Who Runs the Police?

By JASON SIBERT

Who owns the police departments that protect us?

Citizens would like to say that police departments enforce the laws that we make through elected legislative bodies. However, commercial interests are playing a role that corrupt the idea.

Pentagon weapons transfers to local police departments are changing the nature of law enforcement. In the militarization of local police departments, some see police forces becoming more similar to armies than public servants who guarantee public safety.

Over the last three decades, the Pentagon has transferred a large number of military weapons to police departments — tens of thousands of machine guns, nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines, thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment, and hundreds of silencers, armored cars, and aircraft. Congress created the Pentagon-to-police transfer program in the late 1980s during the drug war as a way to arm police against drug gangs. After 9/11, the Pentagon fought two wars and when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wound down, the amount of military surplus equipment flowing to local police ballooned. Since the 1990’s, the Pentagon transferred $4.3 billion to local police departments. One example would be the 12 5.56-millimeter rifles and six .45 caliber pistols transferred to police departments in St. Louis County between 2010 and 2013.

The financial gain for defense contractors should be considered a piece of the puzzle, as they have accumulated a great deal of money power. The defense industry spent $132 million lobbying Congress in 2012 and sent $27 million to political action committees in the same year. The defense lobby also possesses manpower. Over 900 lobbyists represent 266 defense companies to ensure they have a Congress that supports their needs — making as much profit as possible. The largest recipients are those that chair committees that allocate defense dollars. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who sits on the Senate Subcommittee on Defense, was the third largest recipient of defense contractor dollars in 2014, as he received $307,889.

The Fraternal Order of the Police also provides a piece of the puzzle. The FOP lobbies Congress for funding for equipment for their departments. Police departments have help when it comes to gaining influence in Congress. Lenco, who makes the Bearcat APC – a wheeled armored personnel carrier – assists police departments in grant proposals.

The influence of money on policing, to insure healthy profits for weapons manufactures, takes power away from the citizen and places it in the hands of defense contractors. The radical student group Students for a Democratic Society fought for “participatory democracy” in the 1960s and 1970s. “Participatory democracy,” in the definition of SDS, is a public committed to making decisions that affect their own lives and having the institutions to make this possible.

The organization’s founding document – the Port Huron Statement – called for more citizen involvement in the economic, community, and foreign policy spheres. SDS didn’t feel the people’s voice was being heard in those areas. Many sought to take foreign policy from a direction they felt was misguided and also withdraw our military from a war (Vietnam) they saw as unnecessary. SDS members sought to take power away from the powerful and put it in the hands of the people.

Our country needs a participatory democracy movement when in come to criminal justice and policing. We need to take the power out of the hands of defense contractors and put it back in the hands of the people. Let’s have a police force that secures public safety and work for the people and not for defense contractors!

Jason Sibert worked for the Suburban Journals in the St. Louis area for over a decade and is currently executive director of the Peace Economy Project in St. Louis, Mo. Email jasonsibert@hotmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2018

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