The Federal Government Needs to Stop Enabling Murder.

One of the most pressing issues of the twenties in the United States is the brutality employed by law enforcement. Police brutality manifests in many forms. The exacerbation of racial prejudice in the exertion of unchecked authority by municipal police forces since before many of us were born, resulting in hundreds of unnecessary deaths of innocents (George Floyd, Sonya Massey, Breonna Taylor, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, etc.) is the most pertinent example of this phenomenon. 

What binds these individual incidents into one amalgamated contention that requires hasty redress is a broader structural transformation in the American law enforcement system, even though the incidents, isolated, appear as individual misconduct when considered on their lonesome. Over the past three decades, American law enforcement across every jurisdiction has increasingly begun adopting the equipment, tactics, mindset, and brutish fervor of the military. This seismic shift has been accelerated by federal support, namely via the 1033 and 1122 programs, which funnel surplus military gear and discounted tactical equipment into civilian police departments with minimal oversight. In this article, you will explore the direct causal link between the utilization of these programs and an increase in civilian deaths caused by law enforcement.

The consequences of this transformation are not abstract. When officers are equipped and trained like soldiers, they are more likely to approach civilian interactions as combat scenarios rather than community engagements. The line between policing and occupation blurs, particularly in marginalized communities that already experience disproportionate surveillance and force. In such an environment, escalation becomes more likely, restraint less so, and accountability increasingly elusive. This is especially apparent in the fact that, in place of using the military surplus gear for defending the police force from constituent populations with heavier access to weaponry, municipal police forces are more likely to be proactive instead of reactive when granted access to this equipment. For instance, in 1996, Minneapolis’s SWAT team deployed for drug raids more than ~700 times, amounting to approximately twice per day.¹ These raids were not conducted in response to hostage situations or active shootouts, but rather in pursuit of low-level narcotics enforcement, a use far removed from the original justification for paramilitary policing.

There is a fatal cost consequentially derived from the increase in paramilitary brutality amongst American law enforcement, as well. The case of Alberta Spruill illustrates this with disturbing clarity. In May of 2003, New York police executed a no-knock raid on Ms. Spruill’s apartment based on an uncorroborated tip, despite the intended suspect having already been apprehended days prior. Officers deployed flashbang grenades upon entry; the resulting explosion triggered cardiac arrest, killing her within hours. Incidents such as this are not aberrations, but rather the predictable outcome of a policing strategy that prioritizes shock, force, and rapid domination to assert authority over the intended premise of ensuring community safety and dutifully upholding the law.

This causal relationship between militarization and violence is not merely theoretical; it is, unfortunately, supported by empirical research. A 2017 study by Casey Delehanty and colleagues examining the Department of Defense’s 1033 Program found a statistically significant relationship between the receipt of military equipment and increases in police violence.² Specifically, law enforcement agencies that acquired greater quantities of military surplus were associated with higher rates of civilian deaths from officer-involved shootings, even when controlling for factors such as crime rates and demographics. The study further argues that militarization operates not only through material means, but through cultural and organizational changes, fostering a mindset in which force is viewed as the primary and most effective tool for resolving conflict. In this sense, the 1033 Program does not simply equip police departments with more advanced tools; it reshapes their behavior, increasing the likelihood that those tools will be used.

Empirical evidence further undermines the notion that such militarization is either necessary or reactive. By 1995, nearly 94 percent of paramilitary police units were engaged in warrant service, with approximately 66 percent of deployments involving no-knock entries.³ From 1980 to 1995, deployments of these units increased by 1,589 percent — an expansion wildly disproportionate to crime trends, which rose by only 6.63 percent over the same period.⁴ When militarized capacity is distributed with minimal oversight, its application predictably follows existing enforcement patterns — patterns that have long targeted Black communities disproportionately. This divergence makes clear that the proliferation of militarized policing is not a response to rising crime, but a transformation in policing philosophy itself, which has only served to directly negatively impact American communities. 

This transformation has not been applied evenly. While drug usage rates remain comparable across racial groups, enforcement has been anything but. In 2001, despite two-thirds of crack cocaine users being white, 83 percent of those prosecuted for crack-related offenses were Black.5 Such disparities are not incidental. When law enforcement is granted expansive discretion, paired with military-grade capability and minimal oversight, its application tends to concentrate on the most surveilled and politically marginalized populations. In the United States, this has overwhelmingly meant Black communities and disproportionately stunted their ability to healthily interact with law enforcement. Allowing paramilitary forces to continue terrorizing minority communities for no purpose other than flashing their big guns will do nothing but work to deepen the divides that presently exist between the authority and the governed in America.

The pattern is undeniably present and is embedding itself into America’s social fabric. Across decades, militarized policing has escalated beyond the bounds of necessity, disproportionately targeting disadvantaged communities while providing little to no measurable benefit to public safety. Community-centered law enforcement is quickly becoming a dissipating concept as paramilitary force takes hold of our major urban cores. From the routine overuse of SWAT teams to the racially skewed enforcement of drug laws, and the empirically documented link between 1033 program acquisitions and increases in civilian deaths, the evidence paints a clear picture that giving police military-grade equipment transforms them into an occupying force rather than a protective one. Programs like 1033 and 1122 are not abstract policy tools, and instead serve as direct enablers of this transformation, normalizing the use of overwhelming force against civilians. 

How many Americans have to die before we realize that giving authority figures an inch lets them take a mile? If you offer to give somebody something for a very explicit purpose, and they misuse and abuse it, what do you do? You stop lending them your things. That is the attitude the federal government must take. Local police forces are not trained to sustain the usage of heavy weaponry in a reactive manner. Americans should not be forced to live in fear of the people who swear to protect them, and that is what we are presently enabling. The time has come for lawmakers, policymakers, lobbyists, and citizens alike to recognize that militarized policing is a choice, not an inevitability, and to act decisively to end these programs before more lives are needlessly lost. We need to put the 1033 and 1122 programs in the ground where they belong, next to the hundreds of citizens they have needlessly caused the murder of. If we do not, there is no telling the extent to which paramilitary forces will exercise themselves on American citizens before it becomes a figment of the past. 

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1: Balko, R (2006). Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America. Cato Institute. 11. https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/balko_whitepaper_2006.pdf.

2: Delehanty, C., Mewhirter, J., Welch, R., & Wilks, J. (2017). Militarization and police violence: The case of the 1033 program. Research & Politics, 4(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2053168017712885

3: Kraska, P. B., & Cubellis, L. J. (1997). Militarizing Mayberry and beyond: Making sense of American paramilitary policing. Justice Quarterly, 14(4), 607–629. https://doi.org/10.1080/07418829700093521

4: Ibid.

5: Mauer, M., & King, R. S. (2004). Schools and prisons: Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education. The Sentencing Project. https://static.prisonpolicy.org/scans/sp/brownvboard.pdf