A Paramilitary Policing Juggernaut - A Paramilitary Policing Juggernaut
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
A Paramilitary Policing Juggernaut 25
A Paramilitary Policing Juggernaut
Stephen Hill and Randall Beger*
Juggernaut: “Anything that draws blind and destructive devotion...”
I
—American Heritage Dictionary, 2005
t is the contention of this article that the United States is currently en-
meshed in a potentially unstoppable global phenomenon that we characterize
as a “paramilitary policing juggernaut.” Two forces drive this juggernaut. The
first is the modern state’s need to counteract the “clandestine dimensions of glo-
balization” (Andreas, 2003: 108). The second is the proclivity of civilian police
forces to adopt militarized forms of policing.
Unless a greater awareness of this phenomenon is generated, the United States
and its allies will travel the same path as that of countries like Israel, which is today
battling the aftereffects of having adopted a militarized ideology of policing in which
the “offender” is treated as an “enemy.” Though neoliberal globalization may be the
primary cause of this phenomenon, U.S. support for the use of paramilitary police
in peacekeeping operations may inadvertently encourage even greater militariza-
tion of policing across the international community. Thus, unless these forces are
controlled, the paramilitary policing juggernaut threatens to run roughshod over
the provision of democratic policing on a global scale.
This article begins by defining the key terms of police “militarism,” “militari-
zation,” and “paramilitary policing.” After elucidating the principal drivers of the
paramilitary policing juggernaut, we examine its effects on democratic policing
in the United States and abroad. Finally, after discussing the inherent difficulties
involved in containing the juggernaut, we offer suggestions for action in this regard.
Militarism, Militarization, and Paramilitary Police
The most prominent scholar on the issue, Peter Kraska (2007: 3), best defines the
distinction between police “militarism” and “militarization.” The former he defines
“in its most basic sense as an ideology...that [stresses] the use of force and threat of
violence as the most appropriate and efficacious means to solve problems,” while
* Stephen M. Hill is Associate Professor of international relations in the Department of Political
Science, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (e-mail: hills@uwec.edu). His research and teaching
interests include paramilitary policing, peacekeeping, and conflict resolution. Randall R. Beger is
Professor of criminal justice in the Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Eau
Claire (e-mail: begerrr@uwec.edu). His research and teaching interests include paramilitary policing,
legal adaptation among refugees, and ex-offender reentry challenges.
Social Justice Vol. 36, No. 1 (2009) 2526 Stephen Hill and Randall Beger
defining the latter as “the implementation of [that] ideology.” Thus, by Kraska’s
definition, militarization is actually a process through which police agencies adopt
an increasingly martial culture, organization, material, and modus operandi.
The term “paramilitary policing” has multiple meanings. It generally refers to
“armed forces of the state that have both military capabilities and police powers”
(Perito, 2004: 46). Although the paramilitary policing juggernaut identified here
primarily concerns the militarization of the police, a second trend has become ap-
parent, that of the “police-ization” of the U.S. military (Kraska, 2007). As these
trends continue to converge, a “paramilitarization” of U.S. security is becoming
increasingly evident.
Paramilitary police are thus the most obvious manifestation of the adoption
of a militarized ideology of policing, or the militarization of the police. The more
militarized the police become, the more they come to resemble their military coun-
terparts, both in ideology and form. Significantly, militarized police or paramilitary
police tend to: (1) deploy as units rather than as individuals; (2) seek training from
military personnel in the use of sophisticated weaponry, special apparel, and equip-
ment; and (3) adopt a system of rank that replicates the structure of the military
(Scobell and Hammitt, 1998).
Though the United States has never had a specific paramilitary police force,
such forces are common in other countries. The most famous of these include the
French Gendarmerie, the Italian Carabinieri, and the Spanish Guardia Civil. These
“gendarmeries,” as they are informally called, generally compose a significant
proportion of each nation’s respective police forces and their militarized nature is
usually manifest in their submission to the authority of their ministries of defense
(Waddington, 1991). In contrast, paramilitary police personnel in Anglo-Saxon
countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia tend to
operate as paramilitary police units (PPUs) under the authority of their respective
civil police organizations. Such PPUs have been known by many different names,
including: Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT), Emergency Response Teams
(ERT), and Special Patrol Groups (SPG). The proliferation of PPUs across the
United States is now the most discernible symptom of a greater malaise affecting
U.S. policing: its militarization.
The Drivers of Paramilitary Policing
Counteracting the Clandestine Effects of Globalization
As Peter Kraska (2007: 1) has documented for over a decade, U.S. citizens
have become “witnesses to a little noticed but nonetheless momentous historical
change—the traditional distinctions between military/police, war/law enforce-
ment, and internal/external security are rapidly blurring.” Though these effects are
empirically evident, the cause remains deeply contested. Two principal schools of
thought exist, which Tony Fitzpatrick (2001: 216–217) calls the “exogenous” andA Paramilitary Policing Juggernaut 27
“endogenous” explanations of globalization. The former “refers to those processes
and flows [of globalization] that exhibit an autonomous, independent reality [on
states]” (p. 216). In this explanation, states are seen primarily as actors reacting
to, and evolving in, a neoliberal economic structure. Globalization is thus an
independent force that is “transforming both the nature of the sovereign state in
the international system and the relations between the two” (Patman, 2006: 982).
