Radley Balko's "Rise of the Warrior Cop" book review
The book Rise of the Warrior Cop, The Militarization of America's Police Forces, published by Public Affairs and scheduled for release on July 9, 2013, starts at the beginning, taking us from the days when Americans policed themselves to the birth of the occupation of policing. While I was well aware of Radley's persistence and acumen at chronicling current events, I never realized what a thorough researcher he is. The history of policing is remarkably impressive.
It's critical to appreciate the history of policing, to understand that what we now see as normal and inescapable wasn't always the case. For most of our history, this country did not have a group of people with shields and guns who wandered the streets ordering people about. The fall from grace, If you perceive it as I do, came fast and hard.
American attitudes toward police were built on images of Andy Griffith, strolling the streets of Mayberry to save random cats and, an allusion Radley employs, serving as guest umpire in the occasional baseball game. Good. Honest, One of us. This was the police officer upon whom we relied, and the one we pictured as we told our children that they were here to help us; they were our friend.
Starting in the 1960's, Radley takes us decade by decade down the road to perdition. As he wears his libertarian politics on his sleeve, it came as no surprise that he gave the politics of law enforcement special scrutiny. His hatred of Richard Nixon for manipulating the silent majority's hatred of hippies and counterculture into the War on Drugs is palpable. On the other hand, there is no reluctance to blame Bill Clinton for his deceitful abuse of the COPS program, and its infusion of billions into the drug war a few decades later.
Radley is a surprisingly good story teller, generally low key in recounting tales of individual harm interspersed with broad influences that gave rise to putting heavy weaponry into the hands of children. There are times when the narrative gets a bit breathless, trying hard to capture the confluence of political deceit on the part of some and ignorance on the part of others. Then again, the alternative would be to simply call out the liars and morons for their contribution to a state of affairs that served to put a naïve American public at grave risk for such puny and transitory purposes as winning an election.
What came as quite a surprise was Radley's discussion of the start of SWAT, special weapons and tactics (notably not including the word "attack" because, well, that might upset people). His description is not merely calm, but borders on sympathetic. It reflects the balance of his approach, which is quite shocking in light of what we all know to come at the end of the story.
Radley pays homage to those within law enforcement who recognized the developing schism between police and the public that would lead us to blur the line between soldier fighting a foreign enemy on the battlefield and police fighting a domestic enemy on the streets of America, using the same clothing, weapons and attitudes. The book has its heroes, though they pale in comparison to such moral scolds as William Bennett.
At the outset, Radley tries to develop a theme based on the symbolic Third Amendment, the quartering of soldiers, to show our tradition of not allowing a standing army in our midst to trump the sanctity of our Castles. He returns to that theme from time to time, bringing it full circle toward the end. The theme seemed strained at times, and not really necessary to appreciate how government intrusion into our lives and homes has worked its harm.
As anyone who has even a passing familiarity with Radley's efforts at chronicling wrong door raids and puppycide would expect, the book infuses individual tales of horror throughout, with a special pounding at the end of story after story of what becomes of a police presence more concerned with using the toys in hand than showing restraint, thoughtfulness, concern for the fact that the people on the other end of their bullets are their fellow Americans. Radley does not disappoint.
While the book, not surprisingly, provides an in depth look at the political forces and machinery at work in creating the militarization of police, it doesn't dwell too much on the role of the cop on the street. Sure, there is the machismo and the great fun of wearing body armor and carrying assault weapons when serving a warrant on a medical marijuana user, but the focus is more macro than micro.
It's unclear what makes a guy who is otherwise a fine neighbor, a good father, a great fan of baseball perhaps, into a mindless killer of his fellow citizens. Wearing a black jumpsuit and Kevlar helmet isn't enough of an explanation for pulling the trigger on his assault rifle pointed at the head of a child. Even with Washington dumping tons of surplus military equipment on police departments with three cops, all of whom want to be on the SWAT team so they can be just as cool as the big city guys, there is a gap in what happens in the head of a police officer who looks into the eyes of another man's child and decides that he's going to end his life. How did that happen?
It's impossible to fathom how any reader of SJ won't read this book immediately. It's a critical history of how we got from there to here, from Officer Friendly to the Lenco Bearcat in a town with no crime. And why, once the toys are in hand, they must be used. And they are used against us. But this book needs to go much farther, as there is no person, not even a child, who hopes to survive life in modern America who doesn't need to know that this nation wasn't always at the mercy of an overly weaponized, seemingly omnipotent force.
http://blog.simplejustice.us/2013/06/18/book-review-radley-balkos-rise-of-the-warrior-cop.aspx