As to the argument that it would help with any of the racial or brutality problems I just don't see how,
Absolutely agree, just saying it's a brilliant and ingenious public manipulation tactic. That level of government control is scary and easy to see the negative for the average citizen and city/state governments. Though don't see as being able to do anything other than observe and think about conspiracies and how interesting it is such large numbers of people are swept along by such things. The magnitude of idea is almost mind boggling to me. It's creating an enormous armed government force with almost no real cost or work; it already exist, it's already manned, armed, and fully operating; just a matter of implementing the standardizations and levels of control; just a matter of dangling grant money in front of mayors; mayors sign up and that makes it the public's choosing. There seems to be an underlying goal to raise the public respect of police officers to equal that of soldiers, trusted and honored protectors and servers, and the general public will think it's all grand as long as they don't come knocking on the door. Can you see it, Parts?
Yes I see it , it's been going on for awhile 911 gave it a huge push making them all 'heroes' even if all they ever did was write parking tickets for twenty years then retired. I have also noticed grant money showing up locally too, after reading a story about money being given out to enforce the texting while driving laws I have noticed cops have been sitting near the end of my street looking down the main road with binoculars trying to catch people. Also notice how most new cop cars all have the same look it's due to the requirements of the Homeland security grants that helped pay for them. There is a lot of interesting stuff in Radley Balko's column in the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/radley-balko
What makes it seem the most unavoidable, now that it's started, is the idea doesn't have a political slant in either direction. Could see it as appealing to any party in power, and certain to be perpetuated by any president in the next election. It can't be promoted as a racial issue forever though. It makes sense to believe there's negative racial bias in law enforcement, but crime statistics also make it sensible to understand why that's the case. So the white cop can't be the bad guy forever, in order for the idea to work for everyone, it has to be the police in general, and there's probably a lot more of that to come in the media. That's why that task force paper only touches on the issue of minorities a little bit, it's more about happy joy-joy improving community relationships with law officials and citizen. Look at the angry unhappy people, look at what this hand is doing, while the other hand builds an insurmountable army. I can lead a nation with a microphone~Flobots