Pubdate: Fri, 23 Aug 2013
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Copyright: 2013 The Washington Times, LLC.
Contact:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/492

CAMOUFLAGE COPS

Militarizing Police Forces Increases the Odds of Overkill

A SWAT team armed with machine guns and clad in the latest 
paramilitary gear descended earlier this month on a small organic 
farm in Arlington, Texas, looking for marijuana.

Drones and helicopters scouted the area while the farm's residents 
were handcuffed and held at gunpoint.

By the end of the 10-hour raid, police failed to find any drugs.

Instead, one person was arrested for outstanding traffic violations, 
and some ordinary bushes and plants were hauled away as "evidence" of 
nothing more than the growing of tomatoes and blackberries.

As the land's owner, Shellie Smith, explains, she and her fellow 
farmers just want to go about their business and be left alone: "We 
have been targeted by the system because we are showing people how to 
live without it." This is an example of how training police to become 
experts in conducting raids creates an incentive to come up with 
excuses to conduct raids.

It's becoming more common as America's police forces adopt military 
tools, tactics and mindset.

The city of Concord, N.H., found the need the join the bandwagon when 
it asked the Department of Homeland Security for a $258,000 grant to 
purchase the domestic version of a tank, a Lenco BearCat G3 armored 
vehicle. According to the application filed by the local police, the 
powerful vehicle is needed to protect citizens because "terrorism 
slants primarily towards the domestic type" in New Hampshire. "Groups 
such as the Sovereign Citizens, Free Staters and Occupy New Hampshire 
are active and present daily challenges," the department explains. 
City officials are ordering the tanklike vehicle resistant to .50 
caliber machine-gun fire and "radiological materials" to deal with a 
handful of unwashed hippies camping out in front of City Hall singing 
"Kumbaya."

It's the sort of overkill ably documented in Radley Balko's new book, 
"Rise of the Warrior Cop." Fueled by federal grants, it's not 
uncommon the find smalltown constables stocking up on flash-bang 
grenades, drones, tanks, grenade launchers, Tasers and an 
ever-expanding networks of surveillance cameras. "The Founders could 
never have envisioned police as they exist today," Mr. Balko writes 
as he details the growing use of SWAT teams for actions that were 
run-of-the-mill police work just a few years ago. SWAT teams have 
been used to raid poker games, arrest accused white-collar criminals 
and, as happened in Arlington, raid family farms.

A soldier's job is to accomplish his mission and get home alive. 
While that works in Afghanistan or Iraq, here at home it can create 
an attitude elevating police officer safety above the safety of the 
public. This was seen in February when the Los Angeles Police 
Department went on a manhunt for Christopher Dorner, a former cop who 
allegedly shot and killed three officers.

Dorner owned a blue Nissan pickup truck, but when overzealous 
officers happened upon a blue Toyota truck, they riddled it with 102 bullets.

Had they bothered verifying their target, they might have noticed 
that a mother and daughter, not Dorner, were inside the vehicle 
delivering newspapers. Fortunately, the women survived, as did 
another innocent truck driver who was also shot at on the same day.

Police have a tough enough job without city leaders begging for 
federal money to turn them into domestic soldiers.

Congress must restore a proper balance by pulling the plug on federal 
support for militarization efforts.

If cities had to pay for these weapons and gadgets of war out of 
their own pockets, their dreams of raiding harmless family farms 
looking for unpasteurized milk and blackberry bushes would soon fade away.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom