(CJ Paper) Balancing Para-Military...

Balancing Para-Military and Community Policing Styles

ToughLOVE® is a program designed for parents/caregivers of children to strengthen the parenting skills to be firm with their children – especially, the adolescents during their awkward ages of passing from the rite of passage of being children into young adults. Having been a facilitator of a ToughLOVE® parent support group in Montgomery County, Texas, I have seen and appreciated the many different parenting styles of the parents. In the groups, we discussed what seemed to have worked, why they worked, and other creative suggestions to establish firm control in the home environment while completely understanding that the parent has rights too, and maintaining open communications with their children. Likewise, the police authorities are torn between their styles of establishing peace and control, while keeping friendly, open communications with the community.

The basic styles of policing (based on dominating administrative approaches to the police operations) are: (1) political era (around the 1840’s to 1930) where the agencies tended to serve the interests of the politicians first and foremost, then looking towards the interests of the citizens; (2) reform era (1930’s – 1970’s) where the police focused on solving the traditional crimes (i.e. murder, rape, and burglary) or capturing offenders; and (3) community problem solving era (1970’s – present) where the service role is stressed and a partnership role is envisioned between the police officers and the community; however, many policing entities often use a combination of these approaches. (Schmalleger, pgs 122-123)Police reform throughout the eras worked to take the “good ol’ boy” attitude out of the policing authorities and refocused it on the citizen’s rights and concerns. Additionally, the 20th century police reform developed two primary functions – that of (1) efficiency of the police officers, which directed them to look at redefining the management approaches and ridding of the “good ol’ boy” images, and (2) focus upon being a social servant. Although the social environment was not new , it did require the police officers to be trained in social work (especially with the rise of new social welfare agencies in the 1930’s). (Johnson & Wolfe, pgs 286-287) A growing emphasis on eliminating crime resulted, as well as increasing efforts to build confidence and pride in the police; through the use of the sunrise court and the golden rule policy, more time focused upon the prosecution of major criminal activity and minor criminal activities were diverted from the criminal system. (Johnson & Wolfe, pg 303)

Socialization involves changes in status or roles or experiences. (Golden, pg 326) Because keeping up with the changes is essential for a police department to stay with the times, it is essential that the police department keeps in touch with the “mode” of the community – its concerns and interests. Cedar Park Police Department (out of Cedar Park, Williamson County, Texas) is a good example of doing just that through its various special events (i.e. 4th of July, National Night Out, Blue Santa, and Shattered Dreams), various community events (i.e. Cedar Park Expo, Summerfest, Bicycle Rodeo, Spring/Fall Fests, Home Depot Safety Day, and Santa’s Workshop), School Resource Officers, Victim Services Program, and various networking opportunities (i.e. Neighborhood Crime Watch, Police Department Tours, Show and Tell (at the schools), Home Inspections, Citizen’s Police Academy, Citizen’s Police Academy Alumni Association, and Seniors & Law Enforcement Together). (Brown, CPCPA Manual – “Community Services Division”, 2/15/05) In fact, the Cedar Park Police Department’s Mission Statement states, “Community policing is an organization-wide philosophy and management approach that promotes community, government and police partnerships; proactive problem solving; and, community engagement to address the causes of crime, fear of crime, and other community issues.” (Brown, CPCPA Manual – “Orientation” by Chief Fluck, 2/1/05)

Sometimes, change can arrive with shocking waves – such as the 911 events in New York City and the Pentagon that rocked the world off of their feet. Enhanced security measures demands became widespread, as well as airport security moving into the control of federal law enforcement and heightened concerns over immigrants and the immigration activities. (Johnson & Wolfe, pg 303) In regards to the support of American’s expansion of military action (resulting from the aftermath of the 911 events), Johnson and Wolfe state:

“While other nations have indicated reluctance to support American expansion of military action, it is noteworthy that there has been substantial cooperation in the investigation of al Queda activities leading up to the September 11 attacks. Antiterrorist investigations in the United States, Europe, and Asia have identified al Queda cells and operatives, leading to their arrest and detention. As this effort continues, it is becoming clear that multinational police and intelligence cooperation has been vastly accelerated in response to these disasters. Of course, in the year following the attacks there has been little opportunity to implement new systems for the cross-national exchange of police intelligence, nor has there been time for the negotiation of multilateral international conventions and treaties dealing with this worldwide threat to national and personal security.”

