Anyone else see this coming? "Police Response To San Bernardino Stokes Militarization Fears"

When I was watching the live coverage of San Bernardino, and saw those armored vehicles approaching
that bullet-riddled black SUV on the scene of the shoot-out, it made me go: "hmmm .. THIS must be
what all that military gear and armored tanks are for." Sad to say -- thanks to the NRA, ISIS and their
ilk -- I suspect the military gear is probably here to stay.

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Police Response To San Bernardino Stokes Militarization Fears
by Martin Kask * December 4, 2015 * NPR

On the day of the mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., the city's SWAT team was training for an active shooter situation just minutes away from the scene of the massacre. "We were just working through scenarios when this call went out," says Lt. Travis Walker, the SWAT team commander.

Walker says they'd decided to train on Wednesday in part to learn some lessons from the deadly shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo., last week. This response isn't unique to San Bernardino; in the weeks since the terrorist attacks in Paris, local law enforcement agencies around the country have been preparing for the possibility of more challenging attacks. In San Bernardino on Wednesday morning, Walker was running his officers through scenarios with volunteers playing the role of shooters.

"We'd just finished a training scenario that involved multiple shooters at multiple locations within a small confined area," he says. And then they were off — to the scene of a real-life multiple-shooter attack. They didn't get there in time to stop it, but the suspects were killed in a shootout later in the day. Walker and his team were there for that, too, using armored vehicles to get close.



That scene was meaningful because those were the very same kind of armored vehicles that for the past year or so have become a symbol of what some people call police militarization, something that's gotten a bad rap since the Ferguson, Mo., protests last year.

Walker says now people can see why they have the heavy gear.