During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, 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 equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units. Police SWAT teams are now deployed tens of thousands of times each year, increasingly for routine jobs. Masked, heavily armed police officers in Louisiana raided a nightclub in 2006 as part of a liquor inspection. In Florida in 2010, officers in SWAT gear and with guns drawn carried out raids on barbershops that mostly led only to charges of “barbering without a license.”I recall well in the Fall of 2011 the shocked reaction by Occupy activists near where I live in Bellingham, WA, when local police showed up in full swat gear to clear their small protest encampment. Bellingham is a typical small college town whose students, if they have any political orientation at all, have a mostly benign liberal opposition to some government policies.
I have little doubt that such police responses are coordinated nationwide, and are designed to intimidate people, thereby to discourage any overt opposition to government policies. The political operatives of the One Percent want to inculcate the idea into the minds of the 99 Percent that there is no alternative to their rule and policies, and they will not tolerate any significant opposition.
What may be of even more significance is how this major publication of the ruling One Percent publishes this material which could in the minds of many suggest a growing militarized police state. This NY Times reporter provides all kinds of explanations that this development has just sort of happened accidentally.
The Pentagon program does not push equipment onto local departments. The pace of transfers depends on how much unneeded equipment the military has, and how much the police request. Equipment that goes unclaimed typically is destroyed. So police chiefs say their choice is often easy: Ask for free equipment that would otherwise be scrapped, or look for money in their budgets to prepare for an unlikely scenario. Most people understand, police officers say.Thus, I argue that the article was designed to allay well-founded fears about a growing police state among American citizens.
