Ferguson and the Rise of SWAT Armies
By Carl M. Cannon - August 17, 2014
Competing theories on curbing crime and keeping the peace in America’s teeming municipalities have long preoccupied law enforcement. “Community policing” is one approach. The harder-edged “proactive” policing is another. Now a new technique has forged itself into the national consciousness—“Ferguson policing,” let’s call it.
If Ferguson policing’s precepts are murky, perhaps that’s because its proponents don’t feel obliged to explain it to the media or community activists—cops just arrest them instead.
Who knew the 53-officer police force in Ferguson, Mo., even had all that military equipment and SWAT gear? Why do they have it? The answers to those questions—and how Missouri’s highway patrol ended (if only temporarily) four nights of rioting—take us back in time and into the rich history of the storied, influential, and sometimes notorious LAPD.
A century ago, about the time Hollywood was establishing itself, civic leaders in the City of Angels realized they had an actual metropolis on their hands. With the Progressive movement in vogue, reformers fashioned a city charter that diluted the power of political parties, thereby weakening patronage. As part of that process, they set out to create a professional police force not beholden to political bosses, and less corrupt than its counterparts back East.
Read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/08/17/ferguson_and_the_rise_of_swat_armies_123678.html
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