Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Speaker 2: shuck and it's just us today. But that's okay because
Speaker 2: this is stuff you should know. The Is this a
Speaker 2: good idea?
Speaker 1: Oh, I think it's a good idea. You know, we're
Speaker 1: just going to kind of report what happened over the
Speaker 1: last you know, sixty years or so in the United States.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's been this increasing trend that Yeah, I guess
Speaker 2: it's about how long it's been going on where the
Speaker 2: police departments across the US have become increasingly militarized. And
Speaker 2: to be specific, it's not just a question of wearing
Speaker 2: technical helmets and vests, carrying assault rifles sometimes driving through
Speaker 2: through cities and m wraps and tanks. It's also a
Speaker 2: change in attitude that it's created where people are no
Speaker 2: longer citizens who are presumed innocent until proven guilty. They
Speaker 2: are the enemy and the police at that moment are
Speaker 2: an occupying force coming in full force to that person's house,
Speaker 2: or even when they're not doing that, just looking intimidating
Speaker 2: to basically everyone who sees them. That's essentially what people
Speaker 2: who talk about this stuff consider the full scope of
Speaker 2: the militarization of the police.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. And like I said, this has been
Speaker 1: happening since about the nineteen sixties. If you go back
Speaker 1: in time to like the eighteen hundreds, when cops first
Speaker 1: started being a thing in the United States, they were
Speaker 1: initially just hired as politicians. It was called a patronage system,
Speaker 1: so they were kind of appointed. It wasn't until the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century that they started get a little more like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's squash that patronage. Let's hire police instead of appointing them,
Speaker 1: so they basically don't work for politicians. And that's when
Speaker 1: union started being founded. That's when formal training programs started.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of this stuff we've covered in
Speaker 1: other episodes, but I know, if we talked about Robert
Speaker 1: Peel and the London Metropolitan Police is sort of a
Speaker 1: big north star that when America started their like real
Speaker 1: police force, they often looked to London and how he
Speaker 1: did it.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. And part of that was what's called
Speaker 2: the professionalism movement of police. Like you said, no longer
Speaker 2: making them political appointees in the pocket of some politician
Speaker 2: who wants them to go rough up as opponent and
Speaker 2: part of professionalism. One of the central tenets is that
Speaker 2: essentially the police is its own silo within society. It's
Speaker 2: not influenced by politics and all that stuff, which is
Speaker 2: good in that sense, but in the other sense, the
Speaker 2: police then kind of become their own well police force,
Speaker 2: and they make a lot of decisions about society, and
Speaker 2: as there's less I guess control or input or influence
Speaker 2: from society, things can start to get out of hand.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, professionalism also meant like, you know,
Speaker 2: people who are trained as police now know what they're doing.
Speaker 2: They're actually getting professional training.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it was in some ways it was
Speaker 1: a progressive era at first when the professionalism movement started,
Speaker 1: but even early on there was a guy in California
Speaker 1: and Berkeley, of all places, the chief of police there
Speaker 1: named August August Volmar, who you know, even way back then,
Speaker 1: was like, hey, I think you know, it should be
Speaker 1: more like the military. He had a quote where he said,
Speaker 1: after all, we're conducting a war, a war against the
Speaker 1: enemies of society. So even back then there was some
Speaker 1: ideological seeds being planted. Other people have defended Volmer in
Speaker 1: this movement and saying, hey, you know, he actually is
Speaker 1: one of the people who first started formal training. He's
Speaker 1: the first person to encourage the escalation and hire the
Speaker 1: first black and women police officer. So he also had,
Speaker 1: you know, people kind of sticking up for his movement
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's become kind of the poster child for who
Speaker 2: started all this, and other people are like, that's just
Speaker 2: not really fair. So either way, he definitely was a
Speaker 2: huge proponent of police reform and kind of established a
Speaker 2: lot of the ways that police thought. And like you said,
Speaker 2: part of it was this idea that there should be
Speaker 2: some degree of militarization of the police. And then after
Speaker 2: August Volmer, nothing happened for about sixty years, and then
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty five things nothing happened, nothing, The police
Speaker 2: just went along doing their thing and everybody was happy
Speaker 2: with what they were doing. Yeah, no, I know what,
Speaker 2: in the sixties everything turned and you can really trace
Speaker 2: the militarization of the police back to a couple of
Speaker 2: years in the sixties. There are other things that happened
Speaker 2: along the way. I think in the eighties there was
Speaker 2: a shootout in Miami nineteen eighty six that ended up
Speaker 2: leading to full throated support for police getting access to
Speaker 2: bulletproof vests, which I really don't think is problematic. Another one,
Speaker 2: we've done an entire podcast on the North Hollywood shootout
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety seven. Yeah, that led access to police
Speaker 2: being equipped with long guns like assault rifles and stuff
Speaker 2: like that after that. And in both those cases, the
Speaker 2: police were unprepared. They were shown to be unprepared, So
Speaker 2: there were steps taken to prepare them that you can
Speaker 2: kind of say are military in nature, I guess, But
Speaker 2: that's nothing compared to the effect that the riots of
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties had on the militarization of the police.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, And we covered some of these in
Speaker 1: our episode on riots. But in nineteen sixty five, the
Speaker 1: Watts riots occurred. Then a couple of years later, in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, there were riots in Newark and Detroit,
Speaker 1: and this stuff was all over the news. It was,
Speaker 1: you know, being widely reported. Americans were getting pretty worried
Speaker 1: about just crime in general, sort of in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: you know, thinking things were kind of out of control.
