People who talk about militarization really don ' t have any grasp of history . Police forces have pretty much always had access to military grade weapons and armor for situations like this . It was reallyonly a brief period of time in the late 80 s and 90 s when some departments had decommed some of their aging weapons and been too cheapunderfunded to replace them . However , you can find plenty of examples from the 30 s 70 s of police carrying M 16 s , Thompson SMGs , and even old Browning Automatic Rifles in some cases . It ' s just that the technology for weapons and armor has accelerated to the point where they ' re actually effective , so they are used more often . And we really can ' t blame police for utilizing modern defensive technology , as much as some people try .