Ron Paul addresses Monday on the Ron Paul Channel the menacing militarization of police in the United States. Paul, the chairman and founder of RPI, explains the problem extends from small towns obtaining military combat vehicles to United States government agencies buying up vast amounts of weapons and ammunition to police employing over 40,000 SWAT team raids each year. Paul also notes in the commentary that crime in Denver has decreased following the legalization of marijuana in Colorado. Paul wonders if Colorado may be on to something—less laws are a better means than militarized police to reduce crime.
Watch the complete commentary here.
As has happened in other instances, Paul mentions that someone shooting at people at Seattle Pacific University in Washington state was stopped earlier this month by an individual who happened to be nearby instead of by police; Jon Meis, a student at the university, used pepper spray on the shooter whom additional students then helped subdue.
Paul concludes that “we do not need to further militarize our local police with tanks and SWAT teams and machine guns and illegal entries and no-knock attacks.” Instead, he suggests we must depend on ourselves, our friends, and our neighbors for safety.
Read here and here the New York Times articles regarding, respectively, police militarization and marijuana legalization that Paul mentions in his Ron Paul Channel commentary.