Norm,

I’m sure that there are some drug cartels paying off cops somewhere; that’s what underground business operations tend to do. But as far as the topic of discussion goes — that is, the increasing aggressiveness and militarization of local police forces — the really payoffs here are coming from none other than the United States federal government, which has spent the past few decades as the prime sponsor, trainer, and supplier for paramilitary SWAT squads, “elite” task forces, and local patrol cops, through the mechanism of tax-funded federal grants, special training seminars and collaboration initiatives with federal law enforcement agencies, surplus equipment sales, etc. And while counter-terrorism and other so-called “Homeland Security” projects are now a driving factor in this process, the chief driving factor, over the past 30-40 years, has been the War on Drugs itself. If you want an explanation of why small-town police are increasingly trained to be belligerent, have the equipment and the desire to conduct paramilitary SWAT raids at the drop of a hat, are taking on larger and more powerful assault weapons just for ordinary patrols, and generally act like a case study of collective roid rage, it’s precisely because the Federalis have been juicing them for the past 30-40 years in order to use them as foot soldiers in the enforcement of federal drug policy.