All Hail the Police State, part 11

I recently attended a SWAT team training session.  I'm not a cop, but an organization I volunteer with has been used to play bad guys for SWAT training a few times.  It's fun, although it's super weird even thinking about pointing a gun at a cop, whether it's an exercise or not.  At this last one the cops were raiding a Islamic extremist camp that had a hostage.  The cops were very, very good at not shooting people on prayer rugs, which was very heartening.  They have a tough job, I wouldn't want to be in their shoes trying to make instant decisions about who the bad guys are and who isn't.

This exercise had police from a number of different departments, and one thing I noticed was every one of them looked like a soldier.  All of them had on military-style battle dress uniforms (BDU's) helmets, vests full of gear and serious carbines, short barreled rifles and sub-machine guns. 

Remember when cops used to dress like this?

Now far too often they look like this

Anyway, it reminded me of this, which I thought I'd share.  Take the quiz and see how you do. 

It's all part of the militarization of police, the two groups are becoming harder and harder to tell apart.  In general, that's bad as police and soldiers have very different jobs, although more and more they are working together.

Stay safe out there!