tool cases that we realized we could use to,
like, carry our tripods in, or the boom pole for our mic.
It's it's a very fundamental issue in,
like in the base level of policing, but will be tricky to fucking undo.