Thread: Police Getting Bayonets, Tanks, Copters, RPGs, 50 Cal Machin

http://www.alipac.us/f19/aircraft-ca...iments-274308/

http://www.alipac.us/f19/here-we-hav...6/#post1337909

NEENAH, Wis. — "Inside the municipal garage of this small lakefront city, parked next to the hefty orange snowplow, sits an even larger truck, this one painted in desert khaki. Weighing 30 tons and built to withstand land mines, the armored combat vehicle is one of hundreds showing up across the country, in police departments big and small.
The 9-foot-tall armored truck was intended for an overseas battlefield. But as President Obama ushers in the end of what he called America’s “long season of war,” the former tools of combat — M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers and more — are ending up in local police departments, often with little public notice..."
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War Gear Flows to Police Departments
Former tools of combat — M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers and more — are ending up in local police departments, often with little public notice.
The New York Times|By Matt Apuzzo

War Gear Flows to Police Departments

By MATT APUZZOJUNE 8, 2014

Article at the page link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us...ents.html?_r=1

The Militarization of the American Police Department

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The Militarization of the American Police Department
byChief David Oliver
https://www.facebook.com/BrimfieldPolice
Chief of Police, Brimfield, OH. Author and co-founder of The Chief Oliver Foundation.

Courtesy: Thomas Hawk

Did that title catch your attention? Yeah, it’s a buzzword sentence. Militarization and police department in the same sentence raises the hackles of some Americans. If it were true, it would likely give me some heartache too. The thing is…it is not true, no matter how those who become irate about it attempt to spin it.
Recently the Brimfield Police Department acquired an MRAP vehicle from the military. Thousands of these were manufactured to keep our brave military people safe while they were in harm’s way. With the downsizing of the military and the drawback of troops in the sandbox, these vehicles became surplus. Many, which were not functional, were cut down and scrapped. About 7,500 or so were made available for police departments across the United States. Cue the hackle raising.
We posted a picture on our Facebook page the day it was delivered. The “militarization of police” talks, from about 5% of posters, started almost immediately. To be fair, there were some run-of-the-mill questions on our page, most consisting of asking for an explanation of the need for such a vehicle. Also, to be fair, most of those played off of the idea of not knowing exactly what the vehicle is. The very small segment of “the feds are putting these in place to subdue us and violate our rights” crowd was vocal, as usual. Let’s delve into this a little deeper.
First, the MRAP is one large beast of a vehicle. To be honest, when I saw it in person I was shocked. It is larger than I thought. For police departments, the vehicle is defensive, period. It is bullet proof and yes, IED and explosive resistant. While at this moment, we do not consider an IED epidemic to be heading our way; Across the United States, people shoot at police officers almost everyday. They also shoot at civilians and school kids every six weeks or so. We had an incident involving an active shooter nine years ago. Hearing that radio traffic and actually being in command of that incident changed my views drastically. The “it won’t happen here” went away forever. As a police chief, my job is to prepare for the worst. Preparation is the key to having the least casualties during a criminal or natural disaster incident.
The people who have the biggest concern with the acquisition of this vehicle seem to be the same people who are pro-gun and less-government. Frankly, that is troubling, because I fit both of those categories. I have been around guns since I could walk and love shooting. It is also not a secret that I think the federal government would have great difficulty organizing a volleyball game.
Police departments are not becoming “militarized.” Police leaders and officers have increased the level of their equipment in direct correlation with the times and threats we face. We don’t have rocket launchers and grenades. The picture of the uniformed beat cop beside the modern SWAT operator with a caption of “When did that become this?” can be answered very quickly and accurately. Think of it these terms…my vest, or the vest worn by most American police officers will not stop a .223 round fired from the AR-15 platform. So, while those who want to own these weapons are largely law-abiding, not one of us can guarantee that a criminal, in an assault on police officers or civilians, will not use the weapon.
Our active shooter did, indeed, involve an AR-15. While officers were trapped under gunfire, a police vehicle attempted to extract them from the fire. The car was shot at, with the officer leaving the area in a hurry. We waited nearly three hours on an armored vehicle, which to me is unacceptable.
In plain terms, if you want to exercise the right granted through the Constitution to keep and bear arms, including higher-powered rifles, those who protect innocent people must also have the right and even obligation to drive a vehicle that will stop those rounds. We must think like that because bad guys also have guns. If your family is trapped and we need to get to them, we do NOT have an obligation to die while doing so. Dying, while a possible outcome, is not what we are paid to do.
Lastly, for our over-cautious and suspicious friends…I know thousands of police officers. None that I know give a hoot that you own guns. None that I know are part of a big conspiracy, with the federal government, to come and get your guns. It’s just not going to happen. I have said it before and will continue to say it. There are organizations and people who are making a boatload of money off of selling fear. They keep both sides whipped into a big frenzy, while they sell advertising space and products. Look at the profits of organizations on both sides of the political spectrum and you will clearly see. Read headlines, which are designed to catch your eyes and fire you up. People spend money when they are emotional.
The police are here to serve and protect our citizens. We are not the enemy.

