It was back when they first developed SWAT teams and started dressing military style and carrying auto rifles and driving tanks. Like this one. You might think all that armor and extra firepower made them more formidable. They thought so. Some of them still do. What it really did was make them contemptible, just like the fascist police in the dictatorships. It is, as rare reader jdallen says, the mark of a government that is afraid of its citizens. And they return the favor by distrusting the government. As they should.
Via Mouth of the Brazos.
UPDATE: Waco was the most obvious and public manifestation of this problem: “One of the most significant trends of federal law enforcement in the last fifteen years has been its militarization…and similar trends at the state and local level.”
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 