Tanks in Horse Country
Posted on November 22, 2011 at 11.56 pm
The header of the website for Lenco Armored Vehicles features two waving American flags and the slogan “Protecting our nation’s defenders.” A little lower down the page, we learn the Lenco is the country’s top manufacturer of “tactical armored security vehicles.” A quick glance at the product pictures offers clarification: They basically make tanks, but with car tires. And at the top of their customer list? LAPD and NYPD. Lenco builds tanks…for the police.
In an article about the growing use of tank vehicles by local police forces, MSNBC quotes a sheriff whose Virginia location isn’t too far from my own: “If somebody looks out and sees a Ford Crown Victoria sitting out there, they may not take you very seriously,” Warren County, Va., Sheriff Daniel T. McEathron told a local newspaper in October, “but if they look out the window and see this thing sitting there, they’re going to know you’re serious.” Added another officer: “It’s big enough to go through a house if it had to.”
As our military stays busy policing the world, our police here at home are increasingly militarized. |
I should note, by the way, that Warren County’s population is a grand total of 37,575 with only one actual town. That town is the “canoe capital of Virginia” and has a stadium paid for by Bing Crosby. I’ve been there — it’s basically somewhere between apple and horse country. It is not, in short, a seething metropolis of crime. And yet the police have tanks.
The Sheriff’s expressed desire to be taken seriously by suspects unintentionally hits on a larger point: Why is the tank so much more intimidating than the Crown Vic if you look out the window to see it in your yard? It’s not just that the tank is enormous and could run over your house; it’s that you have nothing remotely comparable in size or strength. There is no contest here. Some police don’t even bother with Lenco’s 75% tank/25% truck combo; in Tampa, they go all tank.
Along with the general trend of police militarization and brutality, this growing gap between what the police can and may do and the significantly more limited abilities and permissions afforded to the common plebeian has lately been brought into the general discourse by the appalling actions taken against protesters of the Occupy movement, particularly in New York City and Oakland, CA. As Salon commented:
If you’re an ordinary citizen, and you get caught on video dousing people with noxious gas like [NYPD officers] did, you get summarily locked up. And if you’re young and black, expect to receive the law’s full wrath. But when you’re an NYPD commanding officer…you get essentially a free pass.
Of course, that the law applies differently to those with badges has long since been a foregone conclusion in the United States. Imagine, for instance, the consequences I’d experience if I made 95-year old cancer patients remove their adult diapers for “screening.”
All that to say: If anyone still doubts that the line between our military and police is not increasingly blurred, let them doubt no more. As our military stays busy policing the world, our police here at home are increasingly militarized. And the line between these two parts of government is a dangerous one to blur indeed.
Hello Bonnie,
I always do enjoy reading your posts as I am a regular follower on your Tumblr blog.
Now while I do follow much of the beliefs of being a libertarian, I do also serve and function as a member of the military and IC which means that I view the world through multiple lenses. At some point, I would find it enjoyable and necessary to the overall YAL movement for us to begin at least an understanding into the reasons that the IC/LE and military communities do things the way they do. From the eventual education process, we can later draw up practical plans for the drawdown that we need for this country in terms of our foreign policy.
I would like to give my 2 cents on the increase in military style training and equipment procurement of the law enforcement community here in the United States.
Take for example the street gangs in the US that populate major cities and surrounding areas. The second amendment is not going to be enough to get rid of these guys in the short run or long run.
They have simply become too large for a 1990s equipped police force to overtake as well as too big for a handful more of private citizens walking around with a 9mm to prevent shootings, murder, rape, etc.
They are engraved into the prison system where many of these gang members and leadership can control things from behind the scenes.
The overcrowding of the prison system has little to nothing to do about it other than the drug war which we know has been fueling gang activity and funding. Even if we do take away the drug war and see a change in the dynamics of the gangs, they’re not going away.
In the process of the federal, local and state law enforcement groups trying to do what they can to combat them; the gangs have increased their arsenal sizes as well as involvement with the drug trafficking organizations and in turn working with terrorist organizations as well. It was apparent with Qaddafis involvement with the Black P. Stones gang which is a member gang of the People’s Nation gang alliance in Chicago.