http://www.uniformstories.com/the-mi...ice-department

Friday, Mar 28, 2014 08:00 AM EST

4 shocking examples of police militarization in America’s small towns

Research shows that the number of SWAT teams in municipalities smaller than 50,000 is up more than 300 percent

Aaron Cantú, AlterNet
Topics: AlterNet, Radley Balko, SWAT teams, militarization, Warrior cops, Military-Grade Weaponry, Politics News

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

For nearly half a century, the general trend within America’s police precincts has been toward greater militarization, a transformation initiated by the culture wars of the 1960s and facilitated by the war on drugs, fear of inner-city crime, and anxieties over the threat of terrorism.
Fear of drugs, crime and terrorism have been used to justify the expansion of SWAT programs and the acquisition of military grade weaponry and vehicles in America’s smaller towns. Citing previous work, investigative journalist Radley Balko writes that the number of SWAT teams in municipalities with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 “increased by more than 300 percent between 1984 and 1995,” and that 75% of all of these towns had their own SWAT teams by the year 2000. Small precincts acquired wartime weaponry and a warrior culture was engendered among community police.
The ACLU is currently working on a major investigation to illuminate the extent of militarization across America. Here are four shocking examples of militarized police in America’s small towns.
1. Keene, New Hampshire
A town with a murder count of two since 2009, Keene’s city officials surreptitiously accepted a $285,933 grant from the Department of Defense in 2012 to purchase a Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck, or BearCat.
The grant was offered through the 1033 program, which was signed into law in 1997 and created a pipeline for the DOD to pass surplus military gear to local police precincts. It may seem preposterous that a sleepy New England town would need to commandeer a tank intended to withstand IED attacks, but in the post-9/11 era, nearly any degree of militarization can be justified with the threat of terrorism.
“We don’t know what the terrorists are thinking,” warned Jim Massery, sales manager for the creator of the Bearcat, Lencor Armored Vehicles, to investigative journalist Radley Balko, before questioning whether residents who took issue with the BearCat “just don’t think police officers’ lives are worth saving.”

