For years, groups in and outside of the United States have been calling for significant police
reform, in respect to the disproportionate targeting of minorities, excessive force,
and multiple police shootings of unarmed suspects.
In 2015 Human Rights Watch said that the US had quote “largely failed” to address
numerous UN recommendations to improve its judicial system over the previous five years.
So, why and how has police violence gotten so bad in the United States?
Well, one of the largest reasons for the rampant increase in aggressive police tactics is the
blurring of lines between law enforcement and the military.
Since the 1970s when Richard Nixon introduced the “War on Drugs”, overall arrests have
dramatically gone up.
Using the Drug War as a catalyst, Ronald Reagan passed a federal law allowing police to cooperate
with the military, and use their military equipment.
This militarization ramped up by the 21st century, and following the September 11th
terror attacks, both the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense contributed
funding to local police around the country.
During the war on terror, more and more police received surplus military equipment, with
some holding weapons such as grenade launchers and armored vehicles with mounted guns.
Moreover, multiple reports, including one from the Department of Justice, note that
police are better trained in self-defense than they are in community building, and the
use of nonviolent solutions.
For much of the country, there simply is not enough adequate training focused on de-escalation.
In fact, a 1981 court case, Warren v. District of Columbia, found that while police are held
responsible to the public at large, they are were not actually required to assist individuals,
and can’t be sued negligence as a result.
A similar ruling by the Supreme Court in 2005 dismissed a claim against police for not acting
to keep several individuals out of harm.
The court found that the lack of action did not violate the victim’s constitutional
rights.
This lack of accountability to the public, coupled with a lack of internal accountability
have led to widespread abuses in power.
Not only are the standards for police brutality different across the board, but even when
police brutality is clear, it is almost never prosecuted.
One study of New Jersey brutality complaints in 2014 found that only one percent was ever
investigated, and the national average of complaints investigated by internal units
was less than ten percent in 2006.
In an effort to curb such abuses, a 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act allowed
law enforcement agencies to be sued in civil court.
But this ultimately did little to address the problem, since it is most often the local
tax-funded government and not the police department which ends up paying civil settlements.
In a nutshell, the past few decades of police reform have seen law enforcement agents equipped
with military surplus while not only untrained in the use of that equipment, but also untrained
in non-violent tactics.
Moreover, abuses go unreported, uninvestigated, and unpunished, and punitive measures only
hurt the community, not the police.
While there are plenty of law-abiding, committed police officers, as a whole their presence
resembles more of an occupying military force than law enforcement.