Rania Khalek: Why Do Our Police Have Tanks?

Just after midnight on May 16, 2010, a SWAT team threw a "flash-bang" grenade through the window of a 25-year-old man, while his 7-year-old daughter slept on a couch, and her grand -mother watched television. The grenade landed so close to the child that it burned her blanket. The SWAT team leader then burst into the house and fired a single shot which struck the child in the throat, killing her. The shooting death of Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley-Jones sounds as though it happened in a war zone, but the raid took place in Detroit. Paramilitary raids employing the tactics of US soldiers in combat are not at all uncommon in America. Some 40,000 of these raids take place every year, and are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they are sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units not dressed as police officers, but as soldiers. As this story demonstrates, these raids have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries. How did we permit our law enforcement agencies to descend into militaristic chaos? The role of civilian police has been to maintain the peace has been to maintain the peace and safety of the community, while upholding the civil liberty of residents in their respective jurisdictions. Clearly, the mission of the police officer is incompatible with that of the soldier, so why are local police departments looking more and more like paramilitary units in a combat zone?