September 4, 2025 • 47 mins
In the 1960s, America took stock of itself when scores of low-income cities broke out in riots. It found that racism was at the root of many social problems. Instead of addressing the underlying issues, the country decided instead to militarize the police.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
shuck and it's just us today. But that's okay because
this is stuff you should know. The Is this a
good idea?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Oh, I think it's a good idea. You know, we're
just going to kind of report what happened over the
last you know, sixty years or so in the United States.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah, there's been this increasing trend that Yeah, I guess
it's about how long it's been going on where the
police departments across the US have become increasingly militarized. And
to be specific, it's not just a question of wearing
technical helmets and vests, carrying assault rifles sometimes driving through
(01:00):
through cities and m wraps and tanks. It's also a
change in attitude that it's created where people are no
longer citizens who are presumed innocent until proven guilty. They
are the enemy and the police at that moment are
an occupying force coming in full force to that person's house,
(01:24):
or even when they're not doing that, just looking intimidating
to basically everyone who sees them. That's essentially what people
who talk about this stuff consider the full scope of
the militarization of the police.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah for sure. And like I said, this has been
happening since about the nineteen sixties. If you go back
in time to like the eighteen hundreds, when cops first
started being a thing in the United States, they were
initially just hired as politicians. It was called a patronage system,
so they were kind of appointed. It wasn't until the
(01:57):
nineteenth century that they started get a little more like, hey,
let's squash that patronage. Let's hire police instead of appointing them,
so they basically don't work for politicians. And that's when
union started being founded. That's when formal training programs started.
I know a lot of this stuff we've covered in
(02:18):
other episodes, but I know, if we talked about Robert
Peel and the London Metropolitan Police is sort of a
big north star that when America started their like real
police force, they often looked to London and how he
did it.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah for sure. And part of that was what's called
the professionalism movement of police. Like you said, no longer
making them political appointees in the pocket of some politician
who wants them to go rough up as opponent and
part of professionalism. One of the central tenets is that
essentially the police is its own silo within society. It's
not influenced by politics and all that stuff, which is
(02:55):
good in that sense, but in the other sense, the
police then kind of become their own well police force,
and they make a lot of decisions about society, and
as there's less I guess control or input or influence
from society, things can start to get out of hand.
On the other hand, professionalism also meant like, you know,
(03:15):
people who are trained as police now know what they're doing.
They're actually getting professional training.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Yeah, I mean it was in some ways it was
a progressive era at first when the professionalism movement started,
but even early on there was a guy in California
and Berkeley, of all places, the chief of police there
named August August Volmar, who you know, even way back then,
was like, hey, I think you know, it should be
(03:41):
more like the military. He had a quote where he said,
after all, we're conducting a war, a war against the
enemies of society. So even back then there was some
ideological seeds being planted. Other people have defended Volmer in
this movement and saying, hey, you know, he actually is
one of the people who first started formal training. He's
(04:02):
the first person to encourage the escalation and hire the
first black and women police officer. So he also had,
you know, people kind of sticking up for his movement
as well.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, he's become kind of the poster child for who
started all this, and other people are like, that's just
not really fair. So either way, he definitely was a
huge proponent of police reform and kind of established a
lot of the ways that police thought. And like you said,
part of it was this idea that there should be
some degree of militarization of the police. And then after
(04:36):
August Volmer, nothing happened for about sixty years, and then
in nineteen sixty five things nothing happened, nothing, The police
just went along doing their thing and everybody was happy
with what they were doing. Yeah, no, I know what,
in the sixties everything turned and you can really trace
the militarization of the police back to a couple of
(04:59):
years in the sixties. There are other things that happened
along the way. I think in the eighties there was
a shootout in Miami nineteen eighty six that ended up
leading to full throated support for police getting access to
bulletproof vests, which I really don't think is problematic. Another one,
(05:20):
we've done an entire podcast on the North Hollywood shootout
in nineteen ninety seven. Yeah, that led access to police
being equipped with long guns like assault rifles and stuff
like that after that. And in both those cases, the
police were unprepared. They were shown to be unprepared, So
there were steps taken to prepare them that you can
kind of say are military in nature, I guess, But
(05:45):
that's nothing compared to the effect that the riots of
the nineteen sixties had on the militarization of the police.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Yeah, for sure, And we covered some of these in
our episode on riots. But in nineteen sixty five, the
Watts riots occurred. Then a couple of years later, in
nineteen sixty seven, there were riots in Newark and Detroit,
and this stuff was all over the news. It was,
you know, being widely reported. Americans were getting pretty worried
(06:13):
about just crime in general, sort of in the nineteen sixties,
you know, thinking things were kind of out of control.
There was a poll in nineteen sixty nine in Newsweek
that found that sixty six percent of white Americans thought
police should be given more power, and the Watts riots
directly led to the creation of swat units. You know,
(06:33):
we talked about this in our Swat episode all the
way back in twenty ten.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
But there was a guy named Darryl Gates, who I'm
pretty sure isn't that the same guy who was chief
during the Rodney King riots? Okay, well, back then in
sixty five, he was an laped inspector and he basically
said what you said was like they were just completely
unprepared for how to handle something like that at that scale.
So he went directly to the military and said, Hey,
(07:03):
I want to create a special unit that's more like
you guys that can handle something like this, And out
of that came America's first SWAT team in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah, and swat teams are specifically considered a paramilitary police
units or PPUs, like they are a sterling example of
militarization of the police, right, And so you can thank
Darryl Gates for creating this, like you said, although I
suspect along the way somebody would have come up with
something like this since they already existed in the military, right,
(07:32):
So that was one big key point in the militarization
of police. Another big one came from Lyndon Johnson. In
nineteen sixty five, under his guidance, I guess, the United
States passed the Law Enforcement Assistance Act, and Johnson had
declared a war on crime, and part of it allowed
the federal government to give military weapons to local police departments.
(07:55):
So that was the first time this is actually happening
all the way back in sixty five. And again these riots.
There was one hundred and sixty riots in one summer
nineteen sixty seven alone, So people were nervous, and like
you said, a lot of people were in support of
the police having things like access to military weapons. Then
after that, a year later, there was the Omnibus Crime
(08:16):
Control and Safe Streets Act, and that created this permanent
administration that oversaw transferring military weapons to local police departments.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeah, that was it was called the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration.
And because of that, cops were like, all right, I
mean we can start, you know, police departments could start
stockpiling these you know, military grade weapons, and that's really
when it kicked off. People did, and this is a
pretty important part of this episode, but not everyone was
(08:48):
just saying, yeah, this is awesome. Some people stood back
and said, wait a minute, why don't we like kind
of look at like why these riots are happening. Of course,
we need to be able to deal with this stuff,
but if we get to the root of the problem
and maybe try and stop them before they happened, that
might be a good approach. And so in nineteen sixty seven,
Johnson formed a commission. It ended up resulting in what's
(09:11):
called the Kerner Commission Report. It was officially called the
National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, but it was named
after its chairman, Auto Kerner, and he said, I want
to find out three things. What happened, why it happened,
and how can we keep it from happening again. They
surveyed different riots and uprisings in twenty three cities and
(09:34):
assigned people and investigators to go out and you know,
kind of get to the bottom of it. And the
conclusions of the report didn't lead to any substantive change.
It was basically ignored.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
It was and that's I mean, it was like the
most controversial document ever produced by the US government that
basically said there's institutional racism in the US and that
is directly responsible for riots in low income, majority black areas, right,
But part of it was like, part of the problem
is heavy handed policing. And the current report went even further,
(10:12):
and they said the Commission condemns moves to equip police
departments with mass destructive weapons such as automatic rifles, machine guns,
and tanks. Weapons that are designed to destroy, not to control,
have no place in densely populated urban communities. So all
the way back in the late sixties, this government appointed
panel is like, we should not be militarizing the police.
(10:33):
That is the wrong direction. And like you said, it
was just totally ignored. And not only that, rather than
go in the direction of getting to the bottom of
the root causes of this stuff and trying to cure
social ills that way, probably forever, America went the other
way and said, no, let's overwhelm these neighborhoods with full
(10:58):
military style force, equipping the police with military weapons and armor,
and we'll keep Bryant suppressed that way, And it worked,
but at a really huge cost, which is essentially an
erosion of trust in the police, not just in those
communities but across the country.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yeah, and I mean, if you're wondering, like, wait a minute,
Lindon Johnson did so much work for civil rights, this
doesn't quite add up. That was kind of one of
the reasons he didn't bury the report. I mean, you know,
it came out and it was published, even in a book,
so it got people talking at least, but he never
spoke publicly about it. And one of the reasons why
was because of his good track record with civil rights.
