Police militarization is a legacy of cold war paranoia

The police who faced protesters in Ferguson, Missouri looked more like soldiers than officers of the peace. In August, citizens squared off with a camouflage-clad police force armed with tear gas and grenade launchers, armored tactical vehicles and rifles with long-range scopes. Since then, government officials and the media have blamed police militarization on a U.S. Department of Defense program, begun in 1997, that provides police with free surplus military gear. But the roots of militarized policing are much older.

To find the origins of modern militarized policing, we have to look back to the Cold War. Starting in the 1950s, the defense department spent millions of dollars on studies that tried to explain how communists gained followers around the world.