US police learned how to be occupying armies

Guardian -The aggressive response – and in many cases, over-response – of American law enforcement agencies has invigorated a bipartisan push in Congress to ban transfers of military materials to police. Yet the 20th-century history of US policing shows that truly demilitarizing the police will be more difficult than simply removing the body armor. Our law enforcement agencies learned many of the most routine aspects of contemporary policing from US imperial excursions abroad for the purpose of stamping out rebellion.

Created in the 1990s, the so-called “1033 program” allows police departments to obtain surplus material from the vast stocks of the world’s largest military. Not all the material is what most would consider war-fighting hardware. Some of the inventory consists of exercise gear or even musical instruments. But the renewed clamor to “demilitarize” the police is usually directed at the helmets and body armor, rifles and armored vehicles that have been on abundant display since Minneapolis police killed George Floyd last week.

To be sure, police departments are more heavily armed than ever, in part because of post-9/11 fears of terrorism. But the transfer of military surplus gear long predates the War on Terror. It results from both demand on the part of police and oversupply in the military, particularly as wars wind down.