#police-militarization

#police-militarization

Thomas Ferro asked why there were no protests of the millions of deportations during Barack Obama's and Joe Biden's presidencies. Easy answer: Those removals were accomplished without militarizing our streets and snatching brown-skinned U.S. citizens, gardeners, Home Depot customers or anyone speaking with an accent; without teargassing or beating up innocent people and refusing pleas to look at ID; without snagging an immigrant as they comply with the law by showing up for their citizenship hearing.

Baton Rouge bought the Stalker VXE30 from Edge Autonomy, which partners with Lockheed Martin , and began operating under the brand Redwire this week . According to reporting from WBRZ ABC2 in Louisiana , the drone, along with training and batteries, costs about $1 million.

On the face of it, it was kind of funny, but the caption told an entirely more nuanced story: if you were to show up at the restaurant's downtown location that weekend during the No Kings protest wearing an inflatable costume, you could have a beer for $3, but if you wore a frog costume, you could have a beer for free. It was the most popular post in the history of Lardo's social media accounts.

Weapons of war have increasingly found their way into the arsenals of domestic police forces. Few people know that better than protesters in Bangladesh. During the 2024 student uprising, the UN estimates that as many as 1,400 people were killed the vast majority of them by firearms used by state security forces. But over the past few decades, police forces in wealthier parts of the world have also come to look and act more like armies.