Professional police departments have changed over time in the United States. The first professionalized police departments in the United States were modeled on the London Metropolitan Police. In 1844, the first civil police force in the United States was created in
New York City. They were under civilian control and were non-militaristic in the sense that they eschewed military uniforms, weaponry and training. According to Julian Go of
the University of Chicago, police departments in the United States became increasingly militarized in the early 20th century as they "borrowed tactics, techniques, and organizational templates from America's imperial-military regime that had been developed to conquer and rule foreign populations". Historian Stuart Schrader has linked the experiences of World War II to later militarization of police in the United States.
20th century for United States
law enforcement forces During the early 20th century, police departments in the United States adopted several military innovations such as centralized chains of command, professionalization (training and discipline), military operations and tactics (in particular, colonial counterinsurgency tactics), "open-order" units, and counterinsurgency information-gathering techniques. and
Kenosha, Wisconsin, began deploying automatic weapons, including the Thompson submachine gun, and armored cars in the 1920s and 1930s. in 1936
George Fletcher Chandler, a veteran of the
Pancho Villa Expedition and the first Superintendent of the
New York State Police, was an early advocate of law enforcement officers wearing their weapons exposed on the outside of their uniforms. Police militarization was escalated in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s as an era in which
race riots and
anti-war protests were common in many U.S. cities. Some believe the seeming success of officers armed with military-style weapons and deployed to curtail the 1965
Watts riots, a six-day race riot sparked by conflicts with the
Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) that killed 34 people, gave way to the trend of arming and equipping law enforcement officers with battlefield weapons. Joy Rohde, a professor at the
University of Michigan's
Ford School of Public Policy, has published research indicating that "militarization is a mindset... a tendency to see the world through the lens of national security, a tendency to exaggerate existing threats". Rohde traces "the origins of modern militarized policing" to the
Cold War-era
anti-communist paranoia, and the idea that domestic civil rights activists were similar to foreign enemies, as manifested in activities such as the CIA's
Operation CHAOS. According to
Harvard University professor Elizabeth Hinton, the 1965 Law Enforcement Assistance Act ushered in a new era where the federal government facilitated the militarization of police at the state and local level across the United States. Over the last hundred years, under the premise of combatting terrorism and keeping up with the evolution of armaments, special weapons and tactics teams have been implemented and are being used across the United States. The 1960s to the 1990s, encounters with the sophisticated weapons of narcotics trafficking groups such as the
Medellín Cartel and street gangs such as the
Gangster Disciples, with organized, left-wing protesters at such events as the
1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the 1999
WTO Conference in
Seattle, with
urban riots such as the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles, the
1967 Detroit riot, and the
1992 Los Angeles riots led law enforcement to reconsider their standard
side arms. Law enforcement agencies encountered groups such as
Earth Liberation Front (ELF), and incidents such as the 1984
San Ysidro McDonald's massacre, the
1986 FBI Miami shootout between eight FBI agents and two serial
bank robbers (in which the agents were out-gunned by the robbers), and the 1997
North Hollywood shootout. Researchers David N. Falcone, Edward L. Wells, and Ralph A. Weisheit describe a historical separation of police models between small towns and larger cities, which tended to function differently with separate hierarchical systems supporting each. The militarization of both rural and urban law enforcement has been attributed to the United States' involvement in wars during the 20th century, and to increasingly frequent encounters with violent protesters and criminals with automatic weapons, explosives, and body armor, although some attribute the militarization to the more recent campaigns known as the
war on drugs and the
war on terror. Historian
Charles A. Beard argues that cultural change during the Great Depression encouraged the militarization of law enforcement, whereas Harwood argues that the creation of SWAT teams and
tactical units within law enforcement during the 1960s began the trend. armored vehicle The 1981
Military Cooperation with Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies Act allows the U.S. military to cooperate with domestic and foreign law enforcement agencies. Operations in support of law enforcement include assistance in counter-drug operations, assistance for civil disturbances, special security operations,
counter-terrorism, explosive ordnance disposal (EOD), and similar activities. Constitutional and statutory restrictions and corresponding directives and regulations limit the type of support provided in this area. This allows the U.S. military to give law enforcement agencies access to
its military bases and
its military equipment. The legislation was promoted during the
Presidency of Ronald Reagan in the context of the
war on drugs, and is considered a part of a general trend towards the militarization of police. The 1997
North Hollywood shootout had a profound effect on law enforcement agencies. Local patrol officers at the time were typically armed with their standard issue
