The line between police officers and soldiers has become dangerously blurred in the US with the rise of paramilitary SWAT teams whose gear – M16 rifles, battering rams, flashbang grenades (and mindset) is “more appropriate for a battlefield”. In the 1970s, they made a few hundred raids a year, but by 2005, this had grown to about 50,000. And SWAT teams have been unleashed not just on dangerous drug dealers, but on underage drinkers and illegal poker games. This has led to much needless bloodshed. The proper role for police officers is “to protect and serve”. (Adapted from an article by Radley Balko in The Wall Street Journal)
Obama should end the so-called War on Drugs and all the federal incentives, and there are several of them, to ply the police with armaments (the NRA is no doubt somewhere behind this). In one notorious incident armed police stormed in and arrested a group of Tibetan monks who had overstayed their time in the US. Too many police forces are out of control.
Epicureanism stands for lack of fear. There is an ugly parallel between the SWAT teams and what happened in Nazi Germany, only nobody has latched onto it. It gets harder to avoid fear in this circumstance. Epicureans, stay in your Garden, out of harm’s way.
Maybe there were just too many issues to deal with and too little polititical capital, but I personally am deeply disappointed with Obama, who has failed, it seems, even to notice some of the disturbing things that are going on in the US. To remind the police what they are there should be a no-brainer. I am nervous about even speaking to a policeman, so unapproachable and intimidating have they become. In the UK it is the same, only corruption has also crept into a force that used to have such a good reputation. This is a tragedy, and no one seems to care.