(Photo courtesy latimes.com)

By Josh Weizel – Editorial Editor

In many states and cities, the police have become increasingly more militarized with heavy SWAT teams. Actions like those in Ferguson, Missouri, where an unarmed African-American teenager was shot down by a white police officer, raise the question of how militarized police forces are. Is a little sacrifice of our liberties necessary in the name of security? There is a controversy brewing across the country about whether we should trade a little liberty for security or if our fundamental freedoms are more important.

When did the USA become a country that would be foreign and unrecognizable to our Founding Fathers? What has happened to our country when local police forces have become SWAT teams ready to raid people’s private property?

The evidence is overwhelming. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Pentagon is giving state governments $75 billion-a-year to finance domestic security, including items like surveillance cameras which violate the Fourth Amendment’s protection from search and seizure. What is even more startling is that this problem has grown increasingly worse under the Obama administration. President Obama came to power with noble promises and campaign against the Bush era civil liberty violations. The facts are, however, that during the Obama administration, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns with about 200,000 ammunition magazines from the federal government.

The startling truth is that local police forces are now starting to look like bands of soldiers ready for the battlefield. Our country is starting to look more like the Soviet Union than a Constitutional Republic. The Founding Fathers put the Bill of Rights in place to protect citizens from tyrannical government and to ensure against the infringement of those rights.

Whether we like it or not, there are some chilling facts we have to face. Many government agencies, like the Internal Revenue Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Fish and Wildlife Service, now include SWAT teams and they all have power over citizens. We have to face the chilling truth that we are going down a very dangerous road in this country and if we don’t unite together to stand up for our civil liberties we soon may not have the right to do that.

Militarization of states and cities isn’t the only issue concerning civil liberties in this country. Some people think that this is typical Libertarian rhetoric, but the truth is that real people have been affected by the militarization of the police force in all levels of policing. One example is John Pozgai, who is an immigrant from Hungary. Pozgai worked as a merchant, saved his money and was eventually able purchase land. Pozgai, who assumed he had the right to do what he chose on his own property, removed 7,000 old tires and old automobiles that were buried there. Would you believe that the Environmental Protection Agency defined his property as a wetland even though the only connection to a wetland was a small drainage ditch? Can you believe that after the Army Corp. of Engineers insisted that he apply for a permit and after he applied for that permit the EPA sent cameras to monitor his activities?  Can you believe that he was then arrested for putting earth, topsoil and sand into the United States waters?

In the logic of the EPA, he was discharging pollutants. Is it really moral that this individual spent three years in prison because the EPA deemed earth, soil and sand as pollutants? The truth is the EPA openly admitted that Pozgai did not release any hazardous waste into the earth’s waters. The truth is when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution they did not intend for the government to have these enormous powers.

The Founding Fathers did not intend for police forces and government agencies to be armed SWAT Teams that can raid the homes of individuals and violate their constitutional rights. The Founding Fathers did not intend for local police departments to have tanks with 360 degree rotating turrets.

The side that supports police force and raids will make legitimate points in arguing that it is necessary to prevent violent crimes. What they fail to realize is that some of these raids are against individuals with nonviolent crimes. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, Special Weapons and Tactical SWAT teams connected to local police conducted 124 paramilitary style raids in the U.S. Eighty percent of SWAT team raids were used for nonviolent drug cases.

Is it really necessary to have armed Swat Teams to break into homes and terrorize residents for nonviolent crimes? Is this not escalating the situation? This is not a partisan issue since both Republicans and Democrats have equally infringed on our civil liberties. It’s time we unite and form political collations that include liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to stand up for liberty.

(Some information courtesy nytimes.com, theweek.com, latimes.com, and alternet.org)