The author of Rise of the Warrior Cop doesn’t want to destroy policing. Radley Balko’s not a left-wing radical. In fact, his words and his record of work suggest he’s a libertarian and serious about it. He roots his arguments in the U.S. Constitution and in Enlightenment-era ideas of individual rights and liberties and due process of law. That he makes such a effective tear-down of policing’s seedy history and horrifying tactics should concern us. Rise of the Warrior Cop drives home a message that a broad majority of Americans should find compelling. He’s asking us what kind of state we want for ourselves. Based on what he sees emerging, we won’t enjoy where we’re headed.
Balko reaches for policing’s original form and principles by heading all the way back to ancient Rome, at the end of the Republic. He notes that prior to the reign of Julius Caesar, soldiers were not permitted to enter Rome as a standing army. When they did, people started to lose respect for politicians and scholars, and started gaining respect for soldiers. The story then shifts to England. Here, Balko says early policing protected property more than it protected the state from dissent. The modern notion of a citizen’s individual rights, protected by due process and set procedures, has its roots in the common law of this period. Americans in the Revolutionary War era opposed British forces forcibly stationing, or quartering, soldiers in citizens’ homes. The author ties this opposition to the 3rd Amendment , which bans quartering of soldiers. It also goes back to common law and the “castle doctrine” that a citizen’s home should be inviolable in most cases. Because of this, the state should have very limited rights to intrude on it. From all this, Balko suggests an “unwritten Amendment” exists in the US Constitution. This one prohibits using a sort of standing army to police American citizens.
Of course, the United States has violated this principle on multiple occasions. Balko cites a few of them. He also traces the roots of what we’d call modern police forces, showing that they also failed to measure up to their principles early and often. The police force in 19th century London sought to build a reputation for professionalism and proper conduct. It tried to discipline its men, had them wear uniforms, and claimed a goal of avoiding confrontation when performing its duties. The US’s answer to this force – instituted in places like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia – was pretty damn unprofessional by comparison. Men got in the departments through patronage (being part of the right party or political machine). They were hardly trained, quick to violence, and deeply corrupt. Even the wealthy avoided them, and often hired private security instead. Eventually, some cops got sick of the reputation and reality of this. They tried to put in place professional standards of conduct, dress and training in American forces. It helped. The profession gained legitimacy in the eyes of citizens. At least, this happened among citizens who weren’t the police forces’ primary targets. You can learn from books like Alex Vitale’s The End of Policing that these forces were largely built out of a need to protect the property of the rich. Leaders used them to bash in the heads of labor organizers and strikers. They harassed immigrants if they stepped out of line, caught runaway slaves and quashed their rebellions.
But Balko’s main concern, as the book’s subtitle reminds you, is the militarization of police. He makes a distinction between direct militarization – when the military itself is used to police its own citizens – and indirectmilitarization, when you actually make police forces more like a military in their tools, tactics, and outlook. The U.S. has used the military on its own people for “policing” reasons throughout its history. This spans from labor strikes to the Bonus Army crackdown in DC in the 1930s. It involved unprovoked attacks on Native Americans. It includes using National Guardsmen to patrol cities where civil rights protests took place. But building police forces into a military of sorts is a newer development. Balko, writing in 2014, suggests that this militarization has universal political support and is met by public apathy. Maybe this is a dated view. It’s clear to me now that the last few years have increased public consciousness of the problem.
Starting in the 1960s, a series of policy decisions, Supreme Court Judgments and crises helped pave the way for militarization. Balko gives in-depth descriptions of how the new cage we’ve constructed for ourselves was built. High court decisions eroded the idea that police should have to knock and announce their presence before coming into our homes. Police forces claimed that doing so put them at risk, or put evidence in the drug war at risk of being destroyed. The case Terry v. Ohio allowed police to detain, stop and frisk people based only on reasonable suspicion of a crime. This is a standard that can be used legitimately. But far too often, it’s a weaselly way to justify a search of the poor, black men, immigrants, or anyone else in the sights of a patrol officer at the wrong time. Some opposed this erosion of constitutional rights, like Justice Brennan, the NAACP and the New York State Bar Association. Unfortunately, they were overruled. The Watts riots of 1965 and others like it helped feed a public perception that crime was out of control. This perception propped the door open for more militarized police. It didn’t help that presidential candidate Richard Nixon’s “law and order” rhetoric was in full-swing by the late 1960s. His campaign used this as a coded way to swing white voters opposed to civil rights away from the Democratic Party.
