[sgaither]

We have to ask ourselves: where is the money? Our rights aren't being lost to a sprawling military-police state just because there's a Big-Brother wannabe conspiring to destroy the constitution. Police departments grow the same way our project departments grow in engineering companies: by managers arguing for bigger budgets and spending more, sometimes wastefully, to justify bigger budgets come next fiscal year.

These hyped-up (sometimes roided-up) SWAT teams do what they do to justify their existence....no manager wants to preside over a shrinking department. It takes a lot of thinking and long-term policy making to reduce this perverse yet basic economic incentive

[llamataboot]

Don't forget all the war-on-terror funding and politics that have provided even rural police departments with armored personnel carriers and the like.[1] Or outfitting police departments with tons of equipment in advance of protests planned there which then filters down into daily use. In some cities, there is so little for the "anti-terror" cops to do that they have been conscripted into arresting drunk people and pot smokers.[2]

1) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/12/police-militarizati...

2) http://www.startribune.com/local/209811381.html

[alex-g]

There's another side to that, which is that overfunding of the police is coupled to underfunding of other institutions; too many social issues are framed as law-enforcement problems, and tackled with a militarized version of the law enforcement mindset.

[greedo]

A lot of the funding comes from seizures of cars, houses, cash, anything that can be grabbed. Then it's up to the citizen to "prove" it isn't ill-gotten goods.

[kabdib]

Some of the money, in some areas, certainly. Any idea how much?

[greedo]

I don't have any figures for local municipalities, but US Attorneys have been pretty prosperous. In 2010, the seizure total for the Feds was over $1 billion.

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/forfeiture

EDIT

This link is from 2008, but it seems to state that local governments get about $1 Billion/year also...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9149048...

[gaius]

because there's a Big-Brother wannabe conspiring to destroy the constitution

"Yes we scan"

[timmaah]

Just think of how fun the bottom 1/4 of the U.S. will be once the border patrol gets to double its numbers.

[gohrt]

Bottom in economic status, or Bottom as in South?