Posts
r u getting the NAZI "feeling" ?
Cities continue to get ‘tanks’ they don’t need in
nationwide police militarization trend
By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the
Lie
(Image credit: The Brain
Toad/Flickr)
Last month I reported on how Georgia
law enforcement agencies have acquired a massive arsenal of military-grade
vehicles and weapons through the Department of Defense.
Unfortunately, it’s far from isolated.
Many law enforcement agencies
acquire military equipment through the Pentagon’s 1033 program.
Police have also acquired military robots through the
DoD but they have other ways to get their hands on armored surveillance vehicles
and armored personnel carriers
as well.
Indeed, the Department of Homeland
Security gave the city of Keene, New Hampshire, with a population of less than
25,000, $285,933 to buy an armored counter-attack vehicle called a BearCat,
according to Radley Balko.
Keene has had a whopping three
murders since 1999 according to City Data and according to the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU), the city lied about the need for the tank-like vehicle
built by Lenco Industries, Inc.
The ACLU points out that a Keene
City Councilmember actually admitted that the city lied about their need for
the BearCat to DHS.
“Our application talked about the
danger of domestic terrorism, but that’s just something you put in the grant
application to get the money,” the councilmember said, according to the ACLU.
“What red-blooded American cop isn’t going to be excited about getting a toy
like this? That’s what it comes down to.”
Another example of this type of
completely unnecessary equipment being acquired by a law enforcement agency can
be seen in Richland County, South Carolina.
With a violent crime rate down 3.7%
and property crime down 3.9% compared to last year, Richland doesn’t seem to
have a massive crime problem. Furthermore, many of the crimes there are related
to drug use or gambling, according to the ACLU.
Yet Richland’s Sheriff’s Department
for some reason has an armored personnel carrier they call “The Peacemaker.”
As was reported by Reason in 2008, the armored personnel carrier has
a belt-fed .50-caliber turreted machine gun which even the US military is
reluctant to use on humans.
(Image credit: mpeake/Flickr)
How exactly a weapon usually
reserved for use against armored vehicles will “save lives” is anyone’s guess.
These, like the examples in Georgia
are far from isolated.
“Law enforcement agencies throughout
the country have sweeping access to military equipment
and to billions of dollars in federal grant money to purchase heavy weaponry
designed for overseas combat missions, as well as access to anti-terrorism
tactical training,” the ACLU reports.
The ACLU recently launched a new
project on the militarization of policing in America in
response to this growing trend.
While some may claim this type of
equipment is necessary to assure the safety of officers when facing massive
shootouts or similar encounters, in reality, the use is much more mundane in
most cases.
“And in Maryland, the transparency
law has shown that police departments in the state are using SWAT tactics in
precisely the ways critics have claimed: to break into homes to serve warrants
on people suspected of low-level drug crimes,” according to a March 6 article by Radley
Balko. “Many times, they’re not even finding enough contraband to make an
arrest. Yet there haven’t been any calls in the state to reform the way SWAT
teams are used.”
The disturbing results of the
militarization of police are many. In 2010 a nine-year-old girl was
shot in the neck and killed by a SWAT team.
(Image credit: verifex/Flickr)
Shortly before she was killed, the
SWAT team threw a flashbang grenade through
the window of her home in Detroit, Michigan, immediately setting her blanket on
fire.
In another incident, Iraq war
veteran Jose Guerena was shot 60 times by a SWAT team when serving a search warrant as
part of a multi-house drug crackdown.
Guerena he picked up his own gun
(but didn’t fire it) in an attempt to defend his family after his wife saw a
shadowy figure in their front yard holding a gun. Police later defended their actions
after retracting their claim that Guerena shot first and declining to say if
they found any drugs in his house.
According to the ACLU, their
affiliates in 23 states filed over 255 public records requests on March 6 with
law enforcement agencies and National Guard offices to “determine the extent to
which federal funding and support has fueled the militarization of state and
local police departments.”
More on the ACLU’s new project can
be seen here.
Did I forget anything or miss any
errors? Would you like to make me aware of a story or subject to cover? Or
perhaps you want to bring your writing to a wider audience? Feel free to
contact me at admin@EndtheLie.com with your concerns, tips,
questions, original writings, insults or just about anything that may strike
your fancy.
No comments:
Post a Comment