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

Radley Balko
GEN
Published in
8 min readJun 11, 2020

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The Huntington Beach SWAT team advancing during a peaceful protest in California. Photo: Leonard Ortiz/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register/Getty Images

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”…

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Radley Balko
GEN
Writer for

Investigative journalist and reporter at the Washington Post. Author of Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces.