What are your thoughts on “Militarizing the Police?”

The role of the police is vastly different.

Protect and Serve...

How can a militarized police serve and protect, if their training and tactics create a "we vs them" mentality both within and outside the police department?

This is a serious developmental and professional educational issue. I was trained as a police officer many years ago, and this lesson has not been lost - PROTECT AND SERVE, not FIGHT and DEFEND.

If the criminals have capabilities beyond our state and local police then how is LNO supposed to be maintained in a crisis situation prior to the NG being called out? Even having the NG called out is a "loaded" statement because what are the ROE for the particular situation? With that being said, ownership of said capabilities IMHO is only 10% of the law, being able to effectively, efficiently and precisely employ those capabilities is the other 90%. SWAT units were initially developed to give LE a small, precision paramilitary capability for a pinpoint crisis - hostage situation, building take over, stopping vehicles, etc. As NG, we used to do our annual crown control formation drills with batons and riot shields in the days prior to the LTL packages being available. How often do the police perform these types of exercises/drills. based on what I'm seeing in Ferguson, I'd err on the side of not much. When a melee ensues, as in Ferguson, what is LE's OPLAN to handle the crisis? As we've seen they need a better planning and deployment basis for this type of crisis. A complete, large paramilitary police force - LA SWAT is probably the closest thing, but no. State and local police assisted by military planners for both tactical and strategic crisis PLANNING AND OBSERVATION ONLY yes.

Great discussion topic Sir. Should get interesting. My vote goes to the the last option