A series of town meetings led by city councilor Terry Clark revealed a sizable number of city residents opposed the local SWAT’s acquisition of a BearCat. “This is an agreement between the government and arms dealers, essentially,” noted Clark after a representative for Lencor revealed that the transfers of military equipment allow them to tap into the DOD’s $34 billion terrorism budget.
Despite resistance, the Keene police department put the BearCat to use, starting in the fall of 2012, and it was used 21 times as of summer 2013: 19 times for training exercises, once in response to a barricaded person and once in response to a person threatening suicide.
Surrounding cities have signed pacts with Keene to borrow the BearCat when needed, and support throughout the state for similar vehicles remains strong: A state bill to halt the purchase of military equipment by New Hampshire police departments was shot down in late March, making it likely that more departments will seek BearCats from the DOD, in addition to the 11 that already have them.
2. Ogden, Utah
Ogden, a medium-sized Utah town flanked by the Wasatch mountain range and the Great Salt Lake, was for a long time little more than a junction point for railroads crisscrossing the country. These days, it’s ground zero for the debate over the use of SWAT in Utah, which has pitted fervent proponents of aggressive paramilitarism against those who want alternatives to the hyper-violent police confrontations that have roiled the state in recent years.
The flashpoint for the debate came in January 2011, when members of Ogden SWAT battered down the front door of Matthew David Stewart’s home. When the army veteran awoke to the sound of shouting voices and shuffling boots, he grabbed his bathrobe and Beretta and began exchanging fire with the officers, killing one and wounding seven while sustaining multiple gunshot wounds himself.
This disastrous account of law enforcement excess was bookended by death, starting with the raid fatality and ending with Stewart’s own suicide in his prison cell shortly after a judge threw out his self-defense claim. However, the questions raised about the use of military tactics have endured, imbued with urgency by a steady drip of fatal statewide SWAT encounters in the last two years.
Although some in the state advocate more diplomatic means of apprehending drug and other types of offenders, the zeal for Ogden SWAT remains stronger than ever as the institution burrows itself deep into the community’s cultural DNA and swells into nearbyjurisdictions. Three separate bills in the Utah legislature would limit the ability of SWAT to serve “no-knock” raids (the deadly kind in which officers barge in the door while bellowing “Search warrant!”) and increase the standard of transparency that SWAT-equipped precincts must meet.
3. Columbia, South Carolina
Richland County, where Columbia is located, caught the attention of some activists in 2008 when its sheriff purchased an armored personnel carrier from the DOD. Police in the area continued buying military-grade vehicles unchallenged. Most recently, the Columbia Police Department purchased a mine-resistant war truck from the DOD in the fall of 2013.
Unlike Keene’s BearCat, Columbia’s “U.N. blue” has a turret that can be armed with a 50-caliber machine gun. It’s also built to withstand any mine blasts it may trigger in the streets of the “Capital of Southern Hospitality.”
The Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle (MRAP) is valued at $658,000, but was handed off virtually free to the Columbia Police Department under the 1033 program. The Nerve foundthat the only costs incurred by the Columbia police for obtaining the vehicle in September 2013 came to about $2,800: a $2,000 annual fee for participating in the 1033 program, and $800 to actually transport the vehicle from a military base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Under the conditions of the 1033 program, the DOD technically retains ownership of the military equipment it loans out, and recipients must use the equipment for at least one year before it is returned. However, the national ACLU confirmed with AlterNet that they’ve never heard of a department returning equipment to the DOD.
Unsurprisingly, drugs and terrorism were used to justify the presence of the vehicle. The Columbia Police Department’s application for the MRAP explained that the armored vehicle was needed to “protect our officers and the public during high risk counter drug and counter terrorism operations within the city of Columbia and the state of South Carolina.”
Victoria Middleton, executive director of the ACLU-South Carolina, noted that local news outlets failed to commit significant time to covering militarization in Columbia. “There has been a huge distraction,” she wrote to AlterNet in an email, “[with the] search for a new police chief, turf issues with Richland County Sheriff department, [and] city administration problems.”
Documents reviewed by AlterNet reveal that the ACLU-South Carolina sent a FOIA request to the Richland County Sheriff’s office in March 2013, demanding the disclosure of “all 1033 programs inventories created and maintained” by county police departments. The sheriff’s office responded with a warning that fulfilling the ACLU’s request “may result in a charge of several thousand dollars,” which the ACLU immediately countered with another letter.
To date, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department has not complied with the ACLU affiliate’s FOIA request.
4. Paragould, Arkansas
The Paragould police chief attempted to turn a rising crime rate into a carte blanche for sending fully outfitted SWAT teams into communities to ask every single person in public for identification. The population of the town is 27,000.
“To ask you for your ID, I have to have a reason,” said police chief Todd Stovall at a town hall meeting in December 2012. “Well, I’ve got statistical reasons that say I’ve got a lot of crime right now, which gives me probable cause to ask what you’re doing out.”
The mayor stood by his police chief. “They may not be doing anything but walking their dog, but they’re going to have to prove it,” he added to Stovall’s remarks.
The policy of de-facto martial law captured national attention and inspired an immediate response from the Arkansas ACLU. Stovall issued a statement justifying police-state tactics as features of “proactive police philosophy dedicated to managing problems before they become unmanageable,” and gave limited lip service to the Constitution and rule of law in general.
The public outrage forced city officials to back away from the Orwellian initiative.