(11:38):
He was like, this report, he felt like it was
an indictment on his presidency, and he was like, I
don't like the way it makes me look. And so
not only did he never even address it, but apparently
when you have commissions like this, there are these customary
letters thanking the commissioners for their service that they draw
up that the presidents sign. I think they drew up
(11:58):
those letters, but he wouldn't even sign those.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
No, they sent him out without his signature because he's
being a big fat baby about the whole thing. That's
essentially what happened. Yeah, sure, but yeah, because he ignored
it publicly, and because they refused to implement any of
the stuff, it went well they it wasn't implemented, but
it was also given a lot of media attention, and
(12:20):
it kind of laid the groundwork for discussions about race
and the existence of institutional racism in America from that
point on. So, even though Johnson ignored it or his
administration didn't implement anything that it did get some attention.
That book you mentioned became a best seller. There's a
lot of media attention, and it really laid the groundwork
(12:42):
for discussions about racism in America and institutional racism that
would come.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, for sure. So should we take a break and
then talk about Nixon? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (12:53):
I think so, because that's a really big turning point
as well.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
All Right, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna
talk about Richard nick right after this. All right, we
(13:37):
promised talk of Richard Nixon and his war on drugs,
and I don't know why it didn't occur to me
until ten minutes ago, But war on crime, war on drugs,
if we're talking about the militarization of the police, maybe
they should stop using words like war about everything.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah, that's a really good point. As a matter of fact,
some people basically lay the blame on the militarization of
America on Congress. Even Ran Paul Well, I don't necessarily
agree with traditionally. He wrote in twenty fourteen and an
op ed in Time that like, it's basically all Congress's
fault for police militarization happening in the US because of
(14:17):
all of these policies that were passed.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Over the years. Yeah, So Richard Nixon comes along in
nineteen seventy one, declared this war on drugs. He very
famously called drug abuse public Enemy number one. And you know,
there has always been drug problems in the United States,
and along with that ghost crime. I don't think anyone
disputes that drug deaths were increasing at a pretty big
(14:40):
rate in the seventies, and so he decides to do
something about it. If you talk to people on the inside,
they'll say it actually has to do with other things.
One of his adviser's name was John Airlickman, who we
talked about before, But he said what the War on
drugs really was, if you knew Nixon, it was a
(15:00):
ploy to attack his enemies, which was the anti war left,
the progressive left, and black Americans. He has a quote
he said, we knew we couldn't make it illegal to
be either against the war or black, but by getting
the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks
with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily. We could disrupt
those communities.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah, and one of the hallmarks of Nixon's War on
drugs was really aggressive policing police tactics. One of the
things that they set up was the Office of Drug
Abuse Law Enforcement ODALE, which was the predecessor to the DEA.
And this really aggressive approach moved the focus of fighting
(15:43):
drug trafficking by targeting huge drug traffickers, which was traditionally
how law enforcement had done it to basically busting like
not even just low level dealers, but drug users in
their homes. And one of the big things that they
came up with to facilitate those raids on their homes,
military style raids on homes was the no knock warrant,
(16:06):
another big concept in the militarization of police.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Yeah, and you know how it traditionally worked was you
get a warrant and you go and you knock on
someone's door and you see if they answered the door,
and then when they answered the door, you know, start
the process from there. A no knock warrant is just
what it sounds like we've seen them on the news
when they just go barging in a house. Basically previous
to this, the Drug Enforcement Agency, or the predecessor rather,
(16:33):
had conducted five no knock searches in the five years
leading up to the formation of ODALE, and in its
first six months they had over one hundred no knock grades,
And over the course of about thirteen months from April
seventy two to May seventy three, they conducted almost fifteen
hundred no knock grades.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, and one of the huge problems that people have
with no knock raids is that it's just rude. It
is very rude. It results in property destruction. If they
or I should say, when they kick in your front door,
you're on the hook to replace your front door, even
if your house was mistakenly raided. They use flashban grenades
(17:14):
that can injure people, and I mean just police using
grenades I think should kind of stand out to you.
They will engage in gunfire with assault rifles. It can
be a really bad jam. But even like on a
more fundamental level than when those things go really wrong
or even when they go right, and the destruction that
can result is the philosophical change that they represent something
(17:37):
we talked about earlier, where if you go up to
someone's house and you say you have a warrant, you
say you're the police, you knock on their door, that
you're treating that person like a citizen who is suspected
of something but hasn't been proven guilty. If you throw
a flash bang grenade through somebody's window and kicking their
front door and come in like a seal team, yeah,
(17:58):
you're basically saying you're guilty. We're here to remove you
and take you to jail. And you basically have very
little rights if any.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Yeah, and any sudden movement, and I would imagine there's
probably nothing but sudden movements. When someone does that, yeah,
you're probably shot. And as an animal lover, that dog
of yours that runs up and barks at someone that
barges in the house is immediately shot on the spot.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah. So there's a lot of problems with these no
knock warrants. They've been a target of police reform for years,
but essentially there's nothing that's been done about them.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, for sure. So while this is going on, all
this increase of militaristic approach Darryl Gates is in LA.
He's got his swat team up and running in the
seventies and there were some really high profile shootouts. We've
talked about. It's funny how many of these things have
come up over the years. But one famous shootout with
(18:54):
the Black Panthers, another one with the Symbionese Liberation Army
the SLA that Patty Hurst was involved in. We covered
that one, but they were very high profile on the
news kind of things, and the whole concept of swat
teams was all of a sudden, like really in the
public eye and in cities all over the country, you know,
major cities for sure, and even smaller towns they were like, hey,
(19:17):
we won a swat team too, leading to the point
where even though there are no there are no official stats.
There was a criminologist named Peter Kroska who did some
estimates that they're between fifty thousand and eighty thousand swat
raids a year in the United States, right, So that's
the point where we're at now.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
It's it's also well that and I think he also
determined that in nineteen eighty there were something like three thousand,
so that's quite a quite an uptick over the years. Yeah.
I think one of the other overlooked influences on normalizing
SWAT teams was the TV show Swat from the mid seventies.
(19:58):
I think it just was on a season or two,
but it was really popular, so people were like, SWAT
teams are kind of awesome. Like you said, even small
towns were getting these right now. From what I could find,
the smallest town that has its own SWAT team, not
just access to a SWAT team, but they maintain their
own SWAT team is a town called Kerville, Texas, and
it is a population of twenty five thousand. So SWAT
(20:21):
team's definitely spread. And one reason why is not so
the police can be like, man, this is so great.
I love carrying out these raids and using flash bang grenades.
I'm quite sure that it is a sentiment among some cops,
but definitely not all. They are incentivized in every way,
shape or form to have SWAT teams and to use
(20:41):
them to carry out raids for basically anything. And the
reason why they're incentivized to do that is because, like
ram Paul said, the federal government has been incentivizing it
over the years with policy after policy starting with Johnson
and leading up till today.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Yeah, and you know, you get a TV show like
SWAT coming out and promoting and encouraging and sort of
glorifying the use of SWAT teams. Yet Magnipi comes out
and not every city is saying, hey, we need super
hot guys in ferraris investigating things privately.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
No, but ironically, SWAT teams started to wear short shorts
after magnum Pi came out during their raids. It was
a trend for a little while.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
I sent you that picture of Tom Selleck at eighty
years old the other day, Yeah, and he said he
looks better than I done that.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Man.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
He's put on a little weight, But I gotta say, man,
Tom sellok still looks pretty dang good.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
It does, especially for eighty. Sorry to be agist, but
it's true.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Yeah, handsome older man. One thing you mentioned a second
ago was the incentivization. Is that the word of cops
to carry out these no knock rades and stuff like that.
That really ramped up with President Ronald Reagan in the
nineteen eighties. Under his presidency, they started doing more or
(22:00):
more drug raids, a lot more frequent, a lot more intense,
for sure. And part of the reason is because in
nineteen eighty four he passed the Federal Crime Bill, which
expanded civil forfeiture laws relating to drug arrests. So basically, hey,
if you conduct a no knock grade and you go
in there and you get you a gym bag full
(22:22):
of money and cocaine, you get to keep that, keep
those spoils.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah, before they had to turn it all over to
the Department of Justice. The Fed's got all that.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
That's right, So it literally financially incentivized these no knock grades.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yeah, because if you're a budget strapped police department and
all of a sudden you can make millions of dollars
a year for your police department, or keep drug dealers
cars and auction them off or whatever, that's a huge
financial incentive to carry out those raids and get as
much of that money as you possibly can. I don't
think that that's to say unfairly that that's the reason
(23:01):
why cops are organizing raids like that. Like, I think
that it's just like I was saying, or we both said,
a real incentive to carry out those raids rather than
you know, say non military policing.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah, for sure. That was eighty four was a federal
crime bill. Then a few years later in eighty seven,
Congress created a new office basically that almost like a
one stop shop if you want to militarize your local
police department. They helped with a transfer of military equipment.
They literally set up a hotline and a cat and
(23:36):
printed a catalog.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Yeah like this year's the Facebook for police chiefs.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Yeah, that they would send out to police chiefs and
all of a sudden, it just sort of streamlined the
whole process and made it much easier.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah, which is that's pretty easy as it is, but
the whole thing really kind of got going under Bill Clinton.