9×19mm pistols or
.38 Special revolvers, while some had a pump-action
12-gauge shotgun available in their cars. The North Hollywood bank robbers carried fully automatic
AK-47-style weapons with high capacity
drum magazines and ammunition capable of penetrating vehicles and police Kevlar vests. With these weapons, two bank robbers fired approximately 1,100 rounds at officers and civilians before being killed. The robbers wore
body armor which successfully protected them from bullets and shotgun pellets fired by the responding patrolmen. Police noted that the service pistols carried by the first responding officers had insufficient range and relatively poor accuracy, although a SWAT team eventually arrived with sufficient firepower. The ineffectiveness of the standard police patrol pistols and shotguns in penetrating the robbers' body armor led to a trend in the United States toward arming selected police officers, not just SWAT teams, with heavier firepower such as semi-automatic
5.56×45mm NATO AR-15-type rifles. SWAT teams, whose close quarters battle weaponry usually consisted of
submachine guns that fired pistol cartridges, such as the
9×19mm Heckler & Koch MP5, began supplementing them with AR-15-type rifles and carbines. Seven months after the incident, the Department of Defense gave 600 surplus
M16s to the LAPD, which were issued to each patrol sergeant; LAPD patrol vehicles now carry AR-15s as standard issue, with bullet-resistant
Kevlar plating in their doors as well. As a result of this incident, the LAPD authorized its officers to carry .45 ACP caliber semiautomatic pistols as duty sidearms, specifically the
Smith & Wesson Models 4506 and 4566. Prior to 1997, only LAPD SWAT officers were authorized to carry .45 ACP caliber pistols, specifically the Model 1911A1 .45 ACP semiautomatic pistol. rifle during a training exercise The militarization of police escalated with the
1033 program, initiated by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, ostensibly to address organized drug trafficking. The 1033 Program was documented in action through published and televised images of excessive force and armoured vehicles broadcast during the 2014 protests in
Ferguson after
Michael Brown was killed by police. The National Defense Authorization Act, as part of the
U.S. Government's Defense Logistics Agency Disposition Services (DLA) currently coordinates the transfer of excess military equipment to law enforcement agencies. Since 1997, 8,000 local law enforcement agencies have participated in the militarization program that has transferred $5.1 billion in military hardware from the
United States Department of Defense to them. Data from 2006 to 2014 shows that local and state police departments obtained aircraft, helicopters,
bayonets, knives, night-vision sniper scopes, tactical armored vehicles or MRAP's, rifles and weapons including grenade launchers,
watercraft, and camouflage gear, among other military equipment.
21st century Under the
Fourth Amendment, law enforcement officers must receive written permission from a court of law, or otherwise qualified
magistrate, to lawfully search and seize evidence while investigating criminal activity. The requirements changed after the
September 11 attacks, with the 2001
Patriot Act which gave law enforcement officers permission to search a home or business without the owner's or the occupant's consent or knowledge, amongst other provisions, if terrorist activities were suspected. The Act was criticized for its violation of civil liberties and has generated a great deal of controversy since its enactment. In
United States v. Antoine Jones, the court found that increased monitoring of suspects caused by the Patriot Act directly put the suspects'
constitutional rights in jeopardy. For a time, the Patriot Act allowed for agents to undertake "sneak and peek" searches, a term used to describe breaking into a business or residence and entering without judicial oversight. Critics such as the
ACLU strongly criticized the law for violating the Fourth Amendment. On May 18, 2015, President
Barack Obama announced limits on the types of military equipment which can be transferred to police departments through the
1033 program and limits on the implementation of military training programs. Afterward, the military was restricted from transferring some weapons, such as grenade launchers, weaponized vehicles, and bayonets to police. Obama said, "We've seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like it's an
occupying force as opposed to a force that's part of the community that's protecting them and serving them... So we're going to prohibit equipment made for the battlefield that is not appropriate for local police departments." In response to Obama's announcement, the United States' largest police union, the
Fraternal Order of Police, reacted negatively, pledging to push back against the new restrictions, and accusing the administration of politicizing officers' safety. On August 28, 2017, U.S. Attorney General
Jeff Sessions announced the lifting of restrictions on the transfer of military equipment to law enforcement agencies. Sessions said during his announcement that the
Trump administration would not "put superficial concerns above public safety". ACLU spokesperson Kaya Bennett responded to Sessions and said, "We have an epidemic in the United States of police using excessive force, particularly against people of color, with injuries and deaths mounting", and "It defies logic to arm the police with weapons of war—grenade launchers, high-caliber assault weapons and more—but that's precisely what President Trump and Attorney General Sessions have decided to do." Since the 1033 Program was initiated in 1990, more than 5.4 billion U.S. dollars of military equipment has been transferred by the Pentagon to local and state police.