More Aaron Cantú.


http://www.salon.com/2014/03/28/4_sh...towns_partner/

Baby in Coma After Police ‘Grenade’ Dropped in Crib During Drug Raid

By Tina Chen
May 30, 2014 4:26pm

Video at the page link:

A Georgia toddler has been put into a medically induced coma after he was badly burned by a police “flash bang” grenade that landed in the crib where the boy was sleeping during a drug raid, his mother told ABC News today.
The raid occurred before dawn Wednesday night in Habersham County while the Phonesavanh family was sleeping.
“It was a big flash, a loud bang, a bunch of yelling, and my son screaming,” the boy’s mom, Alecia Phonesavanh, 27, told ABC News.
“Two of my other girls were next to my husband. There was a member of the SWAT team pinning him down, another man had my son who was screaming and crying,” Phonesavanh said.
“At that time I didn’t see his playpen, but I kept telling him to ‘Please just give him to me,’” Phonesavanh said of 19-month-old son Bounkham. “‘He’s just scared.’”

Bounkham Phonesavanh, a 19-month-old, was severely injured during a SWAT team raid.

According to Phonesavanh, authorities reassured her that everything was fine, “‘He’s okay, he’s just fine, there’s nothing wrong with him,’” she recalled through tears.
“They lied to me. They kept telling me my son was okay,” she said. “When I saw his playpen I just about threw up. I got really sick, I was so scared.”
“That picture is enough to traumatize anybody knowing that there was a baby lying there,” Phonesavanh said.
When police raided the house early Wednesday morning, they dropped a “flash bang” which police concede landed and exploded in the child’s portable crib.
“It landed in his playpen and exploded on his pillow right in his face,” Phonesavanh told ABC’s Atlanta affiliate, WSB-TV.
The portable crib that the grenade landed in during the SWAT raid, where "Bou Bou" was sleeping.

Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell told ABC News, “It felt like somebody just hit me in the gut with a sledgehammer when I heard. I got the call at about 2:25 a.m. and I just didn’t sleep no more the rest of the night.”
“That’s pretty much how the rest of the guys on our team felt… it brings tears quite regularly these days, and I’m not ashamed to admit it,” Terrell said.
The sheriff said that the Special Response Team, SRT, did the best they could with the information they were given.
A confidential informant was sent to the residence on Tuesday to make a buy for methamphetamine, Terrell said. At the time of the purchase, there were two Mercedes SUVs parked in the driveway, with a guard standing at the front door and the back door. The informant did not enter the home and made the alleged purchase in the doorway, the sheriff said.
“It was really uncomfortable, and really intimidating. The informant made the purchase and left the residence,” Terrell said. “He didn’t see anything to indicate that there was a child in the house.”
After the buy, the SRT came back with a no-knock warrant to arrest the suspected dealer.
“The door was locked, so they breached it with a ram, inserted a device,” Terrell said. “It was dark, they couldn’t see.”
The SRT is taught to insert the “flash and bang” three to five inches inside the door. “Unfortunately there was a pack and play there,” Terrell said. “It does get hot. It uses gun powder to flash… it’s used as a distraction device,” Terrell said.
An SRT member took over the care of the child as soon as he realized what happened as the child started screaming and yelling, the sheriff said.
A whole side of the baby’s playpen was blown out, the boy’s mom said.
“The pillow where he lay was blown up, char marks all over his pillow and the mattress of the playpen itself,” Phonesavanh said.
The Phonesavanhs have been staying at their relative’s home for two months.
Authorities did not make any arrests, nor did they find anything at the house during the raid. The Phonesavanhs’s nephew, Wanis Thonetheva, 30, was arrested later that day and charged with knowingly and willfully distributing methamphetamine. Thonetheva is being held in Habersham County Detention Center. He has appeared before a judge, but the result of that appearance could not be immediately determined.
According to police, Thonetheva was arrested previously for assaulting an individual, but not convicted.
The nephew had been kicked out of the house and when he started coming and going, Phonesavanh said the family grew worried.
“We were trying to get out as soon as I knew what was going on,… we just wanted to get out,” Phonesavanh said. The family was planning on leaving the home the next morning.
“My son’s old playpen was right outside because we were getting ready to leave, we were going to throw it away… it was very, very visible,” Phonesavanh said.
“They can’t tell me there was no signs of kids,” Phonesavanh said. “My van sits right next to the door that they busted into. My van has family stickers on it, four car seats inside, right next to the door that they kicked in,” Phonesavanh said.
Terrell defended his officers.
“Based on the informant information, prior arrests, and weapons charge, they did everything given the information they had,” Terrell said. “Nobody in their right mind would ever dream of anything like this.”
“We would have picked a different door to go in the house, picked a different scenario on how we approach the residence,” Terrell said.
“Pray for the children, pray for the baby, pray for the family,” Terrell said. “It makes you do some soul-searching, and it makes you question, ‘Are you doing what you’re supposed to be doing?’”
“It’s hard, it’s difficult,” Terrell said.
“It’s going to make us double, triple, and quadruple check to know that there aren’t innocent parties in the house,” Terrell said. “It’s going to make us approach each situation differently.”
The 19-month-old "Bou Bou" recovering at the Grady Memorial Hospital burn unit, in a medically induced coma.

Bounkham, named after his father, or “Bou Bou” as his parents call him is at the Grady Memorial Hospital burn unit.
“My baby is nowhere near recovering,” Phonesavanh said.
The parents have yet to leave the hospital.
“By the way the process is going, the reconstructive cosmetic surgery he has to go through, I’m not seeing this ending any time soon,” Phonesavanh said.
“He doesn’t deserve any of this and there’s nothing I can do for him,” the mother said through tears. “I look at him lying in the bed, and I want to trade place with him, I don’t want him to go through this.”
The Phonesavanh family is without insurance and have set up a fund to pay for medical expenses. According to Terrell, the sheriff’s department has already contacted the hospital social worker to request that all hospital bills be forwarded to the county.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headline...ing-drug-raid/

Indiana Sheriff: We Need Military Equipment Because USA Is A War Zone

Who are the police at war with?

by Steve Watson | Infowars.com | June 10, 2014

An Indiana sheriff has defended the large scale transference of military equipment into the hands of law enforcement nationwide, declaring that cops need gear previously used in Iraq and Afghanistan because America is now a battlefield.

Recently there have been a spate of reports documenting the trend of the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security outfitting America’s local police departments with military equipment such as bomb proof vehicles, body armour, and machine guns.
An article in the New York Times this week, notes that “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.”

