 This is our third OAR book talk of the semester featuring Radley Balco and his 2013 book rise of the warrior cop the militarization of America's police forces Dan Stageman on the director of research operations at the college and our office runs these events However, I'm going to turn the mic over to law and police science as professor Peter Moscos who's going to provide mr Balco's formal introduction Mr. Moscos Hi, thank you I'm very excited to be here and to Finally meet in person a man whose work I've been reading for a decade at least Radley Balco as many Accolades to his name the sort of background is is in journalism. I'm his home base now is Nashville, Tennessee And he's written for He runs the watch which is a Washington Post blog that is certainly worth watching I guess But before that he Published for such places like reason magazine and worked for the Cato Institute And had a frequent column in the Huffington Post And he testified before Congress and it's really been influential in this field and what I want to emphasize which is a Line that was when he was awarded journalist of the year in 2011 The LA Press Club wrote that Radley Balco is one of those throwback journalists that understands the power of groundbreaking reporting and how to make a significant impact through his work time and time again his stories cause readers to stop think and more significantly take action My only quibble with that perhaps is the last part and I wonder Certainly his work has made me stop and I think often critically because I think in some ways we've we've disagreed on certain matters of police related, but it has never It has never made me question my respect for his intellectual integrity and for his highlighting certain issues But I question about this take action part and it goes well with the John Jay College of criminal justice is justice's general theme of justice Because Radley Balco has been ahead of the curve He wrote a report for the Cato Institute in 2006. He started working on it before that about the militarization of police I was certainly slightly aware of this in the background given my interest in the field But that report was in many ways groundbreaking because of its Excellent journalism because of the facts it came out and because of the excellent way in which Balco presents his findings It was news to a lot of people and it had a certain amount of impact and then dare I say nothing happened It was a red flag that has been the militarization of police has been a red flag that has been rising above the police For decades now and Balco is really the first person to say is that do we ask for this? How is this happening? Is this something we want? Because police are at their core a civilian organization They're not the military police are not soldiers the job of police is to prevent crime The job of police is also to apprehend offenders, but this gradual shift that was happening The militarization of police was by and large happening under the radar And Bradley Balco stood high on a mountain top or at least that the highest hill he could find and was shouting And a few of us were listening and a few of us were worried But I don't think it hit home into a lot of people until the events of Ferguson when suddenly you saw protesters being faced by a line of Black clothed by clavade People that sure look like soldiers and I think that the one iconic image at least from the militarization of police was a Large turreted gun on top of an armored personnel carrier My thought was what are you planning to do with that because there's no situation possible here in which you would use it So why is there a police officer sitting behind a gun in a turret of an armored personnel carrier? facing down American citizens This shocked a lot of Americans and that's good But it's a shame that they weren't shocked earlier because the further we go down the path of militarization I think the harder it is to turn back the clock And I don't think anybody here is for the Is saying that there are times when police need a more military approach certainly that happens But again in Ferguson you saw incendiary devices flash bang grenades That goes back to the very first SWAT rate ever which I believe Radley will talk about a bit Being thrown in crowds of people I have never heard tactically why you would want to throw a Weapon designed to disorient and anger people into a crowd of people in the open But this is what happens when you have unchecked Unquestioned and untransparent militarization of police So I don't think he timed his book for all the recent police actions That would have been more foresight than I can give you credit for But his book did come out just at the perfect time as these issues Were hitting the forefront of American consciousness And I do give Bout grow a lot of credit for that not because he predicted that the timing would work perfectly because these are issues that he's has cared about deeply over the past decade and Though it's taken I think unfortunate events to to bring these issues to prominence. I would also hope that by these issues being raised We as Americans can finally begin to address what we want in our police departments So with that I am proudly give you Radley Balco thank you, Peter and I Don't know how many of you had Peter for class, but his book cop in the hood is One of the four or five books. I think it would recommend to anybody who wants to sort of actually see What's happening to to American policing right now? It's a really highly recommended read I'm gonna divert just a little bit from the militarization issue I'm gonna come back to it and I think these issues are related because I want to get into something a little more topical I'm gonna show you a quick video clip here. I'm not gonna show the whole thing But this is actually I would just say this has been part of my talk for about the last couple of months It happens to be extremely timely given what's in the headlines lately, but I'll just let you watch here to start Officer Glenowitz is the 22nd law enforcement officer that has been shot and killed so far this year Why Comico County Sheriff Mike Lewis says these recent attacks highlight an alarming trend that law enforcement officers around the country are Under siege he joins us now for so many years for The badges the badge has always been a sign of respect a sign of pride It seems as though now the badge that you're wearing often becomes a target. It certainly has become a target I just put an email out your state to all why Comico County Sheriff's Office personnel to Discontinue wearing anything that would affiliate them or associate them with law enforcement while off duty to protect themselves to protect their families I've never seen it like this Leland. It's a scary scary time for law enforcement in this country at true So how many of you heard some sort of variation on this? There's a war on cop cops are under siege. There's a cop a target on cops backs So you've probably heard that officer Glenowitz was not killed that came out just in the last couple days that he committed suicide what they're describing as a carefully staged suicide apparently to Distracting the fact that he was embezzling Money for the last seven or eight years, but the fact that that particular case didn't pan out the way this particular Fox news segment portrayed it. It's just an anecdote, right? That's just one case But if we look at the broader trend Policing has been getting progressively safer for the last 20 to 25 years And in fact this year is on pace to be the second safest year for police officers Basically since we've been keeping record to keep you look at rates as opposed to overall figures I'm gonna show you some figures here So This is the the raw number of police officers feloniously killed in the line of duty since 1961 As you can see we are this goes up through 2013 2014 there was a slight tick upward. I think there were 48 maybe I think last year this year But as I said this year we're on pace to have the safest year for police since to the second safest year At least in a half century after only 2013 If we if we make this a rate The rate of police officers killed in line of duty the trend becomes even more pronounced This is a little bit tricky because there are varying estimates on how many police officers are actually are depends on their definition of police It depends on your source, but this is from the American Enterprise Institute Taking various numbers and you can see the different graphs based on which estimate on total number of police officers You use but all of them are in heading in a downward Direction and have been basically since about the mid 1990s if you average the figures that looks like this Now the response to this is commonly well Maybe fewer police officers getting killed in line of duty, but that's because we have better they have better armor They have better training they're using lethal force more often So they're killing the bad guys before the bad guys can kill them But this doesn't hold up either Actually, let me look here's this chart is The five-year sort of five-year running average of felonious killings of police officers in the line of duty And as you can see the most recent period for which we have for which this has been figured from the FBI data Again, it's a solid sort of downward trend but the body armor and sort of more more training and quicker shooting Argument fails also because assaults on police officers are also dropping dramatically So it isn't just that body armor is protecting police officers from the bad guys It's that fewer people are attacking police officers. This is good news. This is great news really It's something that should be celebrated We are giving police officers more scrutiny They're getting there. They're more likely to be sort of held accountable or although, you know A lot of people would say they aren't held accountable clearly enough when it comes to egregious misconduct But all of that criticism is not manifesting as violence against police officers It's actually getting safer and safer and safer to be a police officer. This is again This is something we should be we should be celebrating It's something that we should be telling cops that hey your job is getting safer instead. We're doing the opposite We're telling them that their job is getting more dangerous that they're working in war zones that it's never been more dangerous To be a police officer and what that does is it puts police officers on edge It makes them Sort of more prone to use force more quickly more prone to use lethal force more quickly when you tell someone over and over and over again that they're under siege that they're under attack that they're you know, they're Their beat is their sector and their career is their tour of duty It instills a very sort of militaristic kind of battlefield mindset And it makes things much more volatile. It makes it much less like Makes it a de-escalation of force much more likely in an escalation much Excuse me de-escalation much less likely in an escalation much more likely This is a quote from just a couple of months ago And again, this is the president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police You can see we're telling our people from time to time You put on a uniform from the time you walk into your house your head needs to be on a swivel There's no downtime anymore. No lunch. No relaxing for a few minutes Basically always be on guard all the time because someone's always trying to kill you Now this isn't just bad for the communities that police officers serve. This is bad for police officers themselves You know imagine a job where You're told every day that every interaction with the citizen could be your last That it'll be a struggle for you just to get home, you know safely to your kids at night You can see how this is going to put a lot of officers on edge And how they're going to sort of think much more primitively Be much less likely to sort of try to de-escalate potentially dangerous situations This is a problem, it's a problem for communities and I said it's a problem for police when you compound that and I don't think police critics Sort of I think there's a strong argument to be made sort of from the from a kind of an empathetic perspective of police officers as To why this trend in policing is bad And I think one of them is is this that makes things more dangerous for officers as well But also reactionary policing This idea that you're sort of driving around in your squad car And you're really only getting out and interacting with the community when there's conflict or when someone's under suspicion That's a really miserable work experience, right? If you're only interactions with other human beings over the course of the workday are negative and Some sort of conflict again, that makes it a very very difficult job. And I think we're seeing police policing law enforcement has become sort of this very Psychological psychologically isolated profession Police officers have a very tight sort of bond tighter even the military You see this over and over again sort of there's that there's cops and the families of cops and there's everybody else And this is a very sort of unhealthy trend now I said this is a bit of a diversion, but I think it's it's not a diversion I mean, I think this is a product of police militarization It goes hand-in-hand with it and I think the mindset we talk it's very easy I'm going to show you a lot of scary pictures of military equipment that police are using and it's very easy to sort of Recoil at the site of you know the big guns and the snipers and the tanks and the helicopters But the mindset problem I think is every bit as troubling and every bit is concerning as the equipment itself I think we're you know in addition to arming police's at their soldiers We're telling them basically to think that they're soldiers and that's just as problematic So let me sort of get into the meat of the talk here, and I'm going to show you another video Let me set this up real quick This is a raid in Columbia, Missouri in 2011 The probable cause for this raid the police got an anonymous tip from a neighbor that there was marijuana activity going on in this house They did a trash pole Went to the family's trash. They found what they called seeds and stems, and that's it That's the probable cause they had for for the actions that you're about to see in this video They didn't Do a controlled by then send an informant to try to buy drugs. They didn't do any surveillance basically they got the tip They went and through the trash they found the seeds and stems and this happened next Should warn you you're gonna hear but not see a dog getting shot. So if you're a dog person It's gonna be a little disturbing Courage you to imagine you're asleep in a back bedroom in the house count the number of seconds between the first announcement and The first gunshot There's the first gunshot You're gonna see a seven-year-old get shuffled out of the house here in a minute They weren't aware that there was a child in the house so The police found a small quantity of pot in the bedroom a personal use amount as it turns out pot had been Decriminalized in the city of Columbia So the way the drug laws work they couldn't charge the guy for the pot They'd find a pipe near the pot the pipe had been anywhere else in the house It would have been legal But because it was found near the pot that they couldn't charge him for they could charge him With possession of drug paraphernalia. So we got a two hundred and fifty dollar fine. That was the result of the raid When this raid on the video came out I posted on the reason website It quickly went viral. I think it had close to two million YouTube views within a week And it made international news The reaction I thought was pretty fascinating this It made as I said, it made international news the Columbia Police Department Was overwhelmed with email and phone calls. They ended up having to shut down their their phone lines and their email for a while There was my favorite segment about this video was on Fox News Bill O'Reilly Was on and he brought on denoted police militarization expert Charles Krauthammer That's a joke to talk about the the raid and Krauthammer said something interesting. He said He said don't judge the drug war by what you see in this video These cops are rogue cops. You know, this is way outside the norm This isn't this isn't how you know, we fight the drug war in America and he was a hundred percent wrong this this raid was was very typical from the Relatively light probable cause the fact that it was done at night the shooting of the dog The fact that they didn't know there's a kid inside the relatively little contraband that was found None of those things are particularly unusual in fact The only really unusual thing about this raid is that it was recorded and that the video was released to the public But the reaction was interesting. I've been covering this issue for about five or six years at the time And people were angry by what they saw the video some too angry the Columbia Police Department also got a lot of death threats But it was almost as if Kind of the internet generation was seeing for the first time how the drug wars actually fought in the ground And they were pretty angry at what they saw What you saw in this video that video and what you'll see in this next video happens about a hundred and fifty hundred and eighty times a day in the United States The vast majority of these raids are done like that one. Although, you know, there are variations. Some are done during the day sometimes There are no knock raids that was not going to announce although, you know I would argue from the perspective of someone to sleep inside. There's really not much difference But a hundred fifty hundred eighty times a day this happens in the United States the vast majority of those about seventy five to eighty percent from the data that we have Are done to serve warrants on people suspected of drug crimes and the majority of those are for pot I'm going to show you another video. This one's a little more disturbing This is in Utah this is a raid on someone the police suspected that there was somebody dealing meth from this house The guy that you're gonna see an actual person get shot and killed in this video. His name is Todd Blair He's not the suspect the police were after they were actually after his roommate You're gonna see him come out of the bedroom wielding a golf club The police claim that this gave them justification to kill him I would argue that if a guy comes out of a bedroom carrying a golf club in response to a SWAT raid He probably, you know, didn't know that this was a SWAT team, right? He was probably taken by surprise We just courted sort of the whole point of these tactics in the first place So I'll show you this one real quick. This one's a little shorter So that raid was deemed justified also About three months after that raid this same Task force called the Weber Morgan County and our Tottick narcotics strike force Strike force by the way. I mean the names are telling this this particular unit actually had a An ad they took out on buses in Ogden, Utah Where they were all wearing camouflage and full face masks hiding their faces and they were sort of standing holding their guns pointing them out from from the bus And it said please report any drug use will have your back So again, even their advertisements were not even aimed at sort of drug dealers They were asking for tips on people who just used drugs, but anyway a few months after this particular raid the same task force Stage a very similar raid on a guy named Matthew David Stewart Their evidence for this raid was a tip from an ex-girlfriend that Stewart was growing pot in his basement And actually he was Stewart was an Iraq war veteran suffered from PTSD And according to his family smoke pot to self medicate You can you know believe that or not, but there was no evidence at all that he was actually selling There were no complaints from neighbors. There was no controlled by again. They broke into his house at after sundown Stewart had a gun next to the bed. He grabbed it betting on who you believed either he or the cops started firing first But there was a full-fledged gunfight They ended with one cop Dead to critically injured and Stewart critically injured Stewart was charged with capital murder the intentional killing of a police officer from his hospital bed when he recovered they put him in a prison cell and About a year after the raid he lost a pretty important hearing in his case He was trying to argue that the the search warrant was illegal because it was not enough evidence for this type of raid He lost that hearing and then exporting The guards found him hanging in his jail cell. So you have to dead now Because of this sort of decision to go in Sort of guns blazing in the middle of the night for basically a guy growing pot in his basement So, how do we get here? How do we get to the point where these this kind of thing is happening? 150 180 times per day. This is an old Cold War quote Commonly attributed once in Churchill, although I should admit I can't find proof. He actually said it But it is sort of that captures kind of a sentiment, you know at the time that this is what separates us from You know the iron curtain countries right in free societies and democracies The government doesn't send armed to men in black to your door in the middle of the night I would submit that not only we gotten quite a far away from that general idea Even the knocking at this point is optional given the the ubiquity of the no-knock raid So a lot of you may have heard this term it's commonly sort of misunderstood or at least the the original application of it It's a little bit misunderstood but Posse Comitatus is generally kind of the idea that In free societies we keep a very sort of firm wall between the military and The police and there's a very good reason for this right the military's job is very specific It's to annihilate a foreign enemy to kill people and break things. This is what the military is supposed to do Although there's a good argument that the military does a lot of policing itself lately Police are to protect our rights Their job is the LAPD motto famously said to protect and serve these are two fundamentally different missions to fundamentally different functions It's very dangerous to to conflate the two Norms stamper the old Seattle police chief who I interviewed for the book for my book put a different way But also I think pretty eloquently he said soldiers job is to follow orders a police officer's job is to make decisions Again two very very different jobs But unfortunately because both jobs involve carrying a gun and using force I think a lot of sort of politicians and policymakers think that the skill sets are kind of interchangeable And you see this both sort of with the use of war and martial rhetoric when Policymakers and politicians and other elected leaders are referring to police But you also see it in things like Clinton's troops to cops program, right? Which was very well intentioned and I'm sure benefited a lot of people and no one would argue I think that soldiers there's something soldiers should not be cops under any circumstances But it did sort of rely on this kind of assumption that hey if you're good at soldering You're probably good at policing too, and I think that's a false assumption for a lot of reasons I'll get to this in a minute, but there's actually there's actually I've actually heard the argument fairly persuasively that Soldiers may actually make better police officers than police officers today given the way the military sort of trains them Throughout our country's history we've done a pretty good job of keeping the military out of domestic law enforcement There've been a few exceptions during sort of insurrections and riots and uprisings But for the most part those exceptions were very brief And the military sort of returned to its