Thoughts on LEO in BR being criticized for deploying "military-style" gear?

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But officers on Sunday streamed onto a skinny residential street in Beauregard Town, some with their hands near the triggers of military-style rifles, others manning armored vehicles, one of which was seen driving slowly into protesters’ bodies. That kind of military-style equipment was the subject of much criticism after Ferguson, with the contention the display of force built up hostility between local communities and the police.

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The sight of masked officers confronting hundreds of demonstrators was set against charming Southern homes and blooming crape myrtles on a quiet street — not the bustling highways officials earlier said they were trying to keep open. Protesters had moved onto the residential France Street after being nudged away from Government Street.

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Displays of military-style equipment like armored cars, assault-style weapons, gas masks, riot shields, and ear-splitting sirens called LRADs — all of which have been deployed in the past few days during protests about Sterling’s killing in Baton Rouge — are some of the very practices the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services criticized in its definitive report analyzing what went wrong in Ferguson.

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“You would think Baton Rouge would watch Ferguson and learn a lesson. Apparently they didn’t,” said Peter B. Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University who’s studied police militarization for the past 25 years. A former probation officer, Kraska has worked with over 70 police departments on training and reforms.

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The mere appearance of military-style machinery in Ferguson served to escalate, rather than calm, clashes in that community, the Justice Department report found. “Collectively, the use of fully outfitted tactical officers, some of whom were deployed with rifles and PepperBall launchers, contributed to the public (and media) perception that the police were a militarized force ‘invading’ their neighborhood,” the Ferguson report concluded. And in an example that calls to mind the exact situation in Baton Rouge on Sunday, the report found: “While the LRAD (high-pitched alarm) may be appropriate to disperse crowds, using it in conjunction with an armored vehicle escalates the hostility of the crowd and creates a negative public image.”

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“The gas masks themselves were pretty intimidating,” said Lt. General Russel L. Honore, the retired U.S. Army leader who coordinated military response efforts after Hurricane Katrina. “My concern is, with those homes there and all the people in the houses, that would not have been a good place to do (show that weaponry), particularly when the protesters weren’t being violent,” he said after viewing hours of videos, imagery and other coverage of protests in Baton Rouge on Sunday.

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“Something is not right in that department in terms of amount of equipment and amount of training,” Honore said of the Baton Rouge police. Two officers from the agency were also captured on video during the protests pointing weapons at peoples faces in an effort to scatter the crowd, which BRPD officials have said they are reviewing.

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But experts like Kraska said that tough-on-crime approach is missing the point. Just because some demonstrators break the law by being in the street, for example, it’s not worth creating public anxiety by using officers wearing military-style gear to arrest those people on minor offenses. “In some of the most oppressive countries in the world, when they have civil unrest, the worst they’ll bring out is maybe riot gear,” said Kraska, referring to batons, shields and masks.

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