Peace Officers Don't Wear Masks

by Will Grigg
Feb. 20, 2014

A SWAT team operated by North Carolina’s Wilson County Sheriff’s Office executed a “high risk search warrant” on a narcotics suspect. The operators, clad in black armor, bucket helmets, and balaclavas, found what was described as “nearly a pound of marijuana” – which would be the yield from one healthy plant – and a single handgun.

A photograph taken by an embedded correspondent for the Wilson Times newspaper showed two of the masked SWAT operators in full military regalia. [One of them carried a ballistic shield on which was inscribed the word “Defender.” It’s not clear what or whom those stormtroopers were defending.] Peace officers don’t dress that way, nor do they carry out military-style raids to arrest people suspected of non-violent offenses. Perhaps most importantly, peace officers don’t wear masks to hide their identity from the people they are supposedly protecting.

Back in the mid-1980s, a miniseries called “Amerika” depicted the United States following a takeover by the Soviet Union. Order was maintained in Soviet-occupied America by a cadre of black-clad stormtroopers whose faces were always concealed from the public.

Thankfully, that entertaining but lurid program over-estimated the Soviet threat to our national independence. However, it uncannily anticipated our descent into quasi-totalitarian rule. The Soviet-style enforcers we have to fear are found in our local police departments and sheriff’s offices.