Then came the age of mass shooters, hostage-taking, and the SWAT teams cities built to combat these threats. The need for “special-weapons-and-tactics” was clear to police and the media in light of these circumstances. But these weren’t the circumstances under which most SWAT teams would be used most of the time. Instead of saving hostages or fighting terrorism, most SWAT teams are used to serve warrants in the Drug War. These heavily-armed teams, wielding new rights to bust your door in, became the spear of the Nixon Administration’s efforts. They funneled federal money into militarizing police. That money also went toward prosecuting or apprehending drug users and traffickers. The aim of all this, along with the escalatory rhetoric, was to harass blacks, liberals, leftists, and feminists as much as drug addicts or dealers. The president and his party perceived them all to be enemies. This is a tough thing for many people in America to accept, I get that. But the sources are there. The documents exist to support this position. Advisors of Nixon and later presidents have admitted, on record, that this was their aim. I’d say the book makes a damn convincing case.
The result of all this escalation? No-knock raids became commonplace, even expected, despite constitutional protections like the 4th Amendment. Other decisions diced that Amendment up like an onion, then slow-cooked it until what was left was barely a whiff of the original force and meaning. Police forces took the vast amounts of federal money on offer to build up units based on combating drugs instead of other crime. When surplus military weapons and equipment became available, they took full advantage of those deals and then some. Police forces became armored, carrying automatic weapons, and driving armored personnel carriers. They flew military-grade helicopters and wielded grenade launchers. Senators like Joe Biden led the way on expanding civil asset forfeiture. This gave police forces a way to seize property from people who had been convicted of no crime. They’d also received no representation to defend themselves from such an act. That seized property could then fund the department and, by extension, the officers themselves. It created a de facto profit incentive for police to seize property. Similarly, they have a profit incentive to charge excessive tickets and fines. None of these unjust seizures were as devastating as the unannounced, armed raids on homes. Theset ended up ruining or ending the lives of many innocent people. Even those guilty of nonviolent drug crimes did not deserve the dangerous and militarized police response. Some of the most effective material in the book is right here. Balko cites studies of how many times police used these tactics, and how ineffective they are. Such measures treated protestors as enemy combatants. They increased animosity between citizens and law enforcement. They accomplished little else.
The book is written incredibly well, fascinating and infuriating from start to finish. It functions as political analysis in an approachable way, stating its theory and principles early on and never losing sight of them. Even though I have a different outlook from Balko in many ways, he was very effective at convincing me of the virtues in his ideals. This is also an incredibly thorough history of this form of policing, and its structure. It follows the shifts in tactics and approach by police from decade to decade until the present. It establishes that both major parties pushed this process at one time or another. Most of the American public – even some of the communities who felt the brunt of the pain – supported it as well. I’ve only given a taste of what it contains and where it goes.
In 2022, organized BLM protests and clear-cut murders by police are still fresh in the memory of the American public. It’s easy to see that the movement for reform against these tactics is stronger than ever before. This book notes judges, politicians and officers who know these tactics are ineffective and unjust. Many of them have worked against the trend of militarization for decade. Some even reformed their local police forces to show that escalating tactics do not need to be used. At times, they found that less confrontational and militarized ones can achieve better results. They can even lead to reductions in criminal activity. Many seem to think there’s hope for that trend to grow, and I want very much to believe them. But Balko makes clear that this crappy system is, in the end, the result of crappy policies by crappy politicians who we elect. Find a way to get this book and read it, because it will provide a wealth of evidence that this is a trend we must reverse. We have to be the ones to push for an end to this system, and be willing to show politicians the door if they refuse to comply with that demand.
Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces
This influential book argues (from a libertarian perspective) that the drug war, Patriot Act, and militarized policing are not only ineffective, but unconstitutional and un-American.
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