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How a Biden-Backed Community Policing Bill Wound Up Militarizing Cops
Even before 9/11, police departments were using federal funds to buy SWAT gear
When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, crime in America was climbing. The concept of community policing was growing increasingly popular. Ideally, with community policing, rather than taking a “call-and-response” approach to policing — which focuses on aspects of policing like improving response times to 911 calls — cops walk regular beats. They go to community meetings. They know the names of the principals of the schools in their district, and they know and consult with community and neighborhood leaders. It’s a more proactive form of policing, but one that stresses making cops a part of the places they work.
In 1994 Clinton started a new grant program under the Justice Department called Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS. For its inaugural year, Clinton and leaders in Congress (most notably Sen. Joe Biden) funded it with $148.4 million. The next year funding jumped to $1.42 billion, and it stayed in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion through 1999. COPS grants were mostly intended to go to police departments to hire new police officers, ostensibly for the purpose of implementing more community-oriented policing strategies.
The problem was that there was no universal definition of community policing. Most law enforcement officials and academics agree that community policing is a more proactive approach to policing than call-and-response, but within that general agreement is a huge range of approaches. Street sweeps, occupation-like control of neighborhoods, SWAT raids, and aggressive anti-gang policies are also proactive. These police activities are aggressive, often violent, and usually a net loss for civil liberties, but they are proactive.
When Clinton, Biden, and other politicians touted the COPS program, they did so with language that evoked the Peace Corps approach (though both Clinton and Biden also supported policies that promoted militarization). Although Clinton described the goal of COPS as “build[ing] bonds of understanding and trust between police and citizens,” it wasn’t clear if he or any other politician really believed this. The majority of the funding in COPS grants was given…
