http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/american-society-police-state-criminalization-militarization
By now, the militarization of the police has advanced to the point where
"the War on Crime" and "the War on Drugs" are no longer metaphors but
bland understatements. There is the proliferation of heavily armed SWAT teams, even in small towns; the use of shock-and-awe
tactics to bust small-time bookies; the no-knock raids to recover trace
amounts of drugs that often result in the killing of family dogs, if
not family members; and in communities where drug treatment programs
once were key, the waging of a drug version of counterinsurgency war.
(All of this is ably reported on journalist Radley Balko's blog and in his book, The Rise of the Warrior Cop.)
But American over-policing involves far more than the widely reported
up-armoring of your local precinct. It's also the way police power has
entered the DNA of social policy, turning just about every sphere of
American life into a police matter.
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