http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ivan-eland/trading-places-swapping-t_b_11179058.html

Trading Places: Swapping the Roles of Police and Military Is Bad for the Republic

07/25/2016

Ivan Eland Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty, The Independent Institute

Lately, the tactics of local police departments have been in the news because of mass shootings at Orlando and Fort Myers nightclubs, questionable police killings of civilians in suburban St. Paul and Baton Rouge, and retaliatory slayings of police in Baton Rouge and Dallas. Some commentators have argued convincingly that the militarization of police departments has caused the use of aggressive policing, which has in turn spawned counter-violence, resulting in the death of innocent police officers.

In the recent orgy of violence, one notable incident of police militarization was the jury-rigged bomb used in Dallas to kill a shooter of police. The police used C-4, a powerful military-grade explosive, that was attached to a police robot, normally used defensively to safely dispose of bombs, to offensively attack and kill the shooter. The use of such a questionable tactic was overshadowed by the deaths and funerals of the innocent slain officers.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ivan-eland/trading-places-swapping-t_b_11179058.html