Tough Police Tactics began as a Liberal idea

Shifting from the War on Poverty to The War on Crime - Liberal roots

"How did we get here — from the optimism of the civil rights movement to riots and rubber bullets in Ferguson? In her new book, “From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime,” which comes out May 9, Harvard historian Elizabeth Hinton pinpoints the moment when things started to go sour. The problem didn’t originate with Clinton, or Nixon, or Ronald Reagan, she says, though each amplified it in his own way. The roots of today’s crisis reach back further."

Those roots, the author, postulates rest in Lyndon Johnson's approach to civil unrest in Northern cities -


"...Starting in the summer of 1964, race riots ripped through Northern cities including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Rochester, N.Y. Hundreds of people were injured, and thousands were arrested. The riots began with clashes between police and black citizens"

And :

"...Johnson played up the military flavor of the reforms. “We are today fighting a war within our own boundaries,” he said in 1966, likening the black urban unrest to a domestic Vietnam. His initiatives provided money for police to arm themselves with military equipment — “military-grade rifles, tanks, riot gear, walkie-talkies, helicopters, and bulletproof vests,”

And the bitter seed planted continues to bear bitter fruit even today.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/02/americas-tough-approach-to-policing-black-communities-began-as-a-liberal-idea/