Exiting Iraq and Entering Ferguson: The Untold Arms Trade

Last month, President Obama delivered the first of what would be a series of remarks on developing events in Ferguson, Mo. and Iraq. At first glance, the police shooting and death of unarmed18-year-old Michael Brown and execution of US journalist Jim Foley by ISIL would seem like two wholly unrelated events, like two separate worlds. That isn’t necessarily the case.

While Obama continues air strikes in Iraq—hesitant to put boots back on the ground after building his legacy on pulling them out— Ferguson is struggling to find a way to deal with its repercussions.
The 1033 Program, coordinated by the Defense Logistics Agency Disposition Services, transfers excess military capability to local law enforcement—almost $550 million worth in 2013 alone. This agreement between the Defense Department and law enforcement is not new—it was authorized in 1997 through the National Defense Authorization Act. What is new, however, is the surge of troops being withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the large amounts of military-owned equipment coming with them.

More than 8,000 agencies participate in this program, and shortly after President Obama’s remarks on August 14, USA Today confirmed that the Ferguson Police Department is among them. What we see unfolding in ‘small-town, USA’ Ferguson is a byproduct of our projected $6 trillion worth of war in Iraq and Afghanistan being funneled into the hands of police and SWAT teams around the country. Ferguson’s armored vehicles, rifles, and pistols you’ve been seeing in the news may very well have once been held by combat troops in Iraq.

While Iraq’s troubled past has long been amongst religions and tribal affiliations, the conversation surrounding Ferguson is fueled by its own set of racial divisions.
Before Brown, we saw the video of Eric Garner, who was put in a fatal chokehold by police. Before Garner, it was Treyvon Martin. And, let’s not forget Alex Landau where it took 45 stitches to close his facial lacerations after being beaten by Denver police officers in 2009.

In the growing number of communities where police forces are a lot whiter than the populations they protect, local social norms and stereotypes surrounding race and racism are meeting head-on with the changing connotations of power arriving alongside the 1033 Program’s guns and armored vehicles. Underlying fundamental shifts in organizational culture accompany the absorption of military equipment, and those changes have to be addressed if we want to prevent another Ferguson.

Ryan Reilly, a Huffington Post reporter arrested during the protests in Ferguson, later said that the police resembled soldiers more than officers and treated those surrounding him as “enemy combatants.” The Huffington Post statement remarked: “Police militarization has been among the most consequential and unnoticed developments of our time,” and they’re right.

In many aspects, our law enforcement and military are similar. Intensive training, reliance on hierarchy, hyper-masculinity -- these components drive organizations to be effective, decisive, and ‘heroic,’ but also create unique definitions of power, authority, and control.  

There is one stark difference, however. The military utilizes a very polarized concept of good and evil. Their mission is to confront and kill a defined enemy. In contrast law enforcement is comprised of ‘peace officers’—they have no enemies. Their only mission is to uphold the law and to protect and defend their citizens. If those citizens are suspected of committing a crime, well, that’s for the courts to decide.
But when law enforcement is given equipment that makes them look and act more and more like soldiers, what power looks and feels and thinks like shifts right along with them. This is only amplified by a lack of training—it’s offered (not required) by the DLA, but training on these capabilities for and by law enforcement isn’t regularly tracked.

In a guest blog for the International Association of the Chiefs of Police, the Los Angeles Police Department wrote “The primary responsibility of local law enforcement when adopting and employing these [military] capabilities is to protect against embracing the core military culture and mission that was behind its original development.”

The militarization of police is not likely to slow down or stop anytime soon -- not with the Defense Department’s eagerness to “save the American taxpayer’s investment,” according to the DLA website. Unless we do something, what we will continue to see from these trends is a growing intensity of structural violence that prevents communities from achieving their basic needs. In Ferguson’s case, the civilains basic human needs will be their perceptions of trust and access to fair and honest protection. 
 

### Photo by flickr user Uncle Sams Misguided Children