Civil libertarians are unhappy with the ‘militarization’ of our police and are alarmed at the type of weapons used by SWAT teams. First they wanted to take assault weapons away from law abiding citizens and now it looks like they want to take them away from the police.
ACLU LAUNCHES NATIONWIDE LOOK INTO POLICE ‘MILITARIZATION’
Affiliates will sent open records requests to law enforcement agencies to look at SWAT teams, drones, more
By Radley Balko
The Huffington Post
March 6, 2013
WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has launched a nationwide campaign to assess police militarization in the United States. Starting Wednesday, ACLU affiliates in 23 states are sending open records requests to hundreds of state and local police agencies requesting information about their SWAT teams, such as how often and for what reasons they're deployed, what types of weapons they use, how often citizens are injured during SWAT raids, and how they're funded. More affiliates may join the effort in the coming weeks.
Additionally, the affiliates will ask for information about drones, GPS tracking devices, how much military equipment the police agencies have obtained through programs run through the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, and how often and for what purpose state National Guards are participating in enforcement of drug laws.
"We've known for a while now that American neighborhoods are increasingly being policed by cops armed with the weapons and tactics of war," said Kara Dansky, senior counsel at the ACLU's Center for Justice, which is coordinating the investigation. "The aim of this investigation is to find out just how pervasive this is, and to what extent federal funding is incentivizing this trend."
1 comment:
I believe the ACLU thinks that criminals have a constitutional right to commit crimes and the cops interfere with their legitimate livelyhood by killing them.
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