This 2018 study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America takes a comprehensive look at the impacts of militarized police, and shows just how factually counterproductive it is for literally everyone (except for maybe the Defense Contractors who walk with cash between their tented fingers). From the abstract of the article:
The increasingly visible presence of heavily armed police units in American communities has stoked widespread concern over the militarization of local law enforcement. Advocates claim militarized policing protects officers and deters violent crime, while critics allege these tactics are targeted at racial minorities and erode trust in law enforcement. Using a rare geocoded census of SWAT team deployments from Maryland, I show that militarized police units are more often deployed in communities with large shares of African American residents, even after controlling for local crime rates. Further, using nationwide panel data on local police militarization, I demonstrate that militarized policing fails to enhance officer safety or reduce local crime. Finally, using survey experiments—one of which includes a large oversample of African American respondents—I show that seeing militarized police in news reports may diminish police reputation in the mass public. In the case of militarized policing, the results suggest that the often-cited trade-off between public safety and civil liberties is a false choice.
Jonathan Mummolo, the author of the article, goes on to say that, “Taken together, these findings suggest that curtailing militarized policing may be in the interest of both police and citizens.”
Facts don’t care about your feelings on policing, and the facts are pretty clear on this.
Militarization fails to enhance police safety or reduce crime but may harm police reputation [Jonathan Mummolo / PNAS]
Image: Public domain via Pxhere