Fifty years ago the average beat cop in America carried nothing more than a trusty revolver
on his hip and perhaps a shotgun inside his patrol car.
Today American police officers are armed with a variety of lethal and non-lethal weapons
on their person, and it is not uncommon to find not just a shotgun inside their patrol
vehicle but a military-grade carbine and body armor.
To many, today's police officer is in some ways just as armed as an American soldier
in an active combat zone- but is that true?
Today we're going to take a look at US police versus the US military and determine who is
more heavily armed.
If you travel around the world you'll rarely run into police as heavily armed as officers
in the United States.
While many nations have the same internal problems that America has, the United States
is almost unique in the sheer amount of firepower available to its police departments, and in
the last few years displays of American police firepower have drawn stark comparisons to
Chinese crackdowns by military police in the seventies and eighties.
But where does this firepower come from, and is it truly necessary?
Back in the early eighties the United States launched its famous 'war on drugs', and while
its effectiveness is extremely debatable today, the war's proponents noted that in order to
successfully combat heavily armed drug cartels, American police forces needed to up their
firepower.
While in select situations this might have been true, the reality is that the United
States had seen a steady decline in violent crime that extends to this day, but even so
specialized SWAT units within major cities were designated for the role of carrying greater
firepower than the average beat officer.
To achieve this end the US government set up the Department of Defense Excess Property
Program, also known as the 1033 program, which solved the problem of making more firepower
available to police departments in need while also eliminating surplus military equipment
that the Department of Defense no longer had a use for.
In 1990 the program went into effect as part of the National Defense Authorization Act,
and allowed the Pentagon to transfer military equipment to police departments only if it
was “suitable in counter-drug activities”.
Initial grants totaled $1 million in 1990 for military equipment needed by big city
police departments facing dangerous drug violence, but by 2013 the program would be giving out
$450 million in grants every year.
With no serious rise in violent crime, how could the dramatic increase in military equipment
made available to police departments be justified?
We'll answer that question, but first we need to evaluate why the program was started in
the first place.
With the war on drugs in full force, cartels operating inside of the United States began
to protect their operations with more heavily armed thugs.
Violent crime may have been in decline around the nation, but the drug cartels and their
vast networks did represent a very serious threat that often could not be met by rank
and file police officers.
In response to increasing threats, SWAT teams- Special Weapons and Tactics officers- were
established at every major police department, but they soon requested better equipment so
they could level the playing field against heavily armed cartel operatives.
With the passing of the 1033 program, SWAT teams in major cities finally had the answer
to their problems, and soon they were being armed with military-grade armor, vehicles,
and weapons.
The reality is that the propagation of heavier and heavier firepower across the nation's
criminal networks very much demands that every major police department have a SWAT capability,
and those SWAT officers must be armed heavily enough to neutralize any potential threat.
This is common-sense policing, and initially the 1033 program helped achieve this goal.
However as the 2000s came around and the war on terror began, the 1033 program began to
spin wildly out of control.
With the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, one of its first priorities
was preparing local police departments to combat terrorist threats.
Beat police officers are typically the last line of defense against a terrorist threat,
after intelligence agencies and overseas military forces have failed to detect and stop an attack,
so it makes good sense to prepare police departments to identify and neutralize terror threats.
However, the problem came when police departments started asking for more military equipment
than was realistically necessary to combat a terror threat, and even that is not entirely
the police's fault.
With the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security and its priorities to fight
terrorism at home, police departments around the nation were given larger 1033 grants-
yet the grants came with two specific strings attached.
First of all, the equipment procured via a grant must be used within a year of acquiring
it, or else it must be returned.
This was meant to ensure that police departments didn't go gun-happy and start acquiring all
manner of equipment that was completely unnecessary.
The problem is that that's exactly what police departments did, and so having acquired equipment
from assault rifles to armored vehicles, they now had to use them in an active police operation
or risk having it taken away.
Thus police departments around the nation started needing to excuse their purchases
of military-grade hardware, and started deploying police officers in body armor equipped with
assault rifles and riding inside armored vehicles to everything from conducting basic search
warrants to monitoring peaceful protests.
Equipment that was originally meant to be used only in extreme emergencies against heavily
armed criminals was now being integrated into routine police work, because if it wasn't
then the police department would lose all that equipment a year after its purchase.
Obviously this doesn't make a lot of sense, as violent crime requiring military grade
equipment doesn't happen every single year.
Yet it does happen, and when it does happen if a police department didn't show that it
needed to use its new equipment a year after purchasing it, that police department would
not have the proper equipment needed against heavily armed criminals when it did happen.
So in a way, it's hard to blame police departments for responding to peaceful protests or serving
search warrants with police officers so heavily armed that they resemble soldiers in Iraq,
not officers meant to serve and protect their communities.
Yet on the other hand, such displays of military-level force have alarmed many Americans, and driven
a deep wedge of mistrust between the public and the police departments of this nation.
Another factor of the 1033 program which served to worsen the situation is the fact that as
with most federal grants, if the money is not used when it is awarded, then next year
the police department could expect to receive less money.
This encourages police departments to stock up when they can, lest they not have the funds
needed when real problems arise.
This stockpiling of military equipment then needs to be justified, and so we come back
to our first problem as police departments then begin deploying officers that are more
and more heavily armed.
Lastly, the Department of Defense itself is largely to blame for the heavily armed state
of American police departments.
As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wound down, the DoD was left with a huge amount
of surplus military equipment and nothing to do with it.
This equipment represented billions of dollars of military hardware that now no longer served
a purpose and was not needed- everything from tear gas to M4 assault rifles, body armor
and armored vehicles.
One handy way to recoup part of its losses was for the DoD to transfer the equipment
to the Department of Homeland Defense, which would make it available for police forces
through the 1033 program.
Purchased with federal money, this would reimburse the DoD some of its expenses for the equipment,
and was generally seen as a far better outcome than simply warehousing it or destroying it.
This lasted for years, and only came to a stop in 2015 when President Barack Obama ordered
an end to the DoD's transfer of military equipment, warning the department that it would need
to find another way to handle its war surpluses.
Unfortunately by then billions of dollars worth of equipment had already made its way
to the hands of police departments around the nation, and as we've learned today, all
those departments would need to justify those purchases by using them within a year of acquiring.
The deeply troubled 1033 program is the reason why a small Colorado town of 300 has a police
department equipped with a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicle, and why
all across the nation officers have been executing arrest and search warrants while as heavily
armed as American infantrymen.
Proponents of the program argue that police departments need the ability to respond to
heavily armed criminals, and this is in fact true.
Yet the daily use of this equipment to carry out routine tasks which have for decades been
done with lightly armed officers has done much to make the public mistrustful of its
police forces.
Instead of having specialized units within a department, such as SWAT officers, who can
respond to heavily armed threats with the proper equipment, police departments are now
routinely outfitting their officers in military-grade equipment to do tasks which in the past required
only a normal beat officer's daily equipment.
This has only served to worsen the relationships between police departments and the public
they are meant to serve, and there is no doubt that there's zero need for armored vehicles
to respond to a peaceful protest.
Do you think police officers need more or less military-grade equipment?
Let us know in the comments, and as always if you enjoyed this video don't forget to
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