What has the war on terror and the war on drugs done to the police forces around our country? It seems these changes in the local police policy have turned out local police departments into small militaries right before our eyes. Now while some politicians and other government officials like the idea of turning our police departments into small militaries. Those within some of the harder patrolled communities do not like the change. One such community is the black community; the black community has had a long and tumultuous history with the police department.
For years, we in the black community have had to fight with our local city councils and local governments about how the black community is sometimes treated by local police. Going as far back as the reconstruction era in this country when blacks were unfairly jailed for the smallest of offenses. We had to endure the “sun down towns” where blacks needed to be off the streets or not ride through certain towns after sun down because there would be trouble for them if they did so. The war on drugs has been a complete disaster in this country and has resulted in the incarceration of millions of blacks. We are now in the war on terror period combined with the war on drugs and it is causing some of the worse policing in our country.
With the new Gestapo tactics, the police department is operating under what feels like new guidelines. No longer are they out here to protect and serve they are hunting and targeting. The Gestapo law gave the Gestapp carte blanche to operate without judicial review putting it above the law; they had the right to investigate cases of treason espionage sabotage and criminal attacks, much like the police of today. On the streets the police are the judge and jury they are the only law enforcement agency that can carry out a death sentence on the spot they hold the power in their hands.
Could the fact that it is so easy for the police to act in this manner be because of an influx of war vets have joined police forces around the country? The police force resembles the very military position they just left. From the clothes down to the arms they carry, even the vehicles are military vehicles they drive now so the transition is seamless. It is as if they never really left their post in the military they are just on a new mission and that mission is in our communities across the country.
Now the police have change the way they used to operate they now have a cache of weapons provided by the government’s defense department 1033 program. This program provides military surplus equipment to state and local departments across the country at no cost. These weapons include ar-15 rifles, m16 machine guns, optics for rifles, flash bang grenades and the swat teams that operate like small seal teams. They also are given Humvees, and other military style equipment for a local police force.
With the new toys that these local and state police departments have, they are taking new ways to crack down on the citizens. When citizens go out and protest they are met with a strong paramilitary style tactics. They fire tear gas throw flash bang grenades and break out the military vehicles. In addition, with the new policing tactic it is more often than not the black community feeling the brunt of the force from the new military police. Swat team kicking in doors off bad information and killing innocent people in the process. These new police tactics have now begun to spiral out of control.
When innocent people start getting killed in the street from a shot now question later police officers because that has been their military training, something has to be done. Moreover, this is happening within the black community far too often now. The vets who are becoming officers are not being evaluated for PTSD and are just being retrained in military combat and place in a squad car to patrol our community. With no real emphases on dealing with the public in a humanitarian manner vets posing as officers are, see the enemy and not citizens of this country. The brutality that is being handed out among black people has grown over time and has not slowed down. Mainly because it is the blacks, who live in the poor high crime areas these are the neighborhoods and communities that have been raved by the war on drugs and polices that have left the community without resources to build and uplift. Instead, these communities have become battlefields and training grounds for the new urban warfare.
When the black community is the new target of this military called the police department. They need to have better representation but the politicians are profiting from the new style of policing. The states and the local government see this new form of policing as cost effective. When all they pay is shipping for the new toys that would normally cost millions of dollars and the kickbacks far outweigh a life lost or a wrong door kicked in then the politicians see no need to change the status quo. This war on drugs has become a real war on a community. They have dehumanized the drug offender and criminal suspects as the enemy. As a result, brutality and abuse has persisted unabated and undeterred across the country.
Every day they are, tell these cops they are fighting a war and these cops are vets who know only one way to win a war. That is to kill and wipe out the enemy, and the enemy has become the black community. We will continue to see black youth killed in the street, or killed in Walmart. These cops will continue to beat and abuse the suspects they apprehend because to them they are not suspects and they have no civil liberties. They are enemies of war and if a few blacks die then that is just what war looks like. There are no more cops they are soldiers of the city now it is us against them mentality. They have been conditions to believe this anyone that is not a cop is a threat and they are walking drones that are on a mission. The war for them has come home and they are doing what they have been trained to do. It is up to the black community to recognize this, stand up to the system, and demand change in every way.