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  • For years, groups in and outside of the United States have been calling for significant police

  • reform, in respect to the disproportionate targeting of minorities, excessive force,

  • and multiple police shootings of unarmed suspects. In 2015 Human Rights Watch said that the US

  • had quotelargely failedto address numerous UN recommendations to improve its

  • judicial system over the previous five years. So, why and how has police violence gotten

  • so bad in the United States?

  • Well, one of the largest reasons for the rampant increase in aggressive police tactics is the

  • blurring of lines between law enforcement and the military. Since the 1970s when Richard

  • Nixon introduced theWar on Drugs”, overall arrests have dramatically gone up. Using the

  • Drug War as a catalyst, Ronald Reagan passed a federal law allowing police to cooperate

  • with the military, and use their military equipment. This militarization ramped up by

  • the 21st century, and following the September 11th terror attacks, both the Department of

  • Homeland Security and the Department of Defense contributed funding to local police around

  • the country. During the war on terror, more and more police received surplus military

  • equipment, with some holding weapons such as grenade launchers and armored vehicles

  • with mounted guns.

  • Moreover, multiple reports, including one from the Department of Justice, note that

  • police are better trained in self-defense than they are in community building, and the

  • use of nonviolent solutions. For much of the country, there simply is not enough adequate

  • training focused on de-escalation.

  • In fact, a 1981 court case, Warren v. District of Columbia, found that while police are held

  • responsible to the public at large, they are were not actually required to assist individuals,

  • and can’t be sued negligence as a result. A similar ruling by the Supreme Court in 2005

  • dismissed a claim against police for not acting to keep several individuals out of harm. The

  • court found that the lack of action did not violate the victim’s constitutional rights.

  • This lack of accountability to the public, coupled with a lack of internal accountability

  • have led to widespread abuses in power. Not only are the standards for police brutality

  • different across the board, but even when police brutality is clear, it is almost never

  • prosecuted. One study of New Jersey brutality complaints in 2014 found that only one percent

  • was ever investigated, and the national average of complaints investigated by internal units

  • was less than ten percent in 2006.

  • In an effort to curb such abuses, a 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act allowed

  • law enforcement agencies to be sued in civil court. But this ultimately did little to address

  • the problem, since it is most often the local tax-funded government and not the police department

  • which ends up paying civil settlements.

  • In a nutshell, the past few decades of police reform have seen law enforcement agents equipped

  • with military surplus while not only untrained in the use of that equipment, but also untrained

  • in non-violent tactics. Moreover, abuses go unreported, uninvestigated, and unpunished,

  • and punitive measures only hurt the community, not the police. While there are plenty of

  • law-abiding, committed police officers, as a whole their presence s more of an

  • occupying military force than law enforcement.

For years, groups in and outside of the United States have been calling for significant police

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