by Michael Snyder
August 13, 2014
from
EndOfTheAmericanDream Website
Let's be honest - Ferguson, Missouri is under
military occupation right now, and the entire world is watching in horror as
militarized police fire tear gas and rubber bullets at unarmed protesters.
Yes, the
rioting and looting in Ferguson needed to
be stopped.
If order had not been restored, more stores and businesses
would have been destroyed. However, there is no excuse for the brutal
tactics now being employed. At one point, police snipers were even
using laser scopes to target protesters
that were obviously unarmed.
Sadly, this is just a preview of what is coming
to America in the years ahead.
As the economy falls apart and people become
even more angry and even more frustrated, there will be a lot more incidents
of civil unrest like we have just witnessed in Ferguson. And in response,
the federal government and our overly militarized police will seek to crush
those uprisings with overwhelming force. How is it possible that our once
very peaceful nation has fallen apart so dramatically?
What we just watched happen in Ferguson was
truly bizarre. If you didn't know any better, you might have thought that
you were looking at images from a really bad post-apocalyptic disaster
movie.
The following is how
the New Yorker described the scene…
Last night, as the images and stories from
Ferguson, Missouri, joined the news churn, many who registered their
thoughts via social media noted that what they were seeing -
policemen with dogs and AR-15 assault
rifles standing in a Stygian, blue-lit cloud of tear gas; crowds of
protesters with their hands in the air, screaming "Hands up, don't
shoot"; members of the press being removed from the scene - did
not look like America.
And I will certainly agree with that.
It did not look like America. At least not the
America that I grew up in.
In a
WND article, one woman was quoted as saying
that it looked "like something right off the streets of Iraq"…
Cheryl Chumley has been watching
developments in Missouri, where Michael Brown was shot over the weekend,
and just overnight two more people were shot, including one by police.
"Armored
vehicles on patrol, Kevlar-wearing, camouflage dressed officials carting
high-powered rifles, tear gas wafting through the air - sounds like
something right off the streets of Iraq. But it's not.
It's
actually the scene that's playing out in Ferguson right now, with
SWAT-type police taking to the residential streets for crowd control
duties," she said.
Was all of this really necessary?
The rioting and the looting had already ended.
Was there really a need to fire tear gas at unarmed people?
In the video posted below, you can see footage of some of the craziness
that took place…
And in this next video, there is footage of one protester holding his head
after being hit directly in the face with a rubber bullet by the police…
In this day and age, images like this spread
like wildfire. Thanks to social media, people all over the country and all
over the planet will get a first-hand look at how brutal our militarized
police have become.
And the more attention this gets, the more
likely that it is that violence will spread to more cities.
Already, a major protest is being planned for
Sunday directly in front of police headquarters
in Los Angeles. A man was shot and killed
on Monday by the LAPD and people are upset about it. They have seen what
has been happening in Ferguson and now they want to take action.
But wherever civil unrest does erupt, our
militarized police will certainly be there to quickly stamp it out.
As a
recent Slate article detailed, the militarization of our police
has reached unprecedented heights in recent years…
Since 2006, according to an
analysis by the New York Times, police departments have
acquired 435 armored vehicles, 533 planes, 93,763 machine guns, and 432
mine-resistant armored trucks.
Overall, since Congress established its
program to transfer military hardware,
local and state police departments have
received $4.3 billion worth of equipment.
Accordingly, the value of military equipment
used by these police agencies has increased from $1 million in 1990 to
$324 million in 1995 (shortly after the program was established), to
nearly $450 million in 2013.
And when police get all of this equipment, it is
inevitable that they are going to use it. One result of this has been the
astounding increase in the number of SWAT team raids in America.
The following numbers come from my previous
article entitled "10
Facts About The SWATification Of America That Everyone Should Know"…
-
In 1980, there were approximately 3,000
SWAT raids in the United States. Now, there are
more than 80,000 SWAT raids per year in this country.
-
79 percent of the time, SWAT teams
are deployed to private homes.
-
50 percent of the victims of SWAT
raids are either black or Latino.
-
In 65 percent of SWAT deployments, "a
battering ram, boot, or some sort of explosive device" is
used to gain forced entry to a home.
-
62 percent of all SWAT raids
involve a search for drugs.
-
In
at least 36 percent of all SWAT
raids, "no contraband of any kind" is found by the police.
-
In cases where it is suspected that
there is a weapon in the home, police only find a weapon
35 percent of the time.
-
More than 100 American families have
their homes raided by SWAT teams
every single day.
-
Only
7 percent of all SWAT deployments
are for "hostage, barricade or active-shooter scenarios".
-
Even small towns are getting SWAT teams
now. 30 years ago, only 25.6 percent of communities with
populations between 25,000 and 50,000 people had a SWAT team. Now,
that number has increased to
80 percent.
And of course African-American communities
receive a greatly disproportionate amount of attention from our militarized
police. Just imagine how you would feel if every time you saw a police
officer you cringed in fear because you might be about to get searched
again.
The following is how author Michelle Alexander
put it in her book "The
New Jim Crow"…
Ultimately, these stop-and-frisk operations
amount to much more than humiliating, demeaning rituals for young men of
color, who must raise their arms and spread their legs, always careful
not to make a sudden move or gesture that could provide an excuse for
brutal - even lethal - force.
Like the days when black men were expected
to step off the sidewalk and cast their eyes downward when a white woman
passed, young black men know the drill when they see the police crossing
the street toward them; it is a ritual of dominance and submission
played out hundreds of thousands of times each year.
-
So what can we do about this?
-
How can we change the system?
-
How can we reverse this alarming
militarization of our police?
Unfortunately, our system has become so corrupt
that there is very little that we can do.
In fact, one newly released study discovered
that average Americans have a "near-zero"
statistical impact on public policy…
A startling new political science study
concludes that corporate interests and mega wealthy individuals control
U.S. policy to such a degree that "the preferences of the average
American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically
non-significant impact upon public policy."
The startling study (early draft), titled "Testing
Theories of American Politics - Elites, Interest Groups, and Average
Citizens" is slated to appear in an upcoming issue of Perspectives on
Politics and was authored by Princeton University Professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Professor Benjamin Page.
Noted American University Historian Allan J.
Lichtman, who highlighted the piece in a Tuesday article published in
The Hill, calls Gilens and Page's research "shattering" and says their
scholarship "should be a loud wake-up call to the vast majority of
Americans who are bypassed by their government."