MOSCOW, August 23 (RIA Novosti) - Paramilitary tactics are taking hold across United States police departments in a way that has not been seen in other western democracies, Director of the Cato Institute Project on Criminal Justice, Tim Lynch said on Friday.
“I haven’t seen the problem discussed with regard to other western democracies,” Lynch said during a live broadcast responding to whether the militarization of police is unique to the US, excluding dictatorships. “The paramilitary units have been created. They’re not just in the big cities anymore, they’re in small towns.” He continued that police access to military gear “means paramilitary tactics have taken hold in American policing.”
Since protests in Ferguson, Missouri erupted over lethal police brutality, the public has focused on a Pentagon program that has transferred billions of dollars of military hardware to police departments around the country.
“We’re talking about M16s, grenade launchers, armored personnel carriers... We’re talking about violent, no-knock raids on people homes, tens of thousands of time a year,” said Lynch citing a nationwide Raid Map. One estimate asserts that up to 40,000 such raids take place every year in the United States.
Despite the troubling trend US police militarization and brutality that has raised concern internationally, Lynch told RIA Novosti, “I don’t see any role for international pressure in these circumstances.”
