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Merchants of Fear:

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Cover Edited by Andrew Nunez (92519)
Cover Edited by Andrew Nunez

“In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.”

—Poet & Literary Critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Inventing new ‘boogiemen’ is almost always a sure path to political dividends come election time. George H.W. Bush effectively used the specter of weekend furloughed convict Willie Horton to render Democratic opponent Michael Dukakis impotent in the 1988 presidential election. Even the suggestion of a criminal menace is such a tantalizing tool in galvanizing the voting public that it can sway the most dyed-in-the-wool liberal to the right to prove he or she is not “soft on crime.”

A primary example was observed during the 1992 presidential election when then Gov. Bill Clinton took time away from his hectic campaign schedule to rush back to Arkansas to supervise the lethal injection of cop killer Ricky Ray Rector. The condemned man was so addled-brained by a botched gunshot-to-the-head suicide attempt, that he skipped the pecan pie dessert served with his last meal. None-the-less, his wretched condition was overlooked when weighed against his value as a political asset.

Playing on the apprehension of the voting public is a staple of the American political process that manifests itself whenever hot-button issues come up, be they segregation, same sex marriage, stem cell experimentation, or immigration. Whatever the issue, the common formula dictates that one position or the other taken will almost certainly polarize vast segments of the voting public and the population as a whole.

From the frying pan into…

Since the end of the Cold War, Soviet aggression has been replaced by a number of particularly venomous threats, from Timothy McVeigh to Osama bin Laden.

—Former federal prosecutor and conservative journalist Barbara Olson, who was killed when her airliner was hijacked and flown into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

Coincidentally, the winding down of the Cold War overlapped with the rise of the War on Drugs, and in turn the War on Terror. Whether by fate or through deliberate exploitation, these events provided a new apparatus in which funds that had previously been earmarked for the “Red Menace” could be utilized to battle the internal plague of illicit narcotics poisoning the fabric of American society. With the dawn of a new millennium, a new foreign enemy has emerged: this time based on theological opposition to the decadent lifestyle represented by the infidels of America and the west. Ironically, many of the Islamic radicals opposing the United States were, just a few short years before, its allies against the communist forces of the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, the military hierarchy including the Department of Defense (DOD), conditioned for generations to clamor for defense spending to blunt the spread of communism, found a new peril against which they could justify their existence. This, in turn, allows them to please their civilian counterparts in private industry.

As a professor of criminology at the University of California,  Irvine, Bryan L. Sykes generally is preoccupied with the problems of mass incarceration and the inequalities that lead certain social groups down the path of delinquency and into prison. These are issues not readily applicable to the transfer of armored vehicles and guns, and yet Sykes’ interest was whetted by a recent headline proclaiming that the Los Angeles Unified School District received a gift of assault rifles, grenade launchers, and mine resistant personnel carriers.

These are trinkets more suited for the harsh deserts of the Middle East and their attendant hazards of snipers and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), rather than the local haunts of graffiti artists, chronic truancy, and disaffected students biding their time until they can escape the drudgery of formalized schooling at the magical designated time of 4:20 p.m.

For Sykes, this provided an opportunity to step slightly out of his comfort zone, and break free from the constraints of empirical evidence so necessary to his work; to speculate how the “donation” of these implements of war might impact the hallowed halls of education.

“First,” he asks, “what function does this equipment serve in the protection of students (i.e., is there a ‘real’ and credible threat that warrants an armored vehicle and several grenade launchers?), and what educational ‘added-value’ is attached to the procurement of these munitions?”

Perhaps the real “threat” here are the students themselves, and maybe the goal is a move towards, in Sykes’ words, “a complete control over social life.”

At this point another topic to insert into the milieu is that time worn concept of race, as Sykes continues.  “Are non-White, impoverished communities more likely to request and/or receive surplus equipment, relative to more advantaged communities, and if so, why?” he asks.

In a nod (intentional or not) to recent events in Ferguson, Mo., he contemplates that this “reutilization” of military weapons may constitute “a new and semi-visible ‘War on Democracy’ that targets the heart of our democratic institutions.”

Perception and reality are not necessarily one and the same, and Sykes notes that in spite of media saturation that suggests otherwise, crime overall is lower than it has been since the 1960s. Still, the apparition of dread pervades the public psyche and more importantly, the allocation of tax dollars.

“Resources may be better allocated by creating social programs aimed at increasing family connectedness, political engagement, civic participation, (and) job training,” says Sykes, a proposition that he thinks likely would do more to improve the fabric of American life than the transformation of the national landscape into a homegrown combat zone.

As the Cold War “petered out,” it initiated widespread closures of factories in urban areas, and the direct loss of thousands of jobs which, in turn, displaced scores of low-skilled workers, he suggests. At the same time, the country’s armed forces began a large-scale trimming of its enlisted ranks, which meant that the services could once again become more selective, and mandate that new inductees possess at minimum a high school degree before being allowed into Uncle Sam’s ranks.

Of course this left out the legions of dropouts who previously made up the fighting force, and as the 18th century saying goes, idle hands are the devil’s workshop.

The withdrawal of these two primary sources of employment may be directly tied to a rise in the overall crime rate at the close of the Cold War, Sykes proposes, and this has pushed more people towards mass incarceration, which has been amply documented over the past three decades.