(Johnson & Wolfe, pg. 324)

Since 2003 (the year the Johnson & Wolfe book was last published), the militarilistic approach in policing has become quite the norm in fighting many crimes, as well as almost expected for the public to feel most secure. Often this is done through moving the security levels to federal levels (like the airport screening/security), or even a matter of presentation with crisp, clean, pristine militarilistic type of uniforms or BDU’s – especially in the war on drugs or other similar war on crime modes.

Image IS everything. If you teach, if you manage a business, if you are a parent (whatever the case may be), if you don’t come out strong initially, you will lose control of your students, employees, or children. Likewise, to have crisp uniforms, mannerisms of professionalism, and a sense of precision can make or break the tone of any security or policing entity; lack of these characteristics will often present an weak image of not caring, not being precise/accurate in the work product/services, and not being sincere in the protection of those in the business or community the security or policing entity is hired to protect. As a result, the tough guy image emerges, similar to the ToughLOVE® philosophy.

This “new cop” image, according to a study by sociologist Peter Kraska, is on the rise and “more than 30,000 heavily armed, militarily trained police units in the United States”, and, the fact that “the number of paramilitary police missions quadrupled between 1980 and 1995”, which CBS supported with a survey on S.W.A.T. (“special weapons and tactics”) encounters stating that “police use of deadly force increased 34% between 1995 and 1998.” (New Cop, “Paramilitary Policing”) In 1982, only 59% of the police departments had SWAT teams; there were 90% by 1995. As a result, findings reflect an aggressive turn towards having SWAT teams in their forces behind the “rhetoric” of community and problem-oriented policing reforms. (Schmalleger, pg 131) The SWATs began in the 1960s in Los Angeles after the shoot-outs with the Black Panthers; until recently, they were primarily involved in hostage or terrorist situations; however, they have seem to be increasingly targeting the smaller communities – especially, carrying out drug raids, with a “zero-tolerance” stance on crime versus the community policing policy of cops becoming a part of the neighborhoods to prevent mountains stemming from mole hills. The New Haven police began restructuring their police department, in 1999, to get away from the “brute” image created by the SWAT teams; while they still have their SWAT-type unit, Lt. Atunes of the New Haven Police Department claimed that they only had four tactical calls last year. (New Cop, “Paramilitary Policing”)

Peter Kaska and Victor Kappeler, professors at Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Police Studies, found that:

“…police paramilitary units are now called in to perform relatively mundane police work – such as patrolling city streets and serving warrants. Indeed, with the mainstreaming of police paramilitary units, cities (including Fresno, California, and Indianapolis, Indiana) send police to patrol non-emergency situations in full battle dress – giving these communities all the ambience of the West Bank. Of 487 departments answering questions about deployment scenarios, more than 20% said that their tactical teams were used for community patrols. Ironically, the rise in the number of PPUs (paramilitary units) is occurring at the same time as the concept of ‘community policing’ is gaining in popularity. One commander of a paramilitary unit in a Mid-western town of 75,000 described how his team patrols in BDU, cruising the streets in an armored personnel carrier. ‘We stop anything that moves. We’ll sometimes even surround suspicious homes and bring out the MP5s (an automatic manufactured by gun manufacturer Heckler and Koch and favored by military special forces teams). We usually don’t have any problems with crackheads cooperating.’ Just 15 years ago, city departments called out their tactical units little more than once a month on average, usually for those rarest of situations – hostage situations, terrorist events, or barricaded suspects. The mean number of call-outs for these units rose precipitously to 83 events – or about 7 a month – in 1995. Of that sample, more than 75% were for thrilling, no-knock drug raids like Operation Readi-Rock (in North Carolina).”

(Cassidy, “Rise in Paramilitary Policing”)

Joseph McNamara (research fellow in the Hoover Institution at Stanford University who served as a police chief in San Jose and Kansas City after 15 years in New York City’s Police Department) adds that:

“One of the greatest costs of this militarization of local law enforcement has been in the loss of public trust in police institutions, alienating communities from those resources. … [A] rotation onto these units is often given as a reward. ‘When you have police in military uniforms with military weapons sometimes with tanks and armored personnel carriers, this reinforces the idea that the police are an occupation army as opposed to partners in the community [and] people often feel these raids do not take place in white middle class neighborhoods and, by and large, that is accurate.”

