Qui Custodiet

I wrote this for an English assignment. Yes, I have to take English.


Qui custodiet ipsos custodies? Who guards the guardians? The ancient Latin proverbial question is important in any civil society, but it has become more important in the United States now than ever before, because the aggressiveness of police organizations toward the citizenry they police is growing. The aggression of the modern American police force is reflected in three principal areas: the equipment they use to carry out those duties, the methods they employ, and the powerful perverse incentive structure they have developed that encourages them to make an increasing number of encounters with the public hostile ones.

“It’s armored. It’s heavy. It’s intimidating. And it’s free,” said Albany County (New York) Sheriff Craig Apple of the MRAP, or mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle, his department received, at no cost, from the Department of Defense’s Iraq War surplus. Albany County is one of 165 counties to get the MRAP. The MRAP, a large turreted armored truck, is physically one of the largest giveaways the military has made to law enforcement, but it is far from the only one. The Associated Press found that $4.2 billion in military equipment ranging from blankets to bayonets to Humvees has been distributed since 1990 (Associated Press, 2013).

“Our problem is we have to make sure we are prepared to respond to every type of crisis,” Sheriff Apple stated. Left unstated is how his department would have responded to such a crisis prior to obtaining the MRAP. The apparent answer is that they would have used a less heavy and intimidating piece of equipment. Undoubtedly the MRAP is safer for his officers, which is a positive development. But it is a development that comes at a time when officer fatalities are at their lowest level since 1959, and officer fatalities by gunfire at their lowest level since 1887, when the country’s population was a quarter of its current level. (Pearce, 2013). The MRAP seems to be an answer without a question.

Police methodology has become as aggressive as equipment, and nothing typifies that fact like the rise of the no-knock raid. In the United States a no-knock entry, one in which officers enter a property with minimal or no prior announcement in order to protect their safety or prevent evidence from being destroyed, requires a warrant. In 1981, 3,000 such warrants were issued. In 2005, when an octogenarian was accidentally killed in Atlanta during a no-knock raid on the wrong address, the number was 50,000 (Johnson, 2006).

More recent numbers are hard to find, but it is clear that the number of no-knock raids has vastly increased even as injuries and fatalities to officers have drastically fallen. The number of violent incidents associated with these raids has been high. Statistics are again difficult to come by, but the CATO Institute, which has done much work on this subject in conjunction with the Washington Post’s Radley Balko, has an interactive map of “botched SWAT and paramilitary police raids” on its web site, with dozens of incidents neatly divided into chilling categories including “Raid on an innocent suspect”, “Death of an innocent”, “Death or injury of a police officer”, and “Death of a nonviolent offender” (Balko, 2006).

Why are the police now using such aggressive equipment and tactics? Officer safety is again the primary cited concern, and though the beginning of the decline in officer injuries and fatalities predates much of the current militarization trend, it’s certainly possible that officers are safer because of that trend. On the other hand, it’s also the case that officers have a powerful new incentive to confront the public: asset forfeiture. Federal, state, and local authorities are permitted to seize assets that are the proceeds of or were used to facilitate federal crimes (including drug offenses). These assets can be seized immediately and held until the defendants are acquitted, and in some cases beyond; where civil forfeiture is used, they need not even be charged. The Department of Justice collects statistics on its seizures, which increased from about $285 million in 1989 to $1.8 billion in 2010, an annualized increase of almost 20 percent per year. Those statistics don’t include seizures by the Treasury Department (including Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) nor do they include state and local seizures which are authorized under federal law (Maguire, 2010).

What do the proceeds of those seizures fund? In some cases they fund departmental activities, with the expansion of one’s budget being a powerful bureaucratic incentive in itself. But abuses are possible in any system where large sums are at stake and the consequences for missteps are minimal, and not surprisingly, abuses have been found. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found in 1996 that Fulton County (Georgia) prosecutor Tom Howard had spent $8,200 on a security system for his home, and thousands more on food and parties, even as his department was slashing its budget and leaving its bills unpaid (Mariano, 2013). The funds came from the federal asset forfeiture program. Such spending violates Department of Justice rules on using those funds, but the Department of Justice has audited only a tiny fraction of forfeiture funds, and many states have forfeiture programs of their own. In a related article, the Economist noted that the average amount per seizure in Georgia that year was $647, and opined, “This sounds as though federal investigators are taking poor people's money and stuff so that friends of the Fulton County DA's office can eat crab cakes in champagne sauce and enjoy a fancy Christmas party.” (J.F., 2013)

The classic elements of any crime story are motive, method, and opportunity. The police have the motive to deal aggressively with the public they are meant to protect and serve: asset forfeitures. They have the method: no-knock warrants. And increasingly, they have the opportunity: surplus military equipment. This issue, and the injuries, deaths, and general injustice it causes, are a brutal reminder that we as a people must guard the guardians.

References

Associated Press. (2013, November 24). Leftover armored trucks from Iraq coming to local police agencies. Retrieved from New York Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/police-surplus-armored-trucks-iraq-article-1.1527650

Balko, R. (2006). Botched Paramilitary Police Raids. Retrieved from The CATO Institute: http://www.cato.org/raidmap

J.F. (2013, October 15). Fighting Crime Through Superior Steak. Retrieved from The Economist.

Johnson, P. (2006, November 29). After Atlanta raid tragedy, new scrutiny of police tactics. Retrieved from Christian Science Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1129/p03s03-ussc.html

Maguire, K. (Ed.). (2010). Value of Asset Forfeiture Recoveries by U.S. Attorneys. Retrieved from Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics Online: http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t4452010.pdf

Mariano, W. (2013, October 5). DA's spending of federal forfeiture money in question. Retrieved from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: http://www.myajc.com/news/news/das-spending-of-federal-forfeiture-money-in-questi/nbFGb/

Pearce, M. (2013, December 30). 33 cops killed by gunfire in 2013, the lowest number since 1887. Retrieved from Los Angeles Times: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/dec/30/nation/la-na-nn-police-deaths-20131230