The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units. Police SWAT teams are now deployed tens of thousands of times each year, increasingly for routine jobs.Masked, heavily armed police officers in Louisiana raided a nightclub in 2006 as part of a liquor inspection. In Florida in 2010, officers in SWAT gear and with guns drawn carried out raids on barbershops that mostly led only to charges of “barbering without a license.”

Does it concern you at all that our police departments are looking more and more like military battalions? Is our social society on such a slippery slope that even governmental agencies clear down to the local level are becoming convinced that war gear is the best solution?

War Gear Flows to Police Departments – NYTimes.com.