Peter Andreas and Richard Price (2001) highlight this process in their article,
“From War Fighting to Crime Fighting: Transforming the American National Se-
curity State,” in which they argue that the traditional functional distinction between
military and police is an artifact of the emergence of a particular kind of state at a
particular period of time. Only by recognizing this, they believe, will scholars be
“better placed to consider the kinds of contemporary developments that may be
harbingers of another kind of state, in another historical epoch, with other forms
of organized violence” (p. 34). Andreas (2003: 84) develops this theme in a later
article, in which he suggests that despite a decline in “the traditional military and
economic functions of borders...the use of border controls to police the clandestine
side of globalization has expanded.” The “clandestine side of globalization” to
which he refers principally involves “clandestine transnational actors (CTAs),”
who are defined as:
nonstate actors who operate across national borders in violation of state
laws and who attempt to evade law enforcement. CTAs are as dramati-
cally varied as their motives. They may be driven by high profits and
market demand (e.g., drug traffickers and migrant smugglers), the desire
to carry out politically or religiously inspired acts of violence (terrorists),
or the search for employment or refuge (the vast majority of unauthor-
ized migrants).... CTAs have existed in one form or another for as long
as states have imposed border controls. What has changed over time are
the organization of CTAs and their methods and speed of cross-border
movement; state laws and the form, intensity, and focus of their enforce-
ment; and the level of public anxiety and policy attention (pp. 78–79).
Thus, for Andreas, geopolitics has not been transcended by globalization,
but merely transformed (p. 108). It is now essentially based on law-enforcement
concerns (p. 80). The end product of this evolution from the “warfare” state to
the “crimefare” state (p. 52), as Andreas and Price have described it, is that the
“coercive apparatus of the state [is being] reconfigured and redeployed...[with a]
growing fusion between law enforcement and national security missions, institu-
tions, strategies, and technologies.... [This is reflected in] both a militarization of
policing and a domestication of soldiering”(2001: 31). Derek Lutterbeck’s (2004,
2005) work documents these effects and chronicles the transformation of European
and North American border policing from a defensive to a more “proactive” or
“military-type approach.” For Lutterbeck (2005: 232), the fact that border security28 Stephen Hill and Randall Beger
gendarmes have witnessed the greatest growth rates in post-Cold War European
law enforcement is understandable given that CTAs “defy the distinction between
internal and external security,” and have thus “led to the expansion of security
forces that are also located across this divide.”
Another contributing factor to the militarization of policing is the tendency of
the state to treat all CTAs as a threat to national security. Consequently, criminal
and social issues such as drug-trafficking, illegal immigration, and organized crime
have been subsumed under the mantle of counterterrorism. Ronald Crelinsten
(1998) believes that this has partly resulted from a practical response to the simi-
larly clandestine nature of CTAs. Since counterterrorist agencies have expertise in
dealing with clandestine organizations, it is sensible for them to police other types
of CTAs (p. 389). This tendency, he believes, stems from the search by the state’s
“agencies of social control” for new enemies after the Cold War. After exaggerat-
ing the threat, they begin to “engage in claims-making activity...that they need
new powers, new jurisdictions, new networks of cooperation, new power-sharing
arrangements, all because of the transnational nature of the threat” (p. 398). As
Crelinsten acknowledges, Didier Bigo identified this behavior as “an attempt at
insecuritization of daily life by security professionals in order to increase a sense
of societal insecurity and thereby justify increased intervention of policing in a
wide variety of areas” (p. 401). The result is what Bigo has called a “militarization
of the societal” through which “the same coercive solutions are proposed for any
number of social problems” (Ibid.). Moreover, for security professionals in post-
Cold War Europe, the distinction between state security and societal security does
not appear to exist (p. 409).
Tony Fitzpatrick (2001) and Jude McCulloch (2007) also stress the state’s con-
struction of threats in response to globalization. Fitzpatrick argues that as “global
capital becomes apparently unmanageable” and “as the polity and the economy detach
after a century of alignment,” the state must give itself something to do. Thus, the
state “socially and discursively constructs threats that only it can address through...
punitive responses to the chaos it has [helped facilitate]” (p. 220). “In short, as the
state can no longer guarantee the well-being of freedom and security in return for
mass loyalty, it preserves its political authority through the juridification, policing,
and active enforcement of citizenship obligations” (p. 221). Similarly, McCulloch
argues that “the construction of a transnational crime threat provides a productive
fiction, establishing a rhetorical platform for the transformation and extension of
the coercive capacities of states” (p. 19). McCulloch appears to bridge the divide
between the “exogenous” and “endogenous” explanations of globalization, the latter
of which suggests that globalization is actually an ideologically driven construct
(Fitzpatrick, 2001: 216). In McCulloch’s account, the construction of transnational
threats is inherently concerned with the maintenance of social, political, and eco-
nomic hierarchies, both within and between states (p. 19). Thus, “the major success
of transnational crime is a progressing neoliberal globalization that amounts to theA Paramilitary Policing Juggernaut 29
internationalization of U.S.-centered, pro-market, anti-welfare, deregulatory poli-
cies” (p. 28). Though the debate between these schools will inevitably continue,
Fitzpatrick is correct to note that the strength of the endogenous explanation is that
it “makes room for processes...that cannot be simply treated as the strategic effects
of ruling elites...[while] the strength of the endogenous explanation is in reminding
us that the global stage has dominant actors” (pp. 216–217).
