Militarizing Mayberry: state and local police agencies are being transformed into paramilitary affiliates of a centralized police force controlled by Washington, D.C. (On the Home Front).

In the mythical hamlet of Mayberry, as depicted on the beloved Andy Griffith Show, Sheriff Andy Taylor wore his authority lightly, rarely even carrying a gun. His comically high-strung deputy, Barney Fife, was issued a single bullet, which he never used.

While The Andy Griffith Show is idealized fiction, "Sheriff Andy" does embody an authentic American concept of law enforcement: The lawman whose role is to protect and serve the community in which he lives.

The antithesis of that noble concept is an army of occupation, accountable only to the distant ruling elite whose whims it enforces on a tyrannized population. Tragically, America is moving away from the idealized concept of law enforcement toward the totalitarian model. With increasing federal involvement in law enforcement has come increasing militarization. That process, already underway before Black Tuesday, has accelerated dramatically because of that atrocity, with ominous implications for our liberties.

War at Home

"Flame throwers? Tanks? Yes -- use 'em. Helicopters? Bazookas? Cannons? Sure." Against whom would this formidable arsenal be arrayed? Al-Qaeda, perhaps, or Taliban holdouts in Afghanistan? Or maybe murderous Abu Sayyaf terrorist cadres in the Philippines? No. The speaker is not a military commander, but former Minneapolis police chief Tony Bouza, captured on film in Urban Warrior, a documentary depicting the accelerating drive to militarize local police. Significantly, the interview with Bouza was conducted by director Matt Ehling prior to the September 11th attack.

"We should always be reviewing things like Posse Comitatus and other laws if we think it ties our hands in protecting the American people," stated four-star general Ralph E. Eberhart on July 17th. Air Force General Eberhart, heads the recently created Northern Command, assigned the specific task of protecting the U.S. homeland.

Eberhart's suggestion was echoed by Homeland Security Adviser Tom Ridge, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del.), and numerous pundits. The Bush administration "has directed lawyers in the Departments of Justice and Defense to review the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 and any other laws that sharply restrict the military's ability to participate in domestic law enforcement," reported the July 18th New York Times.

"Posse Comitatus" means "power of the county." The 1878 act, which ended the military occupation of the Southern states after the Civil War, prohibits the use of the military "as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws...." A 1981 congressional report pointed out that the Posse Comitatus Act encapsulates "the traditional Anglo-American principle of separation of military and civilian spheres of authority, one of the fundamental precepts of our form of government." Moreover, that act acknowledges a largely forgotten fact about our constitutional system: Law enforcement is properly an almost exclusive concern of local, county, and state governments.

"Since the writing of the Declaration of Independence, Americans have mistrusted standing armies and have seen them as instruments of oppression and tyranny," observed Matthew Canton Hammond in a 1997 analysis published by the Washington University Law Quarterly. "Over time, the military has increased its esteem among the populace, but it has always been held separate from civilian government and limited to its focused goal of military preparedness and national security."

Obviously, those who enlist to serve as either military personnel or police carry out tasks that are both honorable and indispensable to the preservation of our liberties. But those roles involve mutually incompatible approaches to the use of force, as well as different lines of authority. "Civilian law enforcement is traditionally local in character, responding to needs at the city, county, or state level," Hammond notes. Police are trained for "civilian law enforcement," meaning that they are expected "to use lesser forms of force when possible [and] to draw their weapons only when they are prepared to fire."

For military personnel, Hammond continues, "escalation is the rule" -- and quite properly so, given their specific responsibilities. "The military exists to carry out the external mission of defending the nation. Thus, in an encounter with a person identified with the enemy, soldiers need not be cognizant of individual rights...." Police analyst Diane Cecilia Weber elaborates on that point: "[T]he mindset of the soldier is simply not appropriate for the civilian police officer. Police officers confront not an 'enemy,' but individuals who are protected by the Bill of Rights. Confusing the police function with the military function can lead to dangerous and unintended consequences -- such as unnecessary shootings and killings."

