Weapons Of War In America Research Paper

Weapons of War on the Streets of America There once was a time when police work consisted of investigation, gathering evidence, and making an arrest based on that evidence. Today, the role of police officers is much different. Many people living in the United States are now fearful of police officers and for very good reasons. Reading the news daily, one is sure to find a story involving the murder of a civilian by a police officer. Sadly, this is becoming more and more common with little being done to prevent these murders from taking place. In fact, militarizing police departments has been providing police officers much better means to harass the communities they are supposed to protect. With military assets provided by the Department of …show more content…
The attacks indeed created the Department of Homeland Security and the USA PATRIOT Act which strengthened and empowered police departments to better combat terrorism, however there is a problem with this. Governments historically seize crises to expand their scope and power. When the militarization of police might seem necessary, do you think they will simply get rid of their tools when terrorism is no longer a problem? Abigail Hall and Christopher Coyne explain that “Once the crisis has ended, the government reduces its activities, but it does not return to its precrisis dimensions because some new programs, agency expansions, and spending increases persist” (Hall and Coyne 2013). These police departments will do whatever it takes to increase their budgets and hold on to their equipment and this is proving to not include protecting their communities as they are supposed to. With never-ending wars based on combating intangible things such as the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, these paramilitary units are here to stay for the foreseeable …show more content…
Cynthia Brown notes that “Arming police agencies with the responsibilities and latitudes of warriors substantially weakened the boundaries or demarcations that had segregated the military from the domestic civilian peacekeepers we call police” (Brown 2011). The shift from a civilian focused police department towards a military capable paramilitary police force has changed the face of law enforcement. The goal of protecting civilian communities as civilian police officers has been warped to defeating the enemy as a soldier cop. These police departments understand that to justify their wanting of military equipment means to deploy their assets whenever they can. This need results in the damaging of the communities they are sworn to protect instead of defending them as they