Speaker 1: There was a poll in nineteen sixty nine in Newsweek
Speaker 1: that found that sixty six percent of white Americans thought
Speaker 1: police should be given more power, and the Watts riots
Speaker 1: directly led to the creation of swat units. You know,
Speaker 1: we talked about this in our Swat episode all the
Speaker 1: way back in twenty ten.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: But there was a guy named Darryl Gates, who I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure isn't that the same guy who was chief
Speaker 1: during the Rodney King riots? Okay, well, back then in
Speaker 1: sixty five, he was an laped inspector and he basically
Speaker 1: said what you said was like they were just completely
Speaker 1: unprepared for how to handle something like that at that scale.
Speaker 1: So he went directly to the military and said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I want to create a special unit that's more like
Speaker 1: you guys that can handle something like this, And out
Speaker 1: of that came America's first SWAT team in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and swat teams are specifically considered a paramilitary police
Speaker 2: units or PPUs, like they are a sterling example of
Speaker 2: militarization of the police, right, And so you can thank
Speaker 2: Darryl Gates for creating this, like you said, although I
Speaker 2: suspect along the way somebody would have come up with
Speaker 2: something like this since they already existed in the military, right,
Speaker 2: So that was one big key point in the militarization
Speaker 2: of police. Another big one came from Lyndon Johnson. In
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five, under his guidance, I guess, the United
Speaker 2: States passed the Law Enforcement Assistance Act, and Johnson had
Speaker 2: declared a war on crime, and part of it allowed
Speaker 2: the federal government to give military weapons to local police departments.
Speaker 2: So that was the first time this is actually happening
Speaker 2: all the way back in sixty five. And again these riots.
Speaker 2: There was one hundred and sixty riots in one summer
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven alone, So people were nervous, and like
Speaker 2: you said, a lot of people were in support of
Speaker 2: the police having things like access to military weapons. Then
Speaker 2: after that, a year later, there was the Omnibus Crime
Speaker 2: Control and Safe Streets Act, and that created this permanent
Speaker 2: administration that oversaw transferring military weapons to local police departments.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was it was called the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration.
Speaker 1: And because of that, cops were like, all right, I
Speaker 1: mean we can start, you know, police departments could start
Speaker 1: stockpiling these you know, military grade weapons, and that's really
Speaker 1: when it kicked off. People did, and this is a
Speaker 1: pretty important part of this episode, but not everyone was
Speaker 1: just saying, yeah, this is awesome. Some people stood back
Speaker 1: and said, wait a minute, why don't we like kind
Speaker 1: of look at like why these riots are happening. Of course,
Speaker 1: we need to be able to deal with this stuff,
Speaker 1: but if we get to the root of the problem
Speaker 1: and maybe try and stop them before they happened, that
Speaker 1: might be a good approach. And so in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: Johnson formed a commission. It ended up resulting in what's
Speaker 1: called the Kerner Commission Report. It was officially called the
Speaker 1: National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, but it was named
Speaker 1: after its chairman, Auto Kerner, and he said, I want
Speaker 1: to find out three things. What happened, why it happened,
Speaker 1: and how can we keep it from happening again. They
Speaker 1: surveyed different riots and uprisings in twenty three cities and
Speaker 1: assigned people and investigators to go out and you know,
Speaker 1: kind of get to the bottom of it. And the
Speaker 1: conclusions of the report didn't lead to any substantive change.
Speaker 1: It was basically ignored.
Speaker 2: It was and that's I mean, it was like the
Speaker 2: most controversial document ever produced by the US government that
Speaker 2: basically said there's institutional racism in the US and that
Speaker 2: is directly responsible for riots in low income, majority black areas, right,
Speaker 2: But part of it was like, part of the problem
Speaker 2: is heavy handed policing. And the current report went even further,
Speaker 2: and they said the Commission condemns moves to equip police
Speaker 2: departments with mass destructive weapons such as automatic rifles, machine guns,
Speaker 2: and tanks. Weapons that are designed to destroy, not to control,
Speaker 2: have no place in densely populated urban communities. So all
Speaker 2: the way back in the late sixties, this government appointed
Speaker 2: panel is like, we should not be militarizing the police.
Speaker 2: That is the wrong direction. And like you said, it
Speaker 2: was just totally ignored. And not only that, rather than
Speaker 2: go in the direction of getting to the bottom of
Speaker 2: the root causes of this stuff and trying to cure
Speaker 2: social ills that way, probably forever, America went the other
Speaker 2: way and said, no, let's overwhelm these neighborhoods with full
Speaker 2: military style force, equipping the police with military weapons and armor,
Speaker 2: and we'll keep Bryant suppressed that way, And it worked,
Speaker 2: but at a really huge cost, which is essentially an
Speaker 2: erosion of trust in the police, not just in those
Speaker 2: communities but across the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, if you're wondering, like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: Lindon Johnson did so much work for civil rights, this
Speaker 1: doesn't quite add up. That was kind of one of
Speaker 1: the reasons he didn't bury the report. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it came out and it was published, even in a book,
Speaker 1: so it got people talking at least, but he never
Speaker 1: spoke publicly about it. And one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: was because of his good track record with civil rights.
Speaker 1: He was like, this report, he felt like it was
Speaker 1: an indictment on his presidency, and he was like, I
Speaker 1: don't like the way it makes me look. And so
Speaker 1: not only did he never even address it, but apparently
Speaker 1: when you have commissions like this, there are these customary
Speaker 1: letters thanking the commissioners for their service that they draw
Speaker 1: up that the presidents sign. I think they drew up
Speaker 1: those letters, but he wouldn't even sign those.
Speaker 2: No, they sent him out without his signature because he's
Speaker 2: being a big fat baby about the whole thing. That's
Speaker 2: essentially what happened. Yeah, sure, but yeah, because he ignored
Speaker 2: it publicly, and because they refused to implement any of
Speaker 2: the stuff, it went well they it wasn't implemented, but
Speaker 2: it was also given a lot of media attention, and
Speaker 2: it kind of laid the groundwork for discussions about race
Speaker 2: and the existence of institutional racism in America from that
Speaker 2: point on. So, even though Johnson ignored it or his
Speaker 2: administration didn't implement anything that it did get some attention.
