No, having tanks in the streets is not a ‘superficial concern’
Today, AG Jeff Sessions announced that Donald Trump will be using his executive powers to undo the ban on military equipment for police officers. After the irregularities in Ferguson, Obama made sure that his own citizens wouldn’t have to feel as though they were in a war zone.
Now, for so-called security purposes, Trump is reversing that decision.
We will not put superficial concerns above public safety…The executive order the president will sign today will ensure that you can get the lifesaving gear that you need to do your job and send a strong message that we will not allow criminal activity, violence, and lawlessness to become the new normal. And we will save taxpayer money in the meantime.
Dixit Jeff Sessions, whom in one statement managed to insult citizens concerned over their own rights and have a total disregard for the way the US police force is actually acting. There have been so many violent incidents where police officers killed harmless citizens over nothing that one could say there’s a trend going on. Too often, the police organisations went above and beyond to protect the trigger-happy yeehaws that they call officers.
Tanks in your town
With a police force that biased and armed with a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’-mentality, who needs these guys driving mofoking tanks through urban areas?! Nobody, that’s who. And what are we supposed to make of the timing? Not weeks after the Charleston Nazi’s, the ones Trump refuses to condemn and uses ‘whataboutisms‘ to deflect (read here about the actual activities by alt-left during the Charleston attack), Trump reïntroduces military grade weaponry to be used against his own people by a force that targets minorities more than the white population. Do we want to question wether Trump is setting up a violent white supremacist takeover for the US? No. Do we need to? Maybe it’s time to do exactly that.
Whatever your opinion about that, though, it is definitely not a ‘superficial concern’ to worry about triggerhappy cops riding tanks in the streets of your town. And that measure is not intended for ‘public safety’ so much as for ‘cop safety’.