Thursday, July 2, 2020

Are Black Americans victims of Police Militarization in the US

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Nikhita Gautam

Article Title

Are Black Americans victims of Police Militarization in the US

Publisher

Global Views 360

Publication Date

July 2, 2020

URL

Chicago Police

Chicago Police | Source: noahwesley via Creative Commons

In the USA, there are reports of police using tear gas, flashbangs, and many other weapons to fight against the riots which are occurring now in over 350 cities against police brutality against the Black Community. There have been many reports on how the police brutality is disproportionate in terms of race; the Black people are thrice as likely to have violence committed on them by the police force than the whites, and the factor is 1.5 for the Hispanics. There is a first-hand account of a person present in the recent protests who talks about the use of batons on demonstrators.

This, however, leads to the question whether it was the militarization of the police force that caused violence towards minority communities. The police militarization was, in the aftermath of the 9/11 US terrorist attack, justified by the policymakers as a necessary tool to prevent the terrorist attacks in the future. This policy decision led to the military grade weapons and military style training regime for the police force. Some of the states in the US partnered with highly militarized police of Israel for training their police force. Such lethal weapons which were provided to the police force  used against terrorists were gradually used by the police force against common civilians on suspicion of minor crimes and the group of protestors.

The civil right groups were voicing concerns for many years about the use of disproportionate force on the Black and Hispanic Americans, which they blamed on the arming of police with lethal weapons. It was the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, who was shot and killed on Aug. 9, 2014, by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in Ferguson, Montana, USA that galvanised the public to demand for demilitarization of police force. As a response to public anger against the killing of Michael Brown, President Obama set up a Task Force on 21st Century Policing. This task force, in its report put special emphasis on de-escalating situations, with civilians in training and policies, and reduced funding by the Department of Homeland Security for such weapons. However these recommendations failed to have much effect on solving the issues at hand.

The continued use of such lethal weapons casts the police force as a separate, powerful entity which is to be feared, instead of a friendly cop who is trying to provide security to a citizen in distress. Such equipment serves to distance the police from the people, giving them power, and if left unchecked, entitlement over the rest of the citizens. In many instances the presence of a weapon itself leads to more aggressive behaviour and there have been calls to make the police wear body cams to restrain them from acting with disproportionate lethal force.

The racial profiling and discriminatory actions against the black and other communities that was already practiced by the police forces was now being enforced by more lethal power in the force’s hands. A study by Olugbenga Ajilore shows that counties with more race segregation were more likely to request additional weapons, and counties with an African American/Asian American population are more likely to acquire military equipment. Another report of 2017 shows a direct correlation between the degree of police militarization and the killing of civilians in police action.

It can be reasonably said that the militarization, in some sense, inflated the already existing racial profiling based violent actions of police force.

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February 4, 2021 4:40 PM

Black Lives Matter: Will it lead to reform of Police Forces in the USA?

The spontaneous eruption of the “Black Lives Matter” protest after the unfortunate death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police has once again put the spotlight on the operational methodology of the police department at different cities around the USA. There is a chorus across the country, more so in the Democratic Party strongholds to do fundamental reorganization of the police force by focussing on community policing. Some of the extreme and radical activists have gone so far to demand “defund the police” and re-distribute its budget to marginalized communities, municipal corporations and necessity institutions.

“There is no magic switch to turn off and boom there’s no police department,” said Alex Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College. She released a book named ‘The End of Policing’. The book has become a manifesto for protests and police-reform advocates. The defund development calls for diminishing networks' dependence on police for various administrative problems like, observing the homeless, settling household quarrels, restraining understudies, reacting to upheavals by individuals with mental illness, paring down violence in neighbourhoods, and proportional reaction to minor inconveniences like somebody attempting to pass a fake $20, the allegation that set off the police call that resulted in Floyd's demise. The funds saved by reducing the workload of police could be utilised by social and community workers to resolve street feuds. “When we talk about de-funding the police, what we're saying is invest in the resources that our communities need,” Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza told NBC News.

There are cities which have approached this reform in a positive manner. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has decided to shift the money from NYPD budget to youth recreational programs. A whopping $150 million is being pulled out of the LAPD by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. This money is proposed to be invested in healthcare systems and build peace centres. Similarly Portland and Oregon have consented to pull police from state funded schools. A few Minneapolis organizations, including the government funded school region, the University of Minnesota and the Park and Recreation Board, have moved to diminish or end their agreements with city police.

Dallas has earlier experienced the positive results of diverting emergency mental health calls, not only on hospitals but also police to non-police establishment when in 2018 RIGHT Care  was provided $3 million funding to look after these issues. Since the program started, ambulances and emergency vehicle calls for individuals encountering emotional wellness inconveniences have declined in the south-local region of Dallas where the program works, which has opened up officials to manage different calls, authorities said. This transition was also done after the outcry over the shooting of a schizophrenic man holding a screwdriver in 2014 and subsequent defence of police personnel by the police boss David Brown.

Law enforcement officials and conservative activists believe that de-funding police would lead to an upsurge in criminal activities. President Donald Trump has started making this as a key plank of his re-election campaign while the Former Vice President Joe Biden, who is running against Trump, also came out against de-funding police.

It is therefore too early to predict whether the current phase of “Black Lives Movement” after the death of George Floyd will be successful in bringing some substantial reform in the working of police forces across the cities of the US or the momentum will be lost with some incremental tweaking here and there.  

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