Speaker 2: That book you mentioned became a best seller. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of media attention, and it really laid the groundwork
Speaker 2: for discussions about racism in America and institutional racism that
Speaker 2: would come.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So should we take a break and
Speaker 1: then talk about Nixon? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think so, because that's a really big turning point
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about Richard nick right after this. All right, we
Speaker 1: promised talk of Richard Nixon and his war on drugs,
Speaker 1: and I don't know why it didn't occur to me
Speaker 1: until ten minutes ago, But war on crime, war on drugs,
Speaker 1: if we're talking about the militarization of the police, maybe
Speaker 1: they should stop using words like war about everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good point. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 2: some people basically lay the blame on the militarization of
Speaker 2: America on Congress. Even Ran Paul Well, I don't necessarily
Speaker 2: agree with traditionally. He wrote in twenty fourteen and an
Speaker 2: op ed in Time that like, it's basically all Congress's
Speaker 2: fault for police militarization happening in the US because of
Speaker 2: all of these policies that were passed.
Speaker 1: Over the years. Yeah, So Richard Nixon comes along in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, declared this war on drugs. He very
Speaker 1: famously called drug abuse public Enemy number one. And you know,
Speaker 1: there has always been drug problems in the United States,
Speaker 1: and along with that ghost crime. I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: disputes that drug deaths were increasing at a pretty big
Speaker 1: rate in the seventies, and so he decides to do
Speaker 1: something about it. If you talk to people on the inside,
Speaker 1: they'll say it actually has to do with other things.
Speaker 1: One of his adviser's name was John Airlickman, who we
Speaker 1: talked about before, But he said what the War on
Speaker 1: drugs really was, if you knew Nixon, it was a
Speaker 1: ploy to attack his enemies, which was the anti war left,
Speaker 1: the progressive left, and black Americans. He has a quote
Speaker 1: he said, we knew we couldn't make it illegal to
Speaker 1: be either against the war or black, but by getting
Speaker 1: the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks
Speaker 1: with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily. We could disrupt
Speaker 1: those communities.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and one of the hallmarks of Nixon's War on
Speaker 2: drugs was really aggressive policing police tactics. One of the
Speaker 2: things that they set up was the Office of Drug
Speaker 2: Abuse Law Enforcement ODALE, which was the predecessor to the DEA.
Speaker 2: And this really aggressive approach moved the focus of fighting
Speaker 2: drug trafficking by targeting huge drug traffickers, which was traditionally
Speaker 2: how law enforcement had done it to basically busting like
Speaker 2: not even just low level dealers, but drug users in
Speaker 2: their homes. And one of the big things that they
Speaker 2: came up with to facilitate those raids on their homes,
Speaker 2: military style raids on homes was the no knock warrant,
Speaker 2: another big concept in the militarization of police.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know how it traditionally worked was you
Speaker 1: get a warrant and you go and you knock on
Speaker 1: someone's door and you see if they answered the door,
Speaker 1: and then when they answered the door, you know, start
Speaker 1: the process from there. A no knock warrant is just
Speaker 1: what it sounds like we've seen them on the news
Speaker 1: when they just go barging in a house. Basically previous
Speaker 1: to this, the Drug Enforcement Agency, or the predecessor rather,
Speaker 1: had conducted five no knock searches in the five years
Speaker 1: leading up to the formation of ODALE, and in its
Speaker 1: first six months they had over one hundred no knock grades,
Speaker 1: And over the course of about thirteen months from April
Speaker 1: seventy two to May seventy three, they conducted almost fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred no knock grades.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and one of the huge problems that people have
Speaker 2: with no knock raids is that it's just rude. It
Speaker 2: is very rude. It results in property destruction. If they
Speaker 2: or I should say, when they kick in your front door,
Speaker 2: you're on the hook to replace your front door, even
Speaker 2: if your house was mistakenly raided. They use flashban grenades
Speaker 2: that can injure people, and I mean just police using
Speaker 2: grenades I think should kind of stand out to you.
Speaker 2: They will engage in gunfire with assault rifles. It can
Speaker 2: be a really bad jam. But even like on a
Speaker 2: more fundamental level than when those things go really wrong
Speaker 2: or even when they go right, and the destruction that
Speaker 2: can result is the philosophical change that they represent something
Speaker 2: we talked about earlier, where if you go up to
Speaker 2: someone's house and you say you have a warrant, you
Speaker 2: say you're the police, you knock on their door, that
Speaker 2: you're treating that person like a citizen who is suspected
Speaker 2: of something but hasn't been proven guilty. If you throw
Speaker 2: a flash bang grenade through somebody's window and kicking their
Speaker 2: front door and come in like a seal team, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're basically saying you're guilty. We're here to remove you
Speaker 2: and take you to jail. And you basically have very
Speaker 2: little rights if any.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and any sudden movement, and I would imagine there's
Speaker 1: probably nothing but sudden movements. When someone does that, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're probably shot. And as an animal lover, that dog
Speaker 1: of yours that runs up and barks at someone that
Speaker 1: barges in the house is immediately shot on the spot.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So there's a lot of problems with these no
Speaker 2: knock warrants. They've been a target of police reform for years,
Speaker 2: but essentially there's nothing that's been done about them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So while this is going on, all
Speaker 1: this increase of militaristic approach Darryl Gates is in LA.
