Lansing Marathon - Second female - at the 14-mile mark
Police expert predicts civil unrest this summer
During a phone call with a former Canadian police commissioner Robert Lunney recently, he predicted eruptions of civil unrest this summer in the United States, particularly as we get closer to election day.
The conditions are ripe, in his view, because of the severity of the economic crisis for young people who cannot find that all-important first job when they graduate high school or college. He says the Occupy movement was dormant during the winter, but it will likely spring back to life now that the weather is good.
He graded U.S. policing on a scale from excellent to appalling, depending on which response to Occupy you were looking at. In some places, police acted with great restraint and civility. In other places, they behaved like thugs.
From my perspective as the former associate director of the National Center for Community Policing at Michigan State University, the biggest threat to our tranquility stems from moving further and further toward militarizing the domestic police, which is a far bigger risk to our democracy than we realize. Not only does it erode our right to protest peacefully, but it risks putting a lid on a boiling pot that will then be more likely to explode.