The main point is that while I agree it is ridiculous for some of these smaller departments to be getting ahold of APCs (armored personnel carriers, not tanks) there is justification for many of the larger organizations to have the capability to keep their personnel safe if they have to go serve a search warrant in the ghetto part of town where police need heavy escorts just because people shoot at them on sight (not because of brutality but because of gang territory and other possessions). I’ve known of plenty of officers who have gotten gunned down just because they were in the wrong part of the city.
Hey, Nathan.
Thanks for reading and for your thoughtful response! I definitely agree with you about the need for increased understanding of the workings of the military within the libertarian movement to better be able to propose specific strategies for a different foreign policy.
I understand the desire for safety in legitimately dangerous situations (i.e. not among unarmed — if somewhat vandalism-inclined — protesters). That said, as a friend of mine pointed out on Twitter last night, if we further and further blur the equipment distinctions between the police and the military, what’s the point of the Posse Comitatus Act? After all, it’s not without reason that it’s in place: The machinery and mindset of war which the military necessarily possesses for purposes of defense are grossly unfit for use on civilian populations, including our own.
That said, let me know what you think about this: As a hypothetical, let’s say the drug war is over and, as a result, violent crime has significantly decreased. Nonetheless, there would still no doubt be some dangerous areas in big cities. Why is it necessary for police to have the trappings of war to effectively protect themselves rather than, say, bulletproofed cars, vest, helmets, etc.? Why the leap to tanks? Because in the inner city environment — hardly the rough terrain we typically see tanks negotiating — I don’t see advantages to a tank over bulletproof car except psychologically. Moreover, you mentioned escalation: Isn’t this the police equivalent of getting a nuke? Could it help but drive the worst criminals to get anti-tank weaponry?
But back to the psychological issue: Perhaps one of my greatest concerns is that tanks in the streets becomes “normal” to us. Yes, I know, it sounds like libertarian paranoia, but it’s not like we haven’t been under martial law before, most notably during the Civil War and WWII. If tanks are seen as normal, if ever more militarized police are seen as normal (especially in backwaters like Warren County where there isn’t even close to a good reason for it), how much of a jump is it to just bring in the actual military?
Well, with the issue of Posse Comitatus I do recall the reasoning behind its original implementation. It was originally due to the fact that the military was protecting former slaves in the south during the Reconstruction Era since the rest of the southern population wasn’t very keen on equal rights and the law enforcement there wasn’t willing to provide protection. So in origin Posse Comitatus was implemented due to racism. The politicians who pushed the act through Congress wanted the military out of the way so they could pursue their agendas without there being someone to protect former slaves. Really today, the military is perceived more positively than the law enforcement community overall.
The blurring of distinctions between military and law enforcement today could just really be a signal to how large the defense and security industry has grown along with the change in tactics for combating both insurgencies and crime. Obviously much of the war in Afghanistan has been changed to more of a law enforcement style of tactics since we are seeing more arrests of insurgents by special forces than killing of insurgents. Based on my experiences and perspectives here in Afghanistan, I have come to realize how much that has been developed here to combat the insurgency that we can replicate for law enforcement purposes back home in the US.
These are the facts, much of today’s issues in national security, law enforcement and foreign policy are simply reaching a point where things are blending together where the only difference is the scope of responsibility and legal limits to capabilities. It’s majorly a part of the principle we use in the business, “Don’t try to reinvent the wheel.” If a tactic or piece of equipment works in a situation that is similar to another, then it gets replicated and adapted if needed.
One of the unfortunate facts that the law enforcement community has come to realization of, is that with the advancement of technology so do the criminals advance in their tactics, intelligence, etc. So LE have to advance their tactics as well.
You also need to understand the LE mentality of say a regular patrol cop or even a member of a SWAT team. In conjunction with the advancement of criminal tactics, LE doesn’t want to risk having to provide a funeral within a week of an operation or even having them get bed ridden for the rest of their life. They typically take care of their own because of the risk that they take when they put the uniform on. It is that fear of death or getting maimed that makes them assholes when they pull someone over or serve a search warrant on someones house. They really don’t know what to expect even in a small hometown environment. A known cop killer could be riding in a stolen car that they just pulled over. The unfortunate thing is that humans are egotistical when it comes to some things. Your example of the Tampa Department is an example of very egotistical law enforcement leadership wanting to show off their new toys at a very public event.
