On Monday, Obama announced the Task Force on 21st Century Policing, a group established to advise the president in the wake of the Ferguson riots.
While the recommendations may seem obvious – to end the sale of military grade weapons to police departments – they actually came as a surprise. It was originally thought that Obama would allow the equipment (including tracked-armored vehicles, the highest-caliber firearms and ammunition, and camouflage uniforms) but ensure that the local police had better training, or that the use was limited to SWAT teams and the like. Instead, the group recommended – and Obama promised through an executive order – a total prohibition.
A less covered part of the agreement focuses on a separate category of weapons that will require political approval to be sold by federal agencies to local forces. This list includes armored vehicles like Hummers, drones, battering rams, and riot batons, helmets and shields. To obtain this equipment, police departments will have to be given approval by a city council, mayor, or other governing body, and also provide a persuasive explanation of why it is needed. Other stipulations include more training for the cops using the equipment, and data collection on its use.
In the wake of the police response in Ferguson, MO, questions have been raised about military vehicles and weaponry being used by US police forces.
There's also a bunch of "feel good" stuff in there, and I don’t mean that as a criticism. The report focuses on integrating better community policing efforts throughout the U.S., and it has money to give to jurisdictions willing to do so.
So how does this all work and how did we get here?
Basically, the Department of Homeland Security — and the Department of Defense, for that matter — is a big check writing agency. They pass the money on to local governments, and those local bodies can buy the gear they need. Ironically, the DOD even gives away a lot of their equipment; equipment that they never really wanted but that got pushed through because of special interests in Congress (congressmen wanting the DOD to buy something from their jurisdiction).
Will it work? Yes, and we will be safer for it. I believe that these changes are less revolutionary than on first blush, but actually reclaim the lessons of history we forgot after the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
A little history is in order.
Until World War II, the American homeland had been relatively safe from foreign attacks. After Pearl Harbor, first responders had to contend with a new type of danger, but how to do so was not entirely clear. New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia wanted the federal government to adopt a war mentality in U.S. cities, with sirens, neighborhood militias, and concrete bunkers. Community engagement efforts, he once wrote, were “sissy stuff.”
It wasn’t until President Richard Nixon that the obsession with national security threats finally started to change, thanks to Hurricane Camille in 1969 and several other natural disasters that exposed an inadequate and ineffective federal response.
In reaction, Nixon authorized an important shift in policy: Domestic security funds could be used for any kind of threat – peaceful or otherwise. The new approach was called “dual–use” and applied to planning, equipment, and training.
Dual-use has the benefit of being both efficient and effective. The firefighter who shows up at a burning building does not wonder, at that moment, whether an arsonist or a careless cigarette smoker is to blame; she just wants to put the fire out. The medics at the Boston Marathon finish line had no idea whether the carnage came from a terrorist attack or a gas explosion. They just implemented their well-honed plans for treating a sudden surge in injuries.
Dual-use planning was consistent with reforms occurring in many urban police departments, which were increasingly embracing community policing models.
And then 9/11 happened. And then we forgot. Once again, we started thinking that community engagement strategies were “sissy stuff.” Enter Ferguson.
The report is part of the right sizing of our post-9/11 security apparatus. It is welcome, but it isn’t novel.
These reforms are not to be viewed as “sissy stuff.” They will discipline police departments to focus on the best policing tactics we have known for a long while: those that integrate and not intimidate. Ferguson reminded this country of the lessons we too easily forgot.
Security Mom is a podcast hosted by Juliette Kayyem that aims to unpack how the strange and secretive world of national security works. Subscribe to the Security Mom podcast in iTunes.
