AMERICA'S STEADY DRIFT INTO A MILITARIZED POLICE STATE

Bradley Balko, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces (New York: PublicAffairs, 2013) ("'There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.'--James Madison"  Id. at ix. "Most Americans still believe we live in a free society and revere its core values. These principles are pretty well known: freedom of speech, religion, and the press; the right to a fair trial; representative democracy; equality before the law; and so on. Those aren't principles we hold sacred because they're enshrined in the Constitution, or because they were cherished by the Founders. Those principles were enshrined in the Constitution and cherished by the Framers precisely because they're indispensable to a free society. This book answers the question: How did we get here? How did we evolve from a country whose founding statesmen were adamant about the dangers of armed, standing government forces--a country that enshrined the Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights and revered and protected the age-old notion that the home as a place of privacy and sanctuary--to a country where it has become acceptable for armed government agents dressed in battle garb to storm private homes in the middle of the night--not to apprehend violent fugitives or thwart terrorist attacks, but to enforce laws against nonviolent, consensual activities? How did a country pushed into a revolution by protest and political speech become one where protests are met with flash grenades, pepper spray, and platoons of riot teams dressed like Robocops? How did we go from a system in which laws were enforced by the citizens, often with noncoercive methods, to one in which order is preserved by armed government agents to often conditions to see streets and neighborhoods as battlefields and the citizens they serve as the enemy?" Id. at xiv. Perhaps we should consider the possibility that, psychologically, Americans need an enemy--an 'other'--in order to feel good about themselves and that enemy, that threat, is often anyone outside their own immediate community, anyone deviating from some narrowly-defined norms. Perceiving an domestic enemy, Americans desire a domestic army to protect them from the domestic enemy. Militarized police are that domestic army. We are our own enemy, and we have created a militarized police force to fight and subdue ourselves. After the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, there were calls from some quarters to arm teachers. Perhaps militarized school teachers is the next development in our decline from freedom and democracy.).