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 GLOBAL MOVEMENT FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE

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Question: Local police, militarization or culture of peace? CPNN article: Americans Protest Militarization of Local Police
CPNN Administrator
Posted: Jan. 25 2012,09:49
The recent militarization of local police in the US is not covered very much by the mainstream media.  I found the following recent examples in alternative media:

Heads up: LAPD (and helicopters) to join military in nighttime exercises
By Tony Pierce
Published: Wednesday, January 25, 2012, at 08:38AM

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — According to the Los Angeles Police Department, local police will be providing support to the military who will training in (and over) the city.

The training sites shouldn't affect traffic as they "have been carefully selected to ensure the event does not negatively impact the citizens of Los Angeles and their daily routine," a department official told reporters.

Although the exercises are closed to the public, if you look up in the sky tonight and tomorrow that familiar helicopter light and sound very well could be the military prepping to meet mandatory training certification requirements and handle urban scenarios overseas.


Oakland Police Trained Alongside Bahrain Military and Israeli Forces Prior to Violent Occupy Oakland Raid

9:17 am, December 4, 2011

Cross-posted from Tikkun Daily.

by David Harris-Gershon

A month before Occupy Oakland was violently raided by riot police using chemical weapons, rubber bullets and flash grenades – a raid which critically injured Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen – the Oakland Police Department and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department trained alongside a military unit from Bahrain and an Israeli Border Police unit.

The occasion was Urban Shield 2011, an annual training competition which gathers heavily militarized police from the United States and across the globe to explore the latest in tactical responses and to promote collaboration. It’s a training that northern California police departments credited for their “effective teamwork” in dealing repressively with Occupy Oakland
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David Adams
Posted: June 28 2012,04:45
Here is an update on the militarization of local police in the United States:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/cops-military-gear/

Quoting from this article,

"In 2011 alone, more than 700,000 items were transferred to police departments for a total value of $500 million."

"“There’s been an unmistakable trend toward more and more militarization of American law enforcement,” Norm Stamper, former Chief of the Seattle Police Department and author of Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing, told Danger Room. During his tenure in Seattle, he clamped down on the WTO protests in 1999, the infamous “Battle in Seattle.” It’s a response he now calls “disastrous.”

According to Stamper, having small local police departments go around with tanks and military gear has “a chilling effect on any effort to strengthen the relationship” between the community and the cops. And that’s not the only danger. “There’s no justification for them having that kind of equipment, for one obvious reason, and that is if they have it, they will find a way to use it. And if they use it they will misuse it altogether too many times,” said Stamper."
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