In our Summer 2013 Trends Journal edition, we forecast that America’s surveillance and militarized state would intensify. The military might on display in the aftermath of the April 2013 bombing at the Boston Marathon demonstrated the scope of police military capability and the willingness to use it at the local level. Few criticized the reaction besides the Trends Research Institute, because, after all, bombing suspects were on the loose. An entire major US city was at risk.
We saw it differently. Much differently.
“The military police now are the police,” we reported last year. “Showered with $35 billion from the Department of Homeland Security, virtually every town in America has SWAT teams equipped with sophisticated military weapons gear and armored personnel carriers.”
Moreover, we have repeatedly warned that the sheer scope of military might now in the hands of police departments across the country would embolden abuses not only in high-profile circumstances, but in generally innocuous circumstances, pitting innocent citizens against trigger-happy police thugs.
Make no mistake about it, the line between solider and cop is disappearing — and disappearing fast. Police and military are quickly becoming the same.