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Yet they presumably chose to join the military, right? Is it really excessive and abhorrent to suggest that those who decide to join the military would tend tow

• tomgirl1 13y ago
  It is absolutely not true that local police forces are largely ex-military, or even close. They are by and large civil servants who have been handed a federally subsidized budget of military grade armaments from the dept of homeland security and been "militarized" by the federal govt. Tanks, automatic weapons, helicopters, bulletproof vests, helmets, armor piercing ammunition, bomb squads, all provided by the federal arms dealers. Any idea that the militarization of local and state police is driven by ex-veterans is not only factually wrong but a crazy excuse for the fact that the US federal government has been training them to militarize themselves. And once they have these toys, you might expect them to feel pretty powerful just for having them. In fact, I think you could make the opposite case, that actual veterans if they made up the police force would respect the constitution and would never treat US citizens on US soil in this manner.