External resources relating to What is the militarisation of policing?
They include incidents of police violence against civilians, men and women, posing no apparent threat, as well as against journalists.
For the past week, our social media and television screens have been dominated by images of police officers in head-to-toe body armor wielding batons, pepper-ball guns, riot shields, and teargas against mostly peaceful protesters. Many Americans are now more certain than ever that we need to “demilitarize” our police.
Joe Lewis was just 18 when he was shot twice by the Ohio National Guard on his college campus. A freshman at Kent State University in Ohio, Lewis had saved money working at the post office during high school to pay for his first year of college. He loved the freedom college afforded, and in 1970, the campus was abuzz with the "excitement of being on the cusp of a new world," he said. Lewis grew up on images of the civil rights protests and the Vietnam War and took part in anti-war protests when he got to the campus.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Sunday his 7-month-old government had yet to make progress in tackling record levels of violence afflicting the country as he launched a new militarised police force tasked with fixing the problem.
Dozens of people in Hong Kong say they were injured by the police during a mass demonstration in June against a contentious bill that would allow extraditions to mainland China. The New York Times reviewed hundreds of videos and photos posted online by witnesses, along with submissions to our WhatsApp tip line, to assess whether the Hong Kong police used excessive force. Experts at Amnesty International, a human rights group, helped examine the footage.
A tense calm has returned to Harare a day after three people were shot dead as soldiers and police fought running battles with hundreds of protesters, firing live ammunition, teargas and water cannon.
One in five arrests in China last year took place in Xinjiang, the nominally autonomous western territory that critics say has been turned into a police state rife with human rights violations.
Japan has one of the lowest rates of gun crime in the world. In 2014 there were just six gun deaths, compared to 33,599 in the US. What is the secret?
In this public lecture, world renowned feminist scholar Professor Cynthia Enloe explores how militarisation is a social process that affects our everyday lives and enables states to fight wars. Enloe asks ‘where are the women?’ in international affairs and explores how women as soldiers' wives, secretaries, factory workers, shoppers and soldiers can both support and oppose armed conflict. She also explores how notions of masculinity and femininity can be militarised or de-militarised and what the implications of this are for state foreign policy.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced Wednesday that authorities had carried out more than 2,200 raids since a state of emergency was declared following the November 13 attacks that killed 130 people. Under the state of emergency, French police can raid any home without judicial oversight. In addition, police have held 263 people for questioning—nearly all have been detained. Another 330 people are under house arrest, and three mosques have also been shut down. The vast majority of those targeted in the raids have been Muslim. We speak with Yasser Louati, spokesperson and head of the International Relations Desk for the Collective Against Islamophobia in France.
Firearms officers called to tackle terrorist gunmen have been ordered to ignore the injured and dying in the event of a UK attack and instead race towards the threat to try to minimise the total number of casualties in such a situation, a police chief has said.
Since the terror attacks in Paris last month, which claimed 130 lives, British police have been urgently reviewing their tactics. Police chiefs are trying to reassure the government and the public that they could deal with such an event, where multiple targets are hit by a team of terrorists targeting civilians with automatic weapons.
Pat Gallan, Metropolitan police assistant commissioner for special crime and operations, said armed officers had been told to ignore the wounded, even if that included their colleagues, and prioritise arresting or shooting the armed terrorists...
The Metropolitan police commissioner wants to increase the number of armed officers in London in the wake of the Paris attacks.
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said he expected to have to lose 5,000 of the capital’s 32,000 officers to cope with cuts likely to total £800m over four years after the spending review this month.
But he tried to reassure Londoners that the number of firearms officers was being reviewed as a result of the attacks in the French capital, in which 129 people were killed. He said the Metropolitan police was proud to be a mostly unarmed force, but the Paris attacks showed the need for change.
There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that the militarization of domestic security is bad for human rights and has little impact on crime and violence in the long term. So what keeps attracting Latin American governments to adopt these “iron fist” policies?
All front-line police in England and Wales should be offered Tasers in light of the increased terrorism threat, the head of the Police Federation says.
Steve White said the devices would help protect against "dangerous people" who could be preparing to attack officers.
"We've got to show our officers that we're taking the threat seriously," he told Radio 4's Today...
The recent race riots in Ferguson, Missouri put a spotlight on the militarization of police in the United States. A panel discussion at the School of International Service on “The Militarization of Policing in Comparative Perspective” addressed this trend at home and abroad, looking at the United States, Europe, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Indonesia...
The report, Preach What You Practice: The Separation of Military and Police Roles in the Americas, from the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) provides a background briefing on key distinctions between military and police functions. It calls on the Obama Administration to change direction, and stop encouraging the military forces of other countries to take on roles that would be illegal for the U.S. Armed Forces to carry out at home. The authors, a team of WOLA’s regional security experts, set out specific steps to be taken by both United States and countries in the region.
Indonesia has won praise for cracking down on Islamist militants behind a string of deadly attacks and at the core of the fight have been the heavily armed black-clad officers of its anti-terrorism unit -- Detachment 88...
The militarization of police units has been a longstanding policy in Latin America well before it received attention from the U.S. media. U.S. bilateral assistance to countries in Latin America has encouraged the adoption of military equipment and military training for local police forces. While the U.S. prohibits the armed forces from assisting police forces at home, the practice of technology transfer and military training in-country has been a cornerstone of U.S. policy in Latin America and the Caribbean for years. The logic is that crime and violence have overwhelmed local police forces—weak and corrupt to begin with—and therefore the armed forces are necessary for the state to provide security. But that comes with huge risks...