• Also included is the steady rolling back of the Posse Comitatus Act, which basically prohibits the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement.

• The Strange and Dangerous Militarization of the US Police Force

• Our Creeping Police State: How Going to the Mall of America Can Land You in an FBI Counterterrorism Report

John Glaser, Antiwar.com

Submitted by David Culver

Radley Balko, simply one of the best journalists around, has a new piece up at the Huffington Post <> on the militarization of domestic police departments, especially since 9/11. Unsurprisingly, the numbers show the terrorist attacks served merely as a pretext for the power-grabbing martial response, which was directed mostly at Americans.

New York magazine reported some telling figures  last month (Aug, ’11) on how delayed-notice search warrants — also known as “sneak-and-peek” warrants — have been used in recent years. Though passed with the Patriot Act and justified as a much-needed weapon in the war on terrorism, the sneak-and-peek was used in a terror investigation just 15 times between 2006 and 2009. In drug investigations, however, it was used more than 1,600 times during the same period.

More…

Related:

Why Do the Police Have Tanks? The Strange and Dangerous Militarization of the US Police Force, Rania Khalek, AlterNet

• The federal government has supplied local police departments with military uniforms, weaponry, vehicles, and training.

• Blurring the line between police officer and soldier

• ‘Hill Street Blues’ Howard Hunter wasn’t fiction after all.

Our Creeping Police State: How Going to the Mall of America Can Land You in an FBI Counterterrorism Report, G.W. Schulz and Andrew Becker and Daniel Zwerdling,  America’s War Within/AlterNet
How writing in a notebook, filming, or looking around too much can throw you into the spooky world of homeland security.