Militarized policing doesn't reduce crime and disproportionately hits black communities

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

Militarized policing doesn’t reduce crime and disproportionately hits black communities

By Radley Balko
Opinion writer
August 22 at 1:50 PM

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found that there’s little upside to militarized policing. The study looked at data from Maryland, where a state law required that police agencies in the state submit biannual reports on how and how often they used their SWAT teams. The law was in effect from 2010 through 2014, after which the legislature allowed it to expire. Author Jonathan Mummolo performed a statistical analysis of the Maryland data and crime rates, officer safety data, and race.

After controlling for variables such as local crime rates, Mummolo found that for every 10 percent increase in the black population of a given Zip code, there was a 10 percent increase in the likelihood of that Zip code being raided by a SWAT team.

As for public safety, he found an increased likelihood of violent crime in jurisdictions with a SWAT team, although that increase became statistically insignificant over time. He found no statistically significant change in the killings of police officers — which were too infrequent to measure — or assaults on police officers.

Finally, Mummolo looked at how the use of SWAT teams affects public perception of the police with a smart little experiment. In two separate surveys, he showed volunteers a story about a police chief asking for a budget increase. But volunteers got one of four photos with the story. One photo depicted a group of cops in their traditional blue uniforms. The other three depicted various degrees of militarization, culminating with a photo from Ferguson, Mo., of heavily armed officers surrounding an armored vehicle, with a sniper perched on the roof. He then asked the respondents questions about crime and policing.

Militarized images in the M-Turk survey caused clear increases between roughly 8 points and 15 points in perceived levels of crime in the vignette city. The high militarization condition in the SSI survey caused a statistically significant 2.2-point increase in the perceived level of crime in the vignette city and, strikingly, a 3.2-point drop in respondents’ desire for more police patrols in their own neighborhoods.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/08/22/militarized-policing-doesnt-reduce-crime-and-disproportionately-hits-black-communities/

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Related: Militarization fails to enhance police safety or reduce crime but may harm police reputation (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science)

[zipplewrath]

1. Dump the salutes

The police need to dump the ranks and salutes. No more sergeants and lieutenants. No more snappy salutes. No more stripes on the shoulder or gold braids on the hats. And the higher the rank, the less battle gear.

There was a police chief back during the whole Ferguson kerfluffle that wrote a long article about how he handled protesters. He walked WITH them, in a polo and a ball cap. Some of his senior officers did also. That way they could identify disrupters and differentiate from the peaceful protesters. They also got some familiarity with the organizers such that moment to moment decisions could be made WITH them instead of TO them. But he SPECIFICALLY mentioned moving away from the sniper/swat/riot gear concept which frequently elevates conflict as oppose to suppressing it.

I have some background in suicide prevention. There was a time that trained staff would go out to roughly speaking "active attempts". The LAST thing you wanted was the police. Just the very presence and image of them made everything worse. And if they followed anything like their normal procedures, it just escalated everything into chaos.