The world we live in is harsh and ugly at times. And it’s easy to give in to despair. This, sadly, is doubly true for those of us, like me, who expend a good deal of their time and energy trying to avoid the grasp of depression, even in the best of times. It’s hard […]
Tag Archives: the militarization of the police
No Indictment in Ferguson… Local protests planned for Tuesday
As expected, the St. Louis County grand jury that we’ve all been waiting to hear from these past several weeks has decided not to indict Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri this summer, setting in motion weeks of tense protest that would […]
Fatal police shooting in Ann Arbor raises questions… How will the community respond?
A 40-year-old woman was shot and killed by Ann Arbor police last night on the 2000 block of Winewood Avenue, at the home of her boyfriend, where she’d been living for the past several months. The woman, who has yet to be named by the police, was killed just around midnight, shortly after police officers […]
See how many military surplus grenade launchers and assault vehicles your local police now have at their disposal
This past May, the New York Times requested an accounting from the Pentagon of all the military gear since 2006 which had been transferred from our military to police forces around the United States. What they received in response was a staggering list, including “tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands […]
What I learned from Ferguson: Now’s the time to get the tanks off our streets and the money out of politics
As the story in Ferguson continues to evolve, one thing has become clear to me… Now is the time to move against the increasingly militarization of America’s local police forces. The public awareness has never been higher, and, for the first time, I feel like momentum is on our side. Before we get into that, […]