I was driving up East Wheelock on my way to class this week and there were two police officers directing traffic around the public works project being carried out at the intersection by Berry Sports Center. What is remarkable about this is that these officers were wearing dark blue combat fatigues. Their cargo pants were tucked into their boot tops, they had bellows pocket shirts with name tags and wide, black nylon belts bearing sidearms in quick release holsters encircled their waists. They were ready for a shootout on East Wheelock. We don't need that kind of presence while a hole is being dug in the street. We need Sheriff Taylor of Mayberry, RFD, with or without Barney.
I suppose combat attire is reasonable given the extreme nature of traffic here in River City and the casually brutal behavior of college professors, students, carpenters and clerks as they motor about Hanover. Local police officers wear combat boots and bulletproof vests. They carry 9mm handguns with 15 round magazines, have pepper spray or mace on their belts, shotguns in their cars and probably have M-16 rifles in the station house. Add to that arsenal the common personal attributes of a high and tight, or very short, haircut, a uniform with a broad campaign hat, spit-shined boots and starched shirt and pants and behold; you've got the Army on the streets not a friendly cop. This is especially true when police are dressed in the dark, unmistakably martial uniforms on exhibit in front of the gym.
In the United States, each agency of the federal government possessing regulatory powers has a militarized group ready to respond to its needs or to support other federal agencies when jurisdictions conceivably overlap. Armed police of the IRS stand ready to apprehend tax cheats, while uniformed or undercover agents of the INS round up illegal immigrants. Alcohol, tobacco or firearm law violators are arrested by black clad officers of the ATF, and any National Park tourists running amok are corralled by gun-toting Park Rangers. Squads of Department of Energy police confine energy abusers, and the Department of Defense, the umbrella organization for our military, has its own police force.
A hallmark of the most barbarous regimes in history and in modern times is the presence of a highly structured and regulated, para-military police organization. East Germany's Stasi comes to mind, along with the Iranian Savak. Units operating as national police forces conducted the recent atrocities in the Balkan states. I don't suggest that local or federal police forces are on par with these homicidal organizations, but the purposeful militarization of a civil force makes the mobilization of that force for military purposes very much easier to accomplish.
I think everyone would agree that police need firearms for their protection and for ours, but the heavily armed young men and women clad in combat fatigues sporting harsh military haircuts send the wrong message to the community. It tells the citizens of Hanover that the extreme danger of a policing the Upper Valley requires these accoutrements. The daily presence of this show of force makes their appearance and equipment appear regular and ordinary, and it surely sends the message that might equals right to the officers bearing the armor and firepower. It is not ordinary and is not right.
The presence of so many heavily armed enforcers gives the false impression that we are on the right course to a safe society. The dramatic rise in prison construction carries the same sense that something is being done about the rough characters that hover just out of sight, ready and willing to take our property or our lives. This evil hovering is implied by the presence of the fatigue wearing, combat ready police forces on our streets, and that implication leads to the circular logic that justifies the massive presence of the enforcers.
The knee-jerk reactions of public officials to imagined threats, or to complaints by citizens, has led to the overtly military styled organization of police forces here and around the country. We don't need them and it is time we get the Army off our streets.
P.S. To the knee-jerkers here in Hanover: leave that tree alone, it didn't do anything.