Allegations of a "war on police" In 2015, journalist
Radley Balko wrote an opinion column in which he described statements by politicians
Donald Trump,
Ted Cruz,
Scott Walker, and
Dan Patrick that a "war on police" was taking place as "fact-free fear mongering" and a "dangerous game". The statements had been made following prominent news reports of deaths by police officers; Balko wrote "2015 is on pace to see 35 felonious killings of police officers. If that pace holds, this year would end with the second lowest number of murdered cops in decades [and]... not only are fewer people killing police officers, fewer people are trying to harm them." This led to an armed standoff with police, who lobbed
tear gas canisters at the building. The police said that MOVE members fired at them; a gunfight with
semi-automatic and
automatic firearms ensued. Commissioner Sambor ordered that the compound be bombed. From a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter, Philadelphia Police Lt. Frank Powell proceeded to drop two one-pound bombs (which the police referred to as "entry devices") made of FBI-supplied
water gel explosive, a
dynamite substitute, targeting a fortified, bunker-like cubicle on the roof of the house. The resulting explosions ignited a fire which spread and eventually destroyed approximately 65 nearby houses. Eleven people (John Africa, five other adults, and five children aged 7 to 13) died in the resulting fire, and more than 250 people in the neighborhood were left homeless. Ramona Africa, one of the two survivors, said police fired at those trying to escape.
Ruby Ridge In 1992, there was a deadly confrontation and a 12-day
siege at
Ruby Ridge in
northern Idaho between
Randy Weaver, his family and his friend Kevin Harris, and agents of the
United States Marshals Service (USMS) and
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). USMS and FBI agents were armed with M16s and sniper rifles, and they used an APC. It resulted in the deaths of two Weavers (Randy's son, Sammy and his wife, Vicki) and Deputy U.S. Marshal William Francis Degan. At the subsequent federal criminal trial of Weaver and Harris, Weaver's attorney
Gerry Spence made accusations of "criminal wrongdoing" against every agency involved in the incident: the FBI, USMS, the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), and the
United States Attorney's Office (USAO) for Idaho. At the completion of the trial, the
Department of Justice's
Office of Professional Responsibility formed a Ruby Ridge Task Force to investigate Spence's charges. The 1994 Task Force report was released in redacted form by Lexis Counsel Connect and raised questions about the conduct and policy of all the agencies. Public outcry over Ruby Ridge led to the
Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information holding 14 days of hearings and issuing a report calling for reforms in
federal law enforcement to prevent a repeat of Ruby Ridge and to restore public confidence in federal law enforcement.
Waco , engulfed in flames.
Waco, Texas, April 19, 1993. In 1993, FBI and BATFE agents used armored vehicles, tanks and attack helicopters during the
siege of the Branch Davidian community in
Waco,
Texas. The FBI's arms included
.50 caliber (12.7 mm) rifles and
M728 Combat Engineer Vehicles, which are based on an
M60A1 Patton main battle tank chassis. The FBI also launched CS grenade fired from
M79 grenade launchers and fired two military M651 rounds at the Branch Davidian site. 40mm munitions recovered by the
Texas Ranger Division at Waco included dozens of plastic Ferret Model SGA-400 Liquid CS rounds, two metal M651 military pyrotechnic tear gas rounds, two metal NICO Pyrotechnik Sound & Flash grenades, and parachute illumination flares.
Other events 2005–2009 From 2005 to 2006, the
Maryland State Police (MSP) entered the names and personal information of death penalty opponents and anti-war protesters into a database used to track terrorists.
Thomas E. Hutchins, former state police superintendent under Governor
Bob Ehrlich, authorized the operation. Former state attorney general
Stephen H. Sachs recommended that letters be sent to notify all the activists put on the list. In the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina in
New Orleans in 2005, employees of the private security firm
Blackwater patrolled the city with automatic weapons. "When asked what authority they were operating under", journalist Jeremy Scahill reported, "one guy said, 'We're on contract with the Department of Homeland Security.'" On August 25, 2008, the
Denver Police Department (DPD) were accused of making mass, indiscriminate arrests of almost 100 protesters at the Democratic National Convention. In 2011, the city of
Denver, Colorado agreed to pay a $200,000 settlement and to improve its crowd control training and policies.
