Militaristic Alerts

"There's an entire for-profit police militarization industry that wouldn't be affected [minor step in addressing overall militarization trend taken by Obama administration]. At the end of the day, what really needs to be addressed is a 25-year-long process of militarizing the culture of military police. There needs to be a focus on the demand side rather than the supply. As long as there is a high level of demand for heavy military equipment by local law enforcement, you're not really fixing the problem."
Peter Kraska, expert on police militarization, Eastern Kentucky University

"This time will be different and one of the reasons this time will be different is the president of the United States is deeply invested in making sure this time is different."
"Ferguson laid bare a problem that is not unique to St. Louis or that area and is not unique to our time and that is a simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of colour."
"Young people of colour do not feel as if they are being treated fairly."
U.S. President Barack Obama

Protesters hold their hands up as they stand in front of a line of police officers after the grand jury’s decision was announced. Lucy Nicholson / Reuters

The situation in the U.S. where police in full battle gear backed by armoured vehicles, sharp-shooters and helicopters confronted protesters in an atmosphere of aggressive military force against a civilian crowd of protesters initiated a public backlash when the streets of a Midwestern suburb seemed to turn into the battlefield of a civil war. Which, in a sense it was. The polarization between the races is endemic and frustratingly difficult to overcome.

On the other hand, public order must be maintained. It was not the police who torched buildings and destroyed the livelihoods of people. The rancour and belligerence over the death of a young thug has demonstrated aptly that America's conversation with itself has a long, long way to go before civility and respect can be restored. The death of 19-year-old Michael Brown was a tragedy. But the circumstances that led to that tragedy were of his own making.

A 12-year-old boy carrying a pellet gun near a recreation centre in Cleveland -- when a rookie white policeman responded to the boy's fake gun and the boy's refusal to obey commands by the policeman -- was shot to death another matter entirely. A public outcry and passions expended on the death of Tamir Rice would represent a far more reasonable reaction to police stupidity and reaction, inexplicable in its nature when a grown man faced up against the refusal of a child to follow orders.

In Canada, police in large urban centres are facing a situation where resources are being diverted to investigations of reports related to terrorism, Since 9-11, and the growing threat of Islamist terrorists against the West, and with it the incidence of home-grown threats and dreadful events such as those that recently took place in Quebec and Ottawa where in separate incidents two Armed Forces military men were murdered, a similar type of militarism has taken place.

"You never know when these people [jihadis] will switch and take up action. That demands of us enormous vigilance and choices that sometimes keeps us awake at night", said Montreal police chief Marc Parent. Terrorist threats have risen to dedicating 90 percent of his force's time to security liaison to the detriment of other issues of a local nature. "We don't know the threat in its entirety. We don't have a tenth of the resources we need" said Edmonton police chief Rod Knecht.

The U.S. began its issuing of military resources no longer required by the military when the Pentagon began apportioning $4.3-billion in surplus military equipment to the 18,000 police forces in the country. Equipment funnelled to various police forces include small arms (automatic weapons), night-vision goggles, Humvees, mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles and aircraft along with armoured vests, helmets goggles and gas masks.

In the United States the concerns are twofold; preparation for future terrorist attacks hitting urban centres, and incidents of mob violence in response to the tense relations between blacks and the larger white population that comprise the majority of the American population. Whereas in Canada, race relations and violence attached to them, are present, but not the dire problem seen to the south. The social dysfunction of race in the U.S. is a gigantic social blemish, one yet to be solved.

And yet so too is the situation where the Western democracies are threatened by the viciously malicious plans of terrorists whose organizations and intentions are fully invested in the destruction of those democratic values and the imposition of Islamist conquest to finally fulfill the destiny of Islam, meant to establish a global caliphate. Death is the means by which persuasion to their destiny is fulfilled.