Speaker 1: He's got his swat team up and running in the
Speaker 1: seventies and there were some really high profile shootouts. We've
Speaker 1: talked about. It's funny how many of these things have
Speaker 1: come up over the years. But one famous shootout with
Speaker 1: the Black Panthers, another one with the Symbionese Liberation Army
Speaker 1: the SLA that Patty Hurst was involved in. We covered
Speaker 1: that one, but they were very high profile on the
Speaker 1: news kind of things, and the whole concept of swat
Speaker 1: teams was all of a sudden, like really in the
Speaker 1: public eye and in cities all over the country, you know,
Speaker 1: major cities for sure, and even smaller towns they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: we won a swat team too, leading to the point
Speaker 1: where even though there are no there are no official stats.
Speaker 1: There was a criminologist named Peter Kroska who did some
Speaker 1: estimates that they're between fifty thousand and eighty thousand swat
Speaker 1: raids a year in the United States, right, So that's
Speaker 1: the point where we're at now.
Speaker 2: It's it's also well that and I think he also
Speaker 2: determined that in nineteen eighty there were something like three thousand,
Speaker 2: so that's quite a quite an uptick over the years. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think one of the other overlooked influences on normalizing
Speaker 2: SWAT teams was the TV show Swat from the mid seventies.
Speaker 2: I think it just was on a season or two,
Speaker 2: but it was really popular, so people were like, SWAT
Speaker 2: teams are kind of awesome. Like you said, even small
Speaker 2: towns were getting these right now. From what I could find,
Speaker 2: the smallest town that has its own SWAT team, not
Speaker 2: just access to a SWAT team, but they maintain their
Speaker 2: own SWAT team is a town called Kerville, Texas, and
Speaker 2: it is a population of twenty five thousand. So SWAT
Speaker 2: team's definitely spread. And one reason why is not so
Speaker 2: the police can be like, man, this is so great.
Speaker 2: I love carrying out these raids and using flash bang grenades.
Speaker 2: I'm quite sure that it is a sentiment among some cops,
Speaker 2: but definitely not all. They are incentivized in every way,
Speaker 2: shape or form to have SWAT teams and to use
Speaker 2: them to carry out raids for basically anything. And the
Speaker 2: reason why they're incentivized to do that is because, like
Speaker 2: ram Paul said, the federal government has been incentivizing it
Speaker 2: over the years with policy after policy starting with Johnson
Speaker 2: and leading up till today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, you get a TV show like
Speaker 1: SWAT coming out and promoting and encouraging and sort of
Speaker 1: glorifying the use of SWAT teams. Yet Magnipi comes out
Speaker 1: and not every city is saying, hey, we need super
Speaker 1: hot guys in ferraris investigating things privately.
Speaker 2: No, but ironically, SWAT teams started to wear short shorts
Speaker 2: after magnum Pi came out during their raids. It was
Speaker 2: a trend for a little while.
Speaker 1: I sent you that picture of Tom Selleck at eighty
Speaker 1: years old the other day, Yeah, and he said he
Speaker 1: looks better than I done that.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: He's put on a little weight, But I gotta say, man,
Speaker 1: Tom sellok still looks pretty dang good.
Speaker 2: It does, especially for eighty. Sorry to be agist, but
Speaker 2: it's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, handsome older man. One thing you mentioned a second
Speaker 1: ago was the incentivization. Is that the word of cops
Speaker 1: to carry out these no knock rades and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: That really ramped up with President Ronald Reagan in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. Under his presidency, they started doing more or
Speaker 1: more drug raids, a lot more frequent, a lot more intense,
Speaker 1: for sure. And part of the reason is because in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four he passed the Federal Crime Bill, which
Speaker 1: expanded civil forfeiture laws relating to drug arrests. So basically, hey,
Speaker 1: if you conduct a no knock grade and you go
Speaker 1: in there and you get you a gym bag full
Speaker 1: of money and cocaine, you get to keep that, keep
Speaker 1: those spoils.
Speaker 2: Yeah, before they had to turn it all over to
Speaker 2: the Department of Justice. The Fed's got all that.
Speaker 1: That's right, So it literally financially incentivized these no knock grades.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because if you're a budget strapped police department and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden you can make millions of dollars
Speaker 2: a year for your police department, or keep drug dealers
Speaker 2: cars and auction them off or whatever, that's a huge
Speaker 2: financial incentive to carry out those raids and get as
Speaker 2: much of that money as you possibly can. I don't
Speaker 2: think that that's to say unfairly that that's the reason
Speaker 2: why cops are organizing raids like that. Like, I think
Speaker 2: that it's just like I was saying, or we both said,
Speaker 2: a real incentive to carry out those raids rather than
Speaker 2: you know, say non military policing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. That was eighty four was a federal
Speaker 1: crime bill. Then a few years later in eighty seven,
Speaker 1: Congress created a new office basically that almost like a
Speaker 1: one stop shop if you want to militarize your local
Speaker 1: police department. They helped with a transfer of military equipment.
Speaker 1: They literally set up a hotline and a cat and
Speaker 1: printed a catalog.
Speaker 2: Yeah like this year's the Facebook for police chiefs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that they would send out to police chiefs and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it just sort of streamlined the
Speaker 1: whole process and made it much easier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is that's pretty easy as it is, but
Speaker 2: the whole thing really kind of got going under Bill Clinton.
Speaker 2: He kind of tossed a bone to progressives by coming
Speaker 2: up with the Community Oriented Policing Services Act. I guess
Speaker 2: which is is that spell cops? Yes, it does good
Speaker 2: call And it's the opposite of professionalization, where they're like, no,
Speaker 2: we need more input from the community and society in
Speaker 2: how police police and all that. That's one thing, so
Speaker 2: it's like a conceptually it makes sense in that respect,
Speaker 2: but in practice it really just gave more funding to
Speaker 2: police departments to hire more cops. The really big part, though,
Speaker 2: came in nineteen ninety seven as part of the National
Speaker 2: Defense Authorization Act that created what's known as the ten
Speaker 2: thirty three program, which is it permanently authorized the Department
Speaker 2: of Defense to funnel military grade weapons and supplies to
Speaker 2: police departments in the US. It said, this is official.
