Rise of the Warrior Cop (55 page)

There have been at least a few other voices of sanity. In Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick ordered the state’s police agencies to stop using the program pending an investigation, after a
Boston Globe
report found—well, basically what similar investigations all over the country had found. From the
Globe:

Police in Wellfleet, a community known for stunning beaches and succulent oysters, scored three military assault rifles. At Salem State College, where recent police calls have included false fire alarms and a goat roaming the campus, school police got two M-16s. In West Springfield, police acquired even more powerful weaponry: two military-issue M-79 grenade launchers.
¹⁰⁰

In June 2012, the Pentagon suspended the entire 1033 program—not because of any concern about the militarization of civilian policing, but because of recent press reports of mismanagement by some of the participating law enforcement agencies. An
Arizona Republic
investigation had found that the Pinal County sheriff’s department transferred some of the Pentagon equipment to nonpolice agencies, and was planning to sell some other equipment at auction. A broader AP report found that police departments had kept poor records about their use of the equipment obtained through the program, including high-powered weapons that could no longer be accounted for. As of November 2012, however, the program was back up and running.

Finally, the Obama administration has continued to defend in court the use of military-like violence to enforce the drug laws. In
Avina v. US,
DEA agents pointed their guns at an eleven-year-old and a fourteen-year-old during a mistaken drug raid. The agents had apparently misidentified the license plate of a suspected drug trafficker for the plate on a car owned by Thomas Avina, the father of the children. The Obama administration argued in federal court that the lawsuit should be dismissed before even being heard by a jury—that the agents’ actions were reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.
Of course, it’s not at all unusual for an administration to defend the actions of federal drug agents. But this was an administration whose drug czar had suggested that perhaps it was time to tone down the battle rhetoric that government officials often used when enforcing the drug laws. He was right about that. But on the front lines, the administration was arguing in court that there’s nothing unreasonable about government agents pointing guns at the heads of children whose parents are suspected of drug crimes—and that even when said gun-pointing is done in the service of a mistaken raid, the agents should be shielded from any liability.
¹⁰¹

“T
HERE’S ALWAYS A GOOD TIME TO USE A TASER.”

So said Andrea, an attractive single mom and one of the four stars of the TLC reality show
The Police Women of Broward County,
which debuted in 2009. In the trailer that included the Taser quip, the video then cut to the show’s stars tackling suspects, slamming knees into kidneys, pointing guns, and generally kicking ass. Judging from other clips on the TLC website, some of which featured shots of the female officers in bikinis, it seemed that the network couldn’t make up its mind whether these women were sexpots with handcuffs or girl cops who were just as rough and tough as the boys. A poster ad campaign for the show only reinforced the identity crisis. One read: “Taser Time.” Another: “Cavity Search, Anyone?”

Pop culture has always had a big influence on police culture, sometimes reflecting prevailing sentiment and sometimes driving it. In his chronicle of the 1970s
How We Got Here,
conservative pundit David Frum argues that the decade’s parade of renegade cops who skirt the law but still abide by a familiar moral code (think Dirty Harry) reflected the prevailing opinion at the time that bad court decisions and criminal-coddling procedures were preventing well-meaning cops from getting the bad guys.
¹⁰²
Ed Burns, the former narcotics cop and co-creator of HBO’s
The Wire,
thinks the influence might have been the other way around. In a 2008 interview, Burns said that the Gene Hackman movie
The French Connection
had a big influence on the culture of drug cops. “In
The French Connection,
[detective] Popeye Doyle had this very cynical, harsh, rough, law-breaking type of drug style that sort of set the tone in how street narcotics guys work. Very flippant. What the movie didn’t pick up, and what you didn’t see, is all the intense surveillance and hard work that would go into a drug bust back then. But they put out the idea of this guy who cracks heads, especially in that scene they went and they shook the bar down. That became iconic. And that is the way the cops were afterward. I mean, you’d see white cops in black neighborhoods looking like Serpico, and they’re not undercover. It was just this mind-set that took over of how you’re supposed to dress and act and the way you’re supposed to be.”
¹⁰³

The French Connection,
it’s worth noting, came out in 1971. The series of botched ODALE raids in Collinsville and elsewhere began in 1973.

In the 1980s, the TV show
Miami Vice
nurtured the belief that south Florida was teeming with drug lords armed with more guns than most Third World armies, while
Hill Street Blues
offered the grittiest, most realistic portrayal of a big city police department yet aired on television. The show cast most of its cops in a sympathetic light, but, also took on issues like racism, corruption, and brutality.