2010–2014 In February 2010, the
Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) raided the apartment of Rickia Russell, breaching the door and throwing in a
flashbang grenade, as part of a search for drugs. At the time, Russell was eating dinner with her boyfriend and the exploding grenade gave her burns to her head and calves. No drugs were found in Russell's apartment and the Minneapolis City Council agreed to pay $1 million in damages. In January 2011, Rogelio Serrato in
Greenfield, California, died of
smoke inhalation after a flashbang grenade launched by the SWAT team of the Greenfield Police Department (GPD) ignited a fire in his home. Referring to the 2011
Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City, Glen Greenwald wrote, "The police response was so excessive, and so clearly modeled after battlefield tactics, that there was no doubt that deterring domestic
dissent is one of the primary aims of police militarization." The
Oakland Police Department (OPD) used excessive force while breaking up
Occupy Oakland demonstrations in 2011. Several protesters successfully sued the city of
Oakland, California for their injuries; Scott Olsen was severely injured after being hit in the head with a police projectile and was awarded $4.5 million. The city paid $1.17 million to a group of protesters, and $645,000 to Kayvan Sabeghi, who was clubbed by police. with a
sniper system provides
overwatch at the Ferguson protest regarding the
shooting of Michael Brown. On May 28, 2014, a SWAT team looking for drugs in a
Cornelia, Georgia home threw a
flashbang grenade into the house. The grenade landed in the playpen of a 19-month-old baby boy, and the detonation severely burned and mutilated the baby's face. In late 2014, concerns about the militarization of police arose after the
shooting of Michael Brown occurred on , 2014, in
Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of . The display of military gear by area police agencies dealing with the protests received significant criticism from the media and politicians. There were concerns over insensitivity, tactics and a militarized response. In recent years, the use of military equipment and tactics for community policing and for public order policing has become more widespread. Lawmakers have begun to discuss the topic.
Concerns and responses Community policing The drift toward militarization concerns police officers and police policy analysts themselves. U.S.
community policing grew out of the
Peelian Principles of the
London Metropolitan Police which emphasizes the relationship between the police and the community they serve. Police academy education patterned after a military boot camp, military-type
battle dress uniforms and black color by itself may produce aggression, as do the missions named wars on crime, on drugs, and on terrorism. In a 2013 piece in the newsletter of the DOJ's
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), COPS Senior Policy Analyst Karl Bickel warned that police militarization could seriously impair
community-oriented policing. Bickel wrote that accelerating militarization was likely to alienate police relationship with the community, and pointed to a variety of factors that contribute to militarization, including the growth of SWAT; the increase prevalence of dark-colored military-style battle dress uniforms for patrol officers (which research suggests has a psychological effect of increasing aggression in the wearer), and "warrior-like" stress training in policing training, which fosters an "us versus them" approach.
Use of force SWAT team conferring on 23 September 1998 A report by
The Marshall Project looking at data from the early 2010s investigated the mindset of "guardian" versus "warrior" by calculating the rate of complaints for excessive
use of force against police officers who had served in the military versus police officers in general. It found higher rates for veterans in Boston (28% vs. 17%) and Miami (14% vs. 11%), but found no difference for
Massachusetts State Police. A national survey in August 2016 by the
Pew Research Center found police officers who had served in the military were more likely to have fired their weapon while doing police work (32% vs. 26%).
Viewpoints The ACLU has stated that local police use these "wartime weapons in everyday policing, especially to fight the wasteful and failed drug war, which has unfairly targeted people of color". Dave Pruett from
The Huffington Post raised concerns about "Military
Humvees, still in camouflage and mounted with machine guns, in the hands of
municipal police [and] SWAT teams of police in full
riot gear, bristling with automatic weapons." Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper published an essay arguing that "the current epidemic of police brutality is a reflection of the militarization... of our urban police forces, the result of years of the 'war on drugs' and the 'war on terror'". Senator
Rand Paul has proposed a demilitarization of U.S. police departments, stating that "The images and scenes we continue to see in Ferguson resemble war more than traditional police action."
Chuck Canterbury, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police, argued that the equipment received from the federal government had been properly de-militarized, and that it was being used to protect civilians from
violent crime. He further stated that the use of the equipment by law enforcement was necessary to protect civilians, since
mass shootings have taken place across the United States, even in small towns. Responding to claims that law enforcement officers were being given tanks, Canterbury argued that the vehicles being used by law enforcement were not armed, and that they were being used across the United States to protect other officers. On March 23, 2015, a Department of Justice investigation into
use of deadly force by the
Philadelphia Police Department in the period from 2007 to 2013 found that the way officers are trained may be a contributing factor to excessive use of deadly force. The report found that a) many officers have the mistaken assumption that being "in fear of their life" is justification for the use of deadly force, but fear should not be a factor—it's a reasonable belief that deadly force is necessary to avoid death or serious injury; b) instruction about policies on the use of force is confusing; c) most training scenarios end in some type of use of force and officers are rarely, if ever, trained how to resolve confrontations peacefully; d) 80% of suspects shot by police were black—black suspects were also more than twice as likely to be shot due to a "threat perception failure"; and e) no consistent procedure was in place for shooting investigations, no audio or video recordings of officer interviews were being made, and officers are often interviewed months after the incidents. In a report released in June 2015,
Amnesty International alleged that the United States does not comply with the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials. Two independent, peer-reviewed studies published in 2020 have found that militarized police officers are neither safer nor more effective at reducing crime.
