reform, in respect to the disproportionate targeting of minorities, excessive force,

and multiple police shootings of unarmed suspects. In 2015 Human Rights Watch said that the US

had quote “largely failed” to address numerous UN recommendations to improve its

judicial system over the previous five years. So, why and how has police violence gotten

so bad in the United States?

Well, one of the largest reasons for the rampant increase in aggressive police tactics is the

blurring of lines between law enforcement and the military. Since the 1970s when Richard

Nixon introduced the “War on Drugs”, overall arrests have dramatically gone up. Using the

Drug War as a catalyst, Ronald Reagan passed a federal law allowing police to cooperate

with the military, and use their military equipment. This militarization ramped up by

the 21st century, and following the September 11th terror attacks, both the Department of

Homeland Security and the Department of Defense contributed funding to local police around

the country. During the war on terror, more and more police received surplus military

equipment, with some holding weapons such as grenade launchers and armored vehicles

with mounted guns.

Moreover, multiple reports, including one from the Department of Justice, note that

police are better trained in self-defense than they are in community building, and the

use of nonviolent solutions. For much of the country, there simply is not enough adequate

training focused on de-escalation.

In fact, a 1981 court case, Warren v. District of Columbia, found that while police are held

responsible to the public at large, they are were not actually required to assist individuals,

and can’t be sued negligence as a result. A similar ruling by the Supreme Court in 2005

dismissed a claim against police for not acting to keep several individuals out of harm. The

court found that the lack of action did not violate the victim’s constitutional rights.

This lack of accountability to the public, coupled with a lack of internal accountability

have led to widespread abuses in power. Not only are the standards for police brutality

different across the board, but even when police brutality is clear, it is almost never

prosecuted. One study of New Jersey brutality complaints in 2014 found that only one percent

was ever investigated, and the national average of complaints investigated by internal units

was less than ten percent in 2006.

In an effort to curb such abuses, a 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act allowed

law enforcement agencies to be sued in civil court. But this ultimately did little to address

the problem, since it is most often the local tax-funded government and not the police department

which ends up paying civil settlements.

In a nutshell, the past few decades of police reform have seen law enforcement agents equipped

with military surplus while not only untrained in the use of that equipment, but also untrained

in non-violent tactics. Moreover, abuses go unreported, uninvestigated, and unpunished,

and punitive measures only hurt the community, not the police. While there are plenty of

law-abiding, committed police officers, as a whole their presence s more of an

occupying military force than law enforcement.