Get accustomed to seeing combat military troops in the streets of America.
On Monday, the National Guard deployed 400 Massachusetts National Guardsmen from the 126th Combat Support Battalion to keep the Boston Marathon race route clear for more than 26,000 runners. Ordinarily a police function, the military is increasingly being used to patrol American streets, in contrast to the democratic tradition.
Under the Posse Comitatus Act passed on June 16, 1878 after the end of Reconstruction, the federal uniformed services-—including the Army, Air Force, and State National Guard forces-—are prohibited from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain “law and order” on non-federal property, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. National Guard forces operating under the state authority are technically exempt from Posse Comitatus Act restrictions.
However, with the passage of the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007, federal law was changed so that the Governor of a state is no longer the sole commander in chief of their state’s National Guard, a direct violation of Article I, Section 10 and Clause 3 of the Constitution.
The deployments and exercises have increased significantly since the U.S. military announced last year it will place 20,000 troops on the streets of America by 2011 under the control of the Northern Command. soldiers were in attendance to “safeguard” the public. However, this role is usually assigned to the police, not a combat support battalion. The military’s job is to break things and kill people during war, not protect civilians from participants in a marathon.
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