WASHINGTON, June 25 (RIA Novosti), Lyudmula Chernova - The excessive militarization of US police leads to fatal "overreactions" of law enforcement officers to commonplace situations that do not require such drastic responses, Michelle Gross, President of Communities United Against Police Brutality told RIA Novosti Wednesday.
"Predictably, police engage in dangerous overreactions to routine situations, resulting in death and injuries to members of the communities and major infringements on civil liberties," Gross said, adding that the militarization of police in the US is an increasingly serious problem based on a new study by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The study suggests that US law enforcement at all levels has become dangerously and unnecessarily militarized in recent years, with heavily armed SWAT teams being deployed for serving warrants and drug searches, and often, disregarding the presence of children and elderly residents.
"There have been a number of high-profile incidents in which SWAT teams have broken into homes during the night for low-level drug or other minor offenses - sometimes even wrong addresses - and killed the residents, including children," Gross said. The president of the organization noted the particularly stark case of a SWAT team in Atlanta, GA incinerating the face of a child and blowing a hole in its chest by tossing a flash grenade into the baby's crib during a night raid over drug allegations.
Gross speculates that the state-of-the-art weaponry used by the police such as "flash grenades" are military armaments specifically designed for wartime operations that have instilled a new mindset in US law enforcement officers.
"This urban warrior mentality has also led to wholesale violations of civil liberties, with military armaments and exotic weapons such as sound cannons and skin-burning microwaves used on protesters engaging in legal, First-Amendment protected activities," Gross emphasized, expressing alarm that the situation is growing worse while the US becomes more of a police state.
"Police departments are awarded with expensive military equipment and the funding to use and maintain it. Having the equipment is an inducement to find ways to use it. When what you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail," Gross concluded.
