Your Local Police Force Has Been Militarized
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 by RLRFrom CounterPunch
By Paul Craig Roberts
In recent years American police forces have called out SWAT teams 40,000 or more times annually. Last year did you read in your newspaper or hear on TV news of 110 hostage or terrorist events each day? No. What then were the SWAT teams doing? They were serving routine warrants to people who posed no danger to the police or to the public.
Occasionally Washington think tanks produce reports that are not special pleading for donors. One such report is Radley Balko’s “Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America” (Cato Institute, 2006).
This 100-page report is extremely important and should have been published as a book. SWAT teams (Special Weapons and Tactics) were once rare and used only for very dangerous situations, often involving hostages held by armed criminals. Today SWAT teams are deployed for routine police duties. In the US today, 75-80% of SWAT deployments are for warrant service.
In a high percentage of the cases, the SWAT teams forcefully enter the wrong address, resulting in death, injury, and trauma to perfectly innocent people. Occasionally, highly keyed-up police kill one another in the confusion caused by their stun grenades.
Mr. Balko reports that the use of paramilitary police units began in Los Angeles in the 1960s. The militarization of local police forces got a big boost from Attorney General Ed Meese’s “war on drugs” during the Reagan administration. A National Security Decision Directive was issued that declared drugs to be a threat to US national security. In 1988 Congress ordered the National Guard into the domestic drug war. In 1994 the Department of Defense issued a memorandum authorizing the transfer of military equipment and technology to state and local police, and Congress created a program “to facilitate handing military gear over to civilian police agencies.”
Read more Force
Makes sense, this way they don’t have to worry about the Posse Comitatus Act*…Dog help us.
*The Posse Comitatus Act is now a hollow shell, expect it to be done away with completely in the next 5 - 10 years.
this is very true as article and comment as posse comitatus act.
but what has really fueled this more in the turn of the century- is the patriot act, and the revised insurrection act and posse comitatus act. terrorism as fear propaganda crushes more liberty rights in more than in 40 years.
much of the public is very little informed that the executive branch can use military and police together if he feels warrant as his judgement on issues as demonstrations, or assembly
Escape from New York, about the fictional USPF or United States Police Force is a futurist extrapolation of where this trend may take the US.
If you can find a copy of the book, it gives a better explanation then the Kurt Russell movie
…and the two sides drift farther apart in this US against THEM
“Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both”.
What part of Act of Congress don’t you understand? It is no more a hollow shell now than in 1878.
A high percentage of search warrants are executed on the wrong addresses?? Since when? What statistical proof is there of this? Does it happen? I’m sure it does…but not with a “high percentage.” Give me a break. It’s just some whiney tree huggin liberal upset about this nebulous “police state” and making up figures to scare people.
Don’t believe every story that someone makes up. Do your own research with facts and not opinions.
nuff said.
Lets take to the streets, bug politicians, whatever it takes to rid militarism in USA.
We cannot lost America, its the last freedom stronghold.
People must stand-up for the rights under the constitution. Unless they want another Nazi Germany.
Most Americans sit on their ass while rights go away-get off it!!!