Number of police paramilitary units grow

by Julia Lutskey

This article was reprinted from the July 5, 1997 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

"[We target] suspicious vehicles and people. We stop anything that moves. We'll sometimes even surround suspicious homes and bring out the [submachine guns]. We usually don't have any trouble with crackheads cooperating."

These are the words of the commander of a police paramilitary unit quoted in the report, "Militarizing American Police: The Rise and Normalization of Paramilitary Units."

They characterize a relatively new and menacing aspect of police culture in the United States, according to Professor Paul Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University who authored the report. To measure its pervasiveness, Kraska surveyed the 690 local and state police agencies with 100 or more active duty officers serving populations of 50,000 or more.

Of the 548 responding agencies, 89.9 percent had police paramilitary units (PPUs) and another 2 percent planned them. Nearly nonexistent in the early 1960s, the number of agencies with PPUs began to grow in 1967. By 1982, nearly 60 percent of police departments had them; by 1990, 78 percent; by 1995, 89 percent.

"The bulk of the newer units were from smaller municipalities and state police agencies, [with] even more rapid growth in smaller county and municipal police departments ... serving populations between 25,000 and 50,000."

As the number of PPUs has increased, so has their activity. The average 13 call-outs per PPU annually in the early 1980s had increased five-fold by 1995 to an average of four or five a month. An astounding but "little noticed phenomenon in U.S. policing - [this is a] dramatic increase in paramilitary policing activity."

Its nature has changed as well. Traditional call-outs - crisis situations such as "barricaded persons," terrorist activity, hostage situations and civil disturbances - accounted for only approximately 18 percent of the total by 1995. The remainder were largely for what police called 'high risk warrant work' - mostly drug raids."

Such work was traditionally standard police work and that it is now being handled by PPUs means that PPUs themselves are increasingly being considered a normal part of police work. "Many PPUs now conduct between 200 and 700 warrants/drug raids a year."

Since the crack epidemic of the 1980s, "rather than reactively responding to traditional crimes such as robbery ... [the police] go into the population and proactively produce cases against an almost limitless number of drug users and low-level dealers - hence the dramatic increase in call-outs."

Most of this work is "no-knock entries" because the "courts are now more than willing to issue 'no-knock if necessary' warrants, particularly in cases regarded as drug related."

The scope of PPU raids is constantly expanding. "[They] often target locations deemed by the police to be community problems such as exotic dance halls, 'drug houses'... or people the police previously and unsuccessfully investigated."

Such raids, dangerous for police and civilians alike, "have become a proactive tool through which the police gather evidence and crudely conduct an investigation into suspected illegal activity," but "few have noted this proactive policing tactic ... of PPUs conducting military- style investigatory drug raids on private residences."

PPUs are increasingly being used in standard patrol work. Fresno, Calif. police maintain full-time 40-man SWAT teams with full military regalia and weaponry. Their job is to control "gang, drug and crime problems."

Instead of working with the community, however, the approach is rather, in the words of one police commander, one of keeping "the pressure on relentlessly. The key to our success is that we're an elite crime fighting team ... We focus on 'quality of life' issues like illegal parking, loud music, bums, neighbor troubles. We stay ... in a hot area and clean it up - particularly gangs. Our tactical enforcement team works nicely with our department's emphasis on community policing."

Of the police units responding, 20 percent indicated they used PPUs as patrol units. Nearly half the police departments with such patrol units served in smaller communities of between 50,000 and 250,000 people. Since 1982, the number of departments using such patrol units nearly tripled.

"An entire 'tactical' culture revolves around PPU training." Police and the military are the two entities with which the state enforces its will and their separation is crucial to the existence of a democratic state. Combined they can bring only repression.

Research done for the study documented that police departments held annual training competitions between their PPUs and that 63 percent of the departments participated in interagency training as well.

"While 'training' may seem to be a purely technical exercise, it actually plays a central role in paramilitary subculture." That police special units have the same elite status in police culture that "special operations" units have in military units does not necessarily indicate further direct connection between the two. Though this direct connection was lacking, a pattern not only of former and reserve soldiers but of active-duty soldiers 'cross- training' with paramilitary officers was clearly established. Nearly half the departments studied "trained with active-duty military experts in special operations."

During the late 1980s, the Department of Defense set up joint task forces to coordinate drug interdiction on the borders. Police and military cross-trained in the effort and established what appears to be a continuing - and menacing - trend. The most important aspect of this trend is its indication of a oneness of both purpose and the use of force by police, the military and the paramilitary throughout the world.

"Armed forces, police forces, paramilitary forces around the world make use of the same type of military technology. With the help of advisors and training courses, forms of command, patterns of recruitment also bear a global resemblance. For the first time in history, soldiers and policemen from different societies have more in common with each other than the societies from which they come."