The proliferation of SWAT deployments in this country is stunning, up from 3,000 a year in the mid-1980s to more than 40,000 now, according to Peter Kraske, who studies the militarization of policing as a criminal justice professor at Eastern Kentucky University.
From Marc Fisher's column today on the police raid of a DC suburb mayor's house, that resulted in the death of his two dogs. Mayor was innocent. In fact, if the police had bothered to investigate first and shoot later, the Mayor wouldn't even have been a suspect.
My grandparent's generation used to laugh at slapstick police work and called it "keystone kops." That's before the "kops" armed themselves with machine guns, body armor, no-knock warrants and an shoot first, ask questions later attitude. The Mayor's story gets front page attention because of who he is. I wonder how many anonymous innocents have similar stories?
I was raised to trust the police, and was shocked several years ago when, serving on a jury in a murder trial, some of my fellow jurors refused to trust anything the police said.
I begin to understand.
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