The peace officer is a relic, all we got now are war officers, outfitted by the Secretary of Defense with army surplus. Scary is what it is.  Terrorizing.

From his post:

Last night, two reporters, The Washington Post`s Wesley Lowery and The Huffington Post`s Ryan Reilly, were arrested and assaulted while working from a McDonald's in Ferguson. The arrests were arbitrary and abusive, and received substantial attention -- only because of their prominent platforms, not, as they both quickly pointed out upon being released, because there was anything unusual about this police behavior.

Reilly, on Facebook, recounted how he was arrested by "a Saint Louis County police officer in full riot gear, who refused to identify himself despite my repeated requests, purposefully banged my head against the window on the way out and sarcastically apologized." He wrote: "I'm fine. But if this is the way these officers treat a white reporter working on a laptop who moved a little too slowly for their liking, I can't imagine how horribly they treat others." He added: "And if anyone thinks that the militarization of our police force isn't a huge issue in this country, I've got a story to tell you."

Lowrey, who is African-American, tweeted a summary of an interview he gave on MSNBC: "If I didn't work for the Washington Post and were just another Black man in Ferguson, I'd still be in a cell now." He added: "I knew I was going to be fine. But the thing is, so many people here in Ferguson don't have as many Twitter followers as I have and don't have Jeff Bezos or whoever to call and bail them out of jail."

Glenn also says:

The dangers of domestic militarization are both numerous and manifest. To being with, as the nation is seeing in Ferguson, it degrades the mentality of police forces in virtually every negative way and subjects their targeted communities to rampant brutality and unaccountable abuse. The ACLU report summarized: "excessive militarism in policing, particularly through the use of paramilitary policing teams, escalates the risk of violence, threatens individual liberties, and unfairly impacts people of color."

[snip]

Ultimately, police militarization is part of a broader and truly dangerous trend: the importation of War on Terror tactics from foreign war zones onto American soil. American surveillance drones went from Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia into American cities, and it's impossible to imagine that they won't be followed by weaponized ones. The inhumane and oppressive conditions that prevailed at Guantanamo are matched, or exceeded, by the super-max hellholes and "Communications Management Units" now in the American prison system. And the "collect-it-all" mentality that drives NSA domestic surveillance was pioneered by Gen. Keith Alexander in Baghdad and by other generals in Afghanistan, aimed at enemy war populations.

It's chilling.  Horrifying.  Unconscionable.

Despite the fact that the police chief went on the air today and said there was no curfew, cops have been shooting rubber bullets and tear gas at peaceful crowds, ordering livestreamers to turn off their cameras, jamming cell phone signals, using the sonic cannons developed for Iraq crowd control. unbelievable video

They even fired into the houses in the area.

Wesley Lowery has been on the streets of Ferguson since Monday, talking to the people of the community. He's also been teargassed, been shot at with rubber bullets and yes, arrested.......

Here's Lowery's account of his arrest:

.....
One instructed me to exit to my left. As I turned left, another officer emerged, blocking my path.

"Go another way," he said.

As I turned, my backpack, which was slung over one shoulder, began to slip. I said, "Officers, let me just gather my bag." As I did, one of them said, "Okay, let's take him."

Multiple officers grabbed me. I tried to turn my back to them to assist them in arresting me. I dropped the things from my hands.

"My hands are behind my back," I said. "I'm not resisting. I'm not resisting." At which point one officer said: "You're resisting. Stop resisting."

That was when I was most afraid -- more afraid than of the tear gas and rubber bullets. C&L

Alderman Arrested, On 24-Hour Jail Hold In Ferguson

Police arrested Antonio French for unlawful assembly after publicly announcing there was no curfew in Ferguson.

This tweet from his wife gives a sense of the arrogance ablaze from these militant cops.

Senka @senka
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@AntonioFrench being booked now. Not sure what the charge is yet. Was ordered out of his car and arrested because he "didn't listen".

All search warrants in St Louis country are now served with a swat team regardless of the crime.

Brown had no criminal or arrest record, he was an exemplary student in high school, and was about to head off to college. Given all that, the police department's account that this young man suddenly lunged for the white officer's gun without provocation, after merely being asked by that officer to remove himself to the sidewalk or side of the road, is ludicrous on its face -- unless, of course, one is willing to suspend his or her notion of common sense.

As of this writing, five days after the incident, investigators still haven't interviewed Brown's friend who was with him that afternoon, and who was an eyewitness to his friend's death at the hands of that as-yet unidentified Ferguson police officer.

But herein lies the real rub as to how all this came to be. By virtue of its demographics and politics, the town of Ferguson, MO stands as a stark 21st century example of Jim Crow, which despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 obviously remains very much alive and kicking in certain sections of the country.

Even though 67% of this St. Louis suburb's 21,000 residents are African-American, 50 of the 53 commissioned officers on its police force are white (94%). As are the department's chief and deputy chief. As are its mayor and five of its six city council members (85%). And as are six of its seven school board members (85%). Per the Los Angeles Times:

"Blacks in Ferguson are twice as likely to be stopped by police as whites, according to an annual report on racial profiling by the Missouri attorney general. Last year, 93% of arrests following car stops in Ferguson were of blacks. Ninety-two percent of searches and 80% of car stops involved blacks[.]"

And now that all this has also come to light, we should definitely want to inquire why and how that sort of appallingly racist political and municipal disparity -- and yes, it most certainly IS racist -- can still exist in in the United States in the year of our Lord 2014, A.D., because that disparity is likely the root cause for the town's present troubles.

And I very much doubt that any of this is due to the electoral acquiescence of Ferguson's majority African-American residents themselves, who appear to have been effectively disenfranchised in both purpose and design -- if not actually in fact -- by their white neighbors.

The militarization of police forces across the country is certainly a topic that's ripe for public discussion, but it is by no means the only issue here that needs a thorough public examination and an accompanying remedy.

"The worst part of outfitting our police officers as soldiers has been psychological. Give a man access to drones, tanks, and body armor, and he'll reasonably think that his job isn't simply to maintain peace, but to eradicate danger. Instead of protecting and serving, police are searching and destroying.

If officers are soldiers, it follows that the neighborhoods they patrol are battlefields. And if they're working battlefields, it follows that the population is the enemy."