Hope, Change and the Techno-Militarization Of America
The impoverished city of Oakland is spending more than $10 million on a “Domain Awareness Center” surveillance hub for its cops, and cameras that track every license plate they see. Baltimore and NYC track license plates, too. Meanwhile, according to the LA Times, “Unmanned aircraft from an Air Force base in North Dakota help local police with surveillance,” and Motherboard reports: The Border Patrol’s fleet of Predator drones were loaned out 248 times in 2012, to “unnamed sheriff’s departments, the Department of Defense, the DEA, the Texas Rangers, and even the Bureaus of Land Management and Indian Affairs.”
Drones are just the tip of the hardware iceberg. Local police are now, as The Verge mordantly observed, “fighting crime with 18-ton military vehicles.” That’s just one example of the billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment given to police over the last few decades; and “a disproportionate share … has been obtained by police and sheriff’s departments in rural areas with few officers and little crime.”
All of that overkill, high tech military equipment has been bought since Obungler started showering his ‘stimulus money’ for so-called “National Security” and “more police officers to fight crime” all over the place starting in 2008. Like every other government initiative, once given birth they NEVER EVER die.
Looks like law enforcement expects the populace to go bananas in the not to distant. Future.
“1984”
Orwell weeps.
It almost seems that the US has this obsession with proving that technology and steel can be effective substitutes for boots (and ears) on the ground.
I think it is just a manifestation of political – and to some extent, social – yellowness.
Wanna bet that the commies and muzzie-wugs have drawn the same conclusion?
(insert Skynet or communist joke here)
Indeed. When tough on crime types make their feelings known the liberals/socialists always come back with (among other things) the- violent crime is down -response. They are correct. But at the same time they are the ones approving 18 ton military vehicles for suburban police in cities with relatively few violent (gun type) crimes.
My city blew hundreds of thousands on a “tactical” vehicle that has never been used for the purpose it was designed. It was not needed and the latest statistics show that -guess what?- violent crime is actually down in the city. A total waste of taxpayers dollars that likely came from the liberal/socialist government in charge of our wallet.
It is the liberals/socialists who want this type of power in the hands of the police – which in many ways are becoming para-military organizations.
A disproportionate amount of equipment has gone to rural areas with little or no crime. Interesting. If I was a betting man I would say it was to keep the urban population boxed in when it all falls apart and the riots begin. Considering 80% of the population lives in urban centers it makes sense. Can’t have all that military equipment fall into the wrong hands now can we ? Wrong hands would be non government hands. Urban is not difficult to seal off. Rural almost impossible. Basically planning a good old fashioned siege to starve the hordes into submission. No food, power or water. Has always worked in the past but seldom used against your own people. Tin foil hat ? I don’t think so.
Critical resources regarding this issue are books by Radley Balko, a guy who seems to have made monitoring the evolution of police forces his life’s work.
Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces
Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America
Balko points out that as SWAT team formation has migrated to ever smaller police departments, the threshold for their use has also been lowered. Balko gives some rather stunning, and, he acknowledges, atypical examples. Two of my favorites are the city that required every arrest warrant to be served with SWAT team members accompanying and the town that sent SWAT team members along with a town official that was performing a health inspection of a barbershop.
high tech military equipment has been bought since Obungler started showering
You are wrong to give partisan attribution to the techno-militarization of America. Both parties have enthusiastically participated.
The first attempts to begin using bureaucratic consolidation, Big Data and advanced analytics to extensively monitor and control U.S. citizens that I remember started under Clinton. One effort, given Gore as the figurehead, was an initiative called “Reinventing Government” that was allegedly supposed to streamline govt agencies. Another effort was the passage of HIPAA which made it much easier for the govt to access private healthcare information. Yet another was the “long form” census survey that was sent to a subset of the U.S. population and against which there was heavy pushback.
But it was the attacks on 9/11 that provided the pretext for a tremendous advancement of the effort to create a full-blown police state in the U.S. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security has been the most dangerous initiative. Before 9/11, bureaucratic infighting and turf wars were one of the few things that kept U.S. citizens somewhat protected from abuses by govt agencies. The DHS eliminates that protection by creating a coordinating authority for all govt agencies. Furthermore, the DHS has been creating a national command structure that can be used to coordinate the efforts of local police departments, including the increasingly military-like local SWAT teams. It is very possible that the DHS will eventually morph into a organization that is much akin to East Germany’s Stasi. Remember it was his control over the consolidated apparatus of govt that allowed Joseph Stalin to destroy his political adversaries and transform himself from being a relatively minor actor in the Russian revolution to dictator for life.
Other initiatives that occurred during the Bush admin were the creation of a program to give surplus armored military vehicles including armored personnel carriers and MRAPs to local police departments, the creation of the TSA, (your papers please, comrade?) the travel monitoring duties of which are being expanded under Obama, and the dramatic expansion of the activities of the NSA.
Obama has publicly declared his intention to create an all powerful national police force. He used the IRS to actively suppress TP activity and to gather extensive data on Tea Party activists and their associates under the pretense of evaluating TP groups for tax exempt status. Obama also has extended all of the initiatives started under Bush for gathering information on U.S. citizens.
If one were paranoid, it would be easy for one to conclude that we are watching the components of a police state being assembled around us. Fortunately, such a thing could never happen in the U.S.
it would be easy for one to conclude that we are watching the components of a police state being assembled around us. Fortunately, such a thing could never happen in the U.S.
dreamer… it’s already too late.
America has become the police state we were warned about in the 50s.
enjoy your destiny…