Former LAPD Deputy Chief Explains the Militarization of American Policing

LAPD Deputy Chief Stephen Downing (Ret.)
writes:  It is sad that it took a police killing and
the excessive deployment of a military presence by local law
enforcement in Ferguson, Missouri to focus national attention upon
a problem that has been metastasizing within American law
enforcement since the early 1970s.

The militarization of local law enforcement was seeded by the
Nixon administration’s declaration of the war on drugs in the early
1970s, and took root in the 1980s as result of President Reagan’s
escalation that poured millions into the drug war, shifting the
focus of local law enforcement away from violent and property
crimes to mostly small-time drug offenders.

Read this article.