Despite their differences, both schools agree that the “War on Terrorism” was
not the beginning of this phenomenon, but just another catalyst or excuse for
greater militarization. The militarization of policing due to an amplification of
national security threats has been discernable since at least the late 1970s, when
the “War on Drugs” eventually led Congress to amend the 1878 Posse Comitatus
Act (PCA), which had hitherto maintained a clear delineation between police and
soldiers. By authorizing the transfer of military training and weaponry to federal,
state, and local police agencies, in order to allow the military to assist law enforce-
ment in combating the drug trade, the 1981 Cooperation Act set off a national
trend in law enforcement to adopt military objectives, methods, and equipment.
Following the Oklahoma City bombing incident in 1995, President Bill Clinton
proposed amending the PCA “to allow the military to aid civilian authorities in
investigations involving ‘weapons of mass destruction’” (Hammond, 1997: 954).
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration sought to gut the
PCA to allow the military a wider role in disaster relief efforts (The Progressive,
2005). Stephen Muzzatti (2005) has also documented how, using “successful”
drug task forces as a model, U.S. law-enforcement agencies sought to create Joint
Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) with the FBI throughout the 1990s. By the end
of 2001, there were already close to 100 such units. Thus, in Muzzatti’s opinion,
rather than initiating the process of police militarization, the “War on Terrorism”
has “normalized and accelerated” it.
The Institutional Proclivity of Police Forces Toward Militarized Forms
With the instrumental role played by the state in propagating the militarization
of policing now obvious, it is also true that the paramilitary policing juggernaut
would not be what it is today if such policies had not fallen on fertile ground. The
ease with which U.S. policing has adopted paramilitary policies is also due to an
institutional proclivity to perceive criminal problems through a militarized lens.
This is arguably a result of the nature of police forces in general. As Kraska (2007)
explains, every police force is to some extent militarized. The only question is to
what degree. So, when police forces are encouraged to adopt a greater degree of
militarism, there may be little inertia to overcome.
The flipside of this is that when non-militarized policies are encouraged, there
will be a certain degree of institutional obstructionism. This may become evident
in attempts to circumvent such new policies, or even to interpret them through a
persistent militaristic perspective. For example, Sergio Herzog (2001: 184) notes30 Stephen Hill and Randall Beger
that U.S. policing has been characterized as moving away from a paramilitary model
to one of a less militaristic nature, in particular that of Community Policing (COP),
yet “a simultaneous secondary trend [has existed] towards an even more militarized
model of policing than before, mainly for handling serious crime and public order
disturbances.” Herzog also points to the irony that when under pressure to adopt
the COP strategy, many police commands and officers perceived paramilitary po-
licing units as determining the changes toward COPs because they constituted a
more appropriate means for accomplishing community goals and values (p. 186).
Kraska (2007: 8) asserts that paramilitary policing is not flourishing as a
“backstage phenomenon, [or] operating as a form of resistance, or corrective, to
the immense political pressures [being] put on the American police to adopt [COP]
reforms,” as many have argued. Rather, advocates of paramilitary policing have
interpreted and applied community policing through a “weed and seed” strategy
that requires PPUs to first “weed out undesirables,” before other programs are
introduced to “seed the community.” This helps to explain why the proliferation
of PPUs began to reach astonishing levels, with figures showing approximately
90% of American cities with a population of 50,000 or more having some kind of
PPU by the mid-1990s (twice as many as 10 years earlier) and 70% of cities with
smaller populations possessing one (Kraska and Cubellis, 2004).
Given this proclivity toward militarism, it is not surprising that police agencies
have been keen recipients of equipment and training from the U.S. military (after
the weakening of the PCA) and private companies. Between 1995 and 1997 alone,
the Department of Defense (DoD) donated 1.2 million pieces of military hardware
to domestic police departments, including M-16 assault rifles, grenade launchers,
and armored personnel carriers (Balko, 2006). Sometimes, this cooperation can go
beyond training and equipping, as in the case of the “Waco Compound” in Texas,
when military special operations consultants were brought in to aid in the planning
of the initial and final raids (Kraska, 1999: 143).
Compounding this state of affairs are the interests of a network of private military
firms, security contractors, and gun manufacturers. For example, the now infamous
security company, Blackwater (renamed Xe in 2009), has trained civilian police
officers in the more technical aspects of urban warfare (Scahill, 2007; Chalmers
and Williams, 2007) and organized competitions such as the World SWAT Chal-
lenge of 2004 at its firearms training center in North Carolina (Singer, 2004). Gun
manufacturers like Heckler and Koch have been known to market their submachine
guns at reduced prices to police forces as weapons utilized from the “Gulf War
to the Drug War” (Kraska, 1999: 152). The proclivity toward militarism in the
police may also be a self-interested response to funding opportunities. Since the
U.S. government allocates approximately $12 billion per year to agencies fighting
the “War on Drugs” (not including amounts spent by state and local government),
there can be little surprise that police forces tend to seek their fair share. Federal
grants from the Department of Homeland Security have also enabled state and localA Paramilitary Policing Juggernaut 31
police departments to strengthen the capabilities of existing PPUs or to establish
new ones (Chalmers and Williams, 2007; Savage, 2007).
