Militarization of American Police

Defining Militarism and Militarization

The concepts of militarism and militarization are at times used in an ideologically charged fashion. This diminishes their power to help us think clearly about the influence the military model has on different aspects of our society.

Militarism, in the most basic terms, is an ideology geared toward solving problems. It is a set of beliefs, values, and assumptions that stresses the use of force and violence as the most appropriate and efficacious means to solve problems. It emphasizes the use of military power, hardware, operations, and technology as its primary problem-solving tools. Similarly, militarization is the implementation of militarism. It is the process of arming, organizing, planning, training for, and sometimes implementing violent conflict. To militarize means adopting and applying the central elements of the military model to an organization or particular situation.

To say that the police are becoming more militarized is simply referring to the process whereby civilian police increasingly draw from, and pattern themselves around, the military model. Four dimensions of the military model provide us with tangible indicators of militarization:

• Culturally—martial language, style (appearance), thinking
• Organizationally—martial arrangements such as “command and control” centers, or elite teams of officers patterned after military special operations squads
• Operationally—patterns of activity modeled after the military, such as in the areas of intelligence, supervision, or handling of high-risk situations
• Materially—martial equipment and technology

Put in this way, it should be clear that since their inception, the civilian police have shared many of these features, at least to some extent, with the military. After all, the foundation of military and police power is the same—the state-sanctioned capacity to use physical violence to accomplish their respective objectives (external and internal security). The police were developed, in fact, as a civilian alternative to the military for the sake of maintaining domestic security.

When discerning police militarization, the real concern is one of degree, or the extent to which a civilian police body is militarized. Militarization must be conceived of on a continuum.

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