1st Video at the page link:

In Indiana, Pulaski County Sheriff Michael Gayer told reporters that “The United States of America has become a war zone.” The Sheriff has received much media attention lately following his department’s acquisition of a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle via what has clearly become a militarization program emanating out of the Pentagon, with the approval of the federal government.
“It’s a lot more intimidating than a Dodge.” Sheriff Gayer noted regarding the MRAP.
Just exactly why Pulaski County needs to intimidate anyone is left unexplained. As noted in the Indianapolis Star report, Pulaski County is a farming community with just 13,124 residents. In 2012, the County experienced only 11 incidents of theft, and just 17 property crimes. There was 1 murder, however it is unlikely that a mine resistant vehicle would have prevented this, nor is it clear why the other $5,000,000.00 worth of military equipment purchased under Sheriff Gayer would be required.

The Sheriff firmly believes all of it is necessary. “There’s violence in the workplace, there’s violence in schools and there’s violence in the streets,” said Gayer. “You are seeing police departments going to a semi-military format because of the threats we have to counteract. If driving a military vehicle is going to protect officers, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
Writing on the department’s website, Gayer notes “With the threat of homeland terrorism, rising violence in our schools, drug and alcohol abuse, our society and freedoms that we so dearly cherish are being challenged.”
Except, of course, there has not been one single instance of terrorism in the county, and pointing bayonets at drunks and drug abusers probably doesn’t get to the crux of the problem.
Quite clearly Gayer believes that he is engaged in some kind of war with his own citizens, or other American citizens coming into his county. Indeed, in the Indianapolis suburbs, officers said they needed a mine-resistant vehicle to protect against a possible attack by veterans returning from war.
“You have a lot of people who are coming out of the military that have the ability and knowledge to build I.E.D.’s and to defeat law enforcement techniques,” Sgt. Dan Downing of the Morgan County Sheriff’s Department told the local Fox affiliate, referring to improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs.

2nd Video at the page link:

Is the same attitude and belief held by other law enforcement departments across the nation?
The figures suggest it is. The NY Times notes that “Since 2006, the police in six states have received magazines that carry 100 rounds of M-16 ammunition, allowing officers to fire continuously for three times longer than normal. Twenty-two states obtained equipment to detect buried land mines.”
If this isn’t a clear indication of the build up of a militarized police state then what exactly is?
—————————————————————-
Steve Watson is a London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, andPrisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.

http://www.infowars.com/indiana-sher...is-a-war-zone/

Another Idyllic Community Alarmed By MRAP-Loving Law Enforcement

June 26, 2014 by Ben Bullard

Walton County, Fla. (pop. 55,000) just got its first MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle), and a lot of residents of the slow-paced, Deep-South coastal community aren’t happy about it.
MRAPs are mine-resistant armored vehicles designed to deflect the force of IED detonations in combat zones. They were engineered for warfare, and the ones streaming into municipal police departments today had their first life in American military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even in that role, their use has been criticized because the vehicles’ hyper-military appearance can intimidate locals and erode rapport between American forces and the people they’re deployed to liberate and protect.
Grassroots journalism website The Anti-Media illustrates just how far Walton County is, in culture, from a combat zone:

Walton County is a part of Florida that is so crime free you can leave your doors unlocked. When Hollywood location scouts were looking for a community so perfect that it appeared to be fake, they came to Walton County. The Truman Show, staring Jim Carey, was filmed on location in a small Walton County community.

As with other local law enforcement agencies nationwide who’ve tapped into the Federal government’s surplus military equipment program, the Walton County Sheriff’s Department obtained the warfighting beast for the cost of transporting it back to Defuniak Springs – Walton’s county seat and largest city at 5,000 people.
According to the Northwest Florida Daily News, it’s got some people freaked out. Quoting one Facebook user upset by the message the acquisition sends to the community, the News observed:

One Destin resident commented on the Walton County Sheriff’s Facebook page that the county didn’t need an MRAP.
“This doesn’t make the officers safer. All studies show that the more militarized a department becomes, the more often officers get hurt,” the commenter said. “This is Walton County, Florida, not Iraq, not Afghanistan.”
Others agreed, calling the vehicle overkill, and in one case, “an offensive intimidation method used to controll [sic] and strike fear.”

