Police departments don’t need military armament to operate

We are a nation of specialists.

We don’t expect our general practitioner to be able to perform heart surgery on us.

We don’t expect a philosophy professor to be able to take over a physics class.

We wouldn’t hire a roofer to replace a driveway.

We’ve come to recognize – if not to know instinctively – that different jobs require different skills, different equipment, different training and even different mindsets.

Government, too, has become specialized, following a road that was set by the Founders and reinforced by Congress over centuries.

Thus we have an Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard – all answering ultimately to a civilian secretary of defense and to the elected commander-in-chief – and charged with protecting the nation from external threats.

States have national guards to deal with internal uprisings and respond to emergencies that threaten the populace.

We have an FBI to investigate crimes and threats within our borders and a CIA to operate outside the United States. States have their own highway patrols or police forces. And counties, cities, villages and townships have their police departments.

It may not be a perfect system, and often there are duplications and inefficiencies.

But it is a system that encourages each entity to concentrate on its own responsibilities, to provide specialized attention where it is needed most.

It is, in short, a system that recognizes that there is a difference in both training and equipment between the family doctor and a heart surgeon, a difference between a combat-trained soldier and a cop on the beat.

Blurring of the line

The relatively recent blurring of the line between soldier and police officer should cause concern, both for elected officials and for the people who elect them.

Elected officials should recognize that equipping local police forces with military equipment, uniforms and armament is not the best use of scant local resources. Such equipment requires extensive training and expensive upkeep. Devoting time and money to that end means there is less time and money available for training and outfitting local officers to do the more important work of connecting with and policing their communities.

But in recent years, the lure of “free stuff” from the military surplus stocks of the federal government has become too great for some police departments to resist.

Every department, it seems, wants its own armored personnel carrier, its own armory stocked with military weapons and its own wardrobe of camouflaged or ninja-black uniforms.

In the ’60s TV sent a message that Andy Taylor, who didn’t even carry a gun while policing Mayberry, was the real police officer and trigger-happy Barney Fife was the buffoon. A few decades later, TV fueled the SWAT phenomenon, which sent a message that any department without a military-style rapid-response team wasn’t a department worthy of respect.

In recent years, it has become increasingly easy for local police departments to outfit themselves at little or no initial cost because of the enormous quantity of surplus equipment amassed during the nation’s war on terror.

An Associated Press story two years ago showed the ridiculous lengths to which some police departments went to get goodies from the federal government. The AP found that a disproportionate share of the $4.2 billion worth of property distributed since 1990 was obtained by police departments and sheriff’s offices in rural areas with few officers and little crime.

And so we come to applaud President Barack Obama for his order earlier this week reining in military equipment give-aways.

Police departments won’t be getting any more armored vehicles that run on a tracked system instead of wheels, weaponized aircraft or vehicles, firearms or ammunition of .50-caliber or higher, grenade launchers, bayonets or camouflage uniforms.

Humvees

Other equipment will come under tighter control, including wheeled armored vehicles like Humvees, manned aircraft, drones, specialized firearms, explosives, battering rams and riot batons, helmets and shields. The AP reports that starting in October, police will have to get approval from their city council, mayor or some other local governing body to obtain it, provide a persuasive explanation of why it is needed and have more training and data collection on the use of the equipment.

Let’s hope this is a turning point from which police departments begin moving back toward the motto that appears on many police cruisers, “to protect and serve,” and away from a model that encourages police departments to think of themselves as a kind of occupying military force.