Militarization when it relates to police, it's larger than just SWAT. You see peaceful demonstrations where you have riot equipment and police officers having a very military posture. There is a critique that says that's an escalation in itself. Do you agree with that characterization?

Well, crowd-control situations, again it's attitude. If the crowd reaches the point that lives and property are in danger, the police should respond and control. And in responding and controlling they should be protected. Be able to put on the helmet, be able to have the kind of training where they can move in such a way that controls and drives the crowd.

To me, the professional response to crowd control is that 90 percent of the job is done before they ever get there. You plan with both sides. You plan with police officers and you plan with the people who are going to demonstrate and you plan with the people with whom they are going to demonstrate against. And you get a level of cooperation. Now, if the demonstrators really want to get arrested so that they can have their publicity and what not, you can make arrangements for that. "Okay, if you're going to block this street, we're going