New Study Links Militarization Of Police To More Non-White People Killed

Mint Press

Police officers stand by as buildings are set on fire after the announcement of the grand jury decision, Nov. 24, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo.

Black Lives Matter activists protesting police violence and the killing of Michael Brown were met with heavily armed officers during the Ferguson protests in 2014. Indigenous people and environmental activists protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline faced a similar scene in 2016 when militarized law enforcement used violent tactics against the peaceful demonstrators.

Scenes of heavily armed police forces are becoming more common across the country. New research from the Washington Post finds that this militarization results in more individuals killed each year by law enforcement. The study found that twice as many people are more likely to die in counties that receive an influx in military equipment. Additional research conducted in 2016 also found that police are more likely to be attacked when they are militarized, which raises the question of how beneficial it is to pad police forces with military-grade weaponry.

The researchers looked to anthropologist Peter Kraska to define militarization as the “embrace and implementation of an ideology that stresses the use of force as a good way to solve problems.” The definition encompasses four dimensions of militarization: material, cultural, organizational and operational. Researchers argue that providing law enforcement agencies with more military equipment also increases militarization along cultural, organizational and operational lines. “Militarization makes every problem—even a car of teenagers driving away from a party—looks like a nail that should be hit with an AR-15 hammer,” the researchers wrote.

The militarization of police leads not only to more civilian deaths, but to the deaths of animals as well. To prove that high levels of violence were not the cause of an increase in militarization, researchers argued that more pets would be killed by police in areas where officers are more prone to violence. Their theory was correct: Data from the Puppycide Database Project tracking police shootings of pets found that officers kill more animals in counties where law enforcement receives more military equipment.