Peter B. Collins Presents Elizabeth Beavers
While we’ve been exposing the expanding American police state here for years, many Americans got their fist glimpse watching the coverage of the protests in Ferguson, Missouri this August. Elizabeth Beavers describes the Pentagon’s 1033 program and Homeland Security’s grants to local agencies as the pipelines for military hardware adopted by local cops all over the nation. While these transfers are rationalized as part of the failed wars on some drugs and terrorism, the scenes of snipers atop MRAP’s targeting unarmed civilians were disturbing to the public, media pundits, and even the White House. Beavers supports a new bill from Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) that would put sharp limits on such transfers. We also talk about the “vertical integration” of law enforcement over the last decade.
*Elizabeth Beavers is Legislative Associate for Militarism and Civil Liberties at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Visit her blog here
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