{"id":72913,"date":"2019-11-13T10:22:30","date_gmt":"2019-11-13T15:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=72913"},"modified":"2019-11-13T10:22:31","modified_gmt":"2019-11-13T15:22:31","slug":"whats-trending-towns-getting-tanked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2019\/11\/13\/whats-trending-towns-getting-tanked\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s Trending? Towns Getting “Tanked”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Modern policing is often characterized by quasi-militaristic tendencies, from \u201cwars\u201d on drugs and crime to its use armored vehicles and automatic weapons. The Department of Defense 1033 Program, which provides military equipment slated for storage to law enforcement agencies, is a popular way that police and sheriff\u2019s departments acquire military gear. According to data from the Defense Logistics Agency, acquisitions of military equipment by state and local law enforcement sharply rose to a peak in 2016, and then have declined in recent years. But what explains participation in the DOD\u2019s program? Which police departments acquire the most military equipment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In a recent study published in <\/a>Criminology<\/a>,<\/em> David Ramey<\/a> and\u00a0Trent Steidley<\/a> investigate whether law enforcement agencies participated in the program and how much gear they acquired using 1033 program participation and U.S. Census and American Community Survey data. They find that participation in the 1033 \u2014 but not the value of gear acquired \u2014 is greater in areas of higher violent arrests. They also find that, after controlling for crime rates and other factors, higher local Black and Hispanic populations correlate with higher levels of participation and greater value acquired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\"Las<\/a>\n<\/div>
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police SWAT, Photo by Tom\u00e1s Del Coro<\/a>, Flickr CC
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However, these racial patterns are not linear. Agencies operating in areas with very small and very large minority populations have low probabilities of program participation, but agencies that serve a more diverse community are most likely<\/em> to obtain military equipment through the 1033 program. For those that do participate, increases in minority populations correlated with higher dollar values of equipment acquired, with each subsequent increase garnering even more gear than the last (an exponential increase). In other words, program participation increases in response to racial demographics up to an extent, but once an agency decides to participate, the value of military equipment requested dramatically increases as minority populations increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trends in police militarization highlight two patterns. Law enforcement agencies respond to increasing crime rates with police militarization, possibly in an attempt to deter further crime. In contrast, the racial effects found in this study follow\u00a0 a \u201cminority threat\u201d model, as military acquisitions correspond to the presence of racial minority groups. This research illustrates how race, net of the crime rates in an area, can pattern not only where police operate, but how<\/em> they operate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ryan Larson<\/strong><\/a> is a graduate student from the Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota \u2013 Twin Cities. He studies crime, punishment, and quantitative methodology. He is a member of the Graduate Editorial Board of <\/em>The Society Pages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Modern policing is often characterized by quasi-militaristic tendencies, from \u201cwars\u201d on drugs and crime to its use armored vehicles and automatic weapons. The Department of Defense 1033 Program, which provides military equipment slated for storage to law enforcement agencies, is a popular way that police and sheriff\u2019s departments acquire military gear. According to data from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1893,"featured_media":72914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2056,16773,451,100613],"class_list":["post-72913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crimelaw","tag-dataviz","tag-police","tag-whats-trending"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2019\/10\/militarization-e1571761071319.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72913"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72971,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72913\/revisions\/72971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}