For the better part of a generation, the Fox hit
Cops
was the only reality police show on TV. For twenty years, America watched as patient patrol officers broke up domestic disputes, arrested sunburned wife beaters, and chased petty drug offenders down darkened allies. Though the departments depicted in the show always had veto power over the footage that made it on the air,
Cops
generally did well to depict the monotonies of police work, be it walking a beat, calmly talking down a jealous husband, or driving a long, all-night neighborhood patrol in a squad car.

It was really the expansion of cable TV in the 1990s and 2000s that blew out the cop reality genre with shows that tended to emphasize confrontation and celebrate a culture of police militarism. A&E broke in first with
Dallas SWAT,
which sent a camera crew with the city’s elite paramilitary police unit to document drug raids
and standoffs. The show’s success spawned
Detroit SWAT
and
Kansas City SWAT
. Court TV then jumped in with
Texas SWAT
and
SWAT U.S.A
.

Testosterone-infused Spike TV joined the mix in 2008 with
DEA
. Produced by jolly weatherman–cum–drug warrior Al Roker, the first season followed a group of federal agents, also in Detroit (the city’s crumbling badlands provide great backdrop for reality shows), as they planned and carried out drug raids. (It also produced an unintentionally hilarious moment when self-proclaimed pot smoker and legalization advocate Joe Rogan was forced to conduct a reverent, promotional interview with one of the show’s drug-agent stars while hosting one of Spike’s mixed martial arts events.)

The obvious criticism of such shows is their exploitation and general tackiness. Not that anyone expects much dignity from most of the cable networks, but you’d think, for example, that the Broward County Sheriff’s Department might object to the sexualization of its female officers, or to a national ad campaign insinuating that they’re sporting itchy Taser fingers.

But these shows may have a more sinister effect. In emphasizing the more aggressive, confrontational aspect of police work over community service—hurting people instead of helping people—they may be shifting the profile of the typical young person attracted to police work. Browse the dozens of police recruitment videos on YouTube, for example, and you’ll find that many of them feature images of cops tackling suspects, rappelling out of helicopters, shooting guns, kicking down doors, and siccing dogs on people. The images are often set to blaring guitars or heavy metal music. These are the videos that police departments send to high schools and colleges to attract new recruits. At the very first step in the process of staffing their departments, then, these agencies are deliberately appealing to people who are likely to be lured by the thrill-seeking, adrenaline-producing, butt-kicking aspects of law enforcement. Build an entire police force of people who fit that description and you have a force of cops who seek confrontation instead of avoiding it and who look to escalate volatile situations
instead of resolving them peacefully. These are the sort of cops who volunteer for the SWAT team for the very reasons they should be excluded from it—cops like the two Maricopa County SWAT officers who talked to CBS News reporter Jim Stewart in 1997. The best part of being on the SWAT team, one of the officers said, was that “you get to play with a lot of guns. That’s what’s fun. You know, everybody on this team is—you know, loves guns.” The second cop then chimed in. “Hey, the bottom line is it’s friggin’ fun, man. That’s the deal. Nobody wants to take burglary reports.”
¹⁰⁴

Even the wrong-door raid has become well established in pop culture. The first depiction of one I could find on network television was in a 1990 episode of the NBC drama
LA Law
. But it’s become more common in the last decade or so. In one episode of
The Simpsons,
Chief Wiggum mistakenly raids the home of Reverend Lovejoy in search of a cattle rustler. The shot then pans down the street to show loose cattle grazing in the front yard of Springfield’s well-known career criminal. One particularly pointed skit on Comedy Central’s
Chapelle’s Show
depicted the discrepancy between police raids on white people suspected of white-collar crimes and black people suspected of drug crimes. In the skit, a white CEO is subjected to a drug raid in which the cops set off a flash grenade, shoot the man’s dog, sexually assault his wife, and beat him as they yell at him to “stop resisting.” Coming full circle, in 2009 a viral video posing as an ad for a search engine parodied the SWAT reality shows by following “Fresno SWAT” as they mistakenly raid a day care center, a family eating dinner, and an elderly couple. It ends with the statement: “Imagine if dispatch gave out as much bad information as search engines do.”

And so here we are. The wrong-door raid has now been normalized to the point where it can be parodied in a viral Internet commercial for a search engine.

The Numbers

Number of drug raids in New York City in 1994: 1,447

. . . in 1997: 2,977

. . . in 2002: 5,117

Approximate number of raids each year by the Toledo, Ohio, SWAT team, as of 2008: 400