Speaker 2: These are no longer executive orders. This is an act
Speaker 2: of Congress saying you guys can do this, and let's
Speaker 2: make it happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And since that, which was in nineteen ninety seven, again,
Speaker 1: they have sold I guess, I mean they're selling this stuff, right, No,
Speaker 1: I well, they just giving it.
Speaker 2: I believe that they're essentially giving it to them. If yes,
Speaker 2: and if they're selling it, then police departments can apply
Speaker 2: four grants from the federal government to buy the stuff
Speaker 2: from the federal government.
Speaker 1: They're like, man, we're all the shame team here a
Speaker 1: lou that was a very bad wiggam. I used to
Speaker 1: do that better. But since then, there has been more
Speaker 1: than seven point six billion dollars worth of military equipment
Speaker 1: given out to police departments across the US.
Speaker 2: In less than thirty years. Yeah, that's a lot. The
Speaker 2: two thousands really kind of changed things as well. I
Speaker 2: guess every decade really did, but not. The nine to
Speaker 2: eleven attack really kind of refocused America's thoughts on public safety,
Speaker 2: law enforcement, that kind of thing. And one of the
Speaker 2: upshots of it was the creation of the Department of
Speaker 2: Homeland Security, which created a program in two thousand and
Speaker 2: three that that essentially gave grants to police departments for
Speaker 2: training against terrorism and equipping them with weapons to fight terrorism.
Speaker 2: And so terrorism also gave local police departments a new
Speaker 2: justification and rationalization for becoming militarized. It's not only was
Speaker 2: a drug users anymore. Now we had potential terrorists coming
Speaker 2: to the US, and police departments needed to know how
Speaker 2: to deal with a terrorist attack, which I mean kind
Speaker 2: of it makes sense. It's tough to argue with. It's
Speaker 2: just another kind of ripple in the pond of this
Speaker 2: whole thing, though.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, but what it did was, you know, you've
Speaker 1: got these SWAT teams sitting around in a maybe smaller town,
Speaker 1: and if they don't have any terrorists to go fight,
Speaker 1: they don't want that tank to get rusty, right, So
Speaker 1: in the two thousands we saw SWAT raids. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just drugs anymore, like you said they were. There have
Speaker 1: been swat raids on bar shops because they didn't have
Speaker 1: a license. Yeah, there have been swat raids against teenage drinking,
Speaker 1: small time gamblers like you know, the back room poker game,
Speaker 1: stuff like that.
Speaker 2: It.
Speaker 1: You know, once they had that system in place, they're like, well,
Speaker 1: we got to use this stuff for something.
Speaker 2: Right, So just having it makes you want to use it.
Speaker 2: You're financially incentivized. You can get it for free, all
Speaker 2: of this stuff. And so if you add all that
Speaker 2: stuff up, you have every incentive to not only have
Speaker 2: a swat team, but to use them fairly often. And
Speaker 2: then also on top of that, they're further incentive advised
Speaker 2: to use no knock warrants because the Supreme Court ruled
Speaker 2: in two thousand and six in a case called Hudson v.
Speaker 2: Michigan that even if you didn't obtain a no knock warrant,
Speaker 2: which is a warrant that says you don't even have
Speaker 2: to knock, right, if you didn't even bother to get that,
Speaker 2: and you still performed a no knock search, came blazing
Speaker 2: in with flash bang grenades and kicking down the door
Speaker 2: and coming in through the window without a warrant, whatever
Speaker 2: evidence that you discovered was still admissible in court.
Speaker 1: That's right, So just one more incentive, and maybe we
Speaker 1: should take a break.
Speaker 2: I think we shouldn't.
Speaker 1: For sure, I'm incentivised to take a break, right, very nice, man.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna dab your forehead with the cool cloth, okay,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna pick up in the twenty ten's right
Speaker 1: after this.
Speaker 2: So, Chuck, We've been basically going on the premise this
Speaker 2: whole episode that the militarization of the police is problematic
Speaker 2: in and of itself, right, And I wanted to understand
Speaker 2: exactly why, Like why didn't America just say forget police forces,
Speaker 2: We'll just use the military all the time. And so
Speaker 2: I looked into it, and essentially the answer that I
Speaker 2: could find from academia is that the military is well
Speaker 2: aware that it could take over the country anytime it wants,
Speaker 2: so it submits to civilian rule. And part of that
Speaker 2: is based on the idea that civilian rule is better
Speaker 2: for democracy than military rule, just because civilian politicians tend
Speaker 2: to know how to run things better. There's more rights
Speaker 2: afforded to people who are citizens not being ruled by
Speaker 2: the military, And so by militarizing the police, and having
Speaker 2: a police presence that looks like a military occupation. It
Speaker 2: normalizes the concept of the military occupying its own country,
Speaker 2: and so it erodes that custom of the separation of
Speaker 2: the military from domestic affairs, that could conceivably lead to
Speaker 2: the idea of the military actually starting to run the show.
Speaker 2: It's supposed to be a separation, and the cops are
Speaker 2: moving that overton window by becoming militarized. That's essentially the
Speaker 2: basic argument that I've seen against police militarization. There's all
Speaker 2: sorts of other symptoms and factors that it creates too
Speaker 2: that people use to argue against it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And you know, we can't ignore the
Speaker 1: fact because this is happening in real time this week
Speaker 1: as we record the current administration, and this isn't militarizing
Speaker 1: the police. This is using the actual military on US soil.
