Chris Gelardi has a fascinating article up on The Nation entitled “US Law Enforcement’s Warrior Complex Is on Full Display in the Streets—and in Leaked Documents.” www.thenation.com/... In it, Mr. Gelardi discusses information about the increasing use of military style training for Police Officers across the country gleaned from a large cache of PD files being called Blue Leaks. The files were hacked from 250 Law Enforcement sites and covered the period from 2007 to 2020. You should read the entire article it constructs an important argument, but I will quote what I think is the central premise:
”In memos, intelligence reports, and other interdepartmental communications from the days following the police killing of George Floyd, domestic law enforcement agencies, especially those on the federal level, put on display their zeal for War on Terror–style counterinsurgency, their propensity to portray themselves as under constant threat by conniving aggressors, and their willingness—even eagerness—to signal-boost disprovable rumors of dissenters’ violent intentions. Taken together, these documents give credence to one of the central observations of the Black Lives Matter movement: that law enforcement in the United States functions as a military occupation.”
The subject matters because the President and his party are betting their election chances on a Law and Order platform as an apparent response to mob violence. The data revealed by BlueLeaks demonstrates that the police, whether reflexifly or deliberately, are acting to reinforce the narrative of out of control streets. By showing up to peaceful protests dressed for combat, the police are telling viewers that things are really bad and that they need to escalate a violent police response. They are establishing an us versus them narrative where citizens deeply unhappy with racially biased law enforcement become enemy combatants and police must dominate or destroy them. I’m not inferring this, this is the documented nature of the training.
The Republican Party and their media allies has spent 30 years reinforcing a big lie. That there are peole in this country who are not true Americans and therefore not deserving of civil liberties. It is a short walk from that foundation to the current idea that those others are actually enemies of the State. Concurrently, over that same timeframe, police training has taught officers that they are at war with these enemies. This is a republican problem, full stop.
Its been noted elsewhere that most of the actual violence and destruction has come from a narrow sub-set of the Republican Party, the militia movement. The uniforms, weapons, and tactics of these groups closely mirror those of the police. Sadly it seems that they have come to believe that they have a common enemy, and we see over and over how differently the perpetrators of murder and incitement from this movement are treated. The treatment of Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha or Dylan Roof in Charlottesville, underscores how the police have taken sides.
The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the use of the military to enforce the law within states. It is illegal for the army to be used for local police work. So the Republican Party works around this law by militarizing local police. This has been a long standing project. (Readers may remember the glut of military equipment transferred to local police in the wind down of the Iraq occupation.)
It’s ironic that the Posse Comitatus Act was originally designed to prevent Federal Troops from law enforcement in former confederate states. Its enactment in 1878 was part of the dismantling of the reconstruction and the beginning of Jim Crow rule. The return of local law enforcement to the South ushered in America’s Apartheid period. Todays Republicans are the direct intellectual descendents of that former Confederacy, regardless of where they live. Then as now, they believe they have a special status and are entitled to use local law enforcement to mantain their control of government because the actual majority is inferior , violent or both.
Bill Barr did not loose a minute of sleep deploying federal troops to American cities to enforce the law. It really doesnt matter which depertment they were from, or what Federal law they were enforcing. They showed up in full battle rattle and went an the offensive. This was not a police action, this was a military engaement.
We are entitled to equal treatment under the law. Cities run by Democrats, liberals, the educated, the poor, people who look or love differently than they do, journalists have all been targeted by these efforts. The president is stoking the need for a military response to these groups. He hopes to both scare his base into voting and to create conditions to limit voting by his opponents.
How it used to be.
Police need to return to their role to protect and serve, not dominate and destroy. Unwilling to accept that their training and methods have shifted too far to the right, the police seem to have decided it is us against them. It is far past time to demilitarize law enforcement at the local and federal levels. The Republicans are afraid of Americans because they know they are screwing people, and sooner or later we will notice. Imposing your minority views through martial law is Fascism, and in the end will not be sufficient to quell the will of the people.
