Police departments equip, train and sometimes dress like soldiers – at what cost?
At times during the nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd, civilian police officers carrying out law enforcement operations were mistaken for military personnel. They had similar uniforms, equipment and tactics.
Police departments across the country receive free excess military equipment, weapons and camouflage clothing from the Defense Department, in addition to military-grade gear they purchase themselves. Over the years, some of those law enforcement units have become indistinguishable from deployed forces — something that makes even the military uncomfortable.
In the days after the sometimes violent police response to protesters, the militarization of those civilian police officers is again under debate. Have law enforcement agencies gone too far?
“The level of armament, the ready willingness to use it on U.S. citizens with reckless abandon even shocked me,” said Peter Kraska, a professor of police and justice studies at Eastern Kentucky University, who has studied the military’s influence on law enforcement since 1989. “And I’m not saying that in a light way. It was something that I don’t think any police analyst would have predicted to this extent.”
In an exclusive analysis, McClatchy compared the amount of weaponry that has been transferred from the Defense Department to police departments to the number of known police incidents in those same departments that led to the death of a civilian.
Since the Defense Department program was launched, the number of weapons transferred to police departments has dramatically climbed. For example, the Defense Department transferred 13,259 guns and gun accessories to police departments from 1990 to 1999.
In the past decade, from 2010 to 2019, it transferred 201,813 guns and gun accessories, such as assault rifles and night-vision sights.
McClatchy found that seven of the top 15 police departments with the highest number of police officer-involved fatalities — when adjusted for population — also received a higher share of the Defense Department’s excess guns.
Those police departments were in Orlando, Fla.; Bakersfield, Calif.; Spokane, Wash.; Aurora, Colo.; Albuquerque, N.M.; and Tucson and Mesa, Ariz.
For example, Bakersfield received 190 gun sights, 800 magazine cartridges and 76 adapter rails for mounted weapons. Bakersfield has a police officer-involved fatality rate of nearly 10 people per 1 million residents — significantly higher than the nationwide police officer-involved fatality rate of 3.4 people per 1 million residents.
The Mesa Police Department in Arizona has an officer-involved fatality rate of 8.1 people per million residents. It obtained 88 rifle bipods, 190 M16 conversion kits, 2,000 magazine cartridges and 600 gun sights from the Defense Department from 2010 to 2019.
To conduct the analysis, McClatchy reviewed the 7,663 reported officer-related shootings from 2013 to 2019 compiled by nonprofit organization Campaign Zero. McClatchy compared that data to the more than 201,813 transfers of guns and gun accessories by the Defense Logistics Agency’s Law Enforcement Support Office 1033 program to police departments from 2010 to 2019.
Experts interviewed by McClatchy said the results should be considered in the context of an overall infusion of military tactics, training and culture into law enforcement agencies that should prompt further review.
“It’s not enough just to correlate weapons with militarization,” Kraska said. “It’s the extent to which it’s become just that mindset and tactics and gear has become normalized in their police department.”
The Defense Department program, which has grown from about $440,000 in transfers per year in 1990 to about $290 million a year in 2019, includes more than just guns and gun parts.
Since 2013, the Defense Department has transferred to police departments 1,059 Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) heavily armored vehicles, which cost about $700,000 a piece and were designed to protect soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan against roadside bombs.
On June 18, when a local TV reporter tweeted that the Moundsville, Ohio, police department had just received an MRAP, the tweet and response went viral. Moundsville has a population of about 8,500.
“Are the Moundsville police going to Afghanistan or something?” a reader tweeted back.
Other examples of police departments receiving military equipment:
Myrtle Beach, S.C., population 35,000, received roughly 2,300 items of tactical gear and equipment worth a total of $2.9 million. This includes different night-vision kits and 18 rifles. It also includes four explosive ordnance device robots, two ground-based drones and one mine-resistant vehicle.
Covina, Calif., population 50,000, received 18 ground-based drones and one mine-resistant vehicle.
Paducah, KY., with an estimated population of 25,000, received 78 assault rifles.
The Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District Police Department in Texas, which is responsible for all the K-12 students and school property in that district, received 60 bayonet knives.
A call to the Cypress-Fairbanks ISD for comment on why the school system would need bayonet knives was not immediately returned.
‘WARRIOR MINDSET’
Darron Spencer served in the Marine Corps as an infantryman from 1995 to 1999 and then became a sheriff’s deputy with the Weld County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado. He has published a book, “Humane Policing,” and now provides training to police departments.
