Between the Armored Personnel Carriers locking down main streets in major American cities – mimicking our MRAPs in Afghanistan – or Special Weapons and Tactics (Swat) and Special Forces units canvassing our country, if we're not careful, this militarization of our domestic policing will make-over America, and fast.
Here's how it all happened. A little-known Pentagon program has been quietly militarizing American police forces for years. A total of $4.2bn worth of equipment has been distributed by the Defense Department to municipal law enforcement agencies, with a record $546m in 2012 alone. ...
Though the program's existed since the 1990s, it has expanded greatly in recent years, due, in part, to post-9/11 fears and sequestration budget cuts. The expanse, however, seems unnecessary given that the Department of Homeland Security has already handed out $34bn in "terrorism grants" to local polices forces – without oversight mind you – to fund counter-terrorism efforts.
Additional militarization, then, deserves congressional attention as the program is harmful and must be scaled back for a number of reasons.
First, the program is transforming our police into a military. The results of such over-militarized law enforcement are apparent from the dispersion of Occupy protesters in Oakland to the city-wide lockdown in Boston. ...
Tanks, grenade launchers, armored vehicles, and assault rifles are just a few of the items that have been transferred from military control to municipal police forces. Law enforcement agencies need only to arrange and pay for shipment in order to receive the items of their choice ... One particularly egregious example is found in South Carolina, where Richland County's sheriff acquired a tank with 360-degree rotating machine gun turrets. Sardonically, the vehicle has been named "the Peacemaker".
Swat teams, furthermore, are no longer found only in large, high-crime areas. Instead, even small rural towns now have the equipment to arm their own paramilitary units. Investigative reporter Radley Balko estimates that around 150 Swat raids are performed every day in the United States.
Read more:
America's police are looking more and more like the military
Related:
Police destroy the Garden of Eden
Do something!
Updates:
Militarization of America: Campus Cops Get Armored Vehicle Built to Withstand IEDs and Mines
Time to be Afraid in America: The Frightening Pattern of Throwing Police Power at Social Problems
Texas Campus Cop Kills Unarmed College Student After Sarcastic Remark
See also:
Police in Miami Gardens Abusing Authority?
SuccubaSuprema writes:
The fact that law enforcement officers are human beings, and therefore fallible like all other human beings, must be remembered, lest we invest them with too much authority and too much power.
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