Rise of the Warrior Cop - The militarization of America's police forces

Rise of the Warrior Cop - The militarization of America's police forces

Introduction

In recent years, one of the most alarming and upsetting trends in the policing of United States has been the militarization of police tactics and weaponry. In his latest publication, Rise of the Warrior Cop - The militarization of America's police forces, writer Radley Balko draws the arch of law enforcement in United States from the colonial times constables to existing SWAT special response teams and units. By means of the military rhetoric surrounding the “war on terrorism,” and “war on drugs” the policymakers have embarked on a hazardously aggressive approach of policing that mostly gives rise to unnecessary injuries and deaths. Thus, in this paper, we will present a book review of Rise of the Warrior Cop - The militarization of America's police forces and a further discussion of the prominent aspects of the book.

Author's Background, Qualifications and Potential Biases

Radley Balko is an esteemed, award-winning analytical and investigative journalist who loves to write about prosecutors, police, civil liberties and the wider system of criminal justice. At present, he is working as a senior investigative reporter and writer for the Huffington Post. Until that time, he has worked for Reason magazine as a senior editor and for the Cato Institute as a policy analyst. In the year 2011, he was named as “Journalist of the Year” by the Los Angeles Press Club. This book is an illuminating and entertaining story which is at the same time frightening and depressing as well told by Radley Balko with gusto and verve, scrupulously and thoroughly researched, and awash with telling historical details.

Sources of Assistance and Possible Bias

The author Radley Balko marks out the origins of law enforcement from the time of colonies and reveals the tension between qualms of a standing military and the requirement for an efficient force to keep up public order. He demonstrates how the fears and values of the Founding Fathers were articulated both in the Bills of Rights and the Castle Doctrine, where the third Amendment of the Bills of Rights prohibited the troops stationing in private homes at the time of peace and whose Fourth Amendment sheltered people and their homes from the intrusion of the government devoid of a warrant. The author's telescoping work takes the reader speedily to the start of the contemporary period that is almost half a century before, when increasing rates of crimes and social disorders sparked sensitive public apprehension and augmented eagerness by the men in blue as well as the public to resort to increasingly aggressive and repressive policing measures to stop the surge of anarchy set free by uppity blacks, anti-war activists, and pot-smoking hippies.

Goal of Book and Success in Meeting Goal

Balko explains the growing utilization of military-style equipments, tactics, and units by law enforcement agencies all over the country, together with extremely violent raids, the utilization of resistant vehicles, and the use of irresistible force of a ...