its stated function The one exception where the military was used sort of in day-to-day policing over an extended period of time Would be reconstruction when the Union Army was basically running the former Confederate States for I guess over a decade now I'd argue that was a Legitimate use of the military in that particular instance, but that was also a very Extraordinary circumstance and hopefully a you know once in our country's history sort of circumstance Otherwise we've done a pretty good job as I said of keeping the military out of domestic law enforcement In the 1980s there was a move by both parties actually to bring the military in to fight the drug war They wanted Marines marching up and down streets conducting drug raids and arrests They wanted navies the Navy intercepting ships And it was pushed by the Reagan administration But there were certainly lots of Democratic leaders that wanted this as well And I think this is a healthy thing the reason why this is one of the few really terrible drug war ideas in the 80s That didn't get passed into law Was due to opposition from the military itself And this is testimony from Thomas Olstead and who lives 1986 This is the number three man at the Pentagon at the time It was really his testimony that convinced Congress that this is a bad road to go down so we're gonna to illustrate kind of the point of how Close cops and soldiers have become How much cops have come to resemble soldiers are gonna play a little game called copper soldier? I'm gonna show you a photo and you're gonna tell me if this is a police officer Or a member of the military all these photos are either members of the military U.S. Military or domestic police officers so here Right very very famous photo from Ferguson. This guy was unarmed The thing about Ferguson was really interesting is when these images started to come out as Professor Moscos pointed out not only did it really kind of trigger a national discussion about this issue That was what long overdue It also triggered a lot of outrage from members of the military themselves I did a lot of cable TV shows around Ferguson It's on social media a lot And you saw a number of complaints from people in the military as these images were coming out one. There was actually complaint widely sort of echoed that in Iraq and in Afghanistan, they weren't nearly as well equipped and armed as some of these cops that they were seeing in Ferguson The other is that in the military you are taught very strict gun discipline You're taught over sort of drummed in your head in the military that you don't point your gun at anything You don't intend to destroy We saw over and over and over again in Ferguson police officers pointing their guns at unarmed peaceful protesters Now this is of course not to say there wasn't any violence during that period there was but there but you know you don't point your gun until the violence happens and Several the police chiefs I interviewed actually for the book who you know I think take a sort of very forward-thinking approach to this talk a lot about protests and how if you Come to a protest expecting violence and confrontation. You're going to get violence and confrontation becomes very self-fulfilling the way to handle protest Chief Jerry Wilson who was the police chief in Washington DC in the 70s said Where there was actually very little? Violence and unrest while there was a lot going on around the country there were protests But they never sort of erupted into violence He would all he said he would have his police officer show up in their blue uniforms as a protest They would have faces they'd have name tags right they weren't these sort of masked Kind of robocops confronting the protesters now He said you'd have to have your right team on hand in case things got out of hand But he would put them on a bus and he'd park the bus a couple streets over so that they were out of view Because in his experience again when you show up expecting violence violence becomes inevitable and I think that's what we saw in Ferguson So copper soldier right still still these are all going to be cops Again, this is from Ferguson. This is the Michigan State Police They posted this to Twitter and got a retweet from the governor of Michigan And then I wrote a piece in the Washington Post about it and they took it down But you know why you need Geely suits and the full full camouflage I mean the camouflage is a thing that always is kind of perplexed me right There's really no reason for police to wear a camouflage One they're very few instances where police are trying to hide To if they are right, they're not raiding the woods right there They're raiding houses or they're working in cities The only reason you wear camouflage are two reasons one is to sort of mimic the military and sort of try to be more like the military the other and and I think that the two kind of go together is that you're getting the stuff from the military and that Tends to be what is happening in a lot of these cases, although certainly not all of them See this was the response to a abortion right to protest in Richmond, Virginia This is a raid in Iowa on a guy who was suspected of credit card fraud The Justification for this kind of force the police said was that the guy not even the suspect but the guy's roommate had a Concealed carry permit with the state of Iowa now think about that for a minute If the guy took went to the trouble to register his gun with the government odds are he's probably not going to be a Threat to kill police officers unless you take him by surprise and he doesn't know their police officers, right? It was there, but this is not the only raid that's been that's going down this way When the police have later said the fact that someone had a registered gun was their their justification for sort of coming in with The SWAT team and it just doesn't make any sense. It actually makes things quite a bit more dangerous This is a SWAT team in Maine. This is an Oregon State trooper So you see I mean the point here is that it's becoming increasingly difficult to to distinguish them I do have a quiz that there are actual members of the military mixed in, you know, but oh this is another this is a raid on a massage parlor in Alabama where Police suspected the women were giving more than massages again Why you have to cover your face and sort of dress up in the full fatigues and carry the gun for these Slight sort of women who were giving extras after the massage. I'm not really sure about So let's talk a little bit more about how we got here This is a cop by the way So so there are two trends that kind of got us here One is the rise of the SWAT team and the other is the rise of the drug war and I'll talk about both of them very quickly Rise the SWAT team the SWAT team is basically the brain shot of this guy. This is Darryl Gates Would go on to become the long-time police chief in Los Angeles Gates in 1960 mid 1960s was the an inspector at LAPD and he was in charge of LAPD's response to the Watts riots The Watts riots were a little bit different than any riots. We had seen up to up until that point There was no sort of single precipitating incident that instigated the riots I mean there was there was a traffic stop But it was more of the product of basically a generation of animosity that have been built up between communities of color in Los Angeles and the administration of Chief William Parker So it wasn't a single issue, you know that that you know See officials could address that would have diminished the anger The other thing is the riots from Gates perspective were particularly sort of Vicious riders would shoot at paramedics when they came to treat people who had been wounded They would shoot at firefighters when they came to put out fires and for Gates this this was particularly thought this was particularly scary because He didn't think that US police forces had The capability to respond to these kinds of emergency situations There'd also been a couple of active shooter situations. There was Charles Whitman at the University of Texas There was also another active shooter That had held up in his house for several hours of the LAPD because LAPD didn't have weapons That were powerful enough to sort of reach the house So Gates thought Well, the Watts rights were to him sort of a kind of urban guerrilla warfare So the LAPD needed a response that was as sort of overwhelming and powerful So he consulted with some Marines at Camp Pendleton nearby and came up with the idea of this very elite Highly trained police unit that could sort of swoop in in violent situations and use overwhelming force and violence to defuse Them as quickly as possible So he calls it the SWAT team the moniker initially stood for special weapons assault teams somebody at LAPD I'm guessing their communications office told him you probably shouldn't have the word assault in the name So they changed it to special weapons and tactics Interestingly he brings this idea to Wayne Parker and Parker shoots him down Parker says no He says this comes too close to breaching this traditional wall between the police and the military Parker dies about a year and a half later And Gates takes the idea to Chief William Redden who gives him the green light and now we have our first SWAT team the first SWAT Raid was in 1968 on a Black Panther holdout in Los Angeles the Black Panthers were You know obviously a political organization But they were a little different than this sort of phantom menace that Fox News tries to scare you about today You know the Black Panthers 1960s did have a body count they had gotten into several gunfights with police officers and so from the public's perspective From the white public's perspective in particular This SWAT raid on a Black Panther compound looked like these heroic cops sort of confronting this group that they were afraid of Logistically the raid was kind of a disaster They're actually lucky that the entire SWAT team wasn't killed Real the really interesting thing about this raid is afterward The Black Panthers who were involved in the gunfight were charged with various crimes up to and including Attempted murder of a police officer And they were acquitted every one of them was acquitted And what they argued was that these tactics the SWAT tactics took them by surprise They had no idea these were police and they were defending themselves Which you know, I think is a perfectly legitimate argument. It's not an argument That's gonna get you very far in court today But there was a time when these tactics were so sort of shocking to people That every one of the Black Panthers involved in the shootout was acquitted But again from a PR standpoint, this was a huge success for Gates And so he gets the green light to continue with the SWAT team and in fact to form a couple more The next kind of big moment in SWAT history comes in absolutely 1973 With the raid on the Symbionnes Liberation Army holdout in Los Angeles The SLA was a domestic terror organization They had kidnapped Patty Hearst the newspaper heiress And the whole country was kind of following where this was gonna go They allegedly brainwashed her she was caught on security video helping rob a sporting goods store I'm sorry. Oh It was a Wells Fargo Bank And so when the FBI and LAPD announced that they had cornered the SLA in this town house in Los Angeles There were national news crews that were sort of ready to go And so you had this now this nationally televised raid and again logistically it was kind of a disaster the the place in the burning to the ground killing everyone inside but again, no LAPD officers were killed no Citizens other than SLA members were killed and so from the public's perspective again. This was a huge success Right. This was these cops confronting this group that a lot of people were legitimately and understandably afraid of This really vaults the SWAT ID into the pop culture So soon we get a SWAT Aaron spelling produces Aaron spelling produces a SWAT TV show becomes the number one show in the