Spencer said when he transitioned from the Marine Corps to sheriff’s deputy and was on patrol, “I had to keep myself aware of why I was there.”
When police officers are responding to a call, “as soon as they go in that door and they make that quick, initial assessment, if the first question in their head is ‘How am I going to help this individual?’ it changes the whole dialogue of the situation, it changes the outcome,” he said.
BEHIND THE STORY
MOREHow we analyzed the data
McClatchy compared the most recent publicly available data from the Defense Logistics Agency’s 1033 program on surplus equipment transfers from 2010 to 2019 to the data on police shootings from 2013 to 2019 compiled by the nonprofit organization Campaign Zero. From the DLA data, McClatchy isolated transfers of just guns and gun parts and then compared those numbers to the population adjusted rate of officer-involved killings for each police department. If a police department received shipments above the median – the midpoint of all shipments — it was marked as a top recipient.
For the DLA data, McClatchy looked back at the past decade instead of just the 2013 to 2019 time period covered by the Campaign Zero data to account for the possibility that a weapon obtained in, say, 2011 could be used to shoot a person in 2014.
DLA only tracks items which are required to be reported and general items that were given out in the year previous to the publication date. According to the DLA, the vast majority of the total items issued are not required to be tracked. The data DLA publishes online accounts for only a small fraction of the total equipment issued to law enforcement agencies.
Similarly, in the absence of a centralized nationwide database on persons killed by police officers, Campaign Zero’s data only accounts for those which have been publicly reported by news outlets or by the police departments.
The FBI is trying to launch a national database on use of force incidents but has faced delays and challenges because thousands of police departments have not responded or provided data.
The experts on police militarization that McClatchy interviewed cautioned that more data than what is currently available is needed to more accurately draw possible relationships between higher levels of equipment transfers to increased use of force.
An Air Force veteran who is a current Maryland police officer said his police academy emphasized “killology,” the training program by retired Army Lt. Col. Dave Grossman that coaches how to be mentally prepared to kill.
“I think that is so toxic,” said the officer, who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, speaking on condition of anonymity.
When other police officers suggest that the combat tactics and weaponry the military used overseas are needed to secure U.S. streets, it frustrates him. “We are not fighting an insurgency,” the officer said. “We are not occupying a neighborhood and trying to win hearts and minds.”
Many police training camps units attend are offered by weapons manufacturers, and led by former military special operations forces, Kraska said.
Former President Barack Obama stopped the Defense Department transfer program for some weapons to law enforcement in 2015 after the shooting of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Mo. The program was reinstated by President Donald Trump in 2017.
“Giving military-grade weapons builds into the idea of the warrior-mindset and takes away from the guardian-mindset — something that law enforcement agencies across the country themselves have recognized as the only mindset that would work in terms of policing,” said Becky Monroe, a former Justice Department director for policy and senior counselor to the assistant attorney general for civil rights under Obama.
VETERANS AS OFFICERS
Spencer said police departments recruit veterans because of their prior military training.
“They know we will take action when a situation needs to have action taken,” he said.
There is no reporting requirement for police departments to disclose how many of their officers have prior military service.
In 2014, Rahul Pathak, now an assistant professor at the City University of New York, used U.S. Census data to estimate that 22 percent of police had military service. He said there are limitations to that approach, but to date it has been his only window into the makeup of police.
“Police departments are not interested in sharing this data,” Pathak said.
McClatchy contacted several police departments across the United States for data about how many veterans were on their force, with varying responses.
“We do not track prior military experience or members of the National Guard,” said Detective Christopher Thomas, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade Police Department, which reported it had 2,987 officers as of December 2019.
The Merced Police Department in California said it did not track prior military service among its 98 officers serving as of 2019, and that information would not be considered public.
The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department in Washington state said that in 2019, of its 333 officers, 102 had prior military service.
IMPACT ON THE NATIONAL GUARD
During the protests sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody it was sometimes difficult to tell the difference between National Guard and police.
In Minneapolis, video emerged of law enforcement officers — some wearing military-style camouflage uniforms — slashing tires in a parking lot. They were later identified by the Minneapolis Star Tribune as police officers who had been directed by supervisors to slash the tires to prevent the cars from being used as weapons.
