Rise of the Warrior Cop - Wall Street Journal Op-Ed by Radley Balko.
... Many longtime and retired law-enforcement officers have told me of their worry that the trend toward militarization is too far gone. Those who think there is still a chance at reform tend to embrace the idea of community policing, an approach that depends more on civil society than on brute force.
In this very different view of policing, cops walk beats, interact with citizens and consider themselves part of the neighborhoods they patrol—and therefore have a stake in those communities. It's all about a baton-twirling "Officer Friendly" rather than a Taser-toting RoboCop...
Comments
Added on behalf of Gute, a SWC member who cannot access SWJ Blog.
I apologize for posting here but I'm having a problem singing in and posting on the blog page. I think remarking about this article works with this thread since the article opens with a drug search warrant. I wasn't there so I don't know all the facts, but it doesn't look good.
The author writes that SWAT came about to counter perceived threats and I would argue that SWAT came about because of real threats.
IMO LE has too many gear queers and barrel suckers, but I think the guys are a product of the times. Many cops are former military and these guys tend to gravitate toward the SWAT/HRT thing - which I think is good. Some never served in the military so they do the SWAT thing to run around in camo and shoot stuff. All like the hell out of it and that's cool with me. Big city police departments have full time teams while smaller departments go the part time route or intra-agency. SWAT teams give a police chief, city manager, mayor a little CYA. A group of officers who train together on a regular basis. It's all about liability. I don't think the group in Utah was a SWAT team. As I've written before not everything needs to be a hard, flash bang entry, but due to liability many departments have their SWAT teams do all the entries.
I believe there is a growing schism between LE and the public, much like the military and the public. The public doesn't like to see the dirty work getting done. Again, many in LE have lost sight of the fact that they are providing a service to the public and not the other way around. Self-aggrandizing by LE gets on my nerves - I picked the job, nobody made me do it.
The author writes at the end of the article about community policing and I think he is writing how we need to return to community policing from SWAT. Community policing is a strategy, SWAT is tactics. Police Departments everywhere engage in community policing every day. IMO the pendulum has just swung too one way and needs to come back to the middle.