LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR
In an interview with Jon, McCain
speaks about points of tension
with newcomers in the GOP Senate, including Ted Cruz and Rand
Paul, and opens up about his future prospects. “I do think that I
have seen individuals, men, who
were at the top of their game and
stayed to the point where they
were not only not at the top of
their game, but they were kind of
objects of our sympathy,” he says.
“I don’t want to be one of those.”
Elsewhere in the issue, Radley
Balko writes about the increasing militarization of our police
forces, as the American Civil Liberties Union is now looking into
the ways police are using weapons
that were once used only for war.
The numbers tell the story of a
rapid rise in this troubling trend,
starting in the late 1960s when
the first SWAT team formed in Los
Angeles. By 1982, 60 percent of
cities with 50,000 or more people
had a SWAT team, rising to nearly
90 percent of cities by 1995.
Radley points to a powerful factor driving this trend: the ability
of politicians to appear “tough on
crime” by securing large grants
for their hometown police depart-
HUFFINGTON
03.31.13
ments. But fewer people are asking whether these grants, and the
high-powered weapons they bring
to communities across the country, are good for the people they’re
designed to protect. Radley introduces us to Keene, a small New
Hampshire town where residents
At 76, the man who
once wrote that earning the
respect of his father and
grandfather was ‘the most
lasting ambition of my life’
is still raring for a fight.”
protested the proposed purchase
of an armored personnel carrier that would be parked outside
City Hall. As one resident put it,
“Keene is a beautiful place. It’s
gorgeous, and it’s safe, and we love
it here. We just don’t want to live
in the kind of place where there’s
an armored personnel carrier
parked outside of City Hall
... It’s just not who we are.”
ARIANNA