-Caveat Lector- >From www.free-market.net/spotlight/police/ {{<Begin>}} When good cops go bad October 28, 1999 Not too long ago, as a series of disturbing revelations about the conduct of federal agents during the Waco fiasco began to ooze into public view, Mario Paz found himself rendered into a lifeless exclamation point to concerns about modern American law enforcement. Paz, a 65-year-old grandfather scraping by in an unsavory Los Angeles neighborhood, was at home in bed when police officers blew the locks off his front and back doors, tossed in stun grenades, and stormed through his home. Police then shot Paz dead in his bed. The police were looking for a neighbor who was allegedly dealing drugs. It would be reassuring to dismiss Paz's death as a mistake, although a lethal one, but Paz is hardly the first person to suffer at the hands of wayward police officers. His name joins Pedro Oregon Navarro, a Mexican immigrant killed by Houston police in a botched and illegal raid; Amadou Diallo, killed in a hail of official-issue bullets on a New York City street; and Donald Scott, a millionaire gunned down by agents from the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and five federal law-enforcement agencies. Add Nelson Robles to the list; he survived his encounter with confused DEA agents who raided his home. Widely separated geographically and in the characteristics of the victims, such raids share two distinguishing qualities: The use of overwhelming and often lethal force by the agents of law and order, and the fact that they are almost always carried out in the name of the war on drugs. The Cato Institute's Diane Cecilia Weber examined the recent transformation of law enforcement in "Warrior Cops: The Ominous Growth of Paramilitarism in American Police Departments." She found that American officialdom's frenzy to enforce drug prohibition had led Congress to loosen traditional restrictions on the use of military resources by civilian police departments. The result has been a flood of training and materiel that is increasingly transforming peace officers into occupation troops on America's streets. That transformation has meant a world of difference to all too many Americans. Where civilian police officers are members of a community that they patrol and where they try to maintain order, soldiers are tasked to destroy an enemy. Police knock on your door; soldiers kick it in. When restraints are dropped on the deployment and use of force, those who suffer the most are usually those who were alienated from the center of power to begin with, and have the fewest resources with which to resist. The result has been disaster for many minority communities. While the ranks of the victims of abusive power are salted with middle-class and even wealthy white Americans, a disproportionate number of the fallen are poor blacks, hispanics, and immigrants like Mario Paz. The problem has grown to the point that Amnesty International, which normally focuses its attention on countries led by generals, commissars, and presidents- for-life, released a report on "Race, Rights, and Police Brutality" in the United States. Human Rights Watch chimed in with the almost simultaneous "Shielded from Justice" city-by-city breakdown of police excesses. The two reports put big-city mayors and police brass on the immediate defensive. Less lethal, but still troublesome, is the adoption of pseudo-scientific "profiles" that police use to catch drug smugglers on the nation's highways. While the specific criteria of such profiles are tightly held secrets, their implementation in the field is such that being pulled over for matching the profile is often referred to as "driving while black." Such profiling is now falling into disfavor because of the overt racial implications, but it hasn't ceased by any means. The American Civil Liberties Union has been tracking some of the worst offenses and compiles its findings in "Arrest the Racism." The puritanical crusade against drugs bears much of the blame for what has happened to American law enforcement -- and civil liberties -- but the problem now extends further. Perceived threats from terrorism and privately owned firearms have joined the ranks of excuses for tougher, meaner, and more brutal law enforcement. It's as if the new tactics and toys have acquired their own momentum, and now just need to fasten on to convenient justifications. Police abuse is nothing new, but the militarization of law enforcement has taken an old, chronic problem and turned it into a plague on the body of American society. As horrible as headline-grabbing tragedies like Waco are, they may serve up some small benefit by turning public attention to the unfortunate transformation of the relationship between Americans and cops-turned-occupation troops in their midst. If that warning is taken seriously, maybe we can avoid adding more names to the list below "Mario Paz." For updated information, browse the resources to the right or click over to the Freedom Network Directory on Police Conduct. http://www.free-market.net/directorybytopic/police/ {{<End>}} {{<Begin>}} http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-050es.html Warrior Cops The Ominous Growth of Paramilitarism in American Police Departments by Diane Cecilia Weber Diane Cecilia Weber is a Virginia writer on law enforcement and criminal justice. Executive Summary Over the past 20 years Congress has encouraged the U.S. military to supply intelligence, equipment, and training to civilian police. That encouragement has spawned a culture of paramilitarism in American law enforcement. The 1980s and 1990s have seen marked changes in the number of state and local paramilitary units, in their mission and deployment, and in their tactical armament. According to a recent academic survey, nearly 90 percent of the police departments surveyed in cities with populations over 50,000 had paramilitary units, as did 70 percent of the departments surveyed in communities with populations under 50,000. The Pentagon has been equipping those units with M-16s, armored personnel carriers, and grenade launchers. The police paramilitary units also conduct training exercises with active duty Army Rangers and Navy SEALs. State and local police departments are increasingly accepting the military as a model for their behavior and outlook. The sharing of training and technology is producing a shared mindset. The problem is that the mindset of the soldier is simply not appropriate for the civilian police officer. Police officers confront not an “enemy” but individuals who are protected by the Bill of Rights. Confusing the police function with the military function can lead to dangerous and unintended consequences—such as unnecessary shootings and killings. Briefing Paper No. 50 (PDF format, 14 pp. 73 Kb) | Briefing Papers Series | Cato Institute Library | Cato Institute Home © 1998 The Cato Institute Please send comments to webmaster. {{<End>}} A<>E<>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." --Buddha + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." 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