Three months ago, an undercover officer bought $50 worth of methamphetamine from a suspected drug dealer in Habersham County.
Citing the suspect’s previous weapon charges, the decision was made to send in a SWAT team early the next morning. Using a no-knock warrant, the unit stormed the home where the drugs were bought, deploying a flash bang grenade as a diversion.
The device landed in a playpen where a toddler — visiting with his family from Wisconsin — was sleeping, badly injuring the 19-month-old and sparking a conversation about the growing use of military tactics and equipment by local law enforcement agencies.
That debate resurfaced this week after an aggressive response by police to civil unrest in a St. Louis suburb. Protests and looting followed the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., aggravating racial tensions.
“There is a big difference between urban conflict and war,” said Marietta Police Chief Daniel Flynn. “You can go too far with it.”
A recently released study by the ACLU found that SWAT units, once deployed only in emergencies such as hostage-taking, are now used predominantly to serve search warrants, typically in drug cases.
And, through the 1033 program established by the Department of Defense in the late 1990s, 600 Georgia law enforcement agencies have obtained — at zero cost — more than $200 million worth of equipment formerly used in overseas wars. That equipment includes armored vehicles and automatic assault rifles.
The agency’s size, or the scope of the crime problem they’re dealing with, is largely irrelevant. An Associated Press review found that a majority of the $4.2 billion in surplus military gear distributed since 1990 went to police and sheriff’s departments in rural areas.
The southeast Georgia town of Bloomingdale — population, 2,745 — is one example. The Savannah suburb has acquired a grenade launcher to shoot tear gas, two M14 single-shot semi-automatic rifles and two M16 military-style rifles converted from automatic to semi-automatic.
Meanwhile, Doraville police came under fire this week when a SWAT training video, since removed from the department’s home page, went viral. The footage depicts officers emerging from the department’s armored personnel carrier in a scene that could be easily be mistaken for a war zone. Doraville is one of eight departments in Georgia that have acquired armored vehicles, according to data from the Pentagon.
“I don’t want to send a message that we’re a police state,” said Doraville Police Chief John King, adding the video was “inconsistent with the values, training and mission” of his department.
But King defended the acquisition of the carrier, which was recently returned to the state, saying it protected his officers while also aiding 18-wheelers stuck on I-285 during last winter’s snow storms.
“It’s not offensive, it’s defensive,” King said. Though Doraville’s crime rate is low — the last murder there occurred in 2009 — the chief said he doesn’t ever want to be caught off guard.
“I always have to think of the bad days,” he said. “If things go bad, I don’t want the community to say to me, ‘Chief, you weren’t prepared.’”
But in the wake of this week’s chaos in Ferguson, an increasingly bipartisan movement is coalescing against the 1033 program.
U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Lithonia, said he plans to introduce legislation that would limit the type of equipment that can be transferred to law enforcement and require states to account for the surplus they’ve received.
“Militarizing America’s main streets won’t make us any safer, just more fearful and more reticent,” Johnson told The Associated Press.
Republican senator Rand Paul went even further in an op-ed published on Time.com, calling the militarization “a system problem with today’s law enforcement.”
“Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies—where police departments compete to acquire military gear that goes far beyond what most of Americans think of as law enforcement,” Paul wrote.
Flynn, the Marietta police chief, worries that the imagery alone creates distance between police and the communities they serve.
“To the extent police are using military-style vehicles, tanks and armored, that stuff often sends the wrong message, especially to the minority community,” he said. “The message that the police are sending to the minority community is we want to go to war against you, and that’s inappropriate.”
The disconnect between police and minorities has always been there, said southwest Atlanta resident Inga Willis, 37.
"When you show up in riot gear, especially in a situation where you have a lot of emotional people, you're going to incite," said Willis, among the speakers at a rally held Thursday in Decatur to express solidarity with the protesters in Ferguson. "The disconnect just keeps growing."
King, whose department was depicted by some national media outlets as the poster boy for law enforcement militarization, said any divide between citizens and police makes his job tougher.
“If the community is afraid of the police, no department can be effective,” he said.
About the Author
