Basic law enforcement in this country is thoroughly, totally militarized.

[kpete]

Occupy Oakland and the Militarization of America's Police
October 26, 2011 at 11:38AM by Charles P. Pierce | 11 comments


Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/occupy-oakland-6530274#ixzz1bvx1154n

Basic law enforcement in this country is thoroughly, totally militarized. It is militarized at its most basic levels. (The "street crime units," so beloved by, among other people, the Diallo family.) It is militarized at its highest command positions. It is militarized in its tactics, and its weaponry and, most important of all, in the attitude of the officers themselves, and in how they are trained. There is a vast militarized intelligence apparatus that leads, inevitably, to pre-emptive military actions, like the raids on protest organizations that were carried out in advance of the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. Sooner or later, this militarized law enforcement was going to collide head-on with a movement of mass public protest, and the results were going to be ugly. (There already had been dry runs elsewhere, most notably in Miami, in 2003, during protests of a meeting of trade ministers.)

Meet Oakland, Singapore-by-the-Bay. There will be more of these. Depend on it. After all, they have fans out there.

(It should be noted here that John Timoney, the police chief in Miami who crushed the protests there, is now a recognized authority on how to keep order in the face of public demonstrations. Chris Matthews even has him on Hardball to talk about it. That's the way the wind's blowing here.)
And why shouldn't the police be militarized? After all, we keep handing them "wars" to fight. A war on drugs. A war on terror. A war on graffiti. (Thanks, Rudy.) Wars are not properly fought with half-measures. Wars are fought over territory and wars are fought over power. You put enough war propaganda into the heads of young men, hand them weapons, and give them a license to use them, and they are not going to see fellow citizens through the visors on their helmets. They are going to see enemies. Wars have enemies. In Oakland last night, the police took action against enemies.

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Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/occupy-oakland-6530274#ixzz1bvwgGWIv

[msongs]

1. did you think all those trained killers from Iraq would get jobs scooping ice cream? nt

[Fumesucker]

2. When 99% of the population is the enemy it's sort of inevitable..

:shrug:

[Initech]

3. It's kind of hard to win the war on terror when we're the one's causing most of it.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

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[Kennah]

5. Not entirely

The term SWAT began with the LAPD in the 1960s, but the NYPD ESU was formerly known as the ESD, which dates back to the 1950s.

Before that, in the 1920s, there was an NYPD Firearms Battalion. They were mostly WWI vets, and they had weaponry up through and including tear gas, Thompson submachineguns or Tommy guns, and Browning Automatic Rifles or BARs.

The Border Patrol was a rather militarized group in the early part of the 20th Century, armed with a lot of modern weapons. They were using semiautomatic rifles before the U.S. military started issuing them.

The early days of the Texas Rangers were quite militarized.

The militarization/demilitarization of LE has come in waves.