I see it that as long as humanity lives in large cities, there will always be crime and there will always be people who go on power trips. This was a show of force to the general public of their capabilities. And honestly, the very same Tampa Armored Personnel Carrier would be a necessity for a worse case scenario since Tampa is still a big city which means that there are wide open spaces for terrain to be dangerous for the police.
The worse case scenario could be a group of terrorists or criminals taking hostages in a hotel or highrise building with a full 360 degree defensive perimeter to take potshots at anyone trying to approach the building. That’s where the APC would be needed since they’re made to take a beating from all angles of fire. They would need to get in and out safely both their personnel and any hostages.
The need for these APCs also comes into the recent addition of IEDs to criminal tactics, you can make a powerful enough IED to flip over a cop car (armored or not) with homemade explosives. Plenty of people die just because of loose objects going flying inside of a vehicle flipping over. A coffee mug in your hand can quickly knock you in the head, cause trauma and bleeding then potential of death beyond that.
Okay, rant done for the most part. Basically, law enforcement and military learn tactics from each other most often. What works for one works for another in turn. I think what the issue is mostly that people are still used to the world before 9/11, before technology took another leap because of increased demand in the security and defense industry. Understand that the military is a completely different world than the civilian world, and it continues to move in the direction of separation. Less than .45% of the American population has ever worn a uniform especially with the all volunteer force. Things that are from the military will most always seem fantasized or alien to the civilian population. Things that are unknown and intimidating are simply going to be that. With the way that technology is advancing, things are simply going to continue in that direction regardless.
I’m sure that people looked at jet engine aircraft with some amount of fear when the military started using them, now they’re in use for regular civilian flights.
I don’t believe that these are things that should be feared but rather an opportunity to gain understanding of the way that the world works. It is scary to look at, and people use technology for the wrong reasons many times but they also use them for the right reasons just as many times. The Tampa APC may be used for intimidation now, but later it will very likely be used to save someone’s life with the way the world works.
Dear Bonnie and Nathan,
The militarization of formerly civilian security forces is real and, unfortunately, inevitable. But…. it has less to do with law enforcement and crime than with the fact that in our current monetary system government gradually but inevitably becomes the largest actor in the economy.
As the diminishing marginal productivity of debt ensures that the currency eventually loses purchasing power, government must inherently compensate for said loss. So that as the purchasing power approaches 0 (since the inception of this iteration of the US$ in 1913, the currency has lost 97% of its purchasing power) in order to ensure its own existence, government must simultaneously create problems and deploy the means to appear to want to solve same.
I am sure you have both read the Washington Post report on “Secret America”? As I am sure you’ve read about the militarization of the Boy Scouts? Did you miss or, worse still, did you not think anything of repatriating a combat brigade from a theater of war in order to deploy it at home for “civilian” operations…
http://guidoromero.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/unusual-troop-movements/
Did you not find it at all incongruous that a quintessentially civilian entity as the Department of Education presumbably is should be gearing up for urban combat too…
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/education-secretary-duncan/ed-department-buying-27-shotgu.html
And, of course, if you gear up to do something then at some point you will inevitably try your hand at doing what you are gearing up to do if for no other reason than you need to practice your new found skills… But if you are new at doing something, a degree of fuck-ups is inevitable…
http://www.news10.net/news/article/141108/2/Questions-surround-feds-raid-of-Stockton-home
… but since practice does make perfect, I would expect lots more snafus…
…
Lest we forget what happens when government becomes the largest actor in the economy:
http://guidoromero.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/when-government-becomes-the-largest-actor-in-the-economy/
Prisons are overpopulated. Yes. But there is a reason why they are. And operation Fast and Furious that, incidentally, is not being picked up by the press, proves yet again and beyond the shadow of a doubt, that government is the single largest instigator of drug crime. It is not a coincidence that since the West has taken over Afghanistan opium production as quadrupled (UN figures so it is probably much higher).
Everything revolves around our monetary system.