Mackubin Thomas Owens, professor of strategy and force planning at the Naval War College, concurs. "Employing the U.S. military as a domestic police force is a recipe for disaster," writes Owens. "The U.S. military is structured to play 'away games.' It is good at protecting the United States by threatening the sanctuary of our adversaries abroad. There are, of course, things the military can do to enhance the security of the American homeland, but we should not be bluffing further the distinction between military activities and domestic law enforcement."

That critical border has become particularly thin where it divides the military from federal law enforcement agencies. Former federal attorney David Hardy points out that the FBI's "Hostage Rescue Team" (HRT), which played a lethal role in the stand-offs at Ruby Ridge and Waco, "was superbly trained for war, not for 'law enforcement.'" The HRT, continues Hardy, is part of "an elite military force of growing size: nearly 10 percent of the FBI is presently enrolled in its HRT teams or the many other SWAT-like units created by other agencies."

Prior to the February 1993 ATF assault on Waco's Branch Davidian church, then-Texas Governor Ann Richards was able to exploit a "drug war" loophole in the Posse Comitatus Act inserted by Congress in 1989. Falsely asserting that the Davidians were implicated in drug trafficking, Richards signed a waiver requesting military support for the raid. This permitted the FBI to deploy tanks, aircraft, supplies, manpower, and high-tech equipment during the 51-day siege.

What Happened to Mayberry?

Even greater damage has resulted from ongoing efforts to transform state and local law enforcement agencies into paramilitary armies of occupation in their communities -- a process Weber describes as "Militarizing Mayberry."

Legal analyst Hammond points out that federal courts have authorized "exceptions in name to the Posse Comitatus Act that "allow the military to provide equipment and supplies, technical assistance, information, and training to law enforcement agencies," most commonly under the rubric of the "war on drugs." By way of this exception, "Congress has encouraged the U.S. military to supply intelligence, equipment, and training to civilian police," notes Weber. "That encouragement has spawned a culture of paramilitarism in American law enforcement."

While relatively few Americans have had traumatic run-ins with federal paramilitaries, the federally funded militarization of local police directly impacts nearly every American community. By the end of the 1990s, writes Weber, "nearly 90 percent of the police departments surveyed in communities with populations over 50,000 had paramilitary units, as did 70 percent of the departments surveyed in communities with populations under 50,000. The Pentagon has been equipping those units with M-16s, armored personnel carriers, and grenade launchers. The police paramilitary units also conduct training exercises with active duty Army Rangers and Navy SEALs."

This sharing of technology and training "is producing a shared mindset" between the military and police, warns Weber. She cites the example of a small Midwestern town whose police department "sends out patrols dressed in tactical uniform in a military personnel carrier. The armored vehicle, according to the SWAT commander, stops 'suspicious vehicles and people. We'll stop anything that moves. We'll sometimes even surround suspicious homes and bring out the MP5s [machine guns ].'"

Another tactical officer with a metropolitan force refers to "saturation patrols" carried out by tactical teams in his city: "We do a lot of our work with the SWAT unit because we have bigger guns. We send out two, two-to-four men cars, we look for minor violations and do jump-outs, either on people or on the street or automobiles. After we jump out the second car provides periphery cover with an ostentatious display of weaponry."

It is important to recognize that these snapshots of the emerging U.S. garrison state come from local officers increasingly funded and trained by the federal government. The training they receive, in turn, is largely derived from doctrines put into practice in UN "peacekeeping" missions overseas, in which co-mingling of police and military roles is the rule, rather than the exception.

In Macedonia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and elsewhere, many U.S. military personnel carry out a role similar to that of "beat cops' on American streets. "We were essentially used to 'enforce the peace' by being there and maintaining a presence," retired Army Sergeant Joe Kelly, who served in the Bosnian peacekeeping mission, told THE NEW AMERICAN. "We would do foot patrols, guard cemeteries, help put down riots, and every once in a while we'd 'lock and load' just to let some hard cases know we were serious." This approach resembles that of the tactical officers described above. That similarity reflects the extent to which our independent, local police forces are being amalgamated into a centralized, militarized, "internal security" apparatus.