He kind of tossed a bone to progressives by coming
up with the Community Oriented Policing Services Act. I guess
which is is that spell cops? Yes, it does good
call And it's the opposite of professionalization, where they're like, no,
(24:10):
we need more input from the community and society in
how police police and all that. That's one thing, so
it's like a conceptually it makes sense in that respect,
but in practice it really just gave more funding to
police departments to hire more cops. The really big part, though,
came in nineteen ninety seven as part of the National
(24:31):
Defense Authorization Act that created what's known as the ten
thirty three program, which is it permanently authorized the Department
of Defense to funnel military grade weapons and supplies to
police departments in the US. It said, this is official.
These are no longer executive orders. This is an act
of Congress saying you guys can do this, and let's
(24:54):
make it happen.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah. And since that, which was in nineteen ninety seven, again,
they have sold I guess, I mean they're selling this stuff, right, No,
I well, they just giving it.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
I believe that they're essentially giving it to them. If yes,
and if they're selling it, then police departments can apply
four grants from the federal government to buy the stuff
from the federal government.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
They're like, man, we're all the shame team here a
lou that was a very bad wiggam. I used to
do that better. But since then, there has been more
than seven point six billion dollars worth of military equipment
given out to police departments across the US.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
In less than thirty years. Yeah, that's a lot. The
two thousands really kind of changed things as well. I
guess every decade really did, but not. The nine to
eleven attack really kind of refocused America's thoughts on public safety,
law enforcement, that kind of thing. And one of the
(25:56):
upshots of it was the creation of the Department of
Homeland Security, which created a program in two thousand and
three that that essentially gave grants to police departments for
training against terrorism and equipping them with weapons to fight terrorism.
And so terrorism also gave local police departments a new
(26:18):
justification and rationalization for becoming militarized. It's not only was
a drug users anymore. Now we had potential terrorists coming
to the US, and police departments needed to know how
to deal with a terrorist attack, which I mean kind
of it makes sense. It's tough to argue with. It's
just another kind of ripple in the pond of this
(26:39):
whole thing, though.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Well yeah, but what it did was, you know, you've
got these SWAT teams sitting around in a maybe smaller town,
and if they don't have any terrorists to go fight,
they don't want that tank to get rusty, right, So
in the two thousands we saw SWAT raids. It wasn't
just drugs anymore, like you said they were. There have
been swat raids on bar shops because they didn't have
(27:01):
a license. Yeah, there have been swat raids against teenage drinking,
small time gamblers like you know, the back room poker game,
stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
It.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
You know, once they had that system in place, they're like, well,
we got to use this stuff for something.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Right, So just having it makes you want to use it.
You're financially incentivized. You can get it for free, all
of this stuff. And so if you add all that
stuff up, you have every incentive to not only have
a swat team, but to use them fairly often. And
then also on top of that, they're further incentive advised
to use no knock warrants because the Supreme Court ruled
(27:37):
in two thousand and six in a case called Hudson v.
Michigan that even if you didn't obtain a no knock warrant,
which is a warrant that says you don't even have
to knock, right, if you didn't even bother to get that,
and you still performed a no knock search, came blazing
in with flash bang grenades and kicking down the door
and coming in through the window without a warrant, whatever
(28:00):
evidence that you discovered was still admissible in court.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
That's right, So just one more incentive, and maybe we
should take a break.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
I think we shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
For sure, I'm incentivised to take a break, right, very nice, man.
I'm gonna dab your forehead with the cool cloth, okay,
and we're gonna pick up in the twenty ten's right
after this.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
So, Chuck, We've been basically going on the premise this
whole episode that the militarization of the police is problematic
in and of itself, right, And I wanted to understand
exactly why, Like why didn't America just say forget police forces,
We'll just use the military all the time. And so
I looked into it, and essentially the answer that I
(29:17):
could find from academia is that the military is well
aware that it could take over the country anytime it wants,
so it submits to civilian rule. And part of that
is based on the idea that civilian rule is better
for democracy than military rule, just because civilian politicians tend
(29:38):
to know how to run things better. There's more rights
afforded to people who are citizens not being ruled by
the military, And so by militarizing the police, and having
a police presence that looks like a military occupation. It
normalizes the concept of the military occupying its own country,
(30:01):
and so it erodes that custom of the separation of
the military from domestic affairs, that could conceivably lead to
the idea of the military actually starting to run the show.
It's supposed to be a separation, and the cops are
moving that overton window by becoming militarized. That's essentially the
(30:22):
basic argument that I've seen against police militarization. There's all
sorts of other symptoms and factors that it creates too
that people use to argue against it.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah, for sure. And you know, we can't ignore the
fact because this is happening in real time this week
as we record the current administration, and this isn't militarizing
the police. This is using the actual military on US soil.
As you know. The latest example is the federal military
takeover of crime in Washington, d C. So that's kind
(30:54):
of just happened over the last couple of days as
we record this, right.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Yes, So one of the things that is leading the
huge pushback of militarization, aside from more and more people
being exposed to an unsettled by a police officer in
full tactical gear holding an assault rifle. Is the advent
of the smartphone, and people can actually record this stuff
and then broadcast it widely, and so it's kind of
(31:18):
captured the attention of the average person. I would say
to the concept that police militarization is in and of
itself a heavy handed police tactic, that is questionable.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah for sure. And I just had another quick point.
I don't want to get too much grief for this,
but there's a pretty obvious elephant in the room here,
which is if you're if you think all this is great,
and you say, well, hey, they got those weapons, so
why can't the cops have those weapons? They have those
weapons because of policy as well, you know, explain well
(31:58):
citizens like saying, hey, you know, citizens have assault rifles,
like the cops should have assault rifles, and like the
citizens have the assault rifles because the US government said
it was okay to So yeah, you know, it's sort
of I don't know.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
I had the same thought that you can trace you
can trace that argument back to okay, well that's actually
an argument in favor of gun control.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
I had the same thought, because yeah, that is a
huge argument. People be like, well, if you take the
cops assault rifles away, only outlaws will have assault rifles.
It's like, no, take the outlaws assault rifles away first,
then we can talk about the cops giving theirs up right.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
They didn't used to have them, you know exactly.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Okay, yeah, so no, I'm with you. I thought that too.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
So you brought up smartphones or did you say smartphones?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
I did. I talked all about smartphones. I talked about yeah,
the iPhone four, the iPhone seven, all the way up
to the iPhone thirteen and just stop there inexplicably.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
You know what's funny is a month before the new
iPhone comes out, we talked about play and obsolescence. My
trusty old iPhone twelve was finally dying.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
I think that's when. That was during the time when
Apple was caught purposely draining batteries to make you have
to replace your phone.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
I'm not conspiracy guy, but I'm just saying, like I
was going to get the new in anyway because it
was I usually do every three, and I waited four
this time, and so you no, I waited five because
I got a twelve and it's the seventeen, but yeah,
it's my battery just started going to zero and shutting
off and rebooting and uh.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Oh wait, it just happened. Your iPhone twelve just broke down.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Oh like last week.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
That's actually pretty good.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Yeah, I guess so. But I was able to get
a aftermarket battery installed for sixty five bucks from the
local guy.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
I know you know this, but I want to share
it to everybody.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
I had a lawnmower, a gas powered lawnmower, admittedly, but
it was broken, like ready for the dump, and I
was like, no, I'm going to this. So I called around.
There were some repair shops. They wanted to charge some
dough and I looked into what was probably wrong. It's
probably the carburetor, and I said, I'm going to replace
this carburetor. And by god, I replaced the carburetor and
(34:13):
when I was done, the first pull that lawmower started
for the first time in years.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
I got a text from Josh on Tuesday at twenty
six penom, I just fixed my law mower by replacing
the carburetor and gas lines started on the first pole.
And then I replied. Eventually I put a radiator in
a VW Jetta in my thirties.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
It was the only real manly thing I've ever done.
He said, Bam, all right, we should probably get back.
We had to have a laugh at some point, so
that parts over.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
That's it. That's the one laugh. Everybody be quiet.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Back to smartphones changing the game because of all of
a sudden obviously people can see the stuff on social
media with their own two eyes much more than before.
And in the mid twenty tens. In twenty fourteen, the
Ferguson protes us We're a really good example of this
kind of happening. They were protesting after Michael Brown was
killed by officer Darren Wilson. The Obama administration declined to
(35:10):
prosecute that, and police got really aggressive on these protests.
They were, you know, the armored trucks came in, snipers
came in, those flash bang grenades that Josh loved talking about,
in tear gas, and there was a big public outcry
after that, such that Obama said, hey, maybe we want
to put some guardrails around this ten thirty three program.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Right, and they did. They said, okay, no more tanks
and grenade launchers, among some other stuff. But This is
I think the first time anyone had stepped in and
been like, we need to take some sort of prohibitions
or bands on what local police departments can get from
the military. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
And also, you know, if you're saying, like, why don't
they just get rid of ten thirty three A, it's
not going to happen. But critics of that will say, hey,
it's not just military weapons. They also take like our
old air conditioners that we were going to throw out
if a cash strapped police department needs a new air
conditioner and stuff like that. And I guess my response
(36:09):
to that is like, why don't you just create an
act about air conditioners?
