"A Little Sane Advice for America..."

Police corral protesters before detaining them during a march in Los Angeles

Warrior Cops Who Now Roam The US Backyard

Alex Lo
November 28, 2014


There is perhaps no better time than now for Americans to practise what they teach others.

No, I don't mean democracy, though that would be a good start too. It's community policing, or for starters, demilitarise your police forces. Average Americans and most foreigners are just shocked by the sight of thousands of "robocops" deployed in Ferguson and several other major cities.

The United States Agency for International Development should really consider sending some of its expert staff home. No, I don't mean it rudely as in "Yankees, go home".

USAid has been working over many years to train locals about responsible policing in war-torn countries. According to Foreign Policy, USAid has decades-old programmes that help countries such as El Salvador, Kosovo, Guatemala and Liberia to demilitarise their security forces and make them accountable for crimes such as extrajudicial killings.

Now is especially a good time to go home when the agency has been told to stop its undercover subversive work under the guise of democracy promotion in countries that don't want them.

One of its manuals asks foreign security forces such questions: "Does the police agency have a use of force policy? Are armed forces held legally accountable for their actions when performing law enforcement or public safety functions? Do [legal] bodies aggressively review and act upon complaints of misconduct?"

"While aimed at police systems overseas," the FP said, "these questions have been asked with renewed urgency in the United States since [Michael] Brown's death, which has become the latest symbol of racial injustice in a country where young black men are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by police than young white men. "

The article didn't mention how those foreign forces got militarised in the first place. In many cases, they were armed and trained by the US military. These included right-wing death squads during the cold war and Reagan eras.

Besides foreign armies, the US military has been giving surplus weapons to US police forces since the 1990s, thereby contributing to the "warrior cops" phenomenon we see across the US today. The chickens have come home to roost.

*******

Sometimes the truth hurts... 

And sometimes you can't see what happening in your own house until your neighbor tells you about it. The author here is right, it's time for America to practice what she preaches and learn what she teaches.  It's time to put our own glass house in order...

"Fear Eats the Soul"