But sheriff Mike Adkinson argues there’s no logic in turning down free equipment that, he insists, does have the potential to ensure officers’ safety – however remote the possibility that an adequately dire situation will arise to justify its use.
“I know that if somebody was in harm’s way, I wouldn’t let public opinion decide the safety of my deputy,” he told the paper. “Safety is my number one priority.”
Notice he didn’t say “public safety.”

http://personalliberty.com/another-i...w-enforcement/

The Independent Institute

Can you tell the difference?



Ferguson or Iraq? Photos Unmask the Militarization of America's Police

By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai and Dustin Drankoski
10 hours ago

The racial tensions, looting, vandalism and police tactics that have followed Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri, have raised the question: Is this really what America looks like in 2014?
Brown, a black 18-year-old who was unarmed, was reportedly shot and killed by a police officer on Saturday in Ferguson, a predominantly black suburb of St. Louis. Residents protesting his death have flooded the streets this week, and photographs of police trying to contain them bear an eerie resemblance to a military operation.
See also: #IfTheyGunnedMeDown Confronts How Minority Deaths Are Portrayed in Media

As America scaled back its presence in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2012, military gear — amphibious tanks, weapons, uniforms and drones — spilled into local police arsenals. In June, an ACLU report warned of the "excessive militarization" of local law enforcement. "This has the effect of terrifying people, destroying communities and actually undermining public safety," Kara Dansky, ACLU senior counsel, told Mashable in June.
The photos below show the heavily armed Ferguson police officers, dressed in camouflaged uniforms. They are set side-by-side with images of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

• Left: Ferguson. Right: Iraq.
  
  (L) Police in Ferguson wearing riot gear walk toward a man with his hands raised on Monday. (R) U.S. soldiers in Mosul, Iraq, search house-by-house for illegal weapons on January 20, 2005.
  
  Image: Jeff Roberson/AP, Mauricio Lima/AFP/Getty Images
• Left: Ferguson. Right: Iraq.
  
  (L) St. Louis County Tactical Police fire tear gas along West Florissant Road in Ferguson. (R) A grenade explodes close to a U.S. Army humvee during clashes in Mosul, Iraq, on June 13, 2003.
  
  Image: Robert Cohen/St. Louis Dispatch, Ramzi Haidar/AFP/Getty Images
• Left: Ferguson. Right: Afghanistan.
  
  (L) Police take up position to control demonstrators who were protesting the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson on Tuesday. (R) U.S. Army soldiers patrol a village in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on February 27, 2014.
  
  Image: Scott Olson/Getty Images, Scott Olson Getty Images
• Left: Ferguson. Right: Iraq.
  
  (L) A police officer looks through the scope of his rifle as he gets into position to control demonstrators in Ferguson on Tuesday. (R) A U.S. Marine sniper prepares to fire at insurgents in the town of Kusaiybah on the Syrian-Iraqi border on October 27, 2005.
  
  Image: Scott Olson/Getty Images, Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images
• Left: Ferguson. Right: Afghanistan.
  
  (L) A Missouri State Highway Patrol tactical vehicle travels down South Florissant Road in Ferguson on Monday. (R) A U.S. Army Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle is parked at the entrance of a U.S. outpost in Khost, Afghanistan, on June 28, 2011.
  
  Image: Michael B Thomas/Getty Images, Ted Aljibe/AFP/Getty Images
• Left: Ferguson. Right: Iraq.
  
  (L) Police prepare to encounter demonstrators in Ferguson on Tuesday. (R) U.S. soldiers point out to a sniper's position after coming under fire during an offensive operation in Najaf, Iraq, on August 15, 2004.
  
  Image: Scott Olson/Getty Images, Joe Raedle/Getty Images

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Topics: ferguson, Mashable Must Reads, military, police, St. Louis, U.S. Military, U.S., US & World


http://mashable.com/2014/08/13/fergu...tests-vs-iraq/

http://www.alipac.us/f19/mapping-mil...cation-309626/