TUESDAY, OCT 28, 2014 09:01 AM PDT
From the War on Drugs to the militarization of police, these deeply unsettling milestones got us where we are
(Credit: Kozorez Vladislav via Shutterstock)
This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
The August 19 shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the protests that followed have focused attention on the militarization of police in the United States. Police overreach, especially in African-American neighborhoods, is nothing new: it was Marquette Frye’s confrontation with California Highway Patrol officers on Aug. 11, 1965, that sparked the Watts Riots in Los Angeles almost half a century ago. But much has changed since the 1960s and 1970s: American police are a lot more militarized than they were back then, and many of the checks and balances that made the U.S. a democratic republic have been eroded by both courts and politicians. Here are 10 events of recent decades that have encouraged the growth of a police state in the U.S. and promoted the type of toxic environment in which unarmed Brown was shot six times.
1. Ronald Reagan Escalates the War on Drugs
Although the war on drugs started under President Richard Nixon and continued under the administrations of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, it was expanded considerably during Ronald Reagan’s two terms as president. Reagan proved to be much more draconian than Nixon, aggressively promoting militarized no-knock drug raids, asset forfeiture laws and mandatory minimum sentences, especially for crack cocaine. The drug war has greatly increased the prison population and placed a heavy burden on taxpayers, as well as imperiled many innocent Americans. Since the 1980s, there have been countless examples of narcotics officers targeting the wrong house or apartment for a no-knock SWAT raid, brandishing assault weapons and killing or injuring innocent people who had nothing to do with drugs. And when that happens, the officers hardly ever face incarceration or even civil charges.
2. Rodney King Beating of 1991
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