Speaker 1: As you know. The latest example is the federal military
Speaker 1: takeover of crime in Washington, d C. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of just happened over the last couple of days as
Speaker 1: we record this, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, So one of the things that is leading the
Speaker 2: huge pushback of militarization, aside from more and more people
Speaker 2: being exposed to an unsettled by a police officer in
Speaker 2: full tactical gear holding an assault rifle. Is the advent
Speaker 2: of the smartphone, and people can actually record this stuff
Speaker 2: and then broadcast it widely, and so it's kind of
Speaker 2: captured the attention of the average person. I would say
Speaker 2: to the concept that police militarization is in and of
Speaker 2: itself a heavy handed police tactic, that is questionable.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. And I just had another quick point.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get too much grief for this,
Speaker 1: but there's a pretty obvious elephant in the room here,
Speaker 1: which is if you're if you think all this is great,
Speaker 1: and you say, well, hey, they got those weapons, so
Speaker 1: why can't the cops have those weapons? They have those
Speaker 1: weapons because of policy as well, you know, explain well
Speaker 1: citizens like saying, hey, you know, citizens have assault rifles,
Speaker 1: like the cops should have assault rifles, and like the
Speaker 1: citizens have the assault rifles because the US government said
Speaker 1: it was okay to So yeah, you know, it's sort
Speaker 1: of I don't know.
Speaker 2: I had the same thought that you can trace you
Speaker 2: can trace that argument back to okay, well that's actually
Speaker 2: an argument in favor of gun control.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2: I had the same thought, because yeah, that is a
Speaker 2: huge argument. People be like, well, if you take the
Speaker 2: cops assault rifles away, only outlaws will have assault rifles.
Speaker 2: It's like, no, take the outlaws assault rifles away first,
Speaker 2: then we can talk about the cops giving theirs up right.
Speaker 1: They didn't used to have them, you know exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so no, I'm with you. I thought that too.
Speaker 1: So you brought up smartphones or did you say smartphones?
Speaker 2: I did. I talked all about smartphones. I talked about yeah,
Speaker 2: the iPhone four, the iPhone seven, all the way up
Speaker 2: to the iPhone thirteen and just stop there inexplicably.
Speaker 1: You know what's funny is a month before the new
Speaker 1: iPhone comes out, we talked about play and obsolescence. My
Speaker 1: trusty old iPhone twelve was finally dying.
Speaker 2: I think that's when. That was during the time when
Speaker 2: Apple was caught purposely draining batteries to make you have
Speaker 2: to replace your phone.
Speaker 1: I'm not conspiracy guy, but I'm just saying, like I
Speaker 1: was going to get the new in anyway because it
Speaker 1: was I usually do every three, and I waited four
Speaker 1: this time, and so you no, I waited five because
Speaker 1: I got a twelve and it's the seventeen, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's my battery just started going to zero and shutting
Speaker 1: off and rebooting and uh.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, it just happened. Your iPhone twelve just broke down.
Speaker 1: Oh like last week.
Speaker 2: That's actually pretty good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess so. But I was able to get
Speaker 1: a aftermarket battery installed for sixty five bucks from the
Speaker 1: local guy.
Speaker 2: I know you know this, but I want to share
Speaker 2: it to everybody.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: I had a lawnmower, a gas powered lawnmower, admittedly, but
Speaker 2: it was broken, like ready for the dump, and I
Speaker 2: was like, no, I'm going to this. So I called around.
Speaker 2: There were some repair shops. They wanted to charge some
Speaker 2: dough and I looked into what was probably wrong. It's
Speaker 2: probably the carburetor, and I said, I'm going to replace
Speaker 2: this carburetor. And by god, I replaced the carburetor and
Speaker 2: when I was done, the first pull that lawmower started
Speaker 2: for the first time in years.
Speaker 1: I got a text from Josh on Tuesday at twenty
Speaker 1: six penom, I just fixed my law mower by replacing
Speaker 1: the carburetor and gas lines started on the first pole.
Speaker 1: And then I replied. Eventually I put a radiator in
Speaker 1: a VW Jetta in my thirties.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was the only real manly thing I've ever done.
Speaker 1: He said, Bam, all right, we should probably get back.
Speaker 1: We had to have a laugh at some point, so
Speaker 1: that parts over.
Speaker 2: That's it. That's the one laugh. Everybody be quiet.
Speaker 1: Back to smartphones changing the game because of all of
Speaker 1: a sudden obviously people can see the stuff on social
Speaker 1: media with their own two eyes much more than before.
Speaker 1: And in the mid twenty tens. In twenty fourteen, the
Speaker 1: Ferguson protes us We're a really good example of this
Speaker 1: kind of happening. They were protesting after Michael Brown was
Speaker 1: killed by officer Darren Wilson. The Obama administration declined to
Speaker 1: prosecute that, and police got really aggressive on these protests.
Speaker 1: They were, you know, the armored trucks came in, snipers
Speaker 1: came in, those flash bang grenades that Josh loved talking about,
Speaker 1: in tear gas, and there was a big public outcry
Speaker 1: after that, such that Obama said, hey, maybe we want
Speaker 1: to put some guardrails around this ten thirty three program.
Speaker 2: Right, and they did. They said, okay, no more tanks
Speaker 2: and grenade launchers, among some other stuff. But This is
Speaker 2: I think the first time anyone had stepped in and
Speaker 2: been like, we need to take some sort of prohibitions
Speaker 2: or bands on what local police departments can get from
Speaker 2: the military. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also, you know, if you're saying, like, why don't
Speaker 1: they just get rid of ten thirty three A, it's
Speaker 1: not going to happen. But critics of that will say, hey,
Speaker 1: it's not just military weapons. They also take like our
Speaker 1: old air conditioners that we were going to throw out
Speaker 1: if a cash strapped police department needs a new air
Speaker 1: conditioner and stuff like that. And I guess my response
Speaker 1: to that is like, why don't you just create an
Speaker 1: act about air conditioners?
