By Bill Mefford
One of the clearest visuals of the past few days since the murder of George Floyd has been of local police departments gearing up like military units and directing their impatience and wrath towards not just those committing violence, but peaceful protesters, bystanders, and even the media. Local police departments have become a military presence even while they are charged to protect and serve.
As a recent article in the Washington Post shows, militarizing the police began in 1965 immediately following the August riots in Watts, outside of Los Angeles. The bill was signed into law on September 22, barely a month after the riots resulted in 34 deaths, mostly at the hands of police, and over 3400 arrests. The Watts riots began after an incident of racial profiling and brutality against Blacks. Sound familiar? This recipe has been responsible for practically every urban disturbance since that time.
Although a report later showed that the riots were the result poor schools, lack of meaningful employment, and a dearth of affordable housing, the response of Congress – in less than a month’s time – was to militarize the police. When the only tool you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. LBJ’s War on Crime morphed into Nixon’s War on Drugs and every few years it seems politicians buttered their bread by arming local police. The pace of the militarization of police picked up under George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush especially. donald trump has likewise followed suit.
Of course, along with Johnson’s War on Crime and Nixon’s War on Drugs (that continues to this day), racism has persisted. Laws have been passed that have resulted in mass incarceration that has exploded the number of people impacted by the criminal justice system, particularly in regards to locking up people of color at a dramatically higher clip than white people who commit the same offense. Mass incarceration and an increased militarization of local police departments has created the distrust and isolation people of color in urban contexts are forced to navigate. Naturally, distrust and frustration, mixed with feelings of helplessness of a rigged justice system boil over and riots are the result.
Yet, one constant is the aftermath when the same root problems are to blame: poor schooling, lack of meaningful employment, and unaffordable housing. Yet, historically, Congress responds to urban violence with more militarization while virtually ignoring the root problems. These same root problems have still not been effectively addressed and don’t hold your breath for this administration to address them either. The trump administration sees public schools as the enemy. They brag about higher employment before the COVID-19 pandemic even though many people working these jobs have to work two or more to make ends meet. And affordable housing in many parts of the country is a joke.
But trump alone is not to blame. The truth is that almost every administration since Johnson has passed laws that militarize the police. This never-ending wave of militarism only serves to detach the police from their communities they are actually charged to protect and serve.
Thanks to local and national groups recognizing the deadly combination of systemic racism within law enforcement (and society in general) along with military weaponry, they advocated the Obama administration to curb the acquisitions of military hardware by local police departments. As a result, the Obama administration issued a comprehensive report in 2014 calling for, among other things, greater public oversight, transparency of what weaponry police actually have, and better training. Of course, to no one’s surprise, this was one of the many policies of the Obama administration that was reversed by the cruel and incompetent trump administration.
When the racism that is this country’s original sin is combined with military weaponry you get what we have seen these past few days: a militarized police uprising against all protesters regardless of whether they are gathering peacefully or not. But lest we forget, the engine that fuels this combination is capitalism, plain and simple. Johnson’s bill that began the militarization of local police came just five short years following President Eisenhower’s final address to the country where he warned the greatest danger this nation faced was in the formation of a military industrial complex. Eisenhower was right then and he is right now. The same defense contractors and war profiteering corporations that have made the massive defense budget more untouchable than biblical canon are the same culprits making money off of these riots. They love what they are seeing because they know the more violence means the more military hardware they will sell.
The root problems of violence be damned.
When the only tool you own is a hammer everything looks like a nail and guess who is selling the hammers?