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機械戰警
Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarisation of America's Police Forces. By Radley Balko.
《戰警的崛起：美國警力軍事化》
RADLEY BALKO'S writing has long been read by people who care about civil liberties.
Radley Balko長期以來撰寫公民自由類的文章，對這方面感興趣的讀者一定有所耳聞。
First for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, then for his own blog, “The Agitator”, now part of the Huffington Post, he has written about criminal-justice policy, with a focus on police abuses: not corruption so much as the excesses that have become inherent in ordinary policing.
他先供職于有美國自由者智囊團稱號的卡托研究所，然后專心撰寫自己的博客“煽動者”。現在，他是赫芬頓郵報的一名記者，撰寫罪犯公正政策類的文章，主要切入點為警察的虐待問題，相對于腐敗來說，這個問題是一般執法中固有的問題，而且十分普遍。
Mr Balko manages to avoid the clichés of both right and left, and provokes genuine outrage at the misuse of state power in its most brutal and unaccountable form.
Balko成功地繞過了左派或右派的陳詞濫調，激起民眾對公共權力濫用的深刻憤慨。這種瀆職行為是極為殘酷且無法量化的。
Heavily armed police raiding the homes of unarmed, non-violent suspects on the flimsiest of pretexts, and behaving more like an occupying army in hostile territory than guardians of public safety.
全副武裝的警察闖進手嫌疑犯的家里，這些人無縛雞之力，僅僅是因為警方臆想的罪責就被當做兇殘的恐怖分子一樣。這些警察全然沒有公共衛士的形象。
“Rise of the Warrior Cop”, Mr Balko's interesting first book, explains what policies led to the militarisation of America's police.
Balko第一本有意思的書名為“戰警的崛起”，書中介紹了什么樣的政策導致了美國警察的軍事化。
To his credit, he focuses his outrage not on the police themselves, but on politicians and the phoney, wasteful drug war they created.
他在書中表示，他并不對警察本身感到憤怒，而是對政治家和制造了無用的毒品戰的騙子們感到憤怒。
After the obligatory backward glances to the colonial era—in which the sort of social shaming possible only in small, homogeneous communities obviated the need for standing police forces—and the American civil war, Mr Balko's story really begins with the Supreme Court's 1963 ruling in Ker v California, which allowed the police to enter someone's home without a warrant and without knocking or announcing themselves.
作者必要地回顧了一下殖民地時期，在當時，戰警的現象還只是存在于小而均勻的社區中，為的是消除常規警力的必要。同時，書中還回顧了美國的內戰時期。而Balko真正要記敘的則是從1963年最高法院的建立開始的。當時的最高法院坐落于加州，法院允許警察不經批準進入居民家中，他們甚至不需要敲門或提前通知。
That was the first in a long series of rulings that gutted the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
這是漫長統治時期中第一個破壞第四修正案中保護無正當理由搜查和逮捕條款的做法。
The social upheaval of the 1960s caught the attention of ambitious politicians and led them to focus on crime.
1960年的社會動蕩使得雄心勃勃的政治家們開始關心并關注犯罪。
Daryl Gates, then a rising star in the Los Angeles Police Department, created America's first SWAT team in 1965.
達瑞爾蓋茲，當時為洛杉磯警察局轟動一時的新星，他于1965年首創了美國第一支特警隊。
Richard Nixon ran successfully for president on a law-and-order ticket in 1968, bolstered by a “Silent Majority” which, in Mr Balko's view, “began to see a link between drugs, crime, the counter-culture and race”.
理查德?尼克松因宣揚嚴肅法紀，在“沉默的大多數”的支持下，于1968年成功當選總統，在Balko看來，也正是那時，當權者看到了“毒品、犯罪、反文化、種族和犯罪的聯系”。
Ronald Reagan made Nixon's drug policies tougher.
羅納德?里根上臺后，繼續強化尼克松的毒品政策。
He dramatically increased both federal involvement in combating drugs and asset forfeiture, which allows law enforcement to seize goods and property believed to be used in crime or, more controversially, purchased with the proceeds of crime.
他在抗擊毒品和財產沒收中大大增加了聯邦的干涉權，這就允許執法能夠掌握牽涉到犯罪的商品和財產，更乃至犯罪過程中獲得的財物。
This gave the police an incentive to find connections between property and drug activity, often at the expense of more serious crimes.
這更加激勵警察們去尋找財產和毒品活動之間的聯系，而這樣的尋找往往伴隨著更多的惡性犯罪。
As Mr Balko notes, “Closing a rape or murder case didn't come with a potential kickback to the police department. Knocking off a mid- or low-level drug dealer did.”
正如Balko 說的，對警局來說，結束一宗強奸案或謀殺案并沒有潛在利益可圖，打擊一起中低等的毒品交易商才是利益之源。
Financial incentives also came through drug-war grants and, after the attacks of September 11th 2001, homeland-security grants that allowed police departments to buy surplus military hardware of dubious utility.
資金激勵的來源也正是這些毒品案，2001年9月11日的毒品案告破后，警局用獲得的本土安全的獎金購買了一大堆不知道什么用的軍事硬件。
Fargo, North Dakota, has received $8m in grants to buy goodies such as an armoured truck with a rotating turret—used “mostly for show, including at the annual city picnic, where police parked it near the children's bouncy castle”.
法戈，北達科他州獲得了800萬美元的獎勵，購買了設有旋轉炮的裝甲車等物品。多數被用來顯擺，無論是一年一度的城市野餐還是其他地方，他們一定會停在孩子的充氣城堡邊。
Mr Balko is adept, in “Rise of the Warrior Cop”, at finding outrageous examples of SWAT-team misuse, such as deploying heavily armed police to break up small-stakes poker games, raid fraternity parties suspected of serving alcohol to underage patrons and arrest barbers for operating without licences.
Balko是個內行，在“戰警的崛起”一書中找到了大量特警隊濫用職權的案例。例如，他們調用全副武裝的警察來取締小賭注的撲克賽，因為懷疑慈善晚會向未成年人提供酒類而突襲晚會，以無照經營的名義逮捕理發店員。
But he is too dismissive of arguments that stricter policing may have helped produce the remarkable drop in America's crime rate.
但是他嚴重忽視了一點，就是在這樣嚴苛的政策下，美國的犯罪率確實有了顯著下降。
Thanks to his book, Americans will be more aware of the costs of those methods.
也正是因為他的這本書，美國人更加注意到了這些方法帶來的副作用。
But they—and he—should also consider possible benefits.
但是他和這些人都應該考慮到這些政策也是有所裨益的。