Intelligence-gathering and surveillance In a January 2017 report
Cato Institute criminal justice policy analyst Adam Bates argues that in the United States, "an increasingly militarized domestic police force" is characterized by "
mission creep [that] has not been limited to weapons and tactics. What the War on Drugs has done for police militarization, the War on Terror is now doing for police intelligence gathering, and the privacy of millions of Americans is at risk." The ACLU has raised concerns about military involvement in surveillance of peaceful protesters. The ACLU pointed, for example, to
U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) issuance of
Threat and Local Observation Notices (TALON) depicting
Veterans for Peace and other anti-war groups as "terrorist threats". The ACLU also raised concerns about military involvement in "
fusion centers".
Civil liberties The federal
Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 forbids the U.S. military from conducting domestic law enforcement activities, embodying "the traditional American principle of separating civilian and military authority". There have been exceptions made, however: in 1981, Congress enacted legislation allowing military involvement in drug interdiction at U.S. borders, and eight years later "designated the Department of Defense as the 'single lead agency' in drug interdiction efforts". These anti-terrorism proposals were criticized by some commentators on the basis that they were a threat to civil liberties. The accelerating militarization of regular law enforcement during the
war on drugs and post-
September 11 war on terror, however, prompted some commentators to express alarm at the blurring of the distinction between civil and military functions, and the potential to erode constraints on governmental power in times of perceived crisis. A 2010 paper published in the journal
Armed Forces & Society examined "role convergence, that is, evidence that significant segments of police operations in the United States have taken on military characteristics; and evidence indicating that many U.S. military initiatives have taken on policing characteristics". It concluded that "for individual citizens and for society as a whole, at least one aspect of role convergence—the militarization of the police—is potentially troublesome. If this convergence results in the police adopting not only military-type tactics and procedures but also military attitudes and orientations, the convergence may seriously threaten traditional civil rights and liberties." Writers such as
Ilya Shapiro and Randal John Meyer have argued that militarization leads to "extreme constitutional violations".
SWAT teams and military-style raid tactics Peter Kraska, a criminal justice professor at
Eastern Kentucky University, found that the prevalence of SWAT teams, among police agencies serving populations of at least 50,000 people, doubled from the mid-1980s to the late-1990s, rising to 89% of police agencies by the end of this time period. Among smaller police agencies (covering areas with between 25,000 and 50,000 people), the proportion with SWAT teams rose from 20% in the mid-1980s to 80% in the mid-2000s. Kraska says: "When people refer to the militarization of police, it's not in a pejorative or judgmental sense. Contemporary police agencies have moved significantly along a continuum culturally, materially, operationally, while using a
Navy SEALs model. All of those are clear indications that they're moving away from a civilian model of policing." A 2014 ACLU report,
War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing, concluded that "American policing has become unnecessarily and dangerously militarized..." Military-style tactics used by such teams include nighttime raids, use of
battering rams, use of
flashbangs, overwhelming displays of force, and the wearing of helmets and masks. The use of SWAT teams became especially common for
drug searches. The ACLU study found that 62% of SWAT deployments were for drug raids, and that 79% involved raids on private homes; the study found that only "7% fell into those categories for which the technique was originally intended, such as hostage situations or barricades". The use of force and military-style equipment during such raids prompted criticism, The
Chicago Police Department (CPD) have been accused of operating a secret "
black site" in their
Homan Square facility where suspects were held without being booked and registered and where they could not be found by their attorneys or families. Suspects were allegedly shackled and beaten.
Federal efforts to curb militarization From 1997 to 2016, the
United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has gone to court to challenge policing practices in more than 24 cities to protect the civil rights of the public. The
Obama administration made a broad push police reform. In 2015, the Task Force for 21st Century Policing recommended restricting federal transfers of military surplus equipment, such as
grenade launchers and armored vehicles, from the
Defense Department to law enforcement agencies via the
1033 program. in what observers saw as a bid to shift police sway from "away from creeping militarization and toward community policing". In 2017, the Trump administration announced it will reinstate the program. ==Types of teams and weapons==