Finally, an apparent hyper-masculine aesthetic within civilian police organizations
makes the paramilitary style of policing particularly attractive. Images of SWAT
officers clad in military uniforms, while toting machine guns and assault rifles,
have appeared countless times on magazine covers, in movies, television programs,
and on police department websites. Such images can only contribute to a “war-
rior” mindset and culture within PPUs and police forces in general (Weber, 1999).
Undermining Democratic Policing in the United States
According to David H. Bayley (2001: 14), democratic policing is predicated
on four principal norms: (1) that police “must give top operational priority to ser-
vicing the needs of individual citizens and private groups”; (2) that they “must be
accountable to the law rather than the government”; (3) that they should “protect
human rights, especially those that are required for the sort of unfettered political
activity that is the hallmark of democracy”; and (4) that they “should be transpar-
ent in their activities.” By undermining these norms, the paramilitary policing
juggernaut subverts democratic policing in the United States.
Evidence of this predicament is burgeoning. Like the scholars covered above
who discussed the state and globalization, Daryl Meeks (2006: 37) argues that
U.S. policing is increasingly moving toward a “military operational model” that
encourages “street-level officers, as well as law enforcement executives, to adopt
the view that the inner-city environment is a war-zone and the enemy is the urban
underclass.” This militarization is occurring despite official statistics showing that
violent crime rates are decreasing.
Muzzatti (2005: 120) has also documented that U.S. policing is inappropriately
criminalizing social problems and conflating “the exercise of constitutionally
protected rights with crime, insurrection, and terrorism.” For example, he notes
that in preparing for the potential Y2K disaster, U.S. law enforcement defined the
public as the “enemy.” Similarly, he believes that through legislation such as the
PATRIOT Act and the Homeland Security Act, the “War on Terrorism” has become
a “catchall category” used by the police to criminalize “a wide range of nonviolent
political and social activists committed to progressive social change” (p. 120).
There is, perhaps, no better example of this phenomenon than the “Battle in
Seattle” of 1999. The corrupting effects militarization can have on Bayley’s norms
of democratic policing were made amply apparent in a subsequent American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) report that condemned the Seattle police for transforming
a protest over the World Trade Organization into a combat zone. Drawing on some
500 eyewitness accounts, the ACLU report painted a disturbing picture of police
taking extreme measures against protesters and non-participants. The following
are but a representative sampling from that report:32 Stephen Hill and Randall Beger
• The Seattle Police Department used massive amounts of teargas against
crowds even when such use was not necessary to protect public safety
and the safety of officers.
• Rubber bullets were used against people who posed no threat. They were
also used against largely nonviolent crowds and against individuals who
were engaged in passive resistance or were fleeing.
• Police officers were not making split-second decisions in emergency
situations. They simply used their weapons on people who offended them
or caught their attention. Officers also used clubs, teargas, pepper spray,
and rubber bullets against individual bystanders in downtown Seattle.
(In Out of Control: Seattle’s Flawed Response to Protests Against the
World Trade Organization, June 2000, ACLU of Washington.)
This kind of behavior is most prevalent among police teams trained in the use
of military tactics, equipment, and maneuvers. As Balko (2006: 1) has shown, such
PPUs increasingly “subject nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly
targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleep-
ing.” And these pernicious effects are becoming more common, given that PPU
“call outs” have begun to reach into virtually every aspect of civic life, including
breaking up fights on school property, conducting raids on illegal gambling opera-
tions, crowd control duties, and saturation patrolling of suspected “crime-prone”
minority neighborhoods (Ibid.).
Finally, the paramilitary policing juggernaut is likely to crush the complimen-
tary norms of democratic policing: transparency and accountability. Militarization
and the use of PPUs are always accompanied by arguments for greater security
and secrecy to protect police operations. For example, the street-skills training
of PPUs is usually deemed to be an internal matter not subject to citizen input or
external review. Kraska and Cubellis (2004) have warned that further militariza-
tion of the police may encourage an explicit “means justifies the ends” mentality
in which due process and justice are subverted to “necessity and expediency,” and
miscarriages of justice hidden under “secrecy.” This lack of transparency makes
it difficult to detect and investigate police corruption. Nathan Pino and Michael
Wiatrowski (2006) have found that paramilitarism in the police leads to increased
complaints and lawsuits, lower levels of support among the populace, and can
impede creative ideas.
Undermining Democratic Policing Abroad
Since all states operating in the globalized neoliberal economic market are subject
to the same pressures, a similar militarization of their policing should be expected.
Indeed, at least in regions where studies have been conducted, such as Western
Europe and Australia, this is already evident (McCulloch, 2001; Lutterbeck, 2005,A Paramilitary Policing Juggernaut 33
2004). However, there is reason to believe that U.S. support for foreign paramilitary
police forces and PPUs abroad is intensifying this process.
