THE militarization of our local and state police departments and the corresponding erosion of our civil rights and civil liberties started right after 9/11. Our nation has become a warstate, we are at war with everything, and because of this mentality pounded into us by the unrelenting propaganda campaigns by our politicians, corporate America, the military-industrial complex and too many of our religious leaders we have lost the dream of ever living in peace at home or abroad. We are a war weary nation yet continue to turn away from the basic teachings of our faith (after all, we do proclaim ourselves as a Christian nation) that offers the means to address our problems through peace and justice. Here are three articles concerning the militarization of our police departments and what it has done to our communities, and yes, this is very appropriate to consider on 9/11. From +Mother Jones and +NPR .....
This weekend, my colleague Prashanth Kamalakanthan and I attended
Urban Shield, a first-responder convention sponsored by more than 100
corporations and the Department of Homeland Security. The five-day
confab included a trade show where vendors display everything from
armored trucks to sniper rifles to 3-D printable drones. (We documented a
few of the more remarkable offerings here.)
It also involved the largest SWAT training exercise in the world. Some
35 SWAT teams competed in a 48-hour exercise involving 31 scenarios that
included ambushing vehicles, indoor shootouts, maritime interdiction,
train assaults, and a mock eviction of a right-wing Sovereign Citizens
group. The teams came from cities across the San Francisco Bay Area,
Singapore, and South Korea and included a University of California SWAT
team, a team of US Marines, and a SWAT team of prison guards.
But on Sunday, at a competition site near the Bay Bridge, our coverage was cut short. A police officer confiscated our press badges, politely explaining that his captain had called and given him the order. The captain, he said, told him we had been filming in an unauthorized location, though he could not tell us where that location was. (We'd been advised earlier that it was okay to film so long as we did not go on the bridge itself.) After several phone calls from both me and my editors, no one could tell us exactly what we had done wrong, but Sergeant J.D. Nelson, the public information officer for the Alameda County Sheriff's Department (which hosts the Department of Homeland Security-funded event) made it clear that we could not have our passes back.
We'll have a more in-depth report, and a lot more images and videos, in a few days.
But on Sunday, at a competition site near the Bay Bridge, our coverage was cut short. A police officer confiscated our press badges, politely explaining that his captain had called and given him the order. The captain, he said, told him we had been filming in an unauthorized location, though he could not tell us where that location was. (We'd been advised earlier that it was okay to film so long as we did not go on the bridge itself.) After several phone calls from both me and my editors, no one could tell us exactly what we had done wrong, but Sergeant J.D. Nelson, the public information officer for the Alameda County Sheriff's Department (which hosts the Department of Homeland Security-funded event) made it clear that we could not have our passes back.
We'll have a more in-depth report, and a lot more images and videos, in a few days.
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