The fact is, the militarization of our local police forces started a long time ago.
First, it was the 1994 crime bill where we were going to put "100,000 cops on the streets." Remember that one? And where were these 100,000 cops going to come from?
From the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, otherwise known as the Clinton crime bill.
(c) TROOPS-TO-COPS PROGRAMS-
`(1) IN GENERAL- Grants made under subsection (a) may be used to hire former members of the Armed Forces to serve as career law enforcement officers for deployment in community-oriented policing, particularly in communities that are adversely affected by a recent military base closing.
`(2) DEFINITION- In this subsection, `former member of the Armed Forces' means a member of the Armed Forces of the United States who is involuntarily separated from the Armed Forces within the meaning of section 1141 of title 10, United States Code.
This essentially funded the reassignment of soldiers, many of whom having just returned from the 1st Iraq war and suffering from Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), to police the streets of the US.
That crime bill was Clinton's first big legislative push after the failed stimulus bill. It not only had this Troops-to-Cops provision, but, in some respects it was also the precursor to the Patriot Act, but that's a subject for another day.
So we have all these soldiers becoming cops. I've searched for stats and other info on this program without much success. But I witnessed first hand the effect of this legislation. All though the 90s and early 2000s, I watched as police forces slowly transformed from a bunch of normal men and women, some with donut bellies, and far more looking like the people they serve, to these Rambo looking people, with their military crew cuts, steroid builds, and, most importantly, a certain look in the eye that says, "I control you."
WTF? When did the coup d'etat happen and why wasn't I told about it?
Then, in 1997, Clinton signed another bill creating the 1033 program. It was the The National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 1997 (FY 97)
This was originally sold to the public as a measure in the war on drugs (Read: war on blacks and other minorities), and maybe that was it's original intent. You certainly didn't see local sheriff's departments buying armed personnel carriers and sound cannons.
But the program has boomed in the last few years, with a clear focus on crowd control. This strongly suggests that the so-called "militarization" of our police is not the legacy of 9/11 so much as the legacy of the bankster bailouts of 08-09, followed by right wing austerity, then culminating in the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011.
From the Pentagon's own 1033 site.
Since its inception [in 1997], the 1033 program has transferred more than $5.1 billion worth of property. In 2013 alone, $449,309,003.71 worth of property was transferred to law enforcement.
I've failed to find the precise data for the year by year increases in militarized weapons transfers to police departments since 1997. But one can extrapolate that, out of a total $5 billion over the lifetime of the program, and a whopping $1/2 billion in 2013 alone, combined with observation, there has been a dramatic increase of late.
Why?
Because the drug war is not working? Or because our own government sees its own people as the enemy.