Following its fateful involvement in Vietnam, Congress tried to end U.S. sup-
port for foreign police forces in 1974 through Sec. 660 of the Foreign Assistance
Act (FAA). However, subsequent administrations circumvented the act to continue
their support for anticommunist governments, particularly in Latin America and the
Caribbean (Hills, 2006). By 1986, Congress had become sufficiently comfortable
with such regional assistance that it passed Sec. 534 of the FAA, which established
the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program to provide
training to foreign police forces in the context of Administration of Justice programs
administered by the Agency for International Development (Perito, 2002: 18–19).
Though its remit was limited in its formative years, the invasion of Panama exposed
inadequacies in the institutional capacity to train foreign police forces, spurring
Congress to expand the program in 1990 to include the reconstitution of “civilian
police authority and capability” in nations “emerging from instability.”
U.S. involvement in peacekeeping operations throughout the 1990s, especially
in the former Yugoslavia, led to greater use of paramilitary police units to close the
“security gap”—the gray area between the appropriate roles for unarmed civilian
police and the use of military forces (Hill, Beger, and Zanetti, 2007). By February
2000, the Clinton administration was sufficiently convinced of the utility of these
forces to release its Presidential Decision Directive 71 on “strengthening criminal
justice systems in support of U.S. peace operations,” which advocated “that U.N.
missions make use of a suitable mix of military and/or paramilitary forces to ac-
complish the assigned tasks of any new peace operation [because] such forces
bring specialized skills, such as crowd control capabilities, that are not common to
traditional military or civilian police organizations.” These forces, it argued, were
“most effective when deployed as units rather than individuals” (PDD 71, 2000).
To increase the supply of paramilitary police forces for these missions, at their
Sea Island Summit in June 2004 the G8 leaders called for the creation of “an in-
ternational training center that would serve as a Center of Excellence to provide
training and skills for peace support operations” (Dziedzic and Stark, 2006). Thus,
in March 2005 the Center of Excellence for Stability Police Units (COESPU) was
established in Vicenza, Italy, to “serve as a doctrinal hub for stability policing and
to provide training for future SPU commanders, mid-grade officers, and NCOs”
(Dziedzic and Stark, 2006). In September 2005, an agreement formalizing U.S.
support for COESPU was signed with Italy. The center hopes to train 3,000 stabil-
ity police trainers by 2010 and countries with personnel attending include India,
Jordan, Kenya, and Senegal. In December 2004, five European Union countries
with indigenous paramilitary police forces (France, Italy, Portugal, The Netherlands,
and Spain) also announced the formation of a European Gendarmerie Force (EGF
or EUROGENDFOR), which is now available for crisis management operations34 Stephen Hill and Randall Beger
under the authority of the E.U., U.N., NATO, the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe, or ad hoc coalitions (Dziedzic and Stark, 2006).
Though many believe the creation of a multinational gendarmerie force for use
in peace-support missions is a welcome development, the danger remains that it
could create even more incentives to militarize policing on an international scale.
It is telling, for example, that although designed to deal only with events unsuited
to heavily armed military forces or to lightly armed civilian police (the security
gap), of the 7,160 police personnel deployed in U.N. peace-support operations at
the end of 2005, over half were already paramilitary police, deployed in 27 units.
The reasons for this sea change are understandable. Formed Police Units (FPU),
as they are called when deployed under U.N. command, are better trained than
typical civilian police volunteers, are logistically independent, and are ready to
deploy at short notice. They are also significantly cheaper to deploy and maintain
in the field (Dziedzic and Stark, 2006).
However, the inherent dangers of this new reliance on paramilitary police are
obvious. As Alice Hills (2001: 92) has warned, “in post-conflict societies in which
the presence of paramilitary forces was historically synonymous with political re-
pression, the use of paramilitary units could [represent] a militarization of policing
that may create more problems than it solves, sending the wrong signals in processes
of reconciliation and democratization.” Thus, it is essential that adequate public
debate take place concerning the efficacy of using such forces in these operations,
which are designed to restore law and order and to (re)build democratic institu-
tions. As in the United States, however, transparency and accountability may not
be a characteristic of the paramilitary policing juggernaut abroad. Article 29.3 of
the treaty establishing the EGF gives immunity to its personnel, so that “from a
criminal law point of view...there may be insufficient legal safeguards and insuf-
ficient remedies should it or any individual operative act illegally in the conduct
of a mission” (Santoro, 2008: 70).
Controlling the Growth of Paramilitary Policing
This article, in highlighting the cause and effects of the paramilitary policing
juggernaut, does not argue against any role for paramilitary policing. This is true
for U.S. domestic policing and for the provision of policing in international peace-
keeping operations. In certain circumstances, such as hostage crises or terrorist
attacks, the use of PPUs can be a perfectly calibrated response to grave threats that
lie outside the competence of regular police officers. Equally, the limited use of
paramilitary units in peacekeeping operations can help to close the security gap and
thus reduce the likelihood of an excessive use of force in the provision of public
security. Nevertheless, the principal argument here remains that a combination
of ignorance and uncritical acceptance of police militarization has increasingly
undermined democratic policing.A Paramilitary Policing Juggernaut 35
If left unchecked, the danger exists that the militarization of policing will reach
a point of no return or, at least, a point at which it is very difficult to return. The
Israeli National Police (INP) represents perhaps the best example. Sergio Herzog
(2001: 188), having studied the militarized ideology of policing adopted by the
INP—in which the “offender” is perceived as an “enemy who only understands the
language of force”— concludes that such approaches tend “to induce ‘pre-violence
behavior,’ namely, exaggerated suspicion, rude and inconsiderate conduct, resort to
unreasonable and unnecessary measures, unwillingness to explain or to listen, and
acceptance of violence for its own sake.” Herzog also proffers an equally prescient
warning about the difficulties of demilitarizing the police. Despite attempts to
demilitarize the INP since 1994, he notes, “the prevailing police subculture [still]
boasts a strong esprit de corps (as in the army), which serves to perpetuate alienation
and separation from the public. An ‘us against them’ stand still prevails regarding
anyone who ‘isn’t a cop,’ particularly minorities (Palestinians and Israeli Arabs)
or groups identified as ‘typical criminal offenders’” (p. 188). Not surprisingly,
Herzog concludes from the Israeli experience that “the blurring of limits between
the military and police force has always been disadvantageous for the public, whom
the latter is supposed to serve” (pp. 205–206).
