War Comes Home: The Militarization of America's Police (Articles and Shocking ACLU EXECUTIVE REPORT)

[KoKo]

Defense Contractors' Funds Fuel Vote To Keep Dept. Of Defense's Police Militarization Program Funded


https://www.techdirt.com/

Crime is way down and police are more heavily-armed and well-protected than ever. Part of it is defense contractors making sure there's still a growing market for their wares. As Maplight points out (quoting an ACLU report on police militarization), 36% of the equipment transferred to law enforcement via the 1033 program is brand new. What may have seemed to be a fiscally responsible program -- making use of excess military equipment rather than simply scrapping it -- is now another way to blow tax dollars. Only this time, it's having other adverse effects on the general public.

When the Defense Logistics Agency is buying brand new and transferring these purchases to law enforcement at pennies on the dollar (using DHS grants to pay the difference), the government is screwing taxpayers multiple times, at multiple levels -- and that's just in a financial sense. We shouldn't need an amendment to tell the Defense Dept. to stop turning locals cops into makeshift occupation forces, and we certainly shouldn't need to tell the government that no law enforcement agency needs ballistic missiles or bombs. Local cops really don't need armored vehicles either, but until legislators are willing to enact some serious limitations, the downhill slope from the DoD's excess property storage to the United States' police departments will continue unabated.

https://www.techdirt.com/

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11 Shocking Facts About America's Militarized Police Forces

The militarization of police is harming civil liberties, impacting children, and transforming neighborhoods into war zones.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/11-shocking-facts-about-americas-militarized-police-forces

The “war on terror” has come home--and it’s wreaking havoc on innocent American lives. The culprit is the militarization of the police.

The weapons used in the “war on terror” that destroyed Afghanistan and Iraq have made their way to local law enforcement. While police forces across the country began a process of militarization complete with SWAT teams and flash-bang grenades when President Reagan intensified the “war on drugs,” the post-9/11 “war on terror” has added fuel to the fire.

Through laws and regulations like a provision in defense budgets that authorize the Pentagon to transfer surplus military gear to police forces, local law enforcement are using weapons found on the battlefields of South Asia and the Middle East.

A recent New York Times article by Matt Apuzzo reported that in the Obama era, “police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.” The result is that police agencies around the nation possess military-grade equipment, turning officers who are supposed to fight crime and protect communities into what look like invading forces from an army. And military-style police raids have increased in recent years, with one count putting the number at 80,000 such raids last year.

In June, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) brought more attention to police militarization when it issued a comprehensive, nearly 100-page (appendix and endnotes included) report titled, “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing.” Based on public records requests to more than 260 law enforcement agencies in 26 states, the ACLU concluded that “American policing has become excessively militarized through the use of weapons and tactics designed for the battlefield” and that this militarization “unfairly impacts people of color and undermines individual liberties, and it has been allowed to happen in the absence of any meaningful public discussion.”


ACLU EXECUTIVE REPORT: WAR COMES HOME

Read in PDF or TEXT for MOBILE PHONE, I-PAD, etc.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/231032449/ACLU-Police-Militarization-Report

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PDF VERSION (89 pages)
https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/jus14-warcomeshome-report-web-rel1.pdf