Militarizing the Police

IN THE NINETEEN SIXTIES, centuries of anger and frustration exploded into widespread street protests, first in L.a., in 1965, and then elsewhere, and everywhere. They were called, conveniently, "race riots". African-Americans did not burn down their own neighborhoods, as they were accused of doing. they owned nothing. they burned down the neighborhoods in which they lived, which were owned by their oppressors. The Viet Nam War protest were not connected to this, nor to the women's rights protests, or gay rights protests and movement. In a hierarchical society, there are many axes to grind. All this concurrent social unrest frightened the ruling corporate elite,  to whom any arrangement remotely resembling egalitarian equality was unacceptable, and which responded, predictably, with more force and oppression. The militarization of urban police also began in Los Angeles, as detailed in a new monograph titled "The Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces". The first SWAT teams, Special Weapons Attack Teams, later changed to thelses aggressive sounding Special Weapons And Tactics, performed as advertised, breaking up street protests. now, SWAT teams almost exclusively break down doors in warrant free drug raids. Now the police are fully militarized, rows of officers looking like Darth Vador sci fi figurines. Armored personnel carriers, tanks, steel piercing amunition all ready to rumble through city streets, destroying everything in their path. Armies of occupation, foreing invaders. All this does not quell mass violence, rather, it exacerbates it,  stirring protests into stree wars. All this business about "defunding" police departments seems a bit amprphous and extreme, but is on the right track in one key regard: our society needs to stop expecting to solve all its social ills with police force, and start expecting ourselves to heal ourselves from the ground up, one angry mentally ill American citizen at a time, by which is meant, all of us.