ACLU says Militarized Police Operations Overwhelmingly Target Non-whites

From [HERE] Earlier this year, the American Civil Liberties Union tried to produce a comprehensive report on the militarization of America's police forces. But they couldn't. "The militarization of policing in the United States has occurred with almost no public oversight," they concluded. "Not a single law enforcement agency in this investigation provided records containing all of the information that the ACLU believes is necessary to undertake a thorough examination of police militarization. Some agencies provided records that were nearly totally lacking in important information. Agencies that monitor and provide oversight over the militarization of policing are virtually nonexistent."

The people charged with protecting us are afraid of what will happen if we know what they're doing.

But the ACLU did discover something worth knowing: after aggregating the reports and data on SWAT raids they could find, they found that the militarized police operations were overwhelmingly aimed at minorities. "Overall, 42 percent of people impacted by a SWAT deployment to execute a search warrant were Black and 12 percent were Latino. This means that of the people impacted by deployments for warrants, at least 54 percent were minorities." (For comparison, 72 percent of Americans identified as white in 2010.) The feel of the police presence is much more militarized in minority communities than white communities.