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Then? Well, right, exactly, like there's no reason you can't
continue the ten thirty three program, but ban yes, military
style weapons and armor, you know, not bill proofessed by armor,
I mean like M wraps and tanks and troop transports
and like helicopters like black Hawks and stuff like that.
There's it'd be easy as pie to do that. There's
(36:32):
just nothing.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
I was kidding, by the way about the air Conditioner Act, so.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
I know you were, but it is I mean, it's
a valid argument that there's actually lots of stuff that
doesn't make the news that's really helpful to police departments
that comes from the ten thirty three program. That's just
you could really easily adjust things, for sure.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Yeah. Absolutely, So Obama rolls back some of this in
twenty fifteen. Then the next administration came in and very
quickly rolled back those ten thirty three were four and
that's when the you know, the sort of ramped up
use of paramilitary forces to break up protests, increase guarding
federal monuments and statues and stuff like that because of vandalism.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
One of the things I just want to say. One
of the things real quick that that Trump did when
he rolled back those reforms. Bayonets had been banned previously
and they got allowed again as part of that executive order.
And if there's one thing that you do not need
as a police officer is a bayonet.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah, think about it. We should do it shorty on bayonets.
It's interesting, like, yeah, it's the concept of putting a
weapon on the front of your weapon. Yes, like a
less good weapon on the front of your web.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Yeah, that's meant to just an interesting stab somebody through
the chest or the neck or the face or something
like that like, and the concept of those things showing
up at a peaceful protest in case it breaks out
into violence, Like I just can't. It just is mind
boggling to me that bayonets were ever allowed.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Well, it just seems very old school. I mean, I
know why they've made bayonets just because back then those
the long rifles took a long time to reload. And
maybe we're hard to shoot in close quarters. So if
you were all of a sudden had a guy run
upon you on battle, you got to do some stab in.
And stab in from you know, three and a half
feet away is better than stabing in your hand. But
this isn't the French Foreign Legion, you know.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
No, And what you're talking about is a military engagement,
not a law enforcement engagement. There's no place for bayonets
and law enforcement. I think that that is objectively true
as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Yeah, for sure. So in twenty twenty two, President Biden
signed an executive order reinstating and expanding some of these
ten thirty three reforms that the previous administration had gotten
rid of. They limited the use of no knock entries
and you know, basically try to you know, how it
happens when different administrations come in, they try to undo
(38:59):
what the previous person right.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
And I looked high and low to see if President
Trump had come in on his second term and reversed
biden orders, and I couldn't see anything that said that.
All the talk about the reversal of the ten thirty
three orders was from the first term. But I did
see that it's possible that Biden's executive orders were never implemented,
(39:22):
so there was really nothing to roll back In practice.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Well, I mean that's another thing, and to itself. You
can get on TV and sign a thing, but implementation
is where the rubber meets arous.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
That's where it's at. And you do get the impression
that there is a cynical thing among politicians that like, yeah,
we're not going to touch this ten thirty three program.
In reality, like it's like you said, it's not going anywhere.
If it didn't go anywhere. After the summer of twenty twenty,
after George Floyd's murder, Yeah, when there's never been more
and widespread focus on police, police tactics, militarization of the police,
(39:58):
so much ink was dr I actually found a teen
Vogue article from twenty twenty titled What's a no knock Warrant?
Teen Vogue was talking about it and if it survived
that it's gonna be really tough to ever just fully
get rid of it if you want it gotten rid of.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Yeah, and you weren't even researching, you were just reading
teen Vogue on the toilet.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
I couldn't believe it. I was like, you got to
kid talking about COVID talking about no knock warrants. Teen
Vogue had their finger on the pulse.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
So the question remains, you know, is this move to
militarize the police has it rather led to like better
public safety? I mean, because that's the ultimate goal seemingly,
And it kind of depends on what you define, you know,
how you define public safety, because that's going to change
depending on who you are. We have seen that militarization
(40:53):
canon has escalated encounters there have you know, it just
this is anecdotal. I don't know if there's a study,
but I feel like every time there's a protest happening
and the tanks roll in, that's when it goes bad.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Yeah, that's that's exactly what a lot of people say
about say for example, Ferguson. I from what I could tell,
the riots started before the police responded, but they started
like after the police showed up. So yes, some people
are saying just seeing police like that is intimidating and antagonizing,
(41:29):
I guess, and that I think the next day after
the whole world was like what are you guys doing
in Ferguson, the governor of Missouri told the Ferguson Police
Department to stand down and send out the Missouri Highway
Patrol and they they basically walked step in step with
(41:50):
the protesters, the peaceful protesters, and they used that law
enforcement tactic and apparently it was to pretty good effect.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Yeah. I mean, one thing is for sure is that
it's led to the killing of a lot more citizens
by the police. And this is a pretty shocking stat
and you know, anytime you're comparing the UK to the
United States, it's I mean, some people might say that's
not a fair comparison because they just do things so differently,
but that's kind of the point, and you know, delivering
(42:20):
these statistics. So the Guardian reported that in the first
very first month in January, only of twenty fifteen American
police killed more US citizens than police in the UK
had in the last twenty four years combined. Yeah, one month,
twenty four years.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Right, And those are typically like used most often, we
guess we should say there are very few states that
actually require police departments to maintain statistics, including on swat teams,
how often they're used, where they're deployed. Again, anecdotally, they
do seem to be much more present and much more
used in predominantly black communities. But there have been studies
(43:02):
that have shown like this is actually counterproductive. Did you
see that one from Princeton from I think twenty eighteen.
It was it basically found that the militarization of police
has a counterproductive effect on police themselves, in that it
(43:23):
affects it negatively impacts public perception of police. And the
study showed that it actually had a negative impact on
public support for expanding police budgets. So by militarizing, you
can make a case that they're also shooting themselves in
the feet metaphorically.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
No pun intending, right, shooting themselves in the feet with
a grenade launcher.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Right. And there was another study I wanted to mention too.
It was from Emery here in Atlanta. It was from
twenty twenty. And there are these two studies that came
out in twenty fourteen twenty seventeen that are pretty prominent
in they're typically used to support the idea that militarization
of police actually has a like increases public safety. And
(44:08):
this twenty twenty study looked at those studies and said
these studies did not have enough data to come to
these conclusions and basically debunked them. And again, the reason
why is because no statistics are required in most states
on things like swat use. So you can't possibly say
that if you carry out one hundred rates a year,
public safety is going to go down by or going
(44:30):
to increase by ten percent or something like that. You
just you can't do it. So studies on that are
inherently faulty. And before you say, well, what about that
twenty eighteen Princeton study that looks specifically at Maryland, which
is one of those rare states that does require reporting
by police departments. Yeah, so you got anything else to
(44:53):
say about it?
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Plenty? But I feel like this is a good stopping boy.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
Okay, I would love to hear from police officers who
listened to stuff you should know out there who are
for militarization and against it. I would definitely, yeah, for
sure those opinions in.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Point yeah, we'll read some of that stuff on the
air very nice.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Well, since Chuck agreed to read some stuff on the air,
that means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
All right. We're getting a lot of good feedback about
our heavy metal episodes, which makes our heart warm because
we care about all the episodes. But I think everyone
could tell we were pretty jazzed about those yep this
one and I'll probably be reading a lot of metal
emails over the next few weeks, but this one's from Kevin.
It's kind of fun. Hey, guys, thanks for the metal ups.
(45:37):
Growing up in the eighties, pop radio and MTV taught
me that metals big three were tights, makeup, and hairspray.
I was way too cool for that and opted for
the other big three. Dismissed the Cure and Depeche Mode.
I was doing both, my friend, because you can. But
I always enjoy a musical history lesson, so thanks. Later
in life, I joined a cover band and will grudgingly
(45:58):
admit that some of the hair band songs worked well
for us, which is why I'm still mythed that my
idea for naming our band was rejected. It was Cheryl Crue.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Oh that's a great one. That's up there with Overdry. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
I'm generally not a pun band name guy, except for
the Beatles and Cheryl Crue.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Yeah, that's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
That is from Kevin. And I also wanted to mention
real quick that I read in like four days. I
had the Nicky six Heroin Diaries book sitting on my
shelf for a couple of years and had just finished
where did I just finish? I finished the Bruce Springsteen book,
(46:42):
the one about the movie coming out, and I dove
right into the Heroin Diaries and read it in three days.
And it is a boy. I can't say it was
a fun read. It was harrowing. Yeah, to read the
Diaries of Nicky six in those days.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
I just finished the letter in Encyclopedia metanicis sweethe volumes.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Oh very nice.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
I'm just kidding. I am kidding, by the way. Oh okay,
who was that that wrote in Kevin?