Yeah, and Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to free some slaves and also instituted a police state, ignoring habeas corpus rights. The fact that a good policy is done by the same people who do bad stuff doesn’t make that policy bad — after all, we don’t claim that freeing slaves is bad because in America it was associated with the abrogation of other important rights. Posse Comitatus has some bad stuff in its history — no argument there — but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good principle, as I’ll explain further down.
It’s great that law enforcement tactics are being used in Afghanistan — terrorists should be treated as the network of criminals they are rather than a war enemy. Hopefully this strategy will result in fewer civilian deaths…
…but just because police tactics can help the military and military tactics and technology can help the police doesn’t mean that military tactics are appropriate for use on a civilian population. It’s not a matter of reinventing the wheel, because these ought to be two entirely different machines. Military rule is not compatible with a free society, and militarized police are a stepping stone toward a militarized police state.
We know that if the government is given the capability to do something bad it will eventually do it. For instance, if it’s allowed to regulate the marketplace, picking winners and losers, that will happen. If it’s allowed to go to war willy-nilly, that too will eventually happen. If it’s allowed to have military equipment for use against the civilian population at its discretion under the excuse of safety, it will eventually do so. And the key phrase there is “at its discretion” — perhaps the least trustworthy discretion around.
I understand the desire for safety. But maybe if you’re really that scared of death or injury, you shouldn’t join the police force. The job of the police is ostensibly to serve and protect the civilian population, not primarily themselves.
As I said before, just because something can work doesn’t mean it should be done. In Singapore you can be fined $300 for throwing a candy wrapper on the ground. I’m sure the law works and they have very clean streets, but that doesn’t make it ok. Again, militarized police may be effective, but they aren’t appropriate for a free society.
…And speaking of a free society, most of the dangerous situations law enforcement officers are placed in today are directly or indirectly due to the drug war. Even the government admits the incredible correlation between gang violence and drugs. Keeping drugs illegal and thus fostering the violence the illegal drug trade produces is not a legitimate reason for the police to use military tactics and technology. It’s an artificial situation tailor made for the unwarranted expansion of government.
Guido — Hi, and thanks for reading! Your point about the government manufacturing problems to solve is pretty much what I’m arguing is going on with the drug war at this point. It’s a very convenient excuse for a lot of dastardly stuff.
Hello Bonnie, Thank you for the reply. Though we are on the same page, I wished to point out where the ultimate cause of what we are living today resides.
Very few people including professionals in the finance and banking industry are aware of what our monetary system is or what the consequences of opting for one system over another are. Academic economic theory has been thoroughly subverted in the past 100 years. This has been a deliberate strategy so that study of the monetary system has been all but eliminated from academia in favor of policies that are as expedient for the existence of government (the notion that debt is capital and the liberal spending presumably afforded by inflation) as they are predatory upon society. Certainly, that vital tool of the nation state that is first in line to enforce and, eventually, take the brunt of government policy and ambition, is wholly unaware of the implications of opting for one monetary system over another preferring by nature to abide by principles of patriotism and loyalty all the while making the ultimate sacrifice silently and diligently.
There is nothing the comes upstream of the monetary system. Everything, all policies and all actions, inscribe themselves within the confines of the monetary system so that the monetary system is THE ultimate cause of any and all government decision.
But inflation conforms to the law of diminishing marginal utility.
Having opted to impose upon society this particular variety of monetary system and as debt begins to lose its ostensible “beneficial” effect over the expansion of GDP, (here the classical bell curve applies whereby there is only so much productive capital that can be generated by increasing debt – once over the apex of the curve, the efficiency of debt declines), government must necessarily interfere in the economy at ever greater and deeper degrees. Thus, in this monetary system it is a mathematical truism that government must eventually become the largest actor in the economy. As this dynamic develops, expanding government must inherently and necessarily justify its own existence.
The monetary system is THE primary tool of government policy in the pursuit of the attainment of the goals as identified by each state’s Raison d’Etat. Everything else, is a proximate cause.
[...] to police a small county of 37,575 people and only one small town? No problem. “If somebody looks out and sees a Ford Crown Victoria sitting out there, they may not take [...]