America's police are beginning to look like an army (article)

[Type Username Here]

Radley Balko’s new book, “Rise of the Warrior Cop,” details how America’s police forces have grown to look and behave more like soldiers than neighborly Officer Krupkes walking the beat. This new breed of police, frequently equipped with military weapons and decked out in enough armor to satisfy a storm trooper, are redefining law enforcement.

How did this happen? For decades, the war on drugs has empowered police to act aggressively. More recently, 9/11 and school shootings enforced the notion that there’s no such thing as too much security. Since 9/11, the newly formed Department of Homeland Security has distributed billions in grants, enabling even some small town police departments to buy armored personnel carriers and field their own SWAT teams.

Once you have a SWAT team the only thing to do is kick some ass. There are more than 100 SWAT team raids every day in this country. They’re not chasing murderers or terrorists. For the most part they go after nonviolent offenders like drug dealers and even small time gamblers. As you’d expect when there is too much adrenaline and too much weaponry, there have been some tragedies. Suddenly goofball comedies where an elite squad invades a house to find a pot-smoking kid don’t seem so funny. (Balko’s book describes such incidents at length in excerpts Salon published here and here.)

This problem defies the usual conservative vs. liberal calculus. As Balko sees it, Democrats love spending money on cops and Republicans want to seem tough on crime. In this fertile ground, the police-industrial complex has grown. Many of its excesses are almost impossible to defend, but it’s not going anywhere. Balko talked to Salon about the decline of community policing, the warrior cop mentality, why so many dogs get killed by police. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The interview is here:
Radley Balko: “Once a town gets a SWAT team you want to use it” - Salon.com

 

[88m3]

Need to disarm the police and have armed response squads like England and armed police for sensitive security roles.

 

[Serious]

I'm pretty sure this became evident after the boston bombings, friend.


Police agencies were using state of the art equipment, in attempt to track down the fugitive.

Funny thing is, all this overly aggressive policing is still largely inefficient, and complete waste and misuse of taxpayer money...

 

[TooLazyToMakeUp1]

I'm pretty sure this became evident after the boston bombings, friend.


Police agencies were using state of the art equipment, in attempt to track down the fugitive.

Funny thing is, all this overly aggressive policing is still largely inefficient, and complete waste and misuse of taxpayer money...

Sadly, this has been evident for quite a while now. The sheriff of my county got a M113A1 and called it "The Peacemaker"

Spoiler

The f*ck do they need this for?!?!

. They used it in drug raids and sh!t .

He got it through a government program called the 1033 program which allows local police departments to apply for and receive any of the Department of Defense's military weapons or equipment.......any of them.

Excerpt from the article

In 2004, for example, law enforcement officials in the New York counties of Oswego and Cayuga defended their new SWAT teams as a necessary precaution in a post–September 11 world. “We’re in a new era, a new time," here,” one sheriff told the Syracuse Post Standard. “The bad guys are a little different than they used to be, so we’re just trying to keep up with the needs for today and hope we never have to use it.” The same sheriff said later in the same article that he'd use his new SWAT team “for a lot of other purposes, too ... just a multitude of other things." In 2002, the seven police officers who serve the town of Jasper, Florida -- which had all of 2,000 people and hadn’t had a murder in more than a decade -- were each given a military-grade M-16 machine gun from the Pentagon transfer program, leading one Florida paper to run the headline, “Three Stoplights, Seven M-16s.”

In 2006 alone, a Pentagon spokesman told the Worcester, Massachusetts Telegram & Gazette, the Department of Defense "distributed vehicles worth $15.4 million, aircraft worth $8.9 million, boats worth $6.7 million, weapons worth $1 million and 'other' items worth $110.6 million" to local police agencies.

In 2007, Clayton County, Georgia -- whose sheriff once complained that the drug war was being fought like Vietnam, and should instead be fought more like the D-Day invasion at Normandy -- got its own tank through the Pentagon's transfer program. Nearby Cobb County got its tank in 2008. In Richland County, South Carolina, Sheriff Leon Lott procured an M113A1 armored personnel carrier in 2008. The vehicle moves on tank-like tracks, and features a belt-fed, turreted machine gun that fires .50-caliber rounds, a type of ammunition so powerful that even the military has restrictions on how it's used on the battlefield. Lott named his vehicle "The Peacemaker." (Lott, is currently being sued for sending his SWAT team crashing into the homes of people who appeared in the same infamous photo that depicted Olympic gold-medalist swimmer Michael Phelps smoking pot in Richland County.) Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio also has a belt-fed .50-caliber machine gun, though it isn't connected to his armored personnel carrier.

Link to the article:A Decade After 9/11, Police Departments Are Increasingly Militarized
Link to about the 1033 program: https://www.justnet.org/other/1033_program.html


These f*ckers lost their minds

 

[KeysT]

Need to disarm the police and have armed response squads like England and armed police for sensitive security roles.

That wont work without disarming citizens. We still have criminals.

 

[Regular_P]

 

[NZA]

this issue is inevitable and almost impossible to mitigate.

the war on drugs is a terrible program that is the single biggest cause of this problem, but good luck getting drugs decriminalized any time soon. most right wingers seem to be advancing the theory that trace amounts of weed made trayvon a dangerous aggressor

on the flipside...

civilians capable of buying $700 ar-15s at cabellas, and domestic terrorists making IEDs will mean the cops justifiably have to be capable of overwhelming that kind of threat.

you would have to get rid of drug laws and further regulate guns in order to de-escalate the situation.

 

[Mr. Somebody]

Those new bike officer helmets are fire.

They look like they have some kind of interface in them when they close the helmet. Completely closed off.

 

[thekingsmen]

Nothing new. While a large portion of Military is overseas occupying nations for 50 plus years and going to war over lies so the multinational corporations and banks can get their way, the government thought it would nice to militarize the police so there won't be resistance to what the banks and corporations are doing overseas and here.

 

[88m3]

That wont work without disarming citizens. We still have criminals.

Not all criminals have guns


Some criminals in England have guns


You are a fascist.

 

[Regular_P]

Not all criminals have guns


Some criminals in England have guns


You are a fascist.

 

[Scustin Trillberlake]

America is slowly but surely becoming more and more like Pre-Nazi Germany. No Hyperbole.

 

[Shogun]

America is slowly but surely becoming more and more like Pre-Nazi Germany. No Hyperbole.

Yes hyperbole.

 

[newworldafro]

Yes hyperbole.

 

[Scustin Trillberlake]

Yes hyperbole.

America is hyper-inflating it's currency though or am i missing something here....