(Cassidy, “Rise in Paramilitary Policing”)

He further states that:

“As the army assumes civilian police functions, the police are acting – and looking – more like soldiers. … [T]he militarization of the police forces [is to be blamed] on the proliferation of assault weapons: ‘I predicted a long time ago, the failure to control military-style weapons into the general population would lead to further militarization of police.’ The drive toward high-tech weaponry was facilitated soon after the end of the Cold War when military spending reductions brought cheap war-surplus material into the market. … Gun companies, perceiving a profitable trend, began aggressively marketing automatic weapons to local police departments, holding seminars, and sending out color brochures redolent with ninja-style imagery. … The greatest concern is that these paramilitary forces will eventually be seen and perceived as an occupying army.”

(Cassidy, “Rise in Paramilitary Policing”)

Is this a good balance to the community-policing role that the policing entities are trying to project?

To examine the websites of various security companies too, one sees that they too are trying to project this militaristic image because it portrays a sense of being tough on protection to the residential and/or commercial consumer. Worldwide Security Associates does a fine example of this on their website. Having been raised in San Antonio, Texas, with five air force and army bases stationed there, there was a degree of a sense of security with the military there. Is that, though, a false sense of security with the presence of the military uniformed clad men/women? When is “enough” security? When is “enough” military presence in our communities? Do we actually need the police entities to take a role of militaristic approaches as well? What does this say about our communities? Does this really project the image environment that we only feel safe in? If we are going to have militaristic policing styles, then why not just call in the National Guard to fill those positions? While the community does want the policing entities to get “tough” on crime, do they really want to walk down the streets to see the “tough guy” image in action???

The new paramilitary police technology and advances project a “culture of militarism”, which:

“[I]n reality, … do not make the people safer. Military gear brings embedded in it a set of militaristic social relations. Aggressive group tactics, automatic weapons, and infrared scopes all displace and preclude the social skills, forbearance, and individual discretion essential to accountable and effective civilian policing. The metaphor of war also implies the possibility of victory in which one side vanquishes another. Thus, one impact of the [culture of militarism] gestates in the world of tactical policing … and [arguably] the young officers find the military regalia of SWAT ‘culturally intoxicating’ … because ‘the elite self-perception and status granted these police units stems from the high status military special operations groups have in military culture.”

(Unknown Author, “A War for All Seasons: the return of law and order”)

Even, as of September 2004, there are 5 countries (France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain) members of the EU (European Union) through the establishment of the EGF (European Gendarmerie Force) under a French 2003 proposal agreed to in Noordwick, Denmark, by these 5 countries’ defense ministers, which establishes a paramilitary police force to be used for public order and backing up the military. These EFGs are based in their own member countries; however, they are available for deployment outside of the EU borders within a month for EU peace maintenance or crisis management missions, or at the request of the UN, NATO, OSCE, or other international bodies. The fact that not all European countries joined this pact demonstrates the level of discontent within the remaining countries regarding the usage of paramilitary forces. (Unknown Author, “EU: Five countries establish a European paramilitary police force”)

When I was in Guatemala in the Summer of 2003 with a Presbytery mission group, I witnessed some effects of the paramilitary policing styles there. They had been getting out of a 36-year civil war though and trying to establish safety and a sense of law and order in the community. However, to see policing entities guarding the fast food restaurants, for example, with rifles, seemed quite overpowering and a bit too much for the way we have been brought up. Are we to see more of that in our future in the United States? Are they actually moving towards that direction – especially, in the wake of 911 events? And, are we going a bit overboard as a result of the 911 events?

What I witnessed in Guatemala in the Summer of 2003 was in no comparison, though, to what had happened in 1954 as a result of a coup of a law created in 1952, the Decree 900 “Law of Agrarian Reform”, as recanted by David Wilkinson in his book:

“Long before any houses burned, there had been a law that could have made a difference in Guatemala. Or rather there had been a law that, for a brief two years, did make a difference – such a difference that even after it was revoked and its authors were in exile or unmarked graves, it continued to shape the way Guatemalans understood their place in the world. The law was Decree 900, the 1952 ‘Law of Agrarian Reform’. Its overarching aim, set forth in its opening paragraph, was to ‘overcome the economic backwardness’ of the country and ‘improve the quality of life of the great masses.’ Whether it could have achieved these ambitious ends will never be known. In 1954, the CIA toppled Guatemala’s reform government. A military regime took power. The reformers were driven underground. And the country began its long terrifying descent into a state of lawlessness, cruelty, and despair.

