4 ms·
"We" didn't ask them to be any of these things, especially soldiers - this is power that they actively pushed for, there was no crime wave in the early 2000s wh
by seemslegit 6y ago
"We" didn't ask them to be any of these things, especially soldiers - this is power that they actively pushed for, there was no crime wave in the early 2000s when the militarization of police began in full swing - just a post-9/11 power opportunism and the need to find jobs for discharged soldiers.
Mission specialists always existed, they're called detectives.
- thephyber 6y ago> there was no crime wave in the early 2000s when the militarization of police began I would argue we started the militarization of police in the 1970s-1980s when NYC was a festering hotbed of crime and when Miami drug dealers were shooting automatic weapons during turf wars (which was when we started Civil Asset Forfeiture... which allowed police/prosecutors to essentially steal assets from civilians without a criminal conviction). We gave surplus DoD weapons to police for cheap after 9/11 and judges started rubber-stamping no-knock warrants around 2001, but I don't think that was the only inflection point.
- seemslegit 6y agoNot the only, but 1970s-1980s had a real crime emergency, the 2000s didn't nearly as much.