The manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects offered the nation a window into the stunning military-style capabilities of our local law enforcement agencies. For the past 30 years, police departments throughout the United States have benefited from the government’s largesse in the form of military weaponry and training, incentives offered in the ongoing “War on Drugs.” For the average citizen watching events such as the intense pursuit of the Tsarnaev brothers on television, it would be difficult to discern between fully outfitted police SWAT teams and the military.The centralization of military forces in societies ruled over by capitalist ruling classes has always been the their solution to the breakdown of the democratic facade.
One of the first acts of the Nazi regime, whose takeover of the German government was sponsored by industrialists, was the consolidation of local police forces under Himmler and the SS.
Here in the US this has been accomplished more deftly under the "War on Drugs", and since 9/11 aggressively pursued under the Department of Homeland Security. This fact became startlingly clear to me when early this year alert citizens brought to the attention of civilian authorities in Seattle that the Seattle police force had secretly acquired surveillance drones directly from Homeland Security (see this).