Speaker 1 (47:11):
Yeah that was Kevin.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Nice work, Kevin. We appreciate that. Into all of you
who enjoyed the Metal episodes, Thank you, rock on and
If you want to get in touch with us, you
can send us an email to send it off to
stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
shuck and it's just us today. But that's okay because
this is stuff you should know. The Is this a
good idea?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Oh, I think it's a good idea. You know, we're
just going to kind of report what happened over the
last you know, sixty years or so in the United States.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah, there's been this increasing trend that Yeah, I guess
it's about how long it's been going on where the
police departments across the US have become increasingly militarized. And
to be specific, it's not just a question of wearing
technical helmets and vests, carrying assault rifles sometimes driving through
(01:00):
through cities and m wraps and tanks. It's also a
change in attitude that it's created where people are no
longer citizens who are presumed innocent until proven guilty. They
are the enemy and the police at that moment are
an occupying force coming in full force to that person's house,
(01:24):
or even when they're not doing that, just looking intimidating
to basically everyone who sees them. That's essentially what people
who talk about this stuff consider the full scope of
the militarization of the police.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah for sure. And like I said, this has been
happening since about the nineteen sixties. If you go back
in time to like the eighteen hundreds, when cops first
started being a thing in the United States, they were
initially just hired as politicians. It was called a patronage system,
so they were kind of appointed. It wasn't until the
(01:57):
nineteenth century that they started get a little more like, hey,
let's squash that patronage. Let's hire police instead of appointing them,
so they basically don't work for politicians. And that's when
union started being founded. That's when formal training programs started.
I know a lot of this stuff we've covered in
(02:18):
other episodes, but I know, if we talked about Robert
Peel and the London Metropolitan Police is sort of a
big north star that when America started their like real
police force, they often looked to London and how he
did it.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah for sure. And part of that was what's called
the professionalism movement of police. Like you said, no longer
making them political appointees in the pocket of some politician
who wants them to go rough up as opponent and
part of professionalism. One of the central tenets is that
essentially the police is its own silo within society. It's
not influenced by politics and all that stuff, which is
(02:55):
good in that sense, but in the other sense, the
police then kind of become their own well police force,
and they make a lot of decisions about society, and
as there's less I guess control or input or influence
from society, things can start to get out of hand.
On the other hand, professionalism also meant like, you know,
(03:15):
people who are trained as police now know what they're doing.
They're actually getting professional training.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Yeah, I mean it was in some ways it was
a progressive era at first when the professionalism movement started,
but even early on there was a guy in California
and Berkeley, of all places, the chief of police there
named August August Volmar, who you know, even way back then,
was like, hey, I think you know, it should be
(03:41):
more like the military. He had a quote where he said,
after all, we're conducting a war, a war against the
enemies of society. So even back then there was some
ideological seeds being planted. Other people have defended Volmer in
this movement and saying, hey, you know, he actually is
one of the people who first started formal training. He's
(04:02):
the first person to encourage the escalation and hire the
first black and women police officer. So he also had,
you know, people kind of sticking up for his movement
as well.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, he's become kind of the poster child for who
started all this, and other people are like, that's just
not really fair. So either way, he definitely was a
huge proponent of police reform and kind of established a
lot of the ways that police thought. And like you said,
part of it was this idea that there should be
some degree of militarization of the police. And then after
(04:36):
August Volmer, nothing happened for about sixty years, and then
in nineteen sixty five things nothing happened, nothing, The police
just went along doing their thing and everybody was happy
with what they were doing. Yeah, no, I know what,
in the sixties everything turned and you can really trace
the militarization of the police back to a couple of
(04:59):
years in the sixties. There are other things that happened
along the way. I think in the eighties there was
a shootout in Miami nineteen eighty six that ended up
leading to full throated support for police getting access to
bulletproof vests, which I really don't think is problematic. Another one,
(05:20):
we've done an entire podcast on the North Hollywood shootout
in nineteen ninety seven. Yeah, that led access to police
being equipped with long guns like assault rifles and stuff
like that after that. And in both those cases, the
police were unprepared. They were shown to be unprepared, So
there were steps taken to prepare them that you can
kind of say are military in nature, I guess, But
(05:45):
that's nothing compared to the effect that the riots of
the nineteen sixties had on the militarization of the police.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Yeah, for sure, And we covered some of these in
our episode on riots. But in nineteen sixty five, the
Watts riots occurred. Then a couple of years later, in
nineteen sixty seven, there were riots in Newark and Detroit,
and this stuff was all over the news. It was,
you know, being widely reported. Americans were getting pretty worried
(06:13):
about just crime in general, sort of in the nineteen sixties,
you know, thinking things were kind of out of control.
There was a poll in nineteen sixty nine in Newsweek
that found that sixty six percent of white Americans thought
police should be given more power, and the Watts riots
directly led to the creation of swat units. You know,
(06:33):
we talked about this in our Swat episode all the
way back in twenty ten.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
But there was a guy named Darryl Gates, who I'm
pretty sure isn't that the same guy who was chief
during the Rodney King riots? Okay, well, back then in
sixty five, he was an laped inspector and he basically
said what you said was like they were just completely
unprepared for how to handle something like that at that scale.
So he went directly to the military and said, Hey,
(07:03):
I want to create a special unit that's more like
you guys that can handle something like this, And out
of that came America's first SWAT team in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah, and swat teams are specifically considered a paramilitary police
units or PPUs, like they are a sterling example of
militarization of the police, right, And so you can thank
Darryl Gates for creating this, like you said, although I
suspect along the way somebody would have come up with
something like this since they already existed in the military, right,
(07:32):
So that was one big key point in the militarization
of police. Another big one came from Lyndon Johnson. In
nineteen sixty five, under his guidance, I guess, the United
States passed the Law Enforcement Assistance Act, and Johnson had
declared a war on crime, and part of it allowed
the federal government to give military weapons to local police departments.
(07:55):
So that was the first time this is actually happening
all the way back in sixty five. And again these riots.
There was one hundred and sixty riots in one summer
nineteen sixty seven alone, So people were nervous, and like
you said, a lot of people were in support of
the police having things like access to military weapons. Then
after that, a year later, there was the Omnibus Crime
(08:16):
Control and Safe Streets Act, and that created this permanent
administration that oversaw transferring military weapons to local police departments.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeah, that was it was called the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration.
And because of that, cops were like, all right, I
mean we can start, you know, police departments could start
stockpiling these you know, military grade weapons, and that's really
when it kicked off. People did, and this is a
pretty important part of this episode, but not everyone was
(08:48):
just saying, yeah, this is awesome. Some people stood back
and said, wait a minute, why don't we like kind
of look at like why these riots are happening. Of course,
we need to be able to deal with this stuff,
but if we get to the root of the problem
and maybe try and stop them before they happened, that
might be a good approach. And so in nineteen sixty seven,
Johnson formed a commission. It ended up resulting in what's
(09:11):
called the Kerner Commission Report. It was officially called the
National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, but it was named
after its chairman, Auto Kerner, and he said, I want
to find out three things. What happened, why it happened,
and how can we keep it from happening again. They
surveyed different riots and uprisings in twenty three cities and
(09:34):
assigned people and investigators to go out and you know,
kind of get to the bottom of it. And the
conclusions of the report didn't lead to any substantive change.
It was basically ignored.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
It was and that's I mean, it was like the
most controversial document ever produced by the US government that
basically said there's institutional racism in the US and that
is directly responsible for riots in low income, majority black areas, right,
But part of it was like, part of the problem
is heavy handed policing. And the current report went even further,
(10:12):
and they said the Commission condemns moves to equip police
departments with mass destructive weapons such as automatic rifles, machine guns,
and tanks. Weapons that are designed to destroy, not to control,
have no place in densely populated urban communities. So all
the way back in the late sixties, this government appointed
panel is like, we should not be militarizing the police.
(10:33):
That is the wrong direction. And like you said, it
was just totally ignored. And not only that, rather than
go in the direction of getting to the bottom of
the root causes of this stuff and trying to cure
social ills that way, probably forever, America went the other
way and said, no, let's overwhelm these neighborhoods with full
(10:58):
military style force, equipping the police with military weapons and armor,
and we'll keep Bryant suppressed that way, And it worked,
but at a really huge cost, which is essentially an
erosion of trust in the police, not just in those
communities but across the country.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yeah, and I mean, if you're wondering, like, wait a minute,
Lindon Johnson did so much work for civil rights, this
doesn't quite add up. That was kind of one of
the reasons he didn't bury the report. I mean, you know,
it came out and it was published, even in a book,
so it got people talking at least, but he never
spoke publicly about it. And one of the reasons why
was because of his good track record with civil rights.
(11:38):
He was like, this report, he felt like it was
an indictment on his presidency, and he was like, I
don't like the way it makes me look. And so
not only did he never even address it, but apparently
when you have commissions like this, there are these customary
letters thanking the commissioners for their service that they draw
up that the presidents sign. I think they drew up
(11:58):
those letters, but he wouldn't even sign those.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
No, they sent him out without his signature because he's
being a big fat baby about the whole thing. That's
essentially what happened. Yeah, sure, but yeah, because he ignored
it publicly, and because they refused to implement any of
the stuff, it went well they it wasn't implemented, but
it was also given a lot of media attention, and
(12:20):
it kind of laid the groundwork for discussions about race
and the existence of institutional racism in America from that
point on. So, even though Johnson ignored it or his
administration didn't implement anything that it did get some attention.
