When criminals have access to some of the most powerful weapons in the world, police feel the pressure to match or outgun them. This invariably results in a massive amount of guns being purchased, often with taxpayer dollars.we explore how gun companies like Glock courted police departments across the country — and how those departments became not only some of the biggest customers of private gun manufacturers but also their guiding inspiration.
Alain Stephens: The number of robberies prompts the federal government to create a special unit: The FBI’S C-1 Bank Robbery Squad. Out of all the daily heists, the squad becomes laser-focused on one particularly violent duo: Michael Lee Platt and William Russell Matix. Alain Stephens: On the morning of April 11, 1986, the eight agents of the C-1 Squad set up a traffic stop in a neighborhood where Matix and Platt had been spotted.
Alain Stephens: This shootout shocks the law enforcement community, the president, and everyday Americans, who are overwhelmed by a growing fear of violent crime. Even one of the robbers’ own mother is shaken by the violence. Alain Stephens: Gaston Glock — the man behind the gun bearing his name — first founded the company to sell curtain rods and knives. Then, in the early 1980s, he got word that the Austrian military was looking for its next pistol.
Alain Stephens: I don’t know if any Libyan terrorists ever used Glocks, but I can assure you: There is probably one in every criminal evidence locker in every jurisdiction in America. But the idea of the gun being synonymous with the cop wasn’t always that way. In fact before the 1900s, officers didn’t necessarily have a gun. They carried whatever they had — clubs, and sometimes pistols or a shotgun. And it was all personal property.
Alain Stephens: The new source of funding gives arms companies a golden incentive to advertise to police, urging them to keep up with the threat of an ever-increasingly-armed populace — a populace that these same gun companies simultaneously arm. The largest police departments start hiring full-time grant writers to help them tap into federal funding.
Alain Stephens: Brent Stratton is a cop and president of the California Association of Tactical Officers, the group that set up the SWAT training I went on. To their organization, it’s not if the cops need this type of equipment, it’s trying to put some rails on it: Making sure officers act like a scalpel, and less like a hammer.
Alain Stephens: Killings, which also, don’t hit all Americans equally — with Black and Brown people being disproportionately killed by police.