Poor Len reveals what state Walt lives in

Walt and Poor Len grew up [more or less. Ed.] in a neighbourhood that looked like this -- like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. (We didn't go to the "slow school" though. Ours was red brick, for the faster kids.)

But our image of the friendly neighbourhood cop -- the image which was washed into our little brains by our parents, our teachers, the parish priest and pretty much everyone -- was much like what you see here.

The policeman was our friend! He helped us cross the busy street and generally watched over us, like a guardian angel with a gas station attendant's cap and white gloves. If you needed help, call a cop!

Times and neighbourhoods have changed. Cops have changed too, as libertarian Radley Balko (who blogs for the Huffington Post as "The Agitator") declares in his first book, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces (PublicAffairs, 2013). Nowadays the cops you meet -- you should be so unlucky! -- look more like this.

They won't be your local neighbourhood cops either. Gone are the days when a policeman who lived in your `hood actually pounded a beat, on foot. [That's where the old nickname "flatfoot" came from. Ed.] Modern cops, when they're not in the donut shop, cruise around in air-conditioned "prowl cars"... or better yet, armored personnel carriers. Len isn't making that up. Mr. Balko says the Fargo ND police department has one, complete with rotating gun turret.

And they'll be considerably better armed and armored too. Even cops on traffic patrol wear kevlar vests and carry an awesome array of automatic weapons, tasers, pepper spray and other WMDs, all the better to subdue perps going 10 mph over the speed limit.

This all started in... wait for it... the hippy-dippy 60s, when young people started to think for themselves -- shock! horror! -- and "do their own thing", in defiance of The Authorities and Forces for Good in our society. It was the social upheaval caused by free thinkers and non-conformists that caught the attention of our politicians and led to the "get tough on crime" policies of Nixon and his successors.

The way Mr. Balko puts it, the "Silent Majority began to see a link between drugs, crime, the counter-culture and race". The problem is that it's virtually impossible not to get involved in some way with at least one of those four things. That's why the Excited States of America has such incredibly high numbers of convicts and ex-convicts, especially of the non-white persuasion.

So also, no matter what colour you are or what you're doing, the policeman who used to be your friend (LOL) now sees you as the enemy. You could be a non-English-speaker who wandered into a "secure area" of an airport because you got lost, and got tasered to death by four (4) Mounties. That happened in Vancouver in 2007 and no-one has yet been found guilty of anything. Or you could be the next Rodney King. Nuff said.

Not just libertarians but all Americans and Canadians should be concerned about the effects on our society of the militarization of the police and the criminalization -- in the minds of the police -- of everyone else. Rise of the Warrior Cop is our summer "must read".

Oh... I promised to tell you what state Walt lives in. Walt lives in a police state.