Late last week, the United States came face to face once again with the brutal reality of policing in this country when video footage was released depicting the murder of 28-year-old Tyre Nichols at the hands of the Memphis Police Department and their special SCORPION unit.
The video itself was sickening yet somehow still unsurprising given where we’re at in this country when it comes to policing that as a force continues to operate without impunity. Yes, the officers, in this case, were arrested, relieved of their duty, and charged with second-degree murder among a variety of other charges, however, despite the continued brutality displayed by the police departments still get rewarded around the country with increased budgets at both a city, state and federal level.
In 2022, the United States in total spent almost $215 billion on law enforcement which was up $10 billion from 2021. Additionally, the 2022 total broke down into $129 billion spent on policing and $86 billion on corrections. This all doesn’t even take into account additional federal programs that provide local police agencies with excess military equipment. In 2021, the ACLU highlighted a government program called “1033” which allowed the Department of Defense to transfer military equipment to local agencies. In fact, since 1033’s inception back in 1996, more than $7 billion in military equipment has been given to increasingly more militarized local police departments.
The federal government arms local police forces in the United States with weapons of war. A program called “1033,” for the section of the act that created it, allows the Department of Defense to give state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies military hardware. Since its inception in 1996, nearly 10,000 jurisdictions have received more than $7 billion of equipment. This includes combat vehicles, rifles, military helmets, and misleadingly named “non-” or less-lethal weapons, some of which have featured in police raids and police violence against protesters, including recent protests for racial justice.
ACLU
Nonetheless, it’s been clear that there’s absolutely no reforming the police. It doesn’t matter how much meaningless legislation is passed by politicians from either side of the aisle because you’re never going to get any honest attempt from the state to hold those who execute their will accountable for their oppressive actions. What you’ll ultimately get are republicans grandstanding about law and order, democrats kneeling with kente cloths around their necks while both sides of the aisle sign bills that write even more checks to the police. Checks that will continue to fund special ops units like SCORPION within the Memphis Police force and other agencies across the country responsible for the nearly 1,176 people who were killed by law enforcement, averaging out to around 100 people per month.