In Buffalo, where a 75-year-old man lay bleeding from the head after police shoved him to the ground, the medics who provided aid were dressed in Army green camouflage, with the similar vests and guns of U.S. soldiers.
A New York police official said in a statement to McClatchy that they were part of the state’s Special Operations Response Team. The official said the camouflage uniforms had been worn by the unit almost dating back to when it was established to protect the 1980 Lake Placid, N.Y. winter Olympics and was “similar to those worn by other tactical police forces across the state and country.”
“SORT members have worn camouflage uniforms for nearly all of the team’s existence. The uniforms provide a safety and tactical advantage in certain situations, by helping members blend into the background and present a low-visibility target,” the official said.
Under the law of Posse Comitatus, U.S. military under federal control, such as active duty Army units, are not allowed to conduct law enforcement activities on U.S. soil. That became a flashpoint during the protests, when the White House considered invoking the Insurrection Act to allow an infantry battalion from Fort Bragg to deploy into Washington, D.C., but it didn’t happen.
At the protests near the White House, the number of different law enforcement agencies at the scene, some in military-style uniforms, led some media to initially report that National Guard members had fired projectiles at protesters. That prompted Defense Secretary Mark Esper to respond, “National Guard forces did not fire rubber bullets or tear gas into the crowd, as reported.”
National Guard units under the control of state governors can conduct law enforcement if authorized, however, as units were activated to respond to the protests, several National Guard leaders said that civil disturbance response on U.S. soil is a mission that the combat-trained forces prefer not to be involved in.
“I believe that we in America should not get used to, or accept uniformed service members of any variety having to be put in a position where they are having to secure people inside the United States of America,” Georgia National Guard Adjutant General Army Maj. Gen. Thomas Carden said to Pentagon reporters on May 31.
The Defense Department is now compiling a “lessons learned” from the deployment of National Guard forces in response to the protests.
Esper has also asked Attorney General William Barr for a similar after-action review focused on law enforcement.
“One of DoD’s concerns to be discussed is that civilian law enforcement is sometimes dressed like the military. It confuses people,” a senior defense official said.
“If civilian law enforcement is going to go out there and push the crowds back and start using force, we don’t want them looking like us. That’s not us. In fact, in Lafayette Park our folks never moved. They stood in place. It was law enforcement moving forward,” the official said, referring to the National Guard presence outside the White House as law enforcement officers forced peaceful protesters to leave the area.
“But in some places, some of the pictures have folks in green. And no matter what you do, it looks like military. So one of the things we want to put on the table with law enforcement is, ‘You guys have got to look different,’” the senior defense official said.
That type of mix-up happened in Cincinnati, where members of the Ohio National Guard received a concerned phone call during the height of the protests, said one National Guard official who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
“A liaison called our military operation center and asked, ‘Hey, do you have any guys out right now? In Cincinnati there’s guys in full kits trying to fill up their bulk water container. You wouldn’t be dumb enough to send people into Cincinnati without telling us?’” the Guard member recalled. The camouflage pattern those officers wore was almost identical to the Army’s and the tactical weapons they carried had led the caller to assume Guard forces had moved in.
The call created a scramble in the unit to make sure there were no National Guard patrolling without authorization. The Ohio National Guard had strict orders to assume as unthreatening a posture as possible and were prohibited from patrolling in any vehicle with a gun turret, the Guard member said. The officers filling up on water turned out to be sheriff’s deputies.
“If citizens can’t distinguish between the two, we are less likely to be seen as a mediating influence between the police and the city,” the Guard member said.
THE BLUE LINE
Militarization of police tactics and equipment intensified after the 9/11 attacks, said Frederic Lemieux, faculty director of the applied intelligence program at Georgetown University.
Police departments received grants to train and equip local counterterrorism response teams.
But once some departments trained highly specialized teams and equipped them with military-grade weaponry and armored trucks to respond to future terror threats, mass shootings or hostage situations, there were not many occasions to deploy them.
And while police departments receive the armored vehicles and gear from the Defense Department for free, they have to pay for the continued operations and maintenance costs.
“So you have a team of four to eight people that costs you anywhere, you know, up higher than a million dollars in your budget a year, sitting there just training and being rarely called upon,” Lemieux said.
Police departments then began to find uses for them, such as responding to drug crimes.
“And then they started to be integrated into more daily operations, up to patrol,” he said.
“It’s the greening of the blue line,” Lemieux said.
This story was originally published June 25, 2020 at 2:26 PM.
