Thursday, July 18, 2013

How we got warrior cops...

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Q: You begin the book talking about what you refer to as "the symbolic Third Amendment." Can you explain that, and what it has to do with militarized police?

A: The Third Amendment is the overlooked amendment. There’s never been a Supreme Court case about it. It’s been a long since we’ve had a war that was fought within U.S. borders, so the idea of the government needing to quarter troops in people’s homes has rarely come up.

What I argue in the book – and there’s academics who have found some historical research to back this up – is that the quartering was something that Founders were concerned about. But the Third Amendment was more a kind of a placeholder for this broader idea of being on guard against an overly militaristic society. People like Washington, and Adams, and Jefferson were all students of history. You particularly find them writing a lot about Rome, and how the Roman Republic turned into an Empire. You had the Praetorian Guards – sort of the first police force in recorded history – who started to take on a more military role. Militarism overtook Roman society more generally. So I think that the Founders had this aversion to standing armies. Even the more moderate of the founders like Adams and Hamilton were very, very wary of standing armies. And hardcore anti-federalists wanted nothing. They didn’t want an army, even for defense. The Third Amendment, along with the Second and the Fourth – you take them all together and I think it presents a reaction to what the Founders knew about history; what they witnessed in Boston when the British troops were stationed. It was just generally a symbolic stand against militarism in a free society.

Q: How much has policing changed? Was there ever really an "Officer Friendly"? Aren’t there just good cops and bad cops now, same as always?

A: There was never a halcyon days of community policing. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to get to that point. Certainly you had bad cops going back to the first police departments. And you’ve always had corrupt cops – cops that take advantage of their position and their power. But I think what’s really changed in the last 35 years or so is the amount of force that is officially permitted and encouraged. So while in the ‘40s, and ‘50s, and ‘60s, you can have rogue cops who would beat people and probably get away with it, it was still sort of against policy. What we’ve seen today is this kind of aggressive, military-like force is sanctioned. In a lot of jurisdictions, the SWAT team is the first choice to serve search warrants. There was a time – a good ten, 15 years after the invention of the SWAT team – when they were the last choice. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Militarized police gone wild across America; terrorizing citizens, shooting pet dogs...
  2. Philadelphia cop attacks and arrests a man for videotaping him...
  3. US cops out of control...
  4. Why are IRS law enforcement agents training with AR-15 rifles?
  5. Truck driver nearly beaten to death by cops for traffic ticket...
  6. How long will it be before they actually start shooting us from helicopter gunships?

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