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Today Is Day 1 Of Urban Shield 2013, A Breeding Ground For Police Repression
by Rania Khalek on October 25, 2013

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Today is day one of Urban Shield, an annual gathering of SWAT teams, law enforcement agencies and military contractors from around the world. The three-day long event, hosted by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, includes a trade show, competitions and training exercises involving simulations of SWAT team raids and mock protests to test out suppression techniques, all in the name of “disaster preparedness” to fight terrorism.

This comes on top of a damning report released earlier this month by the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations detailing the rise in crackdowns on peaceful protests by police departments around the globe, including inside the United States. In the past, police forces from countries notorious for abusing protesters, such as Israel and Bahrain, have participated in Urban Shield. This year, the Boston Marathon bombings have provided the impetus for further militarization.

In what’s either an ironic coincidence or Oakland’s sick way of proclaiming victory over demonstrators, today also happens to mark the second anniversary of Occupy Oakland’s violent eviction. As Police Magazine proudly declared in 2011, “Law enforcement agencies responding to two high-profile manhunts and Occupy protesters in northern California credit Urban Shield for their effective teamwork.” In response, a coalition of 20 anti-police brutality groups across the Bay area have formed the Facing Urban Shield Action Network (FUSAN) to organize protests against the gathering. (More irony: As cops attending Urban Shield participate in protest suppression training exercises, police outside Urban Shield will be engaged in the real thing.)

This year’s event, which received $7.5 million in federal funding, is sponsored by major weapons manufacturers, like Lockheed Martin, ATK and Colt, as well as for-profit prison service providers like Corizon, all of which are participating in the event’s trade show. That means the federal government is essentially financing a major marketing opportunity for companies invested in police militarization and criminal justice privatization.

Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, is the Defense Department’s largest supplier of munitions, including depleted uranium (DU) munitions, which poisons the populations at their receiving end.

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More: http://raniakhalek.com/2013/10/25/today-is-day-1-of-urban-shield-2013-a-breeding-ground-for-police-repression/