Controlling the paramilitary policing juggernaut before it reaches such a level is
thus essential to the future of democratic policing in the United States and overseas.
This will not be easy since powerful forces drive police militarization. Opportuni-
ties to slow its momentum and perhaps establish a footing for its eventual reversal
do exist. For instance, to “put teeth” into the Posse Comitatus Act, Bloeser (2003:
30) proposes the following measures:
• Increase the penalty provision to allow a maximum of 10 years in prison
and mandatory restitution to the victim, with required prison time if
death or significant physical injury results.
• Allow criminal liability for those up the chain of command if intentional
failure to supervise contributed to the [PCA] violation.
• Require military personnel, perhaps by anonymous identification
number, to report PCA violations directly to an independent office at the
Department of Justice and provide protection to reporting individuals
against retribution.
Another effective measure might be to add language to the PCA that would
prohibit the transfer of surplus military hardware to civilian law enforcement and
police training for use in military tactics and maneuvers (Bennett, 2006; Kealy, 2003).
Greater public awareness will be essential to overcoming ignorance and con-
trolling the spread of the paramilitary policing juggernaut. Academics can help to
inform the public and policymakers about its dangers and foster policy discussions.
For example, scholars at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, conducted a
three-year study in which more than 1,000 persons were interviewed or participated36 Stephen Hill and Randall Beger
in an online survey. Subjects in the study included persons from culturally diverse
communities and police officers. Based on this strong empirical evidence, the final
report noted that the Australian government’s approach to terrorism was “to a large
extent informed by counter-insurgency measures implemented in places such as
Northern Ireland and Israel and to a lesser extent South Africa and Algeria during
the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s” (Pickering et al., 2007: 27). It concluded that “hard
power” paramilitary police tactics to combat terrorism were making conditions
worse by alienating members of ethnically diverse groups from law enforcement.
This case is not unique. Aggressive police tactics in the U.S. “War on Drugs”
have reinforced negative public attitudes toward law enforcement, especially
among people living in disadvantaged neighborhoods, with no decline in drug use
(Nunn, 2002; Small, 2001). Lawmakers in several U.S. states have responded to
an emerging backlash against the “War on Drugs” by introducing bills to repeal
or modify civil forfeiture laws that law enforcement has used to seize personal
property and other assets (frequently with no arrest) believed to have been used
during the commission of a criminal act. Critics assert that law enforcement agen-
cies have used asset forfeiture revenues to equip and send PPUs on “no-knock”
drug raids, often conducted on the “wrong” premises (Shannon, 2007). According
to studies by the Rand Corporation, among others, treatment is 10 times more cost
effective than interdiction for reducing cocaine use in the United States (Rydell
and Everingham, 1994). Based on these findings, ballot initiatives in California,
Arizona, and Washington, D.C., have helped to retard the militarization of policing
by calling for substance abusing offenders to be redirected into treatment programs
(Drug Policy Alliance, 2002).
Evidence of escalating violence, together with the threat of lawsuits, has per-
suaded a growing number of civilian police organizations in cities such as Albu-
querque, New Mexico, and Dinuba, California, to dismantle their PPUs, or at least
to curtail their reach (Jordon, 2005; Balko, 2006). Police executives in other cities
have removed PPUs from drug raids and suicide calls (Weber, 1999).
In terms of international peacekeeping, the long-term effects of greater reliance
on FPUs must be assessed more seriously than is currently the case. For practical
and political reasons, an organization such as the United Nations (which perpetu-
ally struggles to attract well trained and adequately funded civilian police) cannot
refuse to deploy FPUs in current peacekeeping operations. However, an ongoing
analysis of the potential effects of FPUs on indigenous police forces must be
undertaken to produce greater confidence in the international community’s ever-
increasing reliance on them.
Demilitarizing policing in the incremental and multidimensional manner outlined
above provides the only hope for controlling the paramilitary policing juggernaut
in a neoliberal, globalizing world. Through cooperation, academics, lawyers, non-
governmental organizations, and the general public can synergistically analyze theA Paramilitary Policing Juggernaut 37
rationale for, and process of, police militarization in policies such as the “War on
Terrorism” and “War on Drugs.”
