Militarization of Police

John Judge: “Perhaps the earliest example of direct training and cooperation of both military and police forces came in the 1950’s, at secret CIA camps in Georgia, when police from many states were covertly instructed in anti-riot techniques. By the end of the 1960’s, as Malcolm X put it following President Kennedy’s assassination, “The chickens [had] come home to roost.” The rising civil rights and anti-war movements of the 50’s and 60’s put the public in the position of an “enemy” to the emerging security state, and the war in Vietnam came home. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), with budget and manpower ten times that of FBI and CIA combined, began to spy on anti-war activists, keeping dossiers on over 8 million civilians. As veterans returned from the war, many used the training they got to land jobs in local police departments. At the same time, police were being openly trained with the same weapons, tactics and techniques used in urban counter-insurgency wars abroad by the U.S. military. They began to develop the same arsenals (including tanks, gas, and other anti-personnel weapons), intelligence methods and personnel.” MOVE and the Militarization of Police, (1985) Judge For Yourself