That book you mentioned became a best seller. There's a
lot of media attention, and it really laid the groundwork
(12:42):
for discussions about racism in America and institutional racism that
would come.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, for sure. So should we take a break and
then talk about Nixon? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (12:53):
I think so, because that's a really big turning point
as well.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
All Right, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna
talk about Richard nick right after this. All right, we
(13:37):
promised talk of Richard Nixon and his war on drugs,
and I don't know why it didn't occur to me
until ten minutes ago, But war on crime, war on drugs,
if we're talking about the militarization of the police, maybe
they should stop using words like war about everything.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah, that's a really good point. As a matter of fact,
some people basically lay the blame on the militarization of
America on Congress. Even Ran Paul Well, I don't necessarily
agree with traditionally. He wrote in twenty fourteen and an
op ed in Time that like, it's basically all Congress's
fault for police militarization happening in the US because of
(14:17):
all of these policies that were passed.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Over the years. Yeah, So Richard Nixon comes along in
nineteen seventy one, declared this war on drugs. He very
famously called drug abuse public Enemy number one. And you know,
there has always been drug problems in the United States,
and along with that ghost crime. I don't think anyone
disputes that drug deaths were increasing at a pretty big
(14:40):
rate in the seventies, and so he decides to do
something about it. If you talk to people on the inside,
they'll say it actually has to do with other things.
One of his adviser's name was John Airlickman, who we
talked about before, But he said what the War on
drugs really was, if you knew Nixon, it was a
(15:00):
ploy to attack his enemies, which was the anti war left,
the progressive left, and black Americans. He has a quote
he said, we knew we couldn't make it illegal to
be either against the war or black, but by getting
the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks
with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily. We could disrupt
those communities.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah, and one of the hallmarks of Nixon's War on
drugs was really aggressive policing police tactics. One of the
things that they set up was the Office of Drug
Abuse Law Enforcement ODALE, which was the predecessor to the DEA.
And this really aggressive approach moved the focus of fighting
(15:43):
drug trafficking by targeting huge drug traffickers, which was traditionally
how law enforcement had done it to basically busting like
not even just low level dealers, but drug users in
their homes. And one of the big things that they
came up with to facilitate those raids on their homes,
military style raids on homes was the no knock warrant,
(16:06):
another big concept in the militarization of police.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Yeah, and you know how it traditionally worked was you
get a warrant and you go and you knock on
someone's door and you see if they answered the door,
and then when they answered the door, you know, start
the process from there. A no knock warrant is just
what it sounds like we've seen them on the news
when they just go barging in a house. Basically previous
to this, the Drug Enforcement Agency, or the predecessor rather,
(16:33):
had conducted five no knock searches in the five years
leading up to the formation of ODALE, and in its
first six months they had over one hundred no knock grades,
And over the course of about thirteen months from April
seventy two to May seventy three, they conducted almost fifteen
hundred no knock grades.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, and one of the huge problems that people have
with no knock raids is that it's just rude. It
is very rude. It results in property destruction. If they
or I should say, when they kick in your front door,
you're on the hook to replace your front door, even
if your house was mistakenly raided. They use flashban grenades
(17:14):
that can injure people, and I mean just police using
grenades I think should kind of stand out to you.
They will engage in gunfire with assault rifles. It can
be a really bad jam. But even like on a
more fundamental level than when those things go really wrong
or even when they go right, and the destruction that
can result is the philosophical change that they represent something
(17:37):
we talked about earlier, where if you go up to
someone's house and you say you have a warrant, you
say you're the police, you knock on their door, that
you're treating that person like a citizen who is suspected
of something but hasn't been proven guilty. If you throw
a flash bang grenade through somebody's window and kicking their
front door and come in like a seal team, yeah,
(17:58):
you're basically saying you're guilty. We're here to remove you
and take you to jail. And you basically have very
little rights if any.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Yeah, and any sudden movement, and I would imagine there's
probably nothing but sudden movements. When someone does that, yeah,
you're probably shot. And as an animal lover, that dog
of yours that runs up and barks at someone that
barges in the house is immediately shot on the spot.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah. So there's a lot of problems with these no
knock warrants. They've been a target of police reform for years,
but essentially there's nothing that's been done about them.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, for sure. So while this is going on, all
this increase of militaristic approach Darryl Gates is in LA.
He's got his swat team up and running in the
seventies and there were some really high profile shootouts. We've
talked about. It's funny how many of these things have
come up over the years. But one famous shootout with
(18:54):
the Black Panthers, another one with the Symbionese Liberation Army
the SLA that Patty Hurst was involved in. We covered
that one, but they were very high profile on the
news kind of things, and the whole concept of swat
teams was all of a sudden, like really in the
public eye and in cities all over the country, you know,
major cities for sure, and even smaller towns they were like, hey,
(19:17):
we won a swat team too, leading to the point
where even though there are no there are no official stats.
There was a criminologist named Peter Kroska who did some
estimates that they're between fifty thousand and eighty thousand swat
raids a year in the United States, right, So that's
the point where we're at now.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
It's it's also well that and I think he also
determined that in nineteen eighty there were something like three thousand,
so that's quite a quite an uptick over the years. Yeah.
I think one of the other overlooked influences on normalizing
SWAT teams was the TV show Swat from the mid seventies.
(19:58):
I think it just was on a season or two,
but it was really popular, so people were like, SWAT
teams are kind of awesome. Like you said, even small
towns were getting these right now. From what I could find,
the smallest town that has its own SWAT team, not
just access to a SWAT team, but they maintain their
own SWAT team is a town called Kerville, Texas, and
it is a population of twenty five thousand. So SWAT
(20:21):
team's definitely spread. And one reason why is not so
the police can be like, man, this is so great.
I love carrying out these raids and using flash bang grenades.
I'm quite sure that it is a sentiment among some cops,
but definitely not all. They are incentivized in every way,
shape or form to have SWAT teams and to use
(20:41):
them to carry out raids for basically anything. And the
reason why they're incentivized to do that is because, like
ram Paul said, the federal government has been incentivizing it
over the years with policy after policy starting with Johnson
and leading up till today.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Yeah, and you know, you get a TV show like
SWAT coming out and promoting and encouraging and sort of
glorifying the use of SWAT teams. Yet Magnipi comes out
and not every city is saying, hey, we need super
hot guys in ferraris investigating things privately.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
No, but ironically, SWAT teams started to wear short shorts
after magnum Pi came out during their raids. It was
a trend for a little while.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
I sent you that picture of Tom Selleck at eighty
years old the other day, Yeah, and he said he
looks better than I done that.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Man.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
He's put on a little weight, But I gotta say, man,
Tom sellok still looks pretty dang good.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
It does, especially for eighty. Sorry to be agist, but
it's true.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Yeah, handsome older man. One thing you mentioned a second
ago was the incentivization. Is that the word of cops
to carry out these no knock rades and stuff like that.
That really ramped up with President Ronald Reagan in the
nineteen eighties. Under his presidency, they started doing more or
(22:00):
more drug raids, a lot more frequent, a lot more intense,
for sure. And part of the reason is because in
nineteen eighty four he passed the Federal Crime Bill, which
expanded civil forfeiture laws relating to drug arrests. So basically, hey,
if you conduct a no knock grade and you go
in there and you get you a gym bag full
(22:22):
of money and cocaine, you get to keep that, keep
those spoils.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah, before they had to turn it all over to
the Department of Justice. The Fed's got all that.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
That's right, So it literally financially incentivized these no knock grades.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yeah, because if you're a budget strapped police department and
all of a sudden you can make millions of dollars
a year for your police department, or keep drug dealers
cars and auction them off or whatever, that's a huge
financial incentive to carry out those raids and get as
much of that money as you possibly can. I don't
think that that's to say unfairly that that's the reason
(23:01):
why cops are organizing raids like that. Like, I think
that it's just like I was saying, or we both said,
a real incentive to carry out those raids rather than
you know, say non military policing.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah, for sure. That was eighty four was a federal
crime bill. Then a few years later in eighty seven,
Congress created a new office basically that almost like a
one stop shop if you want to militarize your local
police department. They helped with a transfer of military equipment.
They literally set up a hotline and a cat and
(23:36):
printed a catalog.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Yeah like this year's the Facebook for police chiefs.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Yeah, that they would send out to police chiefs and
all of a sudden, it just sort of streamlined the
whole process and made it much easier.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah, which is that's pretty easy as it is, but
the whole thing really kind of got going under Bill Clinton.
