Relations between the Police and Public are Frayed. It’s Time to Re-evaluate the 1033 Program.

Members of Congress have returned from their seven-week summer recess. While they were away from the Capitol, yet another police-related death erupted into protests in a major American city. This time events in Milwaukee pitted police against protestors; before that it was Dallas, Chicago, Baton Rouge, Baltimore, and Ferguson, Mo., to name a few.

Each of these cases have differences but, taken together, they are windows into the frayed relationships between police and the American public.

{mosads}Consider that in a 2014 national poll, more than two out of three Americans said police departments don’t do a good job in treating racial groups equally or in using the right amount of force. Part of this unease is connected to concerns that police have become too militarized and aggressive, that they see themselves as ‘at war’ with the public, and that they can’t be trusted to follow the law.

The visuals from Ferguson and elsewhere after police-related deaths are a case-in-point: police in full body armor brandishing automatic weapons as they confront protestors while armored vehicles blockade city streets. These are images that we associate with occupations by invading armies, not with efforts to keep the peace.

So how did we get here? Much of the answer lies in the ‘War in Drugs’ begun by President Nixon in 1971, which has emphasized criminalizing drug use over treatment. The use of the war analogy itself is telling; drug abuse has been described as an enemy to be destroyed rather than a problem to be solved.

The War on Drugs has been a spectacular public policy failure. Beyond damaging relations between police and the public, the rate of incarceration and the prison population in the U.S. has soared since 1970. The U.S. now has the largest prisoner population and highest incarceration rate in the world. At the same time, drugs in the U.S. are cheaper and more potent today than they were in 1990. All this while federal, state, and local governments spend a combined estimated $40 billion a year on the drug war while facing budget shortfalls at every level of government.

Unsurprisingly, the drug war has helped to militarize the culture of policing. Paramilitary police units like SWAT teams are now widespread, as are training programs with names like “The Bulletproof Warrior” that tell police they are warriors combating their enemies – the public.

Federal policies have also contributed to police militarization by blurring the legal lines between police and the military. For instance, a federal program called ‘1033’ has directed $6 billion worth of surplus military equipment into the hands of local police in support of the drug war since 1997; $980 million in military equipment was transferred in 2014 alone.

The 1033 program has operated for decades with minimal oversight and no public scrutiny. The result has been a free-wheeling give-away of federal property to over 8,000 law enforcement agencies. While civil libertarians oppose the flow of guns and armored vehicles to police departments, new research has also shown that most of the ‘equipment’ given away to police since 2006 has nearly nothing to do with policing.

A new University of Idaho study has shown that since 2006, 25% of the items given away to police were composed of miscellaneous things like lumber, couches, televisions, musical instruments, video game systems, and karaoke machines. None of this has anything to do with the drug war but was collectively valued at $389 million. Throw in the give-away of thousands of used non-armored cars and trucks since 2006 and the percentage jumps to over 80% with a value of $1.3 billion.

Those interested in fiscal responsibility should be equally as alarmed about these findings as civil libertarians are about the flow of guns and armored vehicles to local police departments.

Our elected officials can’t seem to agree on much these days, but the 1033 program provides an opportunity for bipartisan collaboration that could help improve the relationships between police and the public while also saving taxpayers money. It’s time to end a bad federal policy that militarizes police with weapons and armored vehicles while simultaneously giving away billions in federal property. Let’s hope Congress can find time to do the right thing.

Dr. Steven M. Radil is an assistant professor of geography at the University of Idaho. His research examines the geographical dimensions of international and domestic politics, including policing.