Interchangeably, the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism provided new enemies for the U.S. to mobilize against, and kept the gears of the military industrial complex humming.

Disposable hardware

The by product of decades of furious manufacturing to keep pace with the Russians has, of course, produced a surplus of martial supplies and ordnance. The entity charged with the disposal of these items has its own unique history, and along with the rest of the defense industry has forged a relationship with the municipal sector. The 1033 Program (officially the DOD Excess Property Program), in place since 1997, has thus far funneled more than $3 billion dollars in military hardware to local law enforcement agencies. That program was preceded by the 1208 Program, charged with the same mission starting in 1990 (note that 1991 is a date generally acknowledged by historians as the end of Cold War). Technically under the jurisdiction of the government’s “Disposition Services,” the 1033’s website (http://www.dispositionservices.dla.mil/leso/pages/default.aspx) states that less than 5 percent of the equipment turned over are weapons or tactical vehicles. Yet and still, these transferred items have included armored vehicles, fully automatic weapons, grenade launchers, helicopters, and robots.

A major flaw in this method of disposal appears to be shoddy accounting. Periodically, firearms turned over to local police turn up missing. One such lapse in accountability occurred in 2012 in Arizona’s Maricopa County, whose residing sheriff is the controversial Joe Arpio (who has been accused of racial profiling involving immigrates, civil rights violations, and so on). At least 20 of the 200 government firearms turned over to the county simply disappeared.

Some of these “give away” items border on the absurd, as when the government donated almost 12,000 bayonets to various police organizations over the past decade. A knife like instrument attached to the muzzle of a soldier’s rifle, it was a central component of military tactics in the 18th and 19th century, but is now regarded as a weapon “of last resort.” The last recorded bayonet charge in American history took place during the Korean War.

Threats, real and imagined

All of this begs the question of whether there is another, underlying purpose behind this benevolent distribution of martial largess.

“The military may need to make space for new, more advanced technology,” Sykes reasons, “thereby allowing their older forms to be concentrated in local communities.”

Another rationale behind these “gifts” to smaller law entities is the idea that locals would be the “first responders” to be mobilized in the event of terrorist infiltration into America’s heartland. The thought of foreign nationals, be they Latin American drug entrepreneurs (enamored, like the movie tagline, with the American Dream), or fanatical Jihadists (hell-bent on ridding the world of the decadent, immoral threat that Yankees pose towards the righteous true believers of Islam) disrupting the tranquility of our homeland is enough to chill the soul of every red-blooded patriot.

Once motivated, zealots—be they Marxist revolutionaries, Islamic fundamentalists, or adherents to the far-right—can easily be prompted to do the bidding of a savvy shot-caller. In each situation, however, recognizable patterns emerge, among them the presence of a convenient, distinguishable menace, ready to be utilized in the manipulation of impressionable minds.

As this article closes, the dust has not settled around Ferguson, Mo., even through Michael Brown’s body has been placed in the ground. The remnants of civil unrest and looting are very much apparent as the townsfolk await the progress of the federal investigation of the 18-year-old’s shooting by White policeman Darren Wilson, who gave his own testimony before a St. Louis County grand jury on Sept. 15.

Critics of the events in Missouri, in the civilian sector and in government, law enforcement, and the military, contend that the appearance of tank like vehicles and riot squad personnel merely escalated the already hostile crowd of demonstrators and onlookers. Conversely and perhaps most tellingly, the introduction of Ferguson native and Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson in a simple, work-a-day uniform went a long way towards calming this tense situation by merely mingling with the crowd, sharing hugs and shaking hands, and ordering crowd control patrolmen to take off their gas masks.

Out on the East Coast, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo) is chairing a hearing on police militarization, spurred on in part by images broadcast from Ferguson showing armored personnel carriers, officers in tactical battle dress with M-4 assault rifles, and even snipers facing down on protesters in its tear-gas and tension filled streets.

Locally, the Los Angeles Police Department’s latest effort to keep up with current technology is being met with resistance. Possibly the most visible and controversial piece of hardware, the pilot-less drone, is now a “hot potato” in the words of Esteban Gil, a researcher for the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition. Two Draganflyer X6 drones gifted by Seattle police are now under the control of Police Commissioner Alexander Bustamante until policies and protocols are established for their use.

For Gil and his colleagues at the Coalition, the ideal scenario would involve eliminating the need for policies and protocol by not deploying the drones at all.

“We are of the position that if we give them an inch, they will take a mile,” he says, citing the history of SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) units made popular by the LAPD.

Initially used for extreme situations in the wake of the Watts Riots/Uprising in 1965, their tactics morphed to the point where they were used for misdemeanor offenses like the selling of individual marijuana cigarettes and other considerably petty crimes.

Opponents of gun control argue infringement of their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Another constitutional component that gets less media ink is the Fourth Amendment right to be safe and secure in one’s home. Aside from the obvious issue of search and seizure, the advent of technology brings with it the notion of a reasonable right to privacy. A relaxation of constraints here may well result in the materialization of “mission creep” as Gil calls it, where law enforcement authorities will slowly erode legal oversight to gain free reign and use these marvels of machinery as they see fit.

Noting the constitutional issues raised with the utilization of such equipment, Gil says that he is more concerned with the possible impact on human rights and social justice.

All of which brings us to a crossroad where the desirability of physical safety over the possibility of a full out theater of war being played out in our backyard is debated.

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