Kaan Ocbe / Contributing Writer
All of the police cars on the campus of Florida International University have an M16 in the trunk at all times. In case that wasn’t enough, the FIU Police also have a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected personnel carrier.
These facts were confirmed last semester by FIU Chief of Police Alex Casas in a meeting with concerned students. While you mull over these facts, consider the questions that this arouses. It’s shocking and feels ill-advised, but how exactly did this happen?
This strange rush to armament is the result of the 1033 program of the National Defense Authorization Act and administered by the Law Enforcement Support Office. In a story last fall, the Miami New Times detailed the effects that this little known federal program was having on police departments in South Florida.
Surprisingly, among the list of small cities and municipalities gearing up their police departments was our very own Florida International University, the recipient of the aforementioned M16s and MRAP. In addition to the University, the adjacent community of Sweetwater received its own high-powered cache which included a grenade launcher and four helicopters.
According to Matt Apuzo of the New York Times, this is all a part of a trend that goes back to the creation of the first military-transfer programs in the early 90s. This has been ramping up in recent years.
Pentagon data reported by the New York Times states that the Obama administration has transferred thousands of machine guns, nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines and hundreds of armored cars and aircraft to local police forces. Meanwhile, Time reported crime to be at its lowest levels in decades.
As military intervention overseas escalated after 9/11, production of military equipment to be used in the theater of war also increased. Now as the wars wind down in scale, a glut of machine guns, night vision goggles, silencers, etc. has been wasting away in federal warehouses.
These require constant upkeep and maintenance at great expense. This is where the increased activity of the LESO program comes in, offloading these expensive weapons of war to local police departments as a measure to lower costs.
In a presentation given last semester at the College of Law, Radley Balko, author of Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, explained to a courtroom full of FIU law students what kind of effect arming civilian police forces in this way has on the psychology of the police.
In his presentation, Balko asserted that by arming police as though they were soldiers, the police begin to develop a soldier mindset which bleeds over into the work that they do in the civilian world.
This changes the way they view citizens and the way that they view their roles as police officers. Unfortunately, we saw the fruits of this militarized mindset in the police response to the uprisings in Ferguson, Miss. and Baltimore.
When a group of concerned students found out about this issue with the police at the University, they decided to write a letter and deliver it to the Police Department.
When their letter came and went without response, those same students re-delivered that letter. However, this time it had support from 12 different student organizations and a delegation of 25 representatives from those groups.
They were immediately granted a meeting with Chief Casas. During this meeting, the chief displayed a remarkable amount of intransigence about his precious weapons. He made it very clear that he had no intention of getting rid of them. I know all of this because I was one of the students that met with him.
A militarized police force on campus poses not only a problem in regards to the health and safety of the student body, but also raises the question of what we as students want our institution to stand for.
Do we want a police force that is this impervious to student concerns? One that can just shirk off any criticism and tell you to not worry about it? That is perhaps the much larger problem.
One thing is certain, and it is that this situation is the result of a slow accumulation of factors. As the war on drugs escalated, as the use of SWAT teams became more en vogue, as ‘tough on crime’ policies sent ripples through our communities, a passive public watched on. Each incremental step seemed like no big deal at the time, but as they built up we have found ourselves with a very big deal on our hands.
But just as the problem created itself incrementally, turning the tide will also have to be incremental. This will have to start in our daily lives with the people closest to us. In this case, for us, it will have to begin with the small police department on our unassuming college campus.
[image from flickr]
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