“The United States celebrated the coup as a triumph for democracy. For years to come, the cold warriors in Washington held it up as a model for what covert operations could accomplish overseas. Yet few Americans really knew what had taken place in Guatemala in 1954. The press coverage had been carefully choreographed by the CIA. Even the New York Times had complied with the agency’s request to keep its correspondent from the country so that he could not give a firsthand account of the coup and its aftermath.”

(Wilkinson, pg 83)

This is an example where the militaristic approach has drastically altered history by suddenly halting a reform in progress and created a 36-year civil war that has left Guatemala forever scarred with remainders of unmarked and clandestine gravesites serving as constant reminders of the torments they lived with throughout those years. It is no wonder that they lived in fear of crimes (including many killings/murders of reformers and innocent grandparents and children) for so very long.

Fear of crime has probably been the root of the crime methodology resources; after all, the policing entities are trying to meet the demands of the public in ensuring their safety and protection from crime. It has been noted that some groups, like women and the elderly, are actually more afraid of being a victim to crime than men or the young; however, a perplexing “paradox of fear” is then created when studying the findings to see that women and the elderly are actually less likely to be victims of crime. (Rafter, pg 63)

That paradox of fear, along with those questions presented on the militaristic presence in the wake of the 911 events, are certainly some questions that may never be fully answered in the near future. While Americans desire to live the American Dream in their safe world, reality says that our world may never be safe as it was before; however, is it as bad as we perceive it as well (just because of the events of 911)??? In the end though, a balance must be achieved in the policing world to ensure the public’s safety, as well as enable a true partnership footing in the community. Part of this balance is achieved through a degree of “moral sensibility” as best described by John Rawls:

“A conception of justice characterizes our moral sensibility when the everyday judgments we do make are in accordance with its principles. These principles can serve as part of the premises of an argument which arrives at the matching judgments. We do not understand our sense of justice until we know in some systematic way covering a wide range of cases what these principles are.”

(Rawls, pg 41)

Further, Abraham Lincoln once said, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” As such, the paramilitary policing styles may be too strong of a management type; on the other hand, community policing may present its own array of issues. Margaret Mead also stated that, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” The community policing approaches are softening the “tough guy” image projected by the para-militaristic approach. In taking advantage of the opportunities of the policing entities reaching out to the communities, we, as citizens, should voice our opinions to the Chiefs in our communities and express our concerns, request to join their Citizen’s Academy, and take an interest in what is happening in your community, as well as advocating for less of a “macho” militaristic approach in our communities and get tough with some ToughLOVE® approaches. Perhaps, in the end, the policing entities can take lessons from the principles provided in the ToughLOVE® program????

Bibliography

Brown, Sgt. Darlene, Cedar Park Citizen’s Academy Manual, established by the Cedar Park Police Department: Cedar Park, Texas (Spring 2005).

Cassidy, Peter (w/assistance of Jim Pate and Karen DiMattia), “Operation Ghetto Storm: The Rise in Paramilitary Policing”, TriArche Research Group

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Kraska, Peter B, “SWAT in the Commonwealth: Trends and Issues in Paramilitary Policing”, Kentucky Justice & Safety Research Bulletin, Justice & Safety Research Center, Eastern Kentucky University (1999).

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McCulloch, Jude, “Counter-terrorism and (in)security: fallout from the Bali bombing”, Borderlands eJournal: Deakin University (2002).

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Unknown Author, War All Seasons: the return of law and order”, excerpted from the book – Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis – by Christian Parenti, Verso Books (1999)

Unknown Author, “EU: Five countries establish a European paramilitary police force – What will be its ‘rules of engagement’? What lines of accountability for its actions are there to be?”

Unknown Author, “New Cop: Paramilitary Policing”

Unknown Author, “New Cop: The Basic Tenets of Community Policing”

Unknown Author, “New Cop: The Story”

Unknown Author, “The Militarization of Policing”

Wilkinson, David, Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal and Forgetting in Guatemala, Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, Massachusetts (2002).