Bill Clinton’s “tough on crime” Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act has turned out to be tough on law abiding citizens. From John and Nisha Whitehead at rutherford.org:
“There are always risks in challenging excessive police power, but the risks of not challenging it are more dangerous, even fatal.”—Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear
The American police state has become America’s new crime boss.
Thirty years after then-President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act into law, its legacy of mass incarceration, police militarization, and over-criminalization continues to haunt us.
It has become the gift that America can’t seem to return.
We are now suffering the blowback from the triple threats of the Crime Bill: police militarization, a warrior mindset that has police viewing the rest of the citizenry as enemy combatants, and law enforcement training that teaches cops to shoot first and ask questions later.
Too often, that “triple threat” also manifests itself in deadly traffic stops, the use of excessive force against unarmed individuals, and welfare checks turned fatal.
The Crime Bill fueled the rise of the police state by pouring funding into law enforcement agencies, particularly for military-grade weaponry and the expansion of police forces. It also laid the groundwork for mass incarceration by incentivizing the construction of more prisons and enacting harsh “three strikes” laws that mandated lengthy sentences for repeat offenders.
Most critically, the Crime Bill led to the explosive growth of SWAT teams across the country.
It’s estimated that more than 80,000 SWAT raids are carried out every year. That translates to over 200 every single day in the U.S.
Among the tens of thousands of raids that leave in their wake the wreckage of lives, homes and trust in the nation’s so-called peacekeepers, some are so egregious as to cut through the apathy and desensitization that has settled over the nation regarding police violence.
