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ADDED 09/08
From The California Research Bureau www.library.ca.gov/crb
“Police Officer on the Frontline or a Soldier? The Effect of Police Militarization on Crime.” By Vincenzo Bove, et al. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, vol. 9 no. 3 (Aug. 2017). 19 p.
[pdf link]
“We investigate whether surplus military-grade equipment acquired by local police departments from the Pentagon has an effect on crime rates. We use temporal variations in US military expenditure and between-counties variation in the odds of receiving a positive amount of military aid to identify the causal effect of militarized policing on crime. We find that (i) military aid reduces street-level crime; (ii) the program is cost-effective; and (iii) there is evidence in favor of a deterrence mechanism.” Results observed by the researchers include a fall in crime, mostly in robberies, assaults, burglaries and car thefts. Nonlethal equipment transfers, including office supplies and IT hardware, have the largest effect on all types of crime. The report cautions that the social cost is a point that the analysis cannot duly capture.
From the Crime Report thecrimereport.org
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