Why Are Police Attacking Peaceful Protesters? How OWS Has Exposed Militarization of Law Enforcement

AlterNet / By Rania Khalek

Why Are Police Attacking Peaceful Protesters? How OWS Has Exposed the Militarization of US Law Enforcement
As the number of OWS arrests nears 1,000, instances of police brutality continue to pile up. Now all of America is seeing the result of police militarization.

October 20, 2011 |


As the number of Occupy Wall Street arrests nears 1,000, instances of police brutality continue to pile up. Felix Rivera-Pitre was punched in the face in New York during a march through the city’s financial district; Ryan Hadar was dragged out of the street by his thumbs at Occupy San Francisco; and at Occupy Boston, members of Veterans for Peace were shoved to the ground and dragged away for chanting and peacefully occupying a local park.

These efforts to intimidate the protesters are symptoms of three decades of policies that have militarized civilian law enforcement. Sgt. Shamar Thomas, a U.S. marine at the Occupy Wall Street protests, was so appalled by the behavior of the NYPD that he loudly confronted a group of 30 officers, shouting at them:



Police repression in America is hardly new. Low-income neighborhoods, communities of color and political activists have always had to deal with unneccassary shows of force by some police officers. Thanks to a populist uprising threatening a status quo that benefits the top tier of American society to the detriment of the bottom 99 percent, many Americans for the first time are witnessing the U.S. police state in action. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/world/152812/why_are_police_attacking_peaceful_protesters_how_ows_has_exposed_the_militarization_of_us_law_enforcement/

but nobody wants to deal with that as it frightens them to much. However, now we have gotten to the point where people are having to see it weather they want to or not. And OWS is really helping to put it in focus for them.

of uniformed men with machine guns on every street, 'night and fog' midnight arrests of dissidents, a single charismatic leaders who has personal command of the worst offenders, etc.

They don't recognize a police state as being an institutional thing, rather than a dictatorship a la Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy.

But they're starting to see it. Finally.

That is the result mostly of the "War on (some) Drugs". What the police actions at OWS makes perfectly clear is which side of the class war cops see themselves on. They are not part of the 1%, and never will be. The sooner they realize that, the better for all of us.

When to flip? Join OWS too soon, and you will get disciplined, reprimanded, or fired and besides losing your job (current income), you might put your pension in danger (future income). Flip too late, after the last shred of respect for the old authority is gone, and you may end up like Muammar coming out of the sewer grate.

I doubt that many of them are self-aware enough to understand they are making a decision; after all, they went into the profession because they have an authoritarian type personality and want to fit into a hierarchy where they can pledge fealty to those above and abuse those below them. They will just wait until some day, when a completely different set of orders comes down, and then they will go out and enforce (emphasis on the "force") those rules with the same gusto.

They have been this way for at least a decade

with the so called "War on Drugs" which in fact has been nothing but a continuous 30 year assault on several amendments in the Bill of Rights.

As those rights have eroded over the decades and millions if not tens of millions of Americans were criminalized and became alienated and/or disenfranchised from participation in their government, a chasm has opened up between the people and the police; tasked to enforce the government's laws; whether those laws were moral, just or not.

As a result, the solution by the government has been to swatify everything related to the police in some form of domestic arms race with gangs, cartels and organized crime and now this draconian police waging drug war mentality is naturally spilling over in to general law enforcement as the police; come to view the people first as criminals or at the very least suspects and as citizens of the nation/state last, if at all.

Thanks for the thread, marmar.

Most of the Law Enforcement officers (including members of my family) that I know support the movement, though they are noticing a few obvious plants in the groups from the opposition.

In my opinion the makeup of Police and Law Enforcement split on left and right pretty much reflects the same percentage of society.

the same stations do the the local pro and university sports broadcasting, it shouldn't be surprising