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Essay On Police Militarization

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My topic is the militarization of police forces within the United States. I feel as if this is a very important topic within the Criminal Justice System that needs to be addressed.
Even without paying strict attention to the news media, a person will still find it difficult to avoid hearing stories about heavily armed SWAT teams, smashing in a door in the dead of night, just to search for drugs. It is a practice that is becoming more and more common. And as it becomes more common, so do the horror stories associated with it: mistaken identities and needlessly ravaged homes, unnecessary shootings of both people and pets, flashbang grenades being detonated near infants, etc. America’s neighborhoods are not a battleground, it’s citizens are not enemy combatants, and it’s police are not soldiers.
There are some very fundamental and very important differences between the military and the police. The armed forces exist in order to protect the country by engaging an enemy in combat, often on foreign ground. The goal of the military is to physically destroy this enemy; it’s soldiers are trained to kill. Take the eleventh line of the U.S. Army’s Soldier’s …show more content…

In many regards, the focus of “keeping the peace” has taken a backseat to a “warrior” mentality. This mindset emphasizes an “us-versus-them” attitude, where anyone is assumed a threat and officers are told to act aggressively and decisively. It is this change that leads to unnecessary confrontations like much of what has been seen in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri in recent weeks as well as injuries and deaths of many unarmed, nonviolent, and innocent civilians during police “no-knock”

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