country in 1975 we get SWAT board games and lunch boxes and view master sets Little SWAT die-cast SWAT mobiles that your you know son can use to raid his sister's dollhouse So in 1970 we have one SWAT team by 1975 they're about 500 So basically every you know decent size city in the country has one But for the most part SWAT is reserved for these emergency type situations where you're using Overwhelming force and violence to diffuse an already violent scenario. So think active shooters hostage takings bank robberies escaped fugitives They're being used to confront people who are in the process of committing a violent crime right you're trying to save lives So let's talk about the drug war About the same time You have the drug war starting up and I think you can kind of trace the modern drug war to 1968 presidential election Where homicide rate is soaring you've got Overdose deaths are soaring there are riots on TV fairly frequently and so Nixon runs this very cynical campaign of Making sort of crime the centerpiece of his platform If you want to be cynical particularly cynical and probably accurate The goal of the campaign was to make white people afraid of black crime Nixon comes up with a number of really really awful ideas as part of this platform And with one of them I want to talk about for the purposes of this discussion is a no knock raid So up until 1968 the no knock raid Was not a policy no knock raids happened But they happened because the police would get a search warrant. They would show up to the scene They would maybe hear somebody, you know getting beaten inside Maybe they would see somebody reaching for a gun inside. They would decide that they can't you know, they can't knock an announce They have to go in immediately and in afterwards they would have to justify their actions to a judge The various sort of idea of the no knock rate of breaking into somebody's house without knocking announcing first really violates About five or six centuries of case law going back to England It violates this principle called the castle doctrine which today is usually invoked in the gun control debate But has a very broader meeting which is that the home should be a place of peace and sanctuary That the government the king shouldn't be able to send his men into your home Except under the most extreme circumstances and even then They should have to announce themselves and their purpose to give you a chance to come to the door and let them in peacefully and avoid Violence to your person in the destruction of your property No knock raid dispenses with all of that It says the drug war the drug drugs are so such an existential threat We have to do away with all this hold the castle doctrine nonsense and give police the authority to just kick down doors In order to apprehend drug offenders This was not something that police chiefs were asking for this is not something really that Organically grew out of policing at all Rather the whole no knock raid was the brainchild of a 28-year-old Senate staffer named Don Santarelli Who was recruited to the Nixon campaign to come up with wedge issues? to again sort of make white middle-class voters fear Crime in particular black crime Santarelli is still around interviewing for the book. He today is very Mournful for what he did calls it the biggest mistake of his career But there's no mistake about it at the time the no knock raid was not Something that the police said they needed it was something that the politicians invented and then tried to convince the police that they needed Nixon gets elected 1970 we get to no knock raid laws one applies just to federal narcotics agents across the country the other applies just to Washington DC Which you know Congress has jurisdiction over DC so Nixon and Maine DC kind of his test city for these various policies Interestingly Jerry Wilson who I mentioned earlier the police chief at the time refuses to implement the no knock raid. He says this is too aggressive It's too violent And I interviewed him as I said I interviewed him for the book. He said look he said police will give you two reasons Why they have to use no knock raids and drug investigations? The first is they'll say if we not get announced and that it'll give the drug dealer time to get a gun and kill us He said this in his entire career. He never knew drug dealers To go into drug dealing to kill cops right they go into drug dealing to make money Even the most sort of you know vengeful drug killer knows that if you kill a cop You're gonna be lucky to survive the next couple seconds And if you survive that you're gonna be in prison for the rest of your life if you're lucky the other reason they give is That they need to get in Before the suspect has time to dispose of the evidence basically flush it down the toilet And Wilson said well look the whole purpose of the drug war is to get the drugs off the streets, right? Said if they flushed the drugs down the toilet then the drugs are off the streets The only reason why you have to get in before they can flush the drugs is because you want to preserve the evidence in order to Win a conviction and in his estimation You know anyone who had a small enough quantity of drugs that they could be quickly flushed down the toilet It was not a big enough target to justify this extreme of a tactic Um Interestingly crime goes down in DC over the next several years while it goes up in the rest of the country I'm not saying refusal to implement the no-knock rate is why that happened, but I am saying you know, it's curious that DC did not become sort of things actually got better there Nationally it's a very different story Nationally you have federal narcotics agents kicking down doors left and right There was a very sort of aggressive Dehumanization campaign that came from the White House also really kind of dehumanizing drug offenders making them seem like As Miles Ambrose one of Nixon's chief drug warriors put it the very vermin of humanity and so there was Armed with a sort of no-knock raid you had narcotics agents just sort of kicking down doors I love the place they're raiding houses without warrants raiding the wrong house people were getting hurt people were getting killed Congress holds hearings They bring some of these victims forward who testify Very curious thing happens then Congress actually repeals both of the no-knock raid bills Now the no-knock raid is going to come back in the 80s with the vengeance and there's a huge sort of body count behind it But there was actually a time when Congress was capable of some shame and reflection And could admit that maybe they had gone too far with this particular law So you have these two trends going on at the same time the SWAT team the drug war But they're moving parallel to one another right these federal agents are undercover cops right they're in street clothes They're not wearing SWAT gear the SWAT teams are proliferating, but they're being used again primarily in these emergency type situations where SWATs Teams are appropriate. I'm not anti SWAT team. I'm anti abusive SWAT teams You don't really see the convergence of these two issues until the 1980s When the rake administration takes over and really tries to make the drug war metaphor very literal And this is where you start to see SWAT teams primarily used to serve warrants on people suspected of drug crimes The Reagan administration really ramps up the rhetoric 1.8 declared drugs a threat to US national security And they passed two laws are Reagan sort of implements two policies that I think really drive the rise of SWAT teams and Militarization first is he instructs the Pentagon to start informally giving away surplus military equipment to police departments across the country This policy is going to be formalized with an office and a budget in the 1990s, but it really started in the early 80s So we're talking machine guns and tanks and helicopters and armor personnel carriers grenade launchers Stuff designed for use on a battlefield is now being given to local domestic police departments for use on American streets in an American neighborhoods The other thing Reagan does Is he creates a series of federal grants that are tied solely to drug policing not to anything else? So if you send your cops out to arrest suspected rapist or murderer There's no federal money tied to that he's in the mount to arrest a couple of low-level drug offenders There is federal money tied to that and there have actually been Some local newspapers have done investigations and you know We're I've been able to actually put a price on each drug arrest and how much revenue that brings in So think about how these two policies play out if you're a local sheriff or police chief, right? You get a bunch of cool stuff from the Pentagon through this program You start a SWAT team because why not you know everybody else is doing it now You can keep your SWAT team in reserve and wait for one of these emergency sorts of situations where SWAT is appropriate But that's probably never gonna happen in your town or you can start sending your SWAT team out on drug raids And generate revenue for your police department both through these federal grants and also through civil asset forfeiture, which I'm sure most of you have heard of but we don't have time to get into here But SWAT becomes very lucrative and sending SWAT teams out to serve drug warrants becomes very lucrative As I said before Reagan really also ratchets up the rhetoric the dehumanization and so you get all this military gear Military tactics then combined with this idea that you're fighting a war that the people you're fighting against are scum They're less than human and you can see where you sort of set the stage for this very antagonistic Confrontational relationship between police and the communities they serve William Bennett Reagan's education secretary later becomes our first drug czar at one point floated the idea of Suspending habeas corpus for people suspected of drug crimes Another case on Larry King live he said he would have no moral objection to be heading drug dealers on live television Daryl Gates also becomes a very outspoken drug warrior He also on Larry King live at one point said the drug users not even drug dealers But drug users are guilty of treason and should be taken out in the street and shot This is the policy is gonna walk back when his son gets arrested for drug possession twice But so what we've seen in the intervening years is this this rhetoric this war rhetoric gets perpetuated over and over and over Again, it filters down to the sheriffs to the the captain's lieutenants all the way down to the big cop This is just one of many quotes you can find on the book and you can find them all over The newspapers just in the last few months But again, this is a sheriff of Clayton County, Georgia a few years ago And he's saying note that not only is he saying we need to fight the drug war as if it were an actual war But it we need to it can't be a Nambi Pambi war like Vietnam We have to fight it like we're storming the beaches of Normandy and drug offenders or German soldiers These are by the way, these are the people elected him right these are the people he's supposed to be serving But you get this from the politicians as well Former Mayor Bloomberg I like the sound of that said a few years ago that NYPD was the eighth largest army in the world, right? Again seems like a fairly harmless statement, but it does sort of betray a mentality this idea that police are soldiers finding a war Not, you know peace officers who are here to protect our rights What we see as a result of these policies and this explosion in both the number and use of SWAT teams Peter Kraska Criminologist who's been serving SWAT Team or police departments about use of SWAT teams for decades It's found that in late late 70s. There are about 300 SWAT deployments per year in the United States 300 across the entire country by the early 80s. We're up to about 3,000 and by 2005. We needed a follow-up study We're looking at about 