Nixon’s War on Drugs, Reagan’s War on Poverty, Clinton’s COPS program, the post-9/11 security state under Bush, Obama: by degrees, each of these innovations empowered police forces, always at the expense of civil liberties. The unrest of the 1960s brought about the invention of the SWAT unit-which in turn led to the debut of military tactics in the ranks of police officers. Today’s armored-up policemen are a far cry from the constables of early America. The consequences have been dire: the home is no longer a place of sanctuary, the Fourth Amendment has been gutted, and police today have been conditioned to see the citizens they serve as an other-an enemy. But according to investigative reporter Radley Balko, over the last several decades, America’s cops have increasingly come to resemble ground troops.

As a result, our country has generally worked to keep the military out of law enforcement. Even if the officer does violate the citizen’s rights, the officer is protected by qualified immunity.The last days of colonialism taught America’s revolutionaries that soldiers in the streets bring conflict and tyranny.

If other officers are nearby, there are policies in place-official and unofficial-to encourage them to back one another up. Absent video, if the officer’s account an incident differs from that of a citizen- even several citizens- his superiors, the courts, and prosecutors will nearly always defer to the officer. At the individual level, a police officer’s power and authority over the people he interacts with day to day is near complete. But perhaps we have entered a police state writ small. And the odds of any single person being victimized by a wrong-door raid, shot or beaten by a cop, or otherwise victimized by militarized police violence are slim to nil. Generally speaking, we’re free to travel.

This isn’t to say we’re in a police state, a term that’s often misused. In short, police today embody all of the threats the Founders feared were posed by standing armies, plus a few additional ones they couldn’t have anticipated. Law enforcement interests may occasionally come up short on budgetary issues, but legislatures rarely if ever pass new laws to hold police more accountable, to restrict their powers, or to make them more transparent.

“Police officers today are a protected class, one no politician wants to oppose.

Rise of the Warrior Cop by Radley Balko