Police Get Turned into Soldiers- on Fresh Air
article Radley Balko wrote the book "Rise Of The Warrior Cop: The Militarization Of America's Police Forces." Surplus military equipment dumped onto police depts., DHS anti-terrorism grants to buy more military hardware, no knock raids with SWAT teams used to serve drug warrants, the need for training, illegal tear gas and flashbang grenades against nonviolent civilians, the warrior mindset of conquering force, drones, helicopters, .50 caliber machine guns, civil forfeiture of private property going into the police departments,....
Solutions: have fewer traffic stops of black and brown people, have less predatory cities that fund themselves by fines and penalties on poor people, have fewer armed police, have the police be required to live in the neighborhoods where they police and to have the racial mix of those communities, have unarmed mediators and traffic cops used for many situations, forget about the the "broken window" emphasis on statistics and harassing the poor; provide jobs, scholarships, mortgages, and loans for people of color and low income people.