Speaker 2: Then? Well, right, exactly, like there's no reason you can't
Speaker 2: continue the ten thirty three program, but ban yes, military
Speaker 2: style weapons and armor, you know, not bill proofessed by armor,
Speaker 2: I mean like M wraps and tanks and troop transports
Speaker 2: and like helicopters like black Hawks and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: There's it'd be easy as pie to do that. There's
Speaker 2: just nothing.
Speaker 1: I was kidding, by the way about the air Conditioner Act, so.
Speaker 2: I know you were, but it is I mean, it's
Speaker 2: a valid argument that there's actually lots of stuff that
Speaker 2: doesn't make the news that's really helpful to police departments
Speaker 2: that comes from the ten thirty three program. That's just
Speaker 2: you could really easily adjust things, for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, So Obama rolls back some of this in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen. Then the next administration came in and very
Speaker 1: quickly rolled back those ten thirty three were four and
Speaker 1: that's when the you know, the sort of ramped up
Speaker 1: use of paramilitary forces to break up protests, increase guarding
Speaker 1: federal monuments and statues and stuff like that because of vandalism.
Speaker 2: One of the things I just want to say. One
Speaker 2: of the things real quick that that Trump did when
Speaker 2: he rolled back those reforms. Bayonets had been banned previously
Speaker 2: and they got allowed again as part of that executive order.
Speaker 2: And if there's one thing that you do not need
Speaker 2: as a police officer is a bayonet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, think about it. We should do it shorty on bayonets.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, like, yeah, it's the concept of putting a
Speaker 1: weapon on the front of your weapon. Yes, like a
Speaker 1: less good weapon on the front of your web.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's meant to just an interesting stab somebody through
Speaker 2: the chest or the neck or the face or something
Speaker 2: like that like, and the concept of those things showing
Speaker 2: up at a peaceful protest in case it breaks out
Speaker 2: into violence, Like I just can't. It just is mind
Speaker 2: boggling to me that bayonets were ever allowed.
Speaker 1: Well, it just seems very old school. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know why they've made bayonets just because back then those
Speaker 1: the long rifles took a long time to reload. And
Speaker 1: maybe we're hard to shoot in close quarters. So if
Speaker 1: you were all of a sudden had a guy run
Speaker 1: upon you on battle, you got to do some stab in.
Speaker 1: And stab in from you know, three and a half
Speaker 1: feet away is better than stabing in your hand. But
Speaker 1: this isn't the French Foreign Legion, you know.
Speaker 2: No, And what you're talking about is a military engagement,
Speaker 2: not a law enforcement engagement. There's no place for bayonets
Speaker 2: and law enforcement. I think that that is objectively true
Speaker 2: as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So in twenty twenty two, President Biden
Speaker 1: signed an executive order reinstating and expanding some of these
Speaker 1: ten thirty three reforms that the previous administration had gotten
Speaker 1: rid of. They limited the use of no knock entries
Speaker 1: and you know, basically try to you know, how it
Speaker 1: happens when different administrations come in, they try to undo
Speaker 1: what the previous person right.
Speaker 2: And I looked high and low to see if President
Speaker 2: Trump had come in on his second term and reversed
Speaker 2: biden orders, and I couldn't see anything that said that.
Speaker 2: All the talk about the reversal of the ten thirty
Speaker 2: three orders was from the first term. But I did
Speaker 2: see that it's possible that Biden's executive orders were never implemented,
Speaker 2: so there was really nothing to roll back In practice.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that's another thing, and to itself. You
Speaker 1: can get on TV and sign a thing, but implementation
Speaker 1: is where the rubber meets arous.
Speaker 2: That's where it's at. And you do get the impression
Speaker 2: that there is a cynical thing among politicians that like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're not going to touch this ten thirty three program.
Speaker 2: In reality, like it's like you said, it's not going anywhere.
Speaker 2: If it didn't go anywhere. After the summer of twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: after George Floyd's murder, Yeah, when there's never been more
Speaker 2: and widespread focus on police, police tactics, militarization of the police,
Speaker 2: so much ink was dr I actually found a teen
Speaker 2: Vogue article from twenty twenty titled What's a no knock Warrant?
Speaker 2: Teen Vogue was talking about it and if it survived
Speaker 2: that it's gonna be really tough to ever just fully
Speaker 2: get rid of it if you want it gotten rid of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you weren't even researching, you were just reading
Speaker 1: teen Vogue on the toilet.
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it. I was like, you got to
Speaker 2: kid talking about COVID talking about no knock warrants. Teen
Speaker 2: Vogue had their finger on the pulse.
Speaker 1: So the question remains, you know, is this move to
Speaker 1: militarize the police has it rather led to like better
Speaker 1: public safety? I mean, because that's the ultimate goal seemingly,
Speaker 1: And it kind of depends on what you define, you know,
Speaker 1: how you define public safety, because that's going to change
Speaker 1: depending on who you are. We have seen that militarization
Speaker 1: canon has escalated encounters there have you know, it just
Speaker 1: this is anecdotal. I don't know if there's a study,
Speaker 1: but I feel like every time there's a protest happening
Speaker 1: and the tanks roll in, that's when it goes bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's exactly what a lot of people say
Speaker 2: about say for example, Ferguson. I from what I could tell,
Speaker 2: the riots started before the police responded, but they started
Speaker 2: like after the police showed up. So yes, some people
Speaker 2: are saying just seeing police like that is intimidating and antagonizing,
Speaker 2: I guess, and that I think the next day after
Speaker 2: the whole world was like what are you guys doing
Speaker 2: in Ferguson, the governor of Missouri told the Ferguson Police
Speaker 2: Department to stand down and send out the Missouri Highway
Speaker 2: Patrol and they they basically walked step in step with
Speaker 2: the protesters, the peaceful protesters, and they used that law
Speaker 2: enforcement tactic and apparently it was to pretty good effect.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, one thing is for sure is that
Speaker 1: it's led to the killing of a lot more citizens
Speaker 1: by the police. And this is a pretty shocking stat
Speaker 1: and you know, anytime you're comparing the UK to the
Speaker 1: United States, it's I mean, some people might say that's
Speaker 1: not a fair comparison because they just do things so differently,
Speaker 1: but that's kind of the point, and you know, delivering
Speaker 1: these statistics. So the Guardian reported that in the first
Speaker 1: very first month in January, only of twenty fifteen American
Speaker 1: police killed more US citizens than police in the UK
Speaker 1: had in the last twenty four years combined. Yeah, one month,
Speaker 1: twenty four years.
