From Warrior Cop to Community Police: A Fmr Chief on How We Can Turn Back the Tide of Militarization

[marmar]

from YES! Magazine:


From Warrior Cops to Community Police: A Former Chief on How We Can Turn Back the Tide of Militarization
Police in America belong to the people—not the other way around. Former Seattle police Chief Norm Stamper on how we can turn war zone occupiers back into friendly neighborhood officers.

Norm Stamper posted Feb 09, 2015


You’re in the kitchen. It’s a Saturday morning, still dark outside. Your partner, three-year-old son, and the family dog are all sound asleep at the back of the house. You’ve put the coffee pot on, are making sandwiches—a trip to the lake is planned, your son’s first fishing trip.

Without warning, the pre-dawn quiet is shattered as your front door flies off its hinges, followed by back-to-back explosions and blinding light. Your local police department calling, decked out in cammies, ballistic helmets, and full-body armor, brandishing M4 and M16 rifles.

“Knife!” shouts a cop. “Drop the knife! Drop the knife!” roar his nine fellow officers, each pointing a rifle or a pistol at your chest. The knife in question? A standard, dullbladed utensil you’d been using to slather mustard and mayo on the sandwiches.

........(snip)........

Finally comes Boomer, the family’s gentle seven-year-old Golden Retriever, bounding down the hall, voicing his own concern about the invasion. With a Glock semiautomatic, one of the cops silences Boomer: a .40 caliber shot to the head, another to the chest.

........(snip)........

But it is the routinization of police militarism that ought to concern us all. America’s police departments—aided and abetted by the federal government’s “1033” program, which allocates to local law enforcement military surplus, including armored vehicles, weapons, even aircraft—have gradually morphed from images of “Officer Friendly,” neighborhood-oriented cops to those of war zone occupiers. ....................(more)

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/together-with-earth/from-warrior-cops-to-community-police

[niyad]

1. k and r