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Thread: Turning police into soldiers has made America into a war zone

  1. #1

    Turning police into soldiers has made America into a war zone

    Turning police into soldiers has made America into a war zone

    Nineteen-month-old Bou Bou Phonesavanh is the latest casualty of America’s militarizing police forces.

    One early morning in late May, the Habersham County Special Response Team conducted a predawn raid on a home near Cornelia, Georgia. After breaking down the door, one of the officers threw a flashbang grenade into the home. The grenade, of a type originally developed for British special operations forces to temporarily blind and confuse the enemy, landed in the toddler’s crib and exploded. In horror, Bou Bou’s parents could only listen to his cries. When his mother pleaded with one of the officers to let her go to him, members of the team screamed at her and told her he was fine, saying he had just lost a tooth.

    Bou Bou Phonesavanh spent three weeks in a medically induced coma with severe burns and a hole in his chest. He was taken out of the coma this week, but the hole hasn’t healed. The SWAT team that threw the grenade into Bou Bou’s crib weren’t on the scene because Bou Bou, his parents, or anyone else in the house were in danger or dangerous. No, the police had deployed a SWAT team to look for a man they suspected of selling $50 worth of drugs, who did not even live in the home.

    They didn’t find him. They didn’t find any guns or drugs in the house, either.

    These raids and their horrific consequences aren’t new. The raid that wounded Bou Bou has much in common with police SWAT deployments around the country, according to a new ACLU report on the militarization of America’s police forces. Increasingly, police departments choose SWAT to handle relatively low-stakes and low-risk tasks in low-income communities of color.

    We found that police often opt for the SWAT team, with its 10-or-more officers armed with assault rifles, to do routine police work in black and Latino neighborhoods. We reviewed multiple cases in which SWAT teams held children at gunpoint, killed family pets, and destroyed property simply because the cops believed they would find drugs. In the process, they have brought terror into people’s homes, eroded public trust in law enforcement, and undermined civil liberties.

    When police first started using SWAT teams, they reserved this tactic for extreme crises. Hostages? Yes. Barricade situation? Yes. Active shooter? Of course. Searches for drugs like marijuana? No way.

    But since the 1990s, the federal government – including the Departments of Defense, Justice, and, more recently, Homeland Security – has been funneling weapons and money into America’s towns and cities to fight the War on Drugs. Police took this declaration of war seriously, and SWAT teams began to boom as police used their military power disproportionately on residents of poor communities of color.

    ...
    http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/police-mi...merica-warzone
    The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding one’s self in the ranks of the insane.” — Marcus Aurelius

    They’re not buying it. CNN, you dumb bastards!” — President Trump 2020

    Consilio et Animis de Oppresso Liber



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  3. #2
    The converse of that, for far too long, they've been turning soldiers into police...

    "An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government" - Ron Paul.

    "To learn who rules over you simply find out who you arent allowed to criticize."

  4. #3
    Good article.
    Non-violence is the creed of those that maintain a monopoly on force.

  5. #4
    The children!

    The terrorists!

    The drugs!


    If all three were eliminated as excuses more would take their place...

    A complacent citizenry who tolerates abuse will continue to be abused for any reason, or none at all...



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