Speaker 2: Right, And those are typically like used most often, we
Speaker 2: guess we should say there are very few states that
Speaker 2: actually require police departments to maintain statistics, including on swat teams,
Speaker 2: how often they're used, where they're deployed. Again, anecdotally, they
Speaker 2: do seem to be much more present and much more
Speaker 2: used in predominantly black communities. But there have been studies
Speaker 2: that have shown like this is actually counterproductive. Did you
Speaker 2: see that one from Princeton from I think twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: It was it basically found that the militarization of police
Speaker 2: has a counterproductive effect on police themselves, in that it
Speaker 2: affects it negatively impacts public perception of police. And the
Speaker 2: study showed that it actually had a negative impact on
Speaker 2: public support for expanding police budgets. So by militarizing, you
Speaker 2: can make a case that they're also shooting themselves in
Speaker 2: the feet metaphorically.
Speaker 1: No pun intending, right, shooting themselves in the feet with
Speaker 1: a grenade launcher.
Speaker 2: Right. And there was another study I wanted to mention too.
Speaker 2: It was from Emery here in Atlanta. It was from
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. And there are these two studies that came
Speaker 2: out in twenty fourteen twenty seventeen that are pretty prominent
Speaker 2: in they're typically used to support the idea that militarization
Speaker 2: of police actually has a like increases public safety. And
Speaker 2: this twenty twenty study looked at those studies and said
Speaker 2: these studies did not have enough data to come to
Speaker 2: these conclusions and basically debunked them. And again, the reason
Speaker 2: why is because no statistics are required in most states
Speaker 2: on things like swat use. So you can't possibly say
Speaker 2: that if you carry out one hundred rates a year,
Speaker 2: public safety is going to go down by or going
Speaker 2: to increase by ten percent or something like that. You
Speaker 2: just you can't do it. So studies on that are
Speaker 2: inherently faulty. And before you say, well, what about that
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen Princeton study that looks specifically at Maryland, which
Speaker 2: is one of those rare states that does require reporting
Speaker 2: by police departments. Yeah, so you got anything else to
Speaker 2: say about it?
Speaker 1: Plenty? But I feel like this is a good stopping boy.
Speaker 2: Okay, I would love to hear from police officers who
Speaker 2: listened to stuff you should know out there who are
Speaker 2: for militarization and against it. I would definitely, yeah, for
Speaker 2: sure those opinions in.
Speaker 1: Point yeah, we'll read some of that stuff on the
Speaker 1: air very nice.
Speaker 2: Well, since Chuck agreed to read some stuff on the air,
Speaker 2: that means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: All right. We're getting a lot of good feedback about
Speaker 1: our heavy metal episodes, which makes our heart warm because
Speaker 1: we care about all the episodes. But I think everyone
Speaker 1: could tell we were pretty jazzed about those yep this
Speaker 1: one and I'll probably be reading a lot of metal
Speaker 1: emails over the next few weeks, but this one's from Kevin.
Speaker 1: It's kind of fun. Hey, guys, thanks for the metal ups.
Speaker 1: Growing up in the eighties, pop radio and MTV taught
Speaker 1: me that metals big three were tights, makeup, and hairspray.
Speaker 1: I was way too cool for that and opted for
Speaker 1: the other big three. Dismissed the Cure and Depeche Mode.
Speaker 1: I was doing both, my friend, because you can. But
Speaker 1: I always enjoy a musical history lesson, so thanks. Later
Speaker 1: in life, I joined a cover band and will grudgingly
Speaker 1: admit that some of the hair band songs worked well
Speaker 1: for us, which is why I'm still mythed that my
Speaker 1: idea for naming our band was rejected. It was Cheryl Crue.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a great one. That's up there with Overdry. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm generally not a pun band name guy, except for
Speaker 1: the Beatles and Cheryl Crue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty good.
Speaker 1: That is from Kevin. And I also wanted to mention
Speaker 1: real quick that I read in like four days. I
Speaker 1: had the Nicky six Heroin Diaries book sitting on my
Speaker 1: shelf for a couple of years and had just finished
Speaker 1: where did I just finish? I finished the Bruce Springsteen book,
Speaker 1: the one about the movie coming out, and I dove
Speaker 1: right into the Heroin Diaries and read it in three days.
Speaker 1: And it is a boy. I can't say it was
Speaker 1: a fun read. It was harrowing. Yeah, to read the
Speaker 1: Diaries of Nicky six in those days.
Speaker 2: I just finished the letter in Encyclopedia metanicis sweethe volumes.
Speaker 1: Oh very nice.
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding. I am kidding, by the way. Oh okay,
Speaker 2: who was that that wrote in Kevin?
Speaker 1: Yeah that was Kevin.
Speaker 2: Nice work, Kevin. We appreciate that. Into all of you
Speaker 2: who enjoyed the Metal episodes, Thank you, rock on and
Speaker 2: If you want to get in touch with us, you
Speaker 2: can send us an email to send it off to
Speaker 2: stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
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