Making police into soldiers turns cities into war zones

[struggle4progress]

Robert Koehler, Commentary

We wrecked Iraq, we pulled out, we redeployed in Anaheim.

This ain't working, guys — I mean, firing rubber bullets into anguished crowds, siccing attack dogs on moms and children. I mean, inventing enemies, going to war, unleashing state-of-the-art firepower in all directions and eventually losing, but not before we've inflicted maximum suffering on the innocent and magnified the original problem tenfold ...

... We exacerbate every problem we militarize. Indeed, militarization is as much a part of the problem — as much a threat to civilization — as, for instance, terrorism or drugs. And the recent, ongoing community uproar in Anaheim, Calif., over two police slayings of Latino males in one weekend — and the subsequent police reaction to that outrage — illustrates the terrifying ineffectiveness of a militarized "us vs. them" approach to conflict.

"They just released the dog and I had my baby," a woman tells the TV news reporter, bursting into tears. "The dog scratched me with his teeth" ...

http://www.statesman.com/opinion/making-police-into-soldiers-turns-cities-into-war-2428130.html

[sad sally]

1. In Laird v. Tatum, Chief Justice Warren Burger referred to:

[A] traditional and strong resistance of Americans to any military intrusion into civilian affairs. That tradition has deep roots in our history and found early expression, for example, in the Third Amendment's explicit prohibition against quartering soldiers in private homes without consent and in the constitutional provisions for civilian control of the military.

As another court put it:

Civilian rule is basic to our system of government. The use of military forces to seize civilians can expose civilian government to the threat of military rule and the suspension of constitutional liberties. On a lesser scale, military enforcement of the civil law leaves the protection of vital Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights in the hands of persons who are not trained to uphold these rights. It may also chill the exercise of fundamental rights, such as the rights to speak freely and to vote, and create the atmosphere of fear and hostility which exists in territories occupied by enemy forces.

[braddy]

2. As a Vet, I get very annoyed when cops label people "civilians" as though they themselves aren't

[malthaussen]

3. Police are supposed to be civilians.

We have lost sight of that important idea. Or rather, we have not lost sight of it, but our leaders have since decided that military police are more to their advantage than civilians.

-- Mal

[limpyhobbler]

4. Corporations profit from militarizing the cops,

And they also pay the politcians to get these policies enacted. Private prisons come to mind but also the equipment makers .