Paul Szoldra’s Objection to the Militarization of American Policing Forces Mirrors My Own Ex Cop’s Perspective — Serve and Protect Has Given Way to Kill and Occupy

© Peter Free

 

13 August 2014

 

 

Killing freedom from the inside

 

Ex-Marine Paul Szoldra wrote — in reaction to police efforts at crowd control, after one of their number shot and killed unarmed Michael Brown in Fulton, Missouri:

 

 

In photos taken on Monday, we are shown a heavily armed SWAT team.

 

They have short-barreled 5.56-mm rifles based on the military M4 carbine, with scopes that can accurately hit a target out to 500 meters. On their side they carry pistols. On their front, over their body armor, they carry at least four to six extra magazines, loaded with 30 rounds each.

 

And they stand in front of a massive uparmored truck called a Bearcat, similar in look to a mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle, or as the troops who rode in them call it, the MRAP.

 

When did this become OK? When did "protect and serve" turn into "us versus them"?

 

If there's one thing I learned in Afghanistan, it's this: You can't win someone's heart and mind when you are pointing a rifle at their chest.

 

© 2014 Paul Szoldra, This Is The Terrifying Result Of The Militarization Of Police, Business Insider (12 August 2014)

 

 

That’s an ex-Marine’s perspective — here is my ex-cop’s

 

Paul Szoldra is correct.  Militarizing American police is madness.

 

I spent a long time in law enforcement.  From the 1970s into the 90s.  Back when we thought that:

 

(a) deadly force was a very last resort

 

and

 

(b) preserving the community’s willingness to talk to us on street corners and shops outweighed the macho element that military control brings with it.

 

My department even prohibited mirrored sunglasses for fear that their intimidation factor would prevent the public from easily relating to us.

 

As a street cop, detective, and eventually watch commander, I agreed with this service orientation.  We were there to help, not to intimidate and oppress.  Certainly not to kill.  We wanted anyone to believe they could turn to one of us for assistance, even when that help “stooped” to getting someone into their locked car, corralling a loose cow, or finding a confused person’s vehicle in a parking lot.

 

 

Service builds trust.  Militarization destroys it.  Nobody wants an army of occupation in their midst.

 

 

The moral? — A cop with only a small handgun (or two) recognizes his or her place in the scheme of human-sized things

 

A police officer equipped like someone patrolling 2004 Fallujah — and with the equivalent of a tank on call — is unlikely to display (or even recognize) the service ethos that underlies policing a free society.

 

America’s infatuation with militarization is coming home to kill us.  See, for example:

 

Alex Kane, 11 chilling facts about America’s militarized police force, Salon (04 July 2014)

 

We’re sick.  And getting sicker.