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How did America’s police become a military force on the streets?
ABA Journal ^ | 1JUL2013 | Radley Balko

Posted on 08/28/2013 10:59:26 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine

Are cops constitutional?

In a 2001 article for the Seton Hall Constitutional Law Journal, the legal scholar and civil liberties activist Roger Roots posed just that question. Roots, a fairly radical libertarian, believes that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t allow for police as they exist today. At the very least, he argues, police departments, powers and practices today violate the document’s spirit and intent. “Under the criminal justice model known to the framers, professional police officers were unknown,” Roots writes.

(Excerpt) Read more at abajournal.com ...


TOPICS: History; Military/Veterans; Society
KEYWORDS: balko; domesticarmy; donutwatch; jackboots; militarization; military; policestate; standingarmy; swat

1 posted on 08/28/2013 10:59:26 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine
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To: Jack Hydrazine
How did America’s police become a military force on the streets?

War on drugs was the excuse, because te druggies had our police forces out gunned.

The real reason is much more subtle, but necessary to consider that it is a plan.

Obama wants Civilian Army Equal to Military

2 posted on 08/28/2013 11:18:26 PM PDT by itsahoot (It is not so much that history repeats, but that human nature does not change.)
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To: itsahoot

Goes way back before Obama. Just look at my profile page and see the section about the Nazis.


3 posted on 08/28/2013 11:19:51 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine (IÂ’m not a Republican, I'm a Conservative! Pubbies haven't been conservative since before T.R.)
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To: Jack Hydrazine

The drug warriors sold us out.


4 posted on 08/28/2013 11:22:16 PM PDT by ClaytonP
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To: itsahoot
War on drugs was the excuse, because te druggies had our police forces out gunned.

Actually Black militants and organized political violence started the militarization of police, not busting the 1960s drug people.

5 posted on 08/28/2013 11:30:42 PM PDT by ansel12 (Obama-[obamacare] "used to be a Republican idea. There's a governor of Massachusetts who set it up.")
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To: Jack Hydrazine

“Goes way back before Obama.”
________________________________________

Yes it does. I noticed it, even in rural areas.
Police were morphing into jack booted thugs, outfitted
with SWAT gear and all. I would say it started somewhere around 2000.


6 posted on 08/28/2013 11:35:17 PM PDT by AlexW
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To: Jack Hydrazine
How did America’s police become a military force on the streets?

Hmmm! I wonder whether it might have something to do with feral government grants worth millions and billions of dollars.

7 posted on 08/28/2013 11:38:24 PM PDT by Standing Wolf (No tyrant should ever be allowed to die of natural causes.)
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To: Standing Wolf

One of my suggestions for a 21st century new bill of rights is that no level of government should be allowed to:

1. Raise tax money to give to another level of government.

2. Mandate that another level of government spend money on anything.

Thus if the states choose to do something, they must raise the revenue to do it. I believe this would not have interfered with the interstate highway system as that was just government pooling resources to contract with private businesses to build roads. It would however prevent the federal government from taking tax revenue and creating bigger and bigger state governments.


8 posted on 08/28/2013 11:58:12 PM PDT by JLS
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To: Standing Wolf; AlexW; JLS

What Good Can a Handgun Do Against An Army?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/2312894/posts


9 posted on 08/29/2013 12:11:20 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (I aim to raise a million plus for Gov. Palin. What'll you do?.)
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To: itsahoot

The Federal Tyranny has thrice used the declaration of “War” to deceive the public into relinquishing their freedoms: War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Terror.The job is now nearly complete.


10 posted on 08/29/2013 12:18:52 AM PDT by dagogo redux (A whiff of primitive spirits in the air, harbingers of an impending descent into the feral.)
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To: Jack Hydrazine

I think it started with the war on terror under Bush and went on steroids with Obama’s stimulus. My hometown now gas night vision goggles to catch teenagers making out at the beach.


11 posted on 08/29/2013 1:39:01 AM PDT by Blackirish (Forward Comrades!!!!!!!!!)
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To: Jack Hydrazine

12 posted on 08/29/2013 5:20:12 AM PDT by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: Blackirish

SWAT goes back way further than that.


13 posted on 08/29/2013 5:59:28 AM PDT by Jack Hydrazine (IÂ’m not a Republican, I'm a Conservative! Pubbies haven't been conservative since before T.R.)
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To: Jack Hydrazine
Gone are the days when the people would demand the sheriff “form a posse!” to chase the bad guys.

A posse was made up of ordinary citizens of the town.

Back in the 1960s there was a push to form a Federal Police Force. Since it was never done, the Feds have decided to arm local police to do their bidding.

I still remember when BILL CLINTON gave the police force of Los Angeles thousands of FULL AUTO M-16s. He also gave them bayonets.

The first SWAT teams were formed after the debaucle at the Howard Johnson’s shootout in New Orleans in 1973.

14 posted on 08/29/2013 7:11:01 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (Sometimes you need 7+ more ammo. LOTS MORE.)
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To: Jack Hydrazine

Because enough Americans are willing to support the government employees no matter what-—they fed the hydra, and now it is large enough to begin devouring us all.


15 posted on 08/29/2013 8:01:52 AM PDT by Altariel ("Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!")
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To: JLS
Those are definitely worthy proposals, JLS, to which, if you'd not mind, I'd like to add another: the national government should be made wholly dependent on the states for its funds.

How radical an idea is that? That's what we started with. The federal government was, for all practical purposes, the states' night watchman. The individual states were the dominant form of government, followed by counties and cities and towns and villages, followed by the national government.

Except—possibly—for national defense, everything that needs to be done could be done at the state or local level far better and more cost-effectively than at the national level. Why did I add "possibly?" Because I believe the state of Arizona, to choose an example more or less at random, could defend itself against the invasion of illegal aliens better than the national government.

Oh, by the way, other than going to the moon and back, can you name five major feral government success stories from the past 50 years? The war on poverty? The war against drugs? The war against terrorism, maybe?

16 posted on 08/29/2013 9:06:58 AM PDT by Standing Wolf (No tyrant should ever be allowed to die of natural causes.)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar
The first SWAT teams were formed after the debaucle at the Howard Johnson’s shootout in New Orleans in 1973.

The first SWAT teams were formed in the 1960s as early as 1964.

""A more prominent early SWAT team was established in the Los Angeles Police Department in 1967, by Inspector Daryl Gates. After that, many United States law enforcement organizations, especially the police departments of major cities, as well as federal and state agencies, established their own elite units under various names.""

17 posted on 08/29/2013 9:23:07 AM PDT by ansel12 (Obama-[obamacare] "used to be a Republican idea. There's a governor of Massachusetts who set it up.")
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To: Blackirish

See post 17, originally they were formed to counter the sophisticated gun violence of the 1960s when some groups were taking on combat activity with bombs, snipers, barricaded shootouts, etc.

wiki
“”A report issued by the Los Angeles Police Department, following a shootout with the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974, offers one of the few firsthand accounts by the department regarding SWAT history, operations, and organization.[4] On page 100 of the report, the Department cites four trends which prompted the development of SWAT. These included riots such as the Watts Riots, which in the 1960s forced the LAPD and other police departments into tactical situations for which they were ill-prepared; the emergence of snipers as a challenge to civil order; political assassinations; and the threat of urban guerrilla warfare by militant groups.””


18 posted on 08/29/2013 9:31:54 AM PDT by ansel12 (Obama-[obamacare] "used to be a Republican idea. There's a governor of Massachusetts who set it up.")
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