MoJo: A "Convention" for militarization of US police? What we saw...
...before being thrown out.
This ugly cancer in our nation isn't going away anytime soon apparently. 
Video: What We Saw Before Being Kicked Out of the SWAT Convention
—By Shane Bauer| Tue Sep. 9, 2014 6:00 AM EDT
This weekend, my colleague Prashanth Kamalakanthan and I attended Urban Shield, a first-responder convention sponsored by over 100 corporations and the Department of Homeland Security. The five-day confab included a trade show where vendors display everything from armored trucks to sniper rifles to 3D printable drones. (We documented a few of the more remarkable offerings here.) It also involved the largest SWAT training exercise in the world. Some 35 SWAT teams competed in a 48-hour exercise involving 31 scenarios that included ambushing vehicles, indoor shootouts, maritime interdiction, train assaults and a mock eviction of a right-wing Sovereign Citizens group. The teams came from cities across the San Francisco Bay area, Singapore, and South Korea and included a University of California SWAT team, a team of US Marines, and a SWAT team of prison guards.
But on Sunday, at a competition site near the Bay Bridge, our coverage was cut short. A police officer confiscated our press badges, politely explaining that his captain had called and given him the order. The captain, he said, told him we had been filming in an unauthorized location, though he could not tell us where that location was. (We'd been advised earlier that it was okay to film so long as we did not go on the bridge itself.) After several phone calls from both me and my editors, no one could tell us exactly what we had done wrong, but Sgt. J.D. Nelson, the public information officer for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department (which hosts the Department of Homeland Security-funded event) made it clear that we could not have our passes back.
We'll have a more in-depth report, and a lot more images and videos, in a few days.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/09/video-highlights-oaklands-urbanshield-conference
= new reply since forum marked as read
Wonderful. 
has been escalating for years. The Patriot Act, final nail in the coffin of american human rights to freedom. What didn't they want this news crew to see? Something vicious and evil this way comes.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
Euphemistic motto: “critical training for critical times.” = militarizing bad cops to suppress peaceful domestic dissent. What could go wrong?
OR ... "domestic terrorists" = Occupy Oakland peaceful protestors.
Yup, that's about what I see happening too. 
Too bad Libertarians are not more consistent in their disdain for "big government" abusing its citizenry.