50,000 per year Today he estimates were somewhere between 80 and 100,000 Given that the trends that sort of drove the initial jump the laws and the sort of the policies are still in place That seems like a pretty reasonable estimate Let's skip over a couple of these This is the SWAT team at the University of North Carolina Charlotte This is the newest trend we're seeing where Colleges are now forming their own SWAT teams the justification for this is always Virginia Tech Columbine We have to be prepared for the next mass shooting The reality is despite the sort of saturation of coverage we get from these shootings Dewey Cornell Sociology at the University of Virginia has crunched the numbers and estimates the average middle school high school or college can expect to see a Mass shooting about once every seven to eight thousand years So the idea that every campus needs a SWAT team to prevent the next Columbine is pretty absurd Unfortunately, once the SWAT team is up and running there's plenty of drug activity on campus to keep them busy Oh There I remember was gonna say so The other thing to remember is in the case of Columbine and Virginia Tech The SWAT teams actually did show up at the scene In fact, they showed up while the shooting was still going on and they determined it was too dangerous for them to go inside So the idea that we need a SWAT team to sort of apprehend people in these mass shooting situations and believe me I mean, I don't I wouldn't go in when there's a mass shooting going on right with the idea that we need to have this SWAT team to prevent these Situations doesn't really jive with the fact that when these situations have happened a lot of times the SWAT team has not actually engaged the shooter I will say in Newtown, Massachusetts The SWAT team actually did go in as the shooting was happening and the fact that they did they've been credited with probably saving a lot of lives So it's not always the case But that was a case where you had a state police SWAT team at a state police outpost that showed up I still don't think it's an argument of putting a SWAT team on every college campus Yeah, I'm sorry Connecticut. Yeah, it's not Massachusetts So I want to talk about two kind of how much time do I have left About 15 more minutes. Oh, so we're running right at the end. Okay. Just a couple more very quick points Two more milestone moments one comes when 1996 in California legalized medical marijuana up until this point California up until this point the government the police organizations that justified this kind of Force by saying we have to use this kind of force because of the threat We're facing that these are dangerous people that are gonna shoot at us if we try to serve warrants the conventional way There are arguments against that I've already made a couple But at least they're making the argument, right? We have to use this kind of force because it's commensurate with the threat California legalizes medical marijuana You get these businesses that pop up mom and pop shops, you know pot grows pot dispenser use treatment centers Some of them were legitimate some of them weren't but they're all openly operating under state law These were not underground criminal enterprises. Well, how did the federal government respond? They saw they responded by sending federal SWAT teams in to raid these places Well, you literally had cancer and AIDS patients handcuffed to their to their beds with guns pointed at their heads These were not threats, right? The government was not using this kind of violence because of the threat It was facing it was using violence to send a political message These state these these businesses were openly flouting federal law and the federal government was making an example of it It's a very scary thing. I don't think there was a full sort of appreciation at the time of what was going on You know in free societies we give government permission to use force and violence to protect us from threats Government using force and violence to make a political statement is not the sort of thing We normally associate with free societies yet. That's exactly what was happening. What happened. It has been happening ever since The last kind of moment I want to talk about and then I'll take questions Comes in after 2011 the September 11th attacks now you have the Department of Homeland Security handing out grants to police departments across the country to buy new military grade equipment ostensibly to fight terrorism But these grants are going to places like Canyon County, Idaho and Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin Places that aren't likely to succumb to al-Qaeda or ISIS anytime soon And so once they have this gear it again ends up being used in much more routine policing like serving drug warrants That the DHS grants dwarf the Pentagon program. It's not even close This is now the major source of militarization of police in the US is the DHS program There's another sort of aspect of it that's also a little Discouraging and that is that with the Pentagon program. This was surplus equipment right it was sitting in a warehouse somewhere It already been bought and paid for the H grants are going DHS grants are going to buy brand new equipment And so what's happened is you've had this cottage industry that sprung up solely to build this equipment in exchange for these checks from DHS inevitably that industry has Set up lobbying shops in Washington to make sure this program continues and expands and now you have the police industrial complex Kind of the little brother to the military industrial complex. We're just gonna make it much difficult to ever roll any of this back I'll just close by saying I used the term police state in the book or I talk about the term police state I don't you know think we live in a police state if we did I would be in prison for writing this book And you would all probably be arrested for coming to hear me talk But for a lot of people it does feel like a police state right the people who Todd Blair for example his one interaction With police was all compassing all all consuming right it killed him In other cases same with Matthew David Stewart ended up with you know his life being over People who have interactions with police in these kinds of situations are these contexts probably feels a lot like a police state For the rest of us, of course, that you don't want to wait until we actually become one to complain Because at the point that that point. It's of course too late Thank you for inviting me to speak and I'd be happy to take questions so a couple of things I know that some people are here for classes and Some of you may have to leave at 530. That's fine If you can just make your way out quietly those who are able to stay and want to we will go till six I'd like to welcome to the stage right now Steven Handelman who is the director of our Center for Media Crime and Justice at the college and also the host of Criminal Justice Matters a CUNY TV show that he's going to be Interviewing mr. Balco for right now. What we'll do. I think is we'll alternate Q&A We'll give Steve one question and one to the audience and Steve if you want to select the audience questioners I think that that's probably the way to do it or should we wait for folks to Exit I guess well, it's actually not 530 yet, but if you're leaving you're leaving Is this on yeah, so let's um Let's start very quickly for those of you Who haven't yet read Radley's book? I really Really recommended it's in hard. It's in paperback now In the best it's really a troubling book Some of the things that Radley is talking about you're listening to are troubling of course, but if you read the book In the best traditions of journalism he piles fact after fact after fact so much so that you wonder Will we've been all this time? Professor Moscos Mentioned the fact that he wrote it. It was published before Ferguson And he was probably a little bit prescient about it, but obviously this stuff has been happening for the last 10 15 20 years And it's only lately of course that we've more people have come to realize the threat and The things that have been going on so I really I want to open this up to questions I know a lot of you have them, but I thought I would start just by asking Are we so far along that? We got to the point where we really can't walk this back um Before I get to that when I just address what you sort of preface the question with which is the idea that We didn't know about this until recently. I mean This has been going on as you said since about the early 1980s and actually even before that But it's really when it was started being ramped up I think the reason why a lot of us hadn't heard of it until only recently is because it was happening to Mostly to communities that don't have Political power and don't have a voice don't have the ability to sort of get anyone to listen to what was happening I mean, there's a period in the late 80s early 90s where these raids were televised on national news And people loved it like it was I talked about an incident in the book where I think it was the CBS evening news showed this raid on a public housing unit and Extraordinarily violent raid and they found a small quantity of pot that the woman's son teenage son had in his bedroom And they sort of trumpeted as this huge success this raid And the woman's kicked out of public housing under a Clinton administration policy that said basically a zero-pollin's tower seat policy for drugs and public housing You watch it today and it's really alarming and you're like all that violence for pot and they're sort of celebrating at the end of it But that's how it was viewed at the time So I think that you know the idea that sort of a lot of us are just waking up to this issue now is You know indicative of the fact that a lot of us aren't The people who are just waking up now are people who don't belong to communities This has been happening to for a very long time You know it's telling what the one state the first state to pass any kind of SWAT reform bill Whatsoever was Maryland and they only passed that bill after a mayor of a local town was mistakenly rated So it took you know a member of the political class getting affected by this issue for the political class actually to take notice So getting to your question Is it too late to walk this back? No, I mean I don't think it is I've actually been really encouraged by what's happened since Ferguson I think we're seeing a Kind of national, you know, I really hate to turn national discussion, but that is actually what's happening But we're also seeing sort of a consensus forming on this a pan ideological consensus Even before Ferguson, I've pointed out when my book came out. I was really encouraged by fact It was it was warmly received sort of on the left and the right I did an interview a friendly interview with with Glenn Beck and democracy now on the same afternoon So, you know, I do think that people Are kind of waking up in the book I talk about how you know up until only recently I think one reason this issue has been allowed to flourish is that when it's sort of happening to people on the right For instance in the 90s. There were these raids on gun gun to enforce gun laws that were pretty violent When time to be on the right people on the left sort of to look the other way or maybe even were a little gleeful And when it's happening to people sort of lonely so save the left the right looks the other way It is a little bit gleeful and I think what we've seen now is it's gotten so pervasive The fact or you know swat, you know, the federal agencies like the prime of education now has its own tactical team It's happened so pervasive that it's hitting everybody and I think now, you know, it's gotten bad enough that a lot of people are It's happening to enough people or it's happening to enough people who know people That it's possible to build sort of a wide coalition. I do think it's gonna happen happen at the state and local level Where we have seen reform it's