The Feds Have Turned America Into a War Zone: 4 Disturbing Facts About Police Militarization

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/feds-have-turned-america-war-zone-4-disturbing-facts-about-police-militarization



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1. The federal government’s war on drugs is the single greatest catalyst for local police militarization.

Far from being used for emergencies such as hostage situations, the ACLU found that 62% of all SWAT deployments were for the purpose of drug searches, and 79% were to search a person’s home with a search warrant—usually for drugs.

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2. Militarization is occurring with “almost no oversight.”

The ACLU found that there is no federal agency that keeps an accurate record of information related to SWAT proliferation. Where records are kept, the ACLU found their formats varied wildly across the country. “The records that were produced revealed an extremely troubling trend: that data collecting and reporting in the context of SWAT was at best sporadic and at worst virtually nonexistent,” according to the report.

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3. Non-whites are more likely to be targeted by SWAT deployments.

It should come as no surprise that the people most persecuted by police in their communities are also more likely to have their front doors bashed down by a police battering ram.

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4. Police are secretive about their use of SWAT

Overall, the ACLU report lacks the sort of robustness you might expect for a definitive report on police militarization in America. This is largely the fault of police agencies themselves, who denied nearly half of the ACLU’s public records requests in part or in full, and who keep poor records of their own SWAT use.