He kind of tossed a bone to progressives by coming
up with the Community Oriented Policing Services Act. I guess
which is is that spell cops? Yes, it does good
call And it's the opposite of professionalization, where they're like, no,
(24:10):
we need more input from the community and society in
how police police and all that. That's one thing, so
it's like a conceptually it makes sense in that respect,
but in practice it really just gave more funding to
police departments to hire more cops. The really big part, though,
came in nineteen ninety seven as part of the National
(24:31):
Defense Authorization Act that created what's known as the ten
thirty three program, which is it permanently authorized the Department
of Defense to funnel military grade weapons and supplies to
police departments in the US. It said, this is official.
These are no longer executive orders. This is an act
of Congress saying you guys can do this, and let's
(24:54):
make it happen.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah. And since that, which was in nineteen ninety seven, again,
they have sold I guess, I mean they're selling this stuff, right, No,
I well, they just giving it.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
I believe that they're essentially giving it to them. If yes,
and if they're selling it, then police departments can apply
four grants from the federal government to buy the stuff
from the federal government.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
They're like, man, we're all the shame team here a
lou that was a very bad wiggam. I used to
do that better. But since then, there has been more
than seven point six billion dollars worth of military equipment
given out to police departments across the US.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
In less than thirty years. Yeah, that's a lot. The
two thousands really kind of changed things as well. I
guess every decade really did, but not. The nine to
eleven attack really kind of refocused America's thoughts on public safety,
law enforcement, that kind of thing. And one of the
(25:56):
upshots of it was the creation of the Department of
Homeland Security, which created a program in two thousand and
three that that essentially gave grants to police departments for
training against terrorism and equipping them with weapons to fight terrorism.
And so terrorism also gave local police departments a new
(26:18):
justification and rationalization for becoming militarized. It's not only was
a drug users anymore. Now we had potential terrorists coming
to the US, and police departments needed to know how
to deal with a terrorist attack, which I mean kind
of it makes sense. It's tough to argue with. It's
just another kind of ripple in the pond of this
(26:39):
whole thing, though.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Well yeah, but what it did was, you know, you've
got these SWAT teams sitting around in a maybe smaller town,
and if they don't have any terrorists to go fight,
they don't want that tank to get rusty, right, So
in the two thousands we saw SWAT raids. It wasn't
just drugs anymore, like you said they were. There have
been swat raids on bar shops because they didn't have
(27:01):
a license. Yeah, there have been swat raids against teenage drinking,
small time gamblers like you know, the back room poker game,
stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
It.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
You know, once they had that system in place, they're like, well,
we got to use this stuff for something.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Right, So just having it makes you want to use it.
You're financially incentivized. You can get it for free, all
of this stuff. And so if you add all that
stuff up, you have every incentive to not only have
a swat team, but to use them fairly often. And
then also on top of that, they're further incentive advised
to use no knock warrants because the Supreme Court ruled
(27:37):
in two thousand and six in a case called Hudson v.
Michigan that even if you didn't obtain a no knock warrant,
which is a warrant that says you don't even have
to knock, right, if you didn't even bother to get that,
and you still performed a no knock search, came blazing
in with flash bang grenades and kicking down the door
and coming in through the window without a warrant, whatever
(28:00):
evidence that you discovered was still admissible in court.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
That's right, So just one more incentive, and maybe we
should take a break.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
I think we shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
For sure, I'm incentivised to take a break, right, very nice, man.
I'm gonna dab your forehead with the cool cloth, okay,
and we're gonna pick up in the twenty ten's right
after this.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
So, Chuck, We've been basically going on the premise this
whole episode that the militarization of the police is problematic
in and of itself, right, And I wanted to understand
exactly why, Like why didn't America just say forget police forces,
We'll just use the military all the time. And so
I looked into it, and essentially the answer that I
(29:17):
could find from academia is that the military is well
aware that it could take over the country anytime it wants,
so it submits to civilian rule. And part of that
is based on the idea that civilian rule is better
for democracy than military rule, just because civilian politicians tend
(29:38):
to know how to run things better. There's more rights
afforded to people who are citizens not being ruled by
the military, And so by militarizing the police, and having
a police presence that looks like a military occupation. It
normalizes the concept of the military occupying its own country,
(30:01):
and so it erodes that custom of the separation of
the military from domestic affairs, that could conceivably lead to
the idea of the military actually starting to run the show.
It's supposed to be a separation, and the cops are
moving that overton window by becoming militarized. That's essentially the
(30:22):
basic argument that I've seen against police militarization. There's all
sorts of other symptoms and factors that it creates too
that people use to argue against it.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah, for sure. And you know, we can't ignore the
fact because this is happening in real time this week
as we record the current administration, and this isn't militarizing
the police. This is using the actual military on US soil.
As you know. The latest example is the federal military
takeover of crime in Washington, d C. So that's kind
(30:54):
of just happened over the last couple of days as
we record this, right.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Yes, So one of the things that is leading the
huge pushback of militarization, aside from more and more people
being exposed to an unsettled by a police officer in
full tactical gear holding an assault rifle. Is the advent
of the smartphone, and people can actually record this stuff
and then broadcast it widely, and so it's kind of
(31:18):
captured the attention of the average person. I would say
to the concept that police militarization is in and of
itself a heavy handed police tactic, that is questionable.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah for sure. And I just had another quick point.
I don't want to get too much grief for this,
but there's a pretty obvious elephant in the room here,
which is if you're if you think all this is great,
and you say, well, hey, they got those weapons, so
why can't the cops have those weapons? They have those
weapons because of policy as well, you know, explain well
(31:58):
citizens like saying, hey, you know, citizens have assault rifles,
like the cops should have assault rifles, and like the
citizens have the assault rifles because the US government said
it was okay to So yeah, you know, it's sort
of I don't know.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
I had the same thought that you can trace you
can trace that argument back to okay, well that's actually
an argument in favor of gun control.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
I had the same thought, because yeah, that is a
huge argument. People be like, well, if you take the
cops assault rifles away, only outlaws will have assault rifles.
It's like, no, take the outlaws assault rifles away first,
then we can talk about the cops giving theirs up right.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
They didn't used to have them, you know exactly.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Okay, yeah, so no, I'm with you. I thought that too.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
So you brought up smartphones or did you say smartphones?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
I did. I talked all about smartphones. I talked about yeah,
the iPhone four, the iPhone seven, all the way up
to the iPhone thirteen and just stop there inexplicably.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
You know what's funny is a month before the new
iPhone comes out, we talked about play and obsolescence. My
trusty old iPhone twelve was finally dying.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
I think that's when. That was during the time when
Apple was caught purposely draining batteries to make you have
to replace your phone.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
I'm not conspiracy guy, but I'm just saying, like I
was going to get the new in anyway because it
was I usually do every three, and I waited four
this time, and so you no, I waited five because
I got a twelve and it's the seventeen, but yeah,
it's my battery just started going to zero and shutting
off and rebooting and uh.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Oh wait, it just happened. Your iPhone twelve just broke down.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Oh like last week.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
That's actually pretty good.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Yeah, I guess so. But I was able to get
a aftermarket battery installed for sixty five bucks from the
local guy.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
I know you know this, but I want to share
it to everybody.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
I had a lawnmower, a gas powered lawnmower, admittedly, but
it was broken, like ready for the dump, and I
was like, no, I'm going to this. So I called around.
There were some repair shops. They wanted to charge some
dough and I looked into what was probably wrong. It's
probably the carburetor, and I said, I'm going to replace
this carburetor. And by god, I replaced the carburetor and
(34:13):
when I was done, the first pull that lawmower started
for the first time in years.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
I got a text from Josh on Tuesday at twenty
six penom, I just fixed my law mower by replacing
the carburetor and gas lines started on the first pole.
And then I replied. Eventually I put a radiator in
a VW Jetta in my thirties.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
It was the only real manly thing I've ever done.
He said, Bam, all right, we should probably get back.
We had to have a laugh at some point, so
that parts over.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
That's it. That's the one laugh. Everybody be quiet.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Back to smartphones changing the game because of all of
a sudden obviously people can see the stuff on social
media with their own two eyes much more than before.
And in the mid twenty tens. In twenty fourteen, the
Ferguson protes us We're a really good example of this
kind of happening. They were protesting after Michael Brown was
killed by officer Darren Wilson. The Obama administration declined to
(35:10):
prosecute that, and police got really aggressive on these protests.
They were, you know, the armored trucks came in, snipers
came in, those flash bang grenades that Josh loved talking about,
in tear gas, and there was a big public outcry
after that, such that Obama said, hey, maybe we want
to put some guardrails around this ten thirty three program.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Right, and they did. They said, okay, no more tanks
and grenade launchers, among some other stuff. But This is
I think the first time anyone had stepped in and
been like, we need to take some sort of prohibitions
or bands on what local police departments can get from
the military. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
And also, you know, if you're saying, like, why don't
they just get rid of ten thirty three A, it's
not going to happen. But critics of that will say, hey,
it's not just military weapons. They also take like our
old air conditioners that we were going to throw out
if a cash strapped police department needs a new air
conditioner and stuff like that. And I guess my response
(36:09):
to that is like, why don't you just create an
act about air conditioners?
