When I first watched the video of the pepper spraying at UC Davis, I immediately asked myself -- even before the onset of the assault by the now-infamous Lt. Pike -- "What are these campus cops doing dressed up like Imperial stormtroopers?" And then I got to thinking about "Alice's Restaurant"
In the story, when officer Opie takes Arlo back to the scene of his crime (littering*), the site was overrun by police who were just looking for an excuse to use all the stuff they had lying around. As Arlo tells it:
And they was using up all kinds of cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officer's station. They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and they took twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. Took pictures of the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that's not to mention the aerial photography
We have a similar problem today: Ever since 9/11 the Department of Homeland Security**, in the name of "fighting terrorism", has been showering local police forces with money for what is effectively paramilitary equipment and training.
There are several problems with this. The first one is that, as in Arlo's case, if you give the cops stuff (in 1965 it was plaster casts, dogs and cameras; in 2011 it's riot gear, LRADs and Pepper Spray), they will find an excuse to use them.
The second problem is even more insidious. We are slowly but surely converting the police forces of this country into paramilitary units -- and when it gets down to the level of Campus Police at a place like Davis you know we're in trouble. The more this happens, the more the police start behaving as an occupying force rather than as a part of the community. The long term consequences of this are frightening.
I have no idea how to stop this. The movement started under "War President" Bush and his Neocon and PNAC buddies, but the current administration shows little interest in backing away from this philosophy of militarizing the police.
*and creating a nuisance.
**That name exemplifies the problem; it sounds like something the Reich would have come up with in the 1930's. Furthermore, any time a Law Enforcement agency has "Security" in it's name, you can be pretty much assured that Civil Rights will not be high on its agenda.