A Quote by Paul Craig Roberts
There are now 17,000 local American police forces that are armed with rocket launchers, bazookas, heavy machine guns, all kinds of chemical sprays, in fact some of them have tanks. You now have local police departments that are equipped beyond the standard of American heavy infantry.
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Military technologies such as Drones, SWAT vehicles and machine-gun-equipped armored trucks once used exclusively in high-intensity war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan are now being supplied to police departments across the nation and not surprisingly the increase in such weapons is matched by training local police in war zone tactics and strategies.
When the culture of police departments is sometimes infused with bias or preconceived ideas against certain groups, there needs to be reform and retraining throughout. And unfortunately, we cannot rely on local departments to police themselves; we need intervention from the top.
Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies - where police departments compete to acquire military gear that goes far beyond what most of Americans think of as law enforcement.
Local prosecutors work alongside local police officers on a regular basis and are therefore conflicted when it comes to prosecuting those same officers. They are under extreme pressure from local police unions and from rank-and-file cops.
We need to demilitarize local police departments so that they do not look like occupying armies. We want police departments that look like the communities they are serving.
There's an enormous amount of corruption, and as one American adviser put it to me, "The police in Afghanistan are thugs. We equip them, we train them, and now they are equipped and trained thugs."
When African-American police officers involved in a police action shooting involving an African-American, why would Hillary Clinton accuse that African-American police officer of implicit bias?
Obviously local people will have their local voice through the police and crime commissioners that they've elected to determine their local policing.
We are mandating forces to hold regular neighbourhood beat meetings. These meetings will give local people the chance to scrutinise the work of their local police.
We need to stop sending federal military equipment to local police departments.
It's an issue that we need to have a national discussion about, the militarization of local police forces, and then when they are used to quell peaceful demonstration. Then we have a problem, and especially around this entire case of the murder of Michael Brown at the hands of a Ferguson police officer.
The local police who know every one of these [illegal] criminals, and they know each and every one by name, by crime, where they live, they will work so fast. And our local police will be so happy that they don't have to be abused by these thugs anymore.
The tank was originally invented to clear a way for the infantry in the teeth of machine-gun fire. Now it is the infantry who will have to clear a way for the tanks.
The toilets at a local police station have been stolen. Police say they have nothing to go on.
I know there are some good American police. But I grew up in a country where we were afraid of the police.
When we use the term pig, for example, we are referring to the people who systematically violate the peoples' constitutional rights - whether they be monopoly capitalists or police. The term is now being adopted by radicals, hippies, and minority peoples. Even the workers, when the pigs supported strike-breakers like they did as Union Oil where 100 local police came in a cracked strikers' heads, began to call them by their true name.
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