Conclusion
This article seeks mainly to raise awareness of an unchecked paramilitary po-
licing juggernaut that poses a threat to the provision of democratic policing in the
United States and abroad. The longer the process continues, the more difficult it
becomes to reverse it. This has been the experience of the Israeli National Police
and, unless the paramilitary policing juggernaut is controlled, U.S. policing is likely
to travel along the same path. Significantly, the United States has exacerbated the
effects of this juggernaut throughout the international community by supporting
paramilitary police forces in Europe and the deployment of FPUs in international
peacekeeping operations. Adequate public discussion must take place on federal
policies toward police militarization at home and abroad.
Though public awareness is essential, the tools and strategies to control the
juggernaut must be developed before the process becomes irreversible. This article
has suggested preliminary steps that might slow the juggernaut while the debate
over militarization proceeds. These include, at a minimum, a strengthening of the
1878 Posse Comitatus Act, repeal of forfeiture laws, and an ongoing analysis of
the long-term effects of FPUs on the civilian nature of indigenous police forces in
countries that have experienced peacekeeping operations.
REFERENCES
American Civil Liberties Union
2000 Out of Control: Seattle’s Flawed Response to Protests Against the World Trade
Organization. At www.aclu-wa.org/ISSUES/police/WTO.Report.html.
Andreas, Peter
2003 “Redrawing the Line: Borders and Security in the Twenty-First Century.” Inter-
national Security 28,2: 78–111.
Andreas, Peter and Richard Price
2001 “From War Fighting to Crime Fighting: Transforming the American National
Security State.” International Studies Review 3,3: 31–51.
Balko, Radley
2006 Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America. At www.cato.org/
pubs/wtpapers//balko2006.
Bayley, David H.
2001 Democratizing the Police Abroad: What to Do and How to Do It. Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice.
Bennett, Dan
2006 “Comment: The Domestic Role of the Military in America: Why Modifying or
Repealing the Posse Comitatus Act Would Be a Mistake.” Lewis and Clark Law
Review 10: 935–953.38 Stephen Hill and Randall Beger
Bloeser, Charles
2003 “A Statute in Need of Teeth: Revising the Posse Comitatus Act After 9/11.” The
Federal Lawyer 50,4: 24–30.
Bock, Alan
2005 “Posse Comitatus: Remembering Why.” At www.antiwar.com/
block/?articleid=7468.
Brown, Ben
2007 “Community Policing in Post-September 11 America: A Comment on the Con-
cept of Community-Oriented Counterterrorism.” Police Practice and Research
8,3: 239–251.
Chalmers, Mike and Lee Williams
2007 “Federal Money Burning Holes in Delaware Pockets.” The News Journal-Wilm-
ington, Delaware (May 6): A1.
Crelinsten, Ronald D.
1998 “The Discourse and Practice of Counter-Terrorism in Liberal Democracies.” The
Australian Journal of Politics and History 25: 389–413.
Drug Policy Alliance
2002 “19 out of 24 Victories for Drug Policy Reform.” At www.drugpolicy.Org/li-
brary/factsheets/19of24.cfm.
Dziedzic, Michael and Christine Stark (Col.)
2006 “Bridging the Public Security Gap: The Role of the Center of Excellence for
Stability Police Units in Contemporary Peace Operations.” USIPeace Briefing.
At www.usip.org.
Fitzpatrick, Tony
2001 “New Agendas for Social Policy and Criminology: Globalization, Urbanism
and the Emerging Post-Social Security State.” Social Policy and Administration
35,2: 212–229.
Giroux, Henry
2004 “War on Terror: The Militarizing of Public Space and Culture in the United
States.” Third Text 18,4: 211–221.
Haggerty, Kevin D. and Richard B. Ericson
2004 “The Military Technostructures of Policing.” The Canadian Review of Policing
Research. At http: //icaap.org/index.php/crpr/article/view/25/22.
Hammond, Matthew Carlton
1997 “Note: The Posse Comitatus Act: A Principle in Need of Renewal.” Washington
University Law Quarterly 75: 953–989.
Herzog, Sergio
2001 “Militarization and Demilitarization Processes in the Israeli and American Police
Forces: Organizational and Social Aspects.” Policing and Society 11: 181–208.
Hill, Stephen M., Randall R. Beger, and John M. Zanetti, II
2007 “Plugging the Security Gap or Springing a Leak: Questioning the Growth of
Paramilitary Policing in U.S. Domestic and Foreign Policy.” Democracy and
Security 3: 301–321.
Hills, Alice
2006 “Trojan Horse? USAID, Counter-terrorism and Africa’s Police.” Third World
Quarterly 27,4: 629–643.
2001 “The Inherent Limits of Military Forces in Peacekeeping Operations.” Interna-
tional Peacekeeping 8,3: 79–98.
Jefferson, Tony
1993 “Pondering Paramilitarism: A Question of Standpoint.” British Journal of Crimi-
nology 33,3: 374–381.A Paramilitary Policing Juggernaut 39
Jordan, Tracy
2005 “Report: Dissolve Easton’s SWAT Unit.” At www.mcall.com/news/.../All.polic-
ereport0709,0,1078573.story.
Kealy, Sean J.
2003 “Reexamining the Posse Comitatus Act: Toward a Right to Civil Law Enforce-
ment.” Yale Journal of International Law 4: 165–195.
Kraska, Peter B.