happened very on a very local level Congress can do some things they can basically they can stop making it worse if they wanted to As could the White House and we've seen a little bit of symbolic action so far, but nothing really substantive But I really think if you want to change policies sort of in your community at your level I really do think it is possible But it's about you know, sort of getting getting word out and making this an issue in DA's elections and sheriff's elections and mayor elections Okay, so let's open up to a few questions I know there must be a lot of you have questions. Do we have mics and the in the aisles or we need to bring You have a walking mic, please just say your name make your questions brief as you possibly can so we can fit in Unless people my name is Catherine and I my question is basically I mean it seems pretty clear that Police and the justice system in general is becoming privatized almost like a business like capitalism with the for-profit prison system and I mean I think it's pretty clear that that would likely increase Everything that's been happening Yeah, I mean I'm opposed to private prisons. I'm particularly opposed to private probation I'm not sure it's been much of a factor in police militarization because police militarization has been going on for decades I think the privatization trend is is is relatively newer than that I certainly don't think it's helping matters But I also think you know if we if we ended all privatization in the criminal justice system tomorrow We would still have a most of the same problems we have today Now that's that's not a reason to support privatization because of course I as I said I think the incentives are wrong and I think privatizing Components of criminal justice system is probably gonna make things worse But I do think there is a little bit of a danger of when we focus too much on the privatization And we sort of make it the source of all the ill in the criminal justice system There's a tendency to overlook the fact that there are a lot of problems that pre-existent Privatization and that would exist if it were you know ended tomorrow So yeah, I think you're right. I think it makes it does sort of make it worse I think the incentives are all misaligned when you start privatizing, you know prisons probation parole I You know, there's even some talking right there are few small communities even tried privatizing police And I think you know, it's probably going to make things worse, but I also think we need to Also keep focus on the issues that kind of predate privatization. You have a question over there raise your hands Who else has questions? So I'll know in advance where to look go over there next and Thanks for your talk Bradley Jose Vasquez with the anthropology department here at John Jay I just had a question in terms of the incidents of violence particularly with SWAT forces and Veterans being in the military force so that you you know You said it kind of really kicked off in the 60s and 70s when a lot of Vietnam vets were coming back Is there any correlation between? sort of combat service and people serving in these types of units and then a comment just I think Just I haven't read your book yet. So I Take it with a grain of salt, but I feel like in the talk Your dichotomy between military and police. I found a little oversimplified Being a vet myself and just understanding how Military training goes and military police are trained in all of that stuff So if you could say maybe a little bit more about how you see Those those two forces, I guess being somewhat different Well, I mean, I do think the two the two Institutions are kind of converging like I said I think the military is increasingly asked to be sort of a peacemaker or police force and in many parts of the World I think the police are becoming increasing militaries. I think my point is just that the in the ideal They should be two very very different institutions with two very very different functions whether or not that's you know What's actually happening? I think the fact that that isn't happening. I think it's part of the problem I will say that your question about veterans and People military experience in policing is a really interesting one It's one that before I started writing the book. I kind of just assumed that that was part of the problem And I've gotten kind of mixed results when I've talked to police chiefs Particularly sort of the older guys who are concerned about militarization and I asked them this question about veterans and police forces And maybe there's just a sign of sort of how bad things have gotten but a lot of them say The veterans are actually a good influence on the rogue cops because you know in the military There is a kind of ingrained sense of personal responsibility. There's a very strict Rules of engagement even though those rules engagement aren't Aren't applicable or shouldn't be applicable to domestic policing. They are at least familiar with the idea of rules of engagement There are you know after-action reports and so a lot of police chiefs told me they actually found the veterans to be sort of a good influence Now that that was the universal there are other police chiefs who said you know did think it was a problem There's also you know problems with PTSD obviously that you have to screen for so I'm not you know I don't have a Satisfying sort of black or white answer to that. I mean, I think it's kind of it from what I can tell and sort of in my reporting and research It's it's kind of a mixed bag I have heard from Other sort of veterans particularly people who train raid teams in Afghanistan and Iraq That they're sort of repulsed by what they see in some of these SWAT videos that sort of tactically they're they're error-prone and are Basically more likely to make things more dangerous rather more safe and then also just from kind of a human rights perspective I don't know you know how how much you know I for instance I had one guy from who trained right raid teams in Afghanistan who watched the Jose Guarena video which is this raid in Arizona where this veteran was was killed during a drug raid And there's video that and he watched the video and you know He said basically if that happened in the military, you know, every one of those officers would be court-martialed You know, I can only take his word for it I don't know if that's true or not But I have had lots several members of military who sort of work on these teams who have told me after the talk or in emails that You know, they're they're very upset by what they see in some of these SWAT videos Just to follow up on that. I assume a lot of cops have read your book. What's been the reaction you've gotten? Um, I kind of found there's a generational split. I think I've found older cops tend to sort of agree with me I mean, you know, they may have quibbles with certain parts of the book or certain parts of what I say Younger cops I would say pretty pretty uniformly don't like me And don't agree with me There are some exceptions, but but yeah, there's there's definitely kind of a generational split that I've noticed Where'd we got we had a question right out front who is so I'm gonna raise their hand right here before Maybe not. Okay. Let's go to that gentleman over there and then over then over here Dolores. Oh See you do you want to go with it? If we can just get Dolores for a quick question, then we'll go back to you. Sorry Thank you so much for your presentation and for your candor I teach a class called the law and politics of race relations and it was Refreshing to hear you admit that part of this is because there was a desire to make white people afraid of black crime Can you talk to us a little bit about the evidence that supports your claim? Oh Sure, well there I mean there have been interviews with with Nixon administration officials since then where they just sort of flat-out admit it That this was a very kind of cynical political ploy that the I mean it got to the point where they were even before the 1972 election they had evidence that crime was improving in DC pretty dramatically actually and it was the result of a policy that Nixon Supported and funded but didn't want anyone to know he supported and funded which was drug treatment He was there was federally funded drug treatment that he was administering and it was working But that didn't white people didn't want to hear about the federal government spending money on you know black drug addicts So they actually suppressed all of that data until after the election and sort of hyped up the idea of you know That crime was getting worse in DC and you know the media sort of played along very complacently there was a Great New York Times article about you know someone who was sort of walking in the shadow of the Washington Monument You know when they were shot gun down, you know by a drug dealer So, you know, yeah, I mean I think if you read I Think the the best history of the drug war is what called smoke and mirrors by Dan Baum came It's about 20 years old now, but up until you know 94 95 when it was published. It's a really thorough You know Accounting of sort of how how we got here and it really interviewed a lot of officials named Nixon Nixon administration who you know 15 20 years later basically just flat-out admitted to a lot of this stuff Thanks for your talk. I Wanted to ask? Oh, yeah, sure You said that this was at least partly about making whites afraid of black crime But the militarization of the police force and these Localized policing tactics go pretty far back. I mean red some are involved actual police for actual military forces in the US The military denied it that they were directing them that they admitted that they were military forces directed against black neighborhoods We saw this kind of Directed policing against black neighborhoods in the 1960s the 1970s and I know you were going to talk about civil forfeiture But it's a way of economically suppressing these neighborhoods Do you think and I tend to think that partly this is not just creating votes or creating wedge issues? But also economically suppressing certain groups particularly African-American neighborhoods I'm wondering if you're aligning that or if that's something that you see as part of this that this is actually an Active racism and not simply using racism as a means to gain votes Um, I don't I mean I don't know that I I mean I can only sort of Form conclusions based on what I have evidence for and I mean you're you're sort of asking me to divine Motives for this and I don't you know, I don't know. I don't know what the policymakers are thinking I mean, I don't know what people have been thinking on an individual Law enforcement leaders have been thinking on an individual or local level You know, I mean I'm certain. I'm sure that that's that's probably part of it in some areas. I don't know again, I don't All I can say is that these policies and these actions have disproportionately affected communities of color You know, why they why they've been directed that way, you know a law and order type would say well, that's where the crime is, right? But you know, why is that where the crime is and that's that's the other question So again, I don't I can't you know, I don't have evidence as to why it happened. All I can say is that that's how it happened Can I go first? Thank you. I actually came across the river. I'm with the criminal justice department in Jersey City, New Jersey City University So I'm very glad I can come here to listen to this talk. So my question is I'm curious to know your idea about, you know the influence from politics in the Police strategy because we know that a lot of the police practices They're actually driven by federal grants and it's been really powerful and one of the example I see is for example, the school resource officers They've been provided with funds from the federal government and you see it's proliferating across the country So are you aware of any federal efforts that's been put out for either slowing this process down or kind of Controlling it and we're reducing it so we can get toward, you know Another direction because we're aware of the effects and people are starting to talk about it So is there anything that you know about that's from the up top that's out there? first let me just use your question to just emphasize that I The talk itself is kind of hard on individual police officers and clearly there are rogue You know cops out there and and bad cops and good cops, but I really think focusing on cops themselves is sort of It doesn't really sort of help the discussion. I mean this these problems are at a policy level and You know you can feed the best most conscientious people into a bad system loaded with bad incentives And you're going to continue to get bad results, right? The good people are going to leave or they're going to be frustrated And so it really is at the policy level. So I'm glad you've asked this question There hasn't been a lot of activity I mean the Obama administration has Put some limits on the 1033 program. This is the Pentagon program of giving the surplus stuff away It's largely symbolic. It's not really going to make it dent Mostly because in 1033 program isn't really even the source of this equipment anymore Most of us coming from DHS and actually from private donors And from police marches just buying it on buying this stuff on their own You know, there are things Congress could do though these burn grants that are going to fund Multiduristictional drug task forces and these are drug task forces that are funded with with federal money and asset for future money They're basically self-funded and they don't report really to anyone There's no local official that they report to back to in Missouri. There was a drug and drug activists drug legalization activists who tried to FOIA The just any documents from one of these task forces actually all of them across the state And he's got these surreal phone conversations where he'll call them and say, you know I'm trying to submit this records request to the state of Missouri and they'll say well We're a federal agency. We're not subject to state law and then he'll say well then I'm going to submit a FOIA And they'll say well, we're a state agency. We're not subject to FOIA So they straddle this sort of nether region between state and federal which makes them like completely, you know void of any sort of accountability And Congress could end that program tomorrow by ending the burn grant program and basically forcing You know, they might be able to survive on us at forfeiture alone But it would certainly put a huge dent in it other things they could you know, the federal government could do it I mean they could end the federal drug war. Yeah, you know, that would be a huge And in sort of let states make their own drug laws. That's not gonna happen anytime soon but The other thing that you know that Congress could do Police departments get a ton of money from the federal government You could start, you know attaching strings to this to that money you could say all right If you're gonna get money from the federal government then we need we want more transparency We want to know how many police officers fire their weapons and from your department of the course of the year We want to know how many times you deploy your SWAT team what for what was found Whether any shots were fired So you could start at least sort of imposing some transparency I mean part of the problem I found in research in the book is there's just not a lot of data out there Professor Kraska's figures, you know are basically estimates based on surveys Which the most recent of which was done in 2005 the ACLU to study, you know It came out right after the book after my book But you know, it was it was also based on survey data The only states that we've seen we have any kind of hard data was Maryland which passed this bill I talked about earlier in Utah, which just passed the bill last year the Maryland bills already expired It wasn't renewed unfortunately but what we found in Maryland for example is that there were an average of four and a half SWAT deployment SWAT raids per day in the state of Maryland and The vast vast majority of them I think was 80% were for what the FBI or misdemeanors and what the FBI calls non-serious felonies pretty low-level crimes And that's similar to what we found in Utah Also that most of these raids are to serve warrants on people suspect and again I didn't I don't think I didn't kind of time to make this distinction apparent in the main talk, but This switch I mean SWAT teams were intended to to use overwhelming force and violence to diffuse an already violent situation Today they're primarily used serve warrants on people Which means you're creating violence and confrontation. You're breaking into their house in the middle of the night Or there was none before Well, they used to be used to confront someone who was in the process of committing a violent crime You know an active shooter or a hostage-taker today They're primarily used to serve warrants to investigate people who are still suspected of nonviolent consensual crimes I mean, it's a it's a really dramatic use in how this kind of force is used and you know it because it happened Fairly gradually there was never any real sort of discussion or debate over whether this is appropriate and you know, I think There are things that can be done at the federal level Certainly to sort of stop the bleeding and to prevent things from getting worse But as I said before I think most of the reform if it's gonna happen is probably gonna have to come from the bottom up What changes did President Obama make to the DHS grant program for military equipment? There were a number of them What you know, they I think there's a ban now on really serious equipment like grenade launchers and You know machine automatic machine. Actually, I think the military is automatic machine guns 50 caliber anything that should fit to calibrate ammunition You can no longer get from the federal government, which the fact that you once could is absurd And actually one thing they did that I thought was was was it was encouraging was they Prohibited any camouflage gear from being transferred to local police departments Which to me suggests that they understand at least that this is more about more than just the guns and the gear It's it's about the mindset actually, I mean Most of what Obama does has done. I think is sort of symbolic Very little sub substantive in the way of substantive policy that's really gonna change much. However, I mean The symbolism is really big and important. I mean for the first time You know and you know since I've been alive. We have a president who has said You know not that we need The cops to be more aggressive and and you know fight crime harder and take it to the criminals We have a president who's saying for the first time Maybe we've gone too far and maybe we need to sort of reassess and reevaluate and I mean that in itself It's pretty important. I mean it would be great if it resulted in an actual substantive policy But that is it does at least sort of mark a shift kind of in the momentum And you know, we'll see what we can do from there. We have a question right here One up there and then one behind it. Hi Thank you for your talk and I really enjoyed reading your book. I got it about a year ago and Took me a while to read it, but it it's definitely very interesting I'm a community health major and in particularly how it relates to substance use and So this is kind of an ancillary interest of mine, but safe, you know, especially now that we have some you know organizations saying that decriminalization of drugs is a good thing for the public health and Treatment and and stuff like that should be the goal What are these guys gonna do if that ever happens? Yeah, I'll tell you I mean, yeah You know, I mean a SWAT team is sort of a government entity like any other They're always gonna try to find a justification for their existence and You know, there's a fascinating online forum I found a few years ago that has since disappeared into the ether, but There was a news article. It was really really fascinating and terrifying There's a news article about this new sort of fungus. They were developing that could eat cocoa plants, right? And and nothing else. They would just eat cocoa plants and I don't think it I think it was You know somebody probably jumped on the story too early It never never came to fruition, but there was this news story out there and There was this there was this thread online thread where DEA agents could sort of anonymously chat amongst themselves and somebody sent it to them And so somebody had posted this article and they were absolutely terrified of this fungus Right because if all the cocoa plants get eaten up then they don't have jobs anymore, right? And it got to the point where one of them suggested that this is this is why This is why that they should all lobby for very strict abortion laws because If there's no more cocaine, you know, they're gonna have to do something so they can you know to start raiding, you know abortion You know a back alley abortion clinics or whatever. I mean, it was just it was mind-blowing to sort of see the mindset in action Look, I mean I think if the drug war ended tomorrow the federal drug war ended tomorrow If states more states sort of follow the lead of Colorado and Washington, Oregon You know, there's gonna be a lot less use for squad teams now I will say you know that there are there is mission creep going on You know a year before Ferguson there was a story out of St. Louis County where a SWAT team was used to serve an administrative warrant for a white collar crime and The neighbors were very concerned they called the local media Local news station went to the St. Louis Police Department again This is a year before Ferguson said, you know, what's the deal? Why was the SWAT team deployed for this this white collar crime and a spokesman for the St. Louis Police Department responded that in St. Louis County now all Search warrants are served to the SWAT team is it regardless of the crime That's pretty scary stuff and I've since found is not just St. Louis But any felony has now served the SWAT team and a lot of jurisdiction so, you know, they are sort of it is moving beyond the drug war and You know, it's not everywhere, but it's certainly in you know an alarming number of places We're seeing I mean every and about, you know SWAT teams deployed to enforce zoning laws and code violations There have been SWAT raids on fraternities and bars where police suspected there was underage drinking going on So, you know, there is where we are seeing a move move out and beyond the drug war How's it going? Quick question before I get into what I wanted to say the question you asked earlier at the beginning of this Q&A you asked how we can Backtrack if we can go back. Can you just elaborate a little bit more? What exactly you're asking with that question? You want me to answer that? Yes So, I guess what I was asking is can we get back to where we were in not I guess in the 50s or 60s But in the time when police officers acted like police officers and not soldiers. That's what I was really getting at Okay, so I just wanted to address something that I feel has not been really addressed Or at least extensively is the fact that the police are doing exactly what they were designed to do If if you look at the slave cults and how the original police force that were enacted here in the United States were to Look for runaway slaves and bring them back to the plantations If you look at the police force, they're doing exactly what they're designed to do So there's no way we can go back to anything because there's nothing to go back to so what should happen is Not a reform of the police or the criminal justice system, but a reconstruction of it We got to destroy whatever it is now and reconstruct it to a point where it works for the people The way, you know, it's what they want you to believe it was intended to do Another thing I wanted to to to ask is as by the way, I'm a student here at John Jay I Don't hear anything as far as what we can do from a student level As far as making changes what what would you suggest students can do Because I feel like Students are the the largest voice in this country and we have a lot of power that we don't really use the best of our Abilities and I want to know what from you who is a little bit more experienced What would you suggest the students do to make a change not to read help reconstruct the justice system Wow, well, so it's your first point. I think it's very well taken. I mean, I think there is a little bit of a tendency to idealize the past I mean, you know officer friendly is kind of the a vision of the police we have in the 1950s, but you know officer friendly was enforcing, you know segregation laws and you know, there's there's so I yeah, I think there is a danger of that I mean, I think things have gotten worse in a lot of ways I Guess the way I try to explain it is I think the There are a few kind of rogue Officers who kind of act out beyond policy And those who do there are at least some attempts at kind of holding them accountable with internal affairs departments so forth The scary thing is that the the amount of force that is allowed to be used as sort of a matter of policy That's allowed by policy has grown dramatically which which I think is is pretty frightening, but your points well taken I do think we have to be careful about saying There was a time when things were wonderful and we need to go back to that time That's what what students can do. I Mean one thing I recommend that anyone can do is it's Very easy to file an open records request And I think information is is pretty powerful just in and of itself So for example You know your local police department your local sheriff's department You know, there are I think the student press law center actually has a form You can just fill out where you just put in your city your state what you're looking for And they'll generate a Letter that complies that your state opened the records on you can ask How many times has the SWAT team been deployed in the last five years? What was found why were they deployed? You know, we're any shots fired and then you know you can Write it up yourself Publish it somewhere. You can send it to a local journalist. You can say hey look, you know SWAT team was deployed 60 times last year, you know primarily in You know African-american zip codes Only eight of those raids produced any drugs at all and none of them produced felony charges So, you know, why are we sending our SWAT teams? On these extraordinary raids that aren't really actually doing anything aren't turning anything up and terrorizing people for no reason So that's something anybody can do anybody can file an open records request. You don't have to be, you know, the journalist or a member of government You know beyond that You know, it's sort of I guess what tact you want to take you can You know, I think one area where the criminal justice reform movement could be a lot better is is getting politically active I think, you know protest is good and important and consciousness raising but You know DA district attorneys races sheriff's races. Nobody really pays attention to them, which means they're pretty easy to influence If you can give people a reason not to vote for someone You can have a pretty big impact pretty quickly So, you know making these, you know, the last mayor election in New York is a great example. This means stop and frisk Became an issue because people made an issue because activists made an issue and it you know It's a big reason why the Blasio was elected Now, you know, I we could look at the results from that and decide whether that how effective that activism actually was but The point is that you know for the first time in a long time in a major city You know policing was a factor in a mayor election and I think that's because you know people made themselves heard and Forced that to happen and that can happen anywhere. I mean city council races You can ask, you know, what what kind of police chief should we have do we want a aggressive non You know aggressive confrontational sort of war on crime police chief or do we want somebody who? Takes a more community oriented approach to policing, you know force mayoral candidates to talk about this stuff So those are I guess two ideas going forward John Clanick I Like to get your reaction to an argument that I've heard for police Militarizing themselves and it goes something like this the 1033 program Provided us with free equipment if it should happen that in our neighborhood Something occurs that would not have occurred Had had we had the 1033 equipment will be held to blame for it. Yeah, so we better get this Yeah, and I mean you can always sort of make that argument you can say, you know If not for this this would have happened I think the argument would have a lot more merit if that's if those kind of situations is how that equipment was being used primarily if You know, we weren't seeing the the armored personnel carrier rolled out In any situations other than situations where there's like a barricade or shots were fired But the fact is, you know, we see this stuff over and over again used again to serve warrants on people suspected pretty low-level crimes So, you know, I mean, it's it's a hard argument to sort of refute because it seems like every police agency can point to sort of one incident in the last 10 years where if we didn't have this armored personnel carrier You know, who knows what would have happened and counterfactuals are always difficult to sort of argue against but Look, I would just say You know, there was a little town in New Hampshire that fought the acquisition of one of these armored personnel carriers and I remember interviewing One of the women who was fighting against it and she wasn't really activist oriented at all And I said, you know, what what what made you sort of so angry about this that that you would sort of protest against the acquisition of this vehicle And she said she said I don't want to live in a town where I look out the window and I see a military vehicle in front of City Hall She's like that's just not the kind of town I want to be And you know, I mean, I think there are very practical sort of Concerns in terms of public safety and you can point to the sort of trail of bodies that a lot of these raids have led to But I also just think imagery is also important I think, you know, part of it is just kind of what what sort of society do we want to live in do we want to live in one where police officers, you know have faces and name tags and you know where Police blues and engage in sort of the community and a part of the community I do want to live in one where they weigh camouflage and face masks and you know sort of tote huge guns I mean That I think is also a big part of the question that probably gets overlooked a lot Just to follow up on that question and the one before that I mean we often forget that None of this really could have happened to the extent it has without it the enabling that comes from judges and prosecutors and politicians and In order to change that many of them are motivated by just that the fear that if we don't do something We're gonna get knocked when something does happen So it's really it's a systemic issue rather than just the cops are Becoming warriors and I think the only way you counter that is you you provide an incentive for them to do the right thing Right? I mean if a prosecutor or a sheriff knows that if they sign off on You know a warrant that leads to a innocent family getting terrorized that that's gonna hurt them politically Then they're gonna be a hell of a lot more careful before they sign off on those warrants The problem is right now that isn't a factor. They don't that's not something they have to worry about I mean these box trades happen, you know, I wouldn't say they happen all the time, but they happen fairly frequently And there are almost no consequences, you know when they do You know judges are a huge part of this. I mean I write about this in the book. They're they're a judge it There's a been Too few if anybody's looking for academic work. This would be a great topic by the way There's two to two few studies into this But I would love to see somebody do a thorough study into how judges Sort of consider and approve search warrants because my guess is that they get almost no scrutiny at all And what data there is out there suggests that that's the case That you know 99% or more search warrants are probably approved signed off One of the studies that is out there that I cite in the book was in Colorado after a botched raid Killed this guy ish milmaina who's completely in a sense of a father immigrant father of 10 was gunned down in his own home and there was a study done of no knock warrants in Denver and the surrounding county over the past four or five years What they found was that I think it was 95 plus percent of these of the no knock warrants were approved But in Colorado you actually have to police actually have to no knock There's a higher hurdle to get a no knock warrant It's supposed to knock an ounce and they found several cases where the judges Approved a no knock warrant even though the police didn't even ask for one And when they interviewed that the head of the head of judges for for Denver the judge basically said well You know we sign so many warrants every day that like you can't expect us to you know Sort of know where we're signing on the forum every time I mean it was it was such a just sort of callous, you know approached that to this issue that like actually lives hang in the balance You know unfortunately most judges that's not an issue that you know Most judges aren't elected and of those who are you know that never comes up But I would it would be fascinating to see some you know some thorough studies on How judges consider search warrants how many you know what percentage are approved? You know what which if any judges give them any scrutiny at all you have time for one last question Given the issues with accountability and the lack of oversight What are your thoughts on the phenomenon known as swatting where people call in hoax it hoax kidnapings and other such Events intending for the SWAT teams to come in and raid Yeah, I mean in some ways it's just kind of a sign of the times right when every every small town has a SWAT team It becomes much easier to sort of manipulate them But yeah this phenomenon where somebody you know people who are sort of somewhat tech savvy can sort of disguise their phone numbers and You know call there was a case of a prosecutor in Los Angeles County this happened to who sort of a nemesis of mine actually but he Was swatted somebody called LAPD claiming and words able to sort of spoof his phone number and said basically I just something like I just shot my wife And they sent a SWAT team and you know the guy could have been killed from this You know, I don't I think it's it's partly just a sign of how ubiquitous SWAT teams are that it's so easy to do this now You know, you can't really blame the police department for this though because in most cases the the complaint is of some sort of eminent threat eminent danger and you know That's what SWAT teams are for to respond to these sort of active active, you know violent crimes in progress And that's usually how it's framed to them So yeah, it's I mean, it's a troubling phenomenon. You know, I don't know that it's all that common I mean, you know anytime it happens. It's pretty awful because someone could could literally be killed but It's hard to sort of blame. I think the police agency in those cases I want to recommend you once again that you haven't read this book really take a look at it really repays some time And please join me in thanking Radley for a fantastic talk. Thanks for having me out