The Militarization of U.S Police Shown by Ferguson Violence

The intensive militarization of America’s police forces is a serious menace about which a small number of people have been loudly warning for years, with little attention or traction. In a 2007 paper on “the blurring distinctions between the police and military institutions and between war and law enforcement,” the criminal justice professor Peter Kraska defined “police militarization” as “the process whereby civilian police increasingly draw from, and pattern themselves around, the tenets of militarism and the military model.”

http://www.infowars.com/the-militarization-of-u-s-police-finally-dragged-into-the-light-by-the-horrors-of-ferguson/

So when are the JDAM's gonna hit?

You lose credibility by linking to Alex Jones which could had easily be avoided in this case by linking directly to Grennwald's piece.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/14/militarization-u-s-police-dragged-light-horrors-ferguson/

He lost all credibility of being human the day he was conceived.

And yes, the militarization of the police is a worrying development.

@Master_Live: I don't care about your opinion on Alex Jones. Please don't talk about it every time I post a thread with a link to Infowars.com as it is not important to the topic.

LOL Alex Jones.

Um, it is INCREDIBLY important to the topic. When trying to discuss something, posting a link to a very bias and often criticized individual diminishes the credibility of that topic no matter its validity. If you ACTUALLY cared about the topic you'd listen to Master and post a link to the original article, instead of one that better supports your personal views.

good thing they're getting mine resistant vehicles as well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-police-departments.html

You think this is news? The police have been killing innocent people for decades and internally covering it all up. Unarmed anti-war protestors were getting killed in the 1960's.

Citizens in the US have long past the point of having a means of counteracting this. After September 11th, 2001, and the signing of those bills that give the US government the means to arrest people without cause and hold them indefinitely without charge pretty much kills any chance of the police ever losing that power. In combination with the privacy-breaking surveillance, and the growing acceptance of privacy being unlawfully infringed, the US is ripe for an insurrection that sees well-armed militias fighting against police and military forces (and the police and government likely winning in most cases, because they have legal access to fully automatic weapons and explosives).

It's not a matter of if, but when. The US government is infringing on it's very own Constitution all the time, and the majority of Americans are bending over and accepting it with smiles on their faces. The Founding Fathers would be ashamed to see what their country has become. Their entire purpose of forming the United States was to escape the tyranny of the British monarchy.

I'm no conspiracy theorist, because it's all pretty damn clear out in the open.

@foxhound_fox: Your average servicemember and police officer isn't going to blindly follow orders to mow down crowds of protestors in a government-sanctioned cleansing of people who aren't on Obama's side. Especially when some of their own family members and friends will be in those crowds. In case you want to bring up the protesters who were shot by the National Guardsmen in the 60s, that was a small isolated incident and doesn't even come close to killing thousands of protesters.

What I said doesn't mean that they won't defend themselves against armed hostile militias trying to overthrow Washington but it's common sense for them to shoot back when they are being shot at.

Personally, I don't sit here and not question why the police have access to such equipment, but at the same token I sit back and look at how much the media is such a shit stirrer in a lot of this nonsense.

Alex Jones has been right on a lot of topics regardless of what some folks think of him personally. I would presume he's right on more topics than the mainstream "approved" news sources. He's just another source for news, he's not always wrong or always right.

Personally I think this is a load of shit from people wanting to jump the gun. Hating authority figures is romanticized and people absolutely love that shit.

It's everywhere, ****, you see it even here on the forums practically every day with people tarring moderators.

Load of pish.

Ugh, what is a "load of shit"? The "militarization" of many police forces across the country is fact.

Have you ever thought as to why this is the case? Citizenry has access to increasingly powerful weapons, it would make sense that the police might need better weapons to protect themselves. I'm not defending police brutality/misconduct, but we certainly have our share of crazies "mowing down" innocent people as of late. The founding father's didn't conceive of the current predicament of modern society. Back then, a rifle wasn't exactly a high powered weapon compared to what we have now. What did they get, like 1 shot per minute? And of course, if one doesn't want to use guns, they can use bombs! As far as these militia groups "rising up" against our government...lol. Give me a break. Most of the American citizenry can't be bothered to walk an extra 100 feet to get in a store nowadays. An armed revolution is never going to happen. What might happen is a revamping of our current laws hopefully in some instances. I'd rather not have packs of militamen and government forces battling outside my window.

This ferguson case is such a load of baloney. They already rioted and attacked store owners and looted. If I were the leader there, at that point, all protests would have been suspended and "martial law" already declared. The "protestors" crossed a line when they resorted to lawlessness. Had they attacked police headquarters and tried to loot and riot, then so be it, since that is who their anger is supposedly directed at. I don't get mad about my being wronged in daily life and punch a guy walking down the street who had nothing to do it with. I don't care how angry they are, no excuses.