2007 “Militarization and Policing—Its Relevance to 21st Century Police.” Policing 1:
1–13.
1999 “Questioning the Militarization of U.S. Police: Critical Versus Advocacy Schol-
arship.” Policing and Society 9: 141–155.
Kraska, Peter B. and Louis J. Cubellis
2004 “Militarizing Mayberry and Beyond: Making Sense of American Paramilitary
Policing.” Steven G. Brandl and David E. Barlow (eds.), The Police in America:
Classic and Contemporary Readings. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thompson.
Lustick, Ian S.
2007 “Fractured Fairy Tale: The War on Terror and the Emperor’s New Clothes.”
Minnesota Journal of International Law 1: 335–357.
Lutterbeck, Derek
2005 “Blurring the Dividing Line: The Convergence of Internal and External Security
in Western Europe.” European Security 14,2: 231–253.
2004 “Between the Police and Military: The New Security Agenda and the Rise of
Gendarmeries.” Cooperation and Conflict 39,1: 45–68.
Lyons, William
2002 “Partnerships, Information and Public Safety: Community Policing in Time of
Terror.” Policing: A International Journal of Police Strategies and Management
25,3: 530–542.
McCulloch, Jude
2007 “Transnational Crime as Productive Fiction.” Social Justice 34,2: 19–32.
2001 Blue Army: Paramilitary Policing in Australia. Carlton: Melbourne University
Press.
Meeks, Daryl
2006 “Police Militarization in Urban Areas: The Obscure War Against the Under-
class.” The Black Scholar 35,4: 33–41.
Monbiot, George
2009 “G20 Videos Won’t Change the Met.” At www.guardian.co.uk/commentis-
free/2009/apr/20/police-g20-protests.
Murphy, Kristina, Lyn Hinds, and Jenny Fleming
2008 “Encouraging Public Cooperation and Support for Police.” Policing and Society
18,2: 136–155.
Muzzatti, Stephen L.
2005 “The Police, the Public, and the Post-Liberal Politics of Fear: Paramilitary Polic-
ing Post-9/11.” James F. Hodgson and Catherine Orban (eds.), Public Policing
in the 21st Century: Issues and Dilemmas in the U.S. and Canada. New York:
Criminal Justice Press.
Nunn, Kenneth B.
2002 “Race, Crime and the Pool of Surplus Criminality: Or Why the War on Drugs
Was a War on Blacks.” The Journal of Gender, Race and Justice 6: 381–429.
Patman, Robert G.
2006 “Globalization, the New U.S. Exceptionalism and the War on Terror.” Third
World Quarterly 27,6: 963–986.40 Stephen Hill and Randall Beger
PDD 71
2000 Summary of Presidential Decision Directive 71. See the Federation of American
Scientists website: www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd/pdd-71–4.htm.
Perito, Robert M.
2004 Where Is the Lone Ranger When We Need Him: America’s Search for a Post-
Conflict Security Force. Washington, D.C.: USIP Press.
2002 The American Experience with Police in Peace Operations. Washington, D.C.:
The Canadian Peacekeeping Press.
Pickering, Sharon, David Wright-Neville, Jude McCulloch, and Peter Lintini
2007 Counter-Terrorism Policing and Culturally Diverse Communities. At www.abc.
net.au/4corners/content/2008/alienation/report.
Pino, Nathan W. and Michael D. Wiatrowski
2006 “Assessing the Obstacles.” Nathan W. Pino and Michael D. Wiatrowski (eds.),
Democratic Policing in Transnational and Developing Countries. Ashgate:
Ashgate Publishers.
The Progressive
2005 “Comment: Preserve Posse Comitatus.” At www.progessive.org/archive.
Rappert, Brian
1999 “Assessing Technologies of Political Control.” Journal of Peace Research 36,6:
741–750.
Rydell, Peter and Susan Everingham
1994 Controlling Cocaine: Supply Versus Demand Programs. At www.Rand/org/pub-
lications/MR/MR331/_.
Santoro, Silvia
2008 “European Gendarmerie Force.” Journal of European Criminal Law 2,3: 67–74.
Savage, Charlie
2007 “U.S. Doles out Millions for Street Cameras: Local Efforts Raise Privacy
Alarms.” At www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/08/12us.
Scahill, Jeremy
2007 Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. New York:
Nation Books, Avalon Publishing.
Scobell, Peter B. and Brad Hammitt
1998 “Goons, Gunmen, and Gendarmerie: Toward a Reconceptualization of Paramili-
tary Formations.” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 26,2: 214–227.
Shannon, Rex M.
2007 “Nightmare on Your Street: Moving Towards Justice for Innocent Victims of
Wrong-Premises SWAT Raids.” Mississippi Law Journal 77: 669–697.
Singer, Peter W.
2004 “Warriors for Hire in Iraq.” At www.brookings.edu/articles/2004/0415defenseind
ustry_singer.aspx.
Small, Deborah
2001 “The War on Drugs Is a War on Racial Justice.” Social Research 68,3: 896–203.
Waddington, P.A.J.
1991 The Strong Arm of the Law: Armed and Public Order Policing. Oxford: Claren-
don.
Weber, Diane Cecilia
1999 Warrior Cops: The Ominous Growth of Paramilitarism in American Police
Departments. At www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp50.pdf.You can also read
