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The Military Model

Information on this page is made up of excerpts from:

Above The Law, by Jerome H. Skolnick and James J. Fyfe

The Military Model
The view of cops as soldiers

Let me turn once again to the example of Desert Storm and the great might that was brought to bear upon a threatening and violent enemy. Under brilliantly coordinated "command and control," the Gulf coalition forces made the best use of firepower guided by great ingenuity and relentless certainty. We had the weapons to do the job: "smart" weapons that worked with deadly effect against an enemy finally reduced to desperate encounter, indeffectual response, and abject retreat.

Here at home in the fight against violent crime we should employ, to be sure, the same command and control, the same ingenuity and certainty. Only here we battle not with the weapons of the military, but with the far stronger weapon of our laws. We need to make certain that our laws are just as smart--just as efficient and effective against criminals--as those weapons that turned back the ruthless and violent intrusion by Saddam Hussein's forces.
-Former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh


This call might at first sound reasonable, but it relies upon a somewhat fallacious analogy and it is more likely to produce unnecessary violence and antagonism than to result in effective policing. Sure, in the Middle East the difference between US soldiers and "the enemy" were pretty clear. But police officers on American Streets too often rely on ambiguous cues and stereotypes in trying to identify the enemies in their war. This also has the effect of demoralizing cops when they realize they are fighting wars they cannot win. These officers don't want to become casualties of a no-win war, so they simply do as little as possible until the day when they are eligible for their pension.

Others, who heed the call to battle, believe claims that they are losing their war because others have handcuffed them with due process rights, rights to appeal, habeas corpus, and the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

The difference between the quasi-military and the civil policeman is that the civil policeman should have no enemies. People may be criminals, they may be violent, but they are not enemies to be destroyed. Once that kind of language gets into the police vocabulary, it begins to change attitudes.
--John Alderson, The Listener, 1985


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