Police Militarization: The New Search and SeizureTed Baumann These soldaten soon found ways to deploy their skills at home. Supported by Minister of Defense Gustav Noske, right-wingers including one Corporal Adolf Hitler organized ex-soldiers into Freikorps, and armed them with surplus military weaponry. These militia brutally crushed Germanys nascent post-war democratic movement. For the next 20 years, they provided the core of the feared Brownshirts, street thugs who helped Hitler and the Nazis into power. Fast forward 100 years. Another faltering empire in domestic political crisis, the United States, brings its own frustrated warriors and their weapons back home Brownshirts in America far-fetched? Not at all. Theyre already here, this time dressed in black or camo. Ive already told you about the militarization of our borderlands, using tactics drawn directly from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. I warned then that events there would soon affect you and me. I was right. A few weeks ago, a police paramilitary unit raided a house not too far from my home in Atlanta, in search of a teenager suspected of dealing drugs. Upon breaking down the door, they lobbed a flash bang grenade into the crib of a two-year-old child, Bounkham Bou Bou Phonesavanh, blowing a hole in the infants chest. The teenager they were searching for a relative in the family did not even live in that house. These boys have some really nasty toys. Since the late 1980s, the Department of Defenses Program 1033 has transferred tons of military-grade weaponry, including machine guns, tanks and aircraft, to state and local police departments, free of charge. As our Middle Eastern wars degenerated into counterinsurgencies, these weapons have become more and more oriented to the sort of urban combat that SWAT teams seem to think is their mission. None of this would have happened, however, if Americas police hadnt embraced the opportunity to go military with such gusto. Indeed, Americas police culture long ago abandoned any pretense at a Mayberry-style Officer Friendly approach. With few exceptions, police now see themselves as an occupying army, confronting a population where every individual is a potential hostile. Police routinely refer to their daily beats as tours, and to interaction with potential criminals as combat. What accounts for this radical change in attitudes? Wheres Sheriff Andy Taylor? The influx of former military personnel into domestic policing jobs definitely plays a role. So too does the glorification of force that goes with being a militaristic empire surrounded by imagined enemies. More important, however, is the profound change in the relationship between citizen and government in America since 9/11. In everything that matters, we citizens are no longer treated as the employers of civil servants like police, to whom they are accountable, but as the object of governments efforts to impose its own independent will. From the National Security Agency to your local sheriffs office, a sense of impunity and utter lack of accountability reigns supreme. Todays police are recruited and trained in a carefully cultivated atmosphere of us vs. them that treats the rest of us as potential threats to be neutralized, not as citizens to be served and protected. But every policeman in the country is theoretically accountable to representatives elected by the citizenry. If Americas police are out of control, its because those elected officials arent doing their jobs. And that means we arent, either. Many citizens of interwar Germanys Weimar Republic craved law and order to such an extent that they were willing to overlook blatant abuses of basic rights and freedoms, as long as they were directed at others. Political opponents were deemed not to be real Germans. As political temperatures rose, the militaristic skills and attitudes developed on the Western and Eastern fronts of 1914-18 were increasingly substituted for democratic debate and process. Many Germans thought this was fine, because the ascendant forces seemed to favor their own interests. Then came Hitler. As the courageous theologian Martin Niemller wrote shortly after his release from a Nazi concentration camp, Americans would do well to meditate on Pastor Niemllers words. Too many of us are guilty of looking the other way as our politicians allow Americas police forces to morph into heavily armed, unaccountable paramilitary thugs. Ultimately, however, it is unlikely that our political process will arrest this trend. Thats why its so important to emulate another group of Germans from the 1930s those who left while there was still time and escape America while you still can. Related selfnews Post Article: Ted Baumann is an Offshore and Asset Protection Editor who joined The Sovereign Society in 2013. As an expat who lived in South Africa for 25 years, Ted specializes in asset protection and international migration. He is the editor of Offshore Confidential and Plan B Club. His writing is featured at The Sovereign Investor, where this article first appeared. For more information about how to protect your assets, please visit here. 