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Then? Well, right, exactly, like there's no reason you can't
continue the ten thirty three program, but ban yes, military
style weapons and armor, you know, not bill proofessed by armor,
I mean like M wraps and tanks and troop transports
and like helicopters like black Hawks and stuff like that.
There's it'd be easy as pie to do that. There's
(36:32):
just nothing.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
I was kidding, by the way about the air Conditioner Act, so.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
I know you were, but it is I mean, it's
a valid argument that there's actually lots of stuff that
doesn't make the news that's really helpful to police departments
that comes from the ten thirty three program. That's just
you could really easily adjust things, for sure.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Yeah. Absolutely, So Obama rolls back some of this in
twenty fifteen. Then the next administration came in and very
quickly rolled back those ten thirty three were four and
that's when the you know, the sort of ramped up
use of paramilitary forces to break up protests, increase guarding
federal monuments and statues and stuff like that because of vandalism.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
One of the things I just want to say. One
of the things real quick that that Trump did when
he rolled back those reforms. Bayonets had been banned previously
and they got allowed again as part of that executive order.
And if there's one thing that you do not need
as a police officer is a bayonet.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah, think about it. We should do it shorty on bayonets.
It's interesting, like, yeah, it's the concept of putting a
weapon on the front of your weapon. Yes, like a
less good weapon on the front of your web.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Yeah, that's meant to just an interesting stab somebody through
the chest or the neck or the face or something
like that like, and the concept of those things showing
up at a peaceful protest in case it breaks out
into violence, Like I just can't. It just is mind
boggling to me that bayonets were ever allowed.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Well, it just seems very old school. I mean, I
know why they've made bayonets just because back then those
the long rifles took a long time to reload. And
maybe we're hard to shoot in close quarters. So if
you were all of a sudden had a guy run
upon you on battle, you got to do some stab in.
And stab in from you know, three and a half
feet away is better than stabing in your hand. But
this isn't the French Foreign Legion, you know.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
No, And what you're talking about is a military engagement,
not a law enforcement engagement. There's no place for bayonets
and law enforcement. I think that that is objectively true
as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Yeah, for sure. So in twenty twenty two, President Biden
signed an executive order reinstating and expanding some of these
ten thirty three reforms that the previous administration had gotten
rid of. They limited the use of no knock entries
and you know, basically try to you know, how it
happens when different administrations come in, they try to undo
(38:59):
what the previous person right.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
And I looked high and low to see if President
Trump had come in on his second term and reversed
biden orders, and I couldn't see anything that said that.
All the talk about the reversal of the ten thirty
three orders was from the first term. But I did
see that it's possible that Biden's executive orders were never implemented,
(39:22):
so there was really nothing to roll back In practice.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Well, I mean that's another thing, and to itself. You
can get on TV and sign a thing, but implementation
is where the rubber meets arous.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
That's where it's at. And you do get the impression
that there is a cynical thing among politicians that like, yeah,
we're not going to touch this ten thirty three program.
In reality, like it's like you said, it's not going anywhere.
If it didn't go anywhere. After the summer of twenty twenty,
after George Floyd's murder, Yeah, when there's never been more
and widespread focus on police, police tactics, militarization of the police,
(39:58):
so much ink was dr I actually found a teen
Vogue article from twenty twenty titled What's a no knock Warrant?
Teen Vogue was talking about it and if it survived
that it's gonna be really tough to ever just fully
get rid of it if you want it gotten rid of.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Yeah, and you weren't even researching, you were just reading
teen Vogue on the toilet.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
I couldn't believe it. I was like, you got to
kid talking about COVID talking about no knock warrants. Teen
Vogue had their finger on the pulse.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
So the question remains, you know, is this move to
militarize the police has it rather led to like better
public safety? I mean, because that's the ultimate goal seemingly,
And it kind of depends on what you define, you know,
how you define public safety, because that's going to change
depending on who you are. We have seen that militarization
(40:53):
canon has escalated encounters there have you know, it just
this is anecdotal. I don't know if there's a study,
but I feel like every time there's a protest happening
and the tanks roll in, that's when it goes bad.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Yeah, that's that's exactly what a lot of people say
about say for example, Ferguson. I from what I could tell,
the riots started before the police responded, but they started
like after the police showed up. So yes, some people
are saying just seeing police like that is intimidating and antagonizing,
(41:29):
I guess, and that I think the next day after
the whole world was like what are you guys doing
in Ferguson, the governor of Missouri told the Ferguson Police
Department to stand down and send out the Missouri Highway
Patrol and they they basically walked step in step with
(41:50):
the protesters, the peaceful protesters, and they used that law
enforcement tactic and apparently it was to pretty good effect.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Yeah. I mean, one thing is for sure is that
it's led to the killing of a lot more citizens
by the police. And this is a pretty shocking stat
and you know, anytime you're comparing the UK to the
United States, it's I mean, some people might say that's
not a fair comparison because they just do things so differently,
but that's kind of the point, and you know, delivering
(42:20):
these statistics. So the Guardian reported that in the first
very first month in January, only of twenty fifteen American
police killed more US citizens than police in the UK
had in the last twenty four years combined. Yeah, one month,
twenty four years.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Right, And those are typically like used most often, we
guess we should say there are very few states that
actually require police departments to maintain statistics, including on swat teams,
how often they're used, where they're deployed. Again, anecdotally, they
do seem to be much more present and much more
used in predominantly black communities. But there have been studies
(43:02):
that have shown like this is actually counterproductive. Did you
see that one from Princeton from I think twenty eighteen.
It was it basically found that the militarization of police
has a counterproductive effect on police themselves, in that it
(43:23):
affects it negatively impacts public perception of police. And the
study showed that it actually had a negative impact on
public support for expanding police budgets. So by militarizing, you
can make a case that they're also shooting themselves in
the feet metaphorically.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
No pun intending, right, shooting themselves in the feet with
a grenade launcher.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Right. And there was another study I wanted to mention too.
It was from Emery here in Atlanta. It was from
twenty twenty. And there are these two studies that came
out in twenty fourteen twenty seventeen that are pretty prominent
in they're typically used to support the idea that militarization
of police actually has a like increases public safety. And
(44:08):
this twenty twenty study looked at those studies and said
these studies did not have enough data to come to
these conclusions and basically debunked them. And again, the reason
why is because no statistics are required in most states
on things like swat use. So you can't possibly say
that if you carry out one hundred rates a year,
public safety is going to go down by or going
(44:30):
to increase by ten percent or something like that. You
just you can't do it. So studies on that are
inherently faulty. And before you say, well, what about that
twenty eighteen Princeton study that looks specifically at Maryland, which
is one of those rare states that does require reporting
by police departments. Yeah, so you got anything else to
(44:53):
say about it?
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Plenty? But I feel like this is a good stopping boy.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
Okay, I would love to hear from police officers who
listened to stuff you should know out there who are
for militarization and against it. I would definitely, yeah, for
sure those opinions in.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Point yeah, we'll read some of that stuff on the
air very nice.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Well, since Chuck agreed to read some stuff on the air,
that means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
All right. We're getting a lot of good feedback about
our heavy metal episodes, which makes our heart warm because
we care about all the episodes. But I think everyone
could tell we were pretty jazzed about those yep this
one and I'll probably be reading a lot of metal
emails over the next few weeks, but this one's from Kevin.
It's kind of fun. Hey, guys, thanks for the metal ups.
(45:37):
Growing up in the eighties, pop radio and MTV taught
me that metals big three were tights, makeup, and hairspray.
I was way too cool for that and opted for
the other big three. Dismissed the Cure and Depeche Mode.
I was doing both, my friend, because you can. But
I always enjoy a musical history lesson, so thanks. Later
in life, I joined a cover band and will grudgingly
(45:58):
admit that some of the hair band songs worked well
for us, which is why I'm still mythed that my
idea for naming our band was rejected. It was Cheryl Crue.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Oh that's a great one. That's up there with Overdry. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
I'm generally not a pun band name guy, except for
the Beatles and Cheryl Crue.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Yeah, that's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
That is from Kevin. And I also wanted to mention
real quick that I read in like four days. I
had the Nicky six Heroin Diaries book sitting on my
shelf for a couple of years and had just finished
where did I just finish? I finished the Bruce Springsteen book,
(46:42):
the one about the movie coming out, and I dove
right into the Heroin Diaries and read it in three days.
And it is a boy. I can't say it was
a fun read. It was harrowing. Yeah, to read the
Diaries of Nicky six in those days.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
I just finished the letter in Encyclopedia metanicis sweethe volumes.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Oh very nice.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
I'm just kidding. I am kidding, by the way. Oh okay,
who was that that wrote in Kevin?
Speaker 1 (47:11):
Yeah that was Kevin.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Nice work, Kevin. We appreciate that. Into all of you
who enjoyed the Metal episodes, Thank you, rock on and
If you want to get in touch with us, you
can send us an email to send it off to
stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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