''Police are nothing less than soldiers a country’s rulers turn loose on its taxpayers''

"Police are nothing less than soldiers a country’s rulers turn loose on its taxpayers. Such troops have seldom been armed as heavily as those sent against external enemies, but America’s increasingly “militarized” cops flout that rule of thumb. And that brings us full circle, because prior to the nineteenth century, regular armies “policed” cities.

One fabled incident from America’s colonial history illustrates this. In 1770, the British Army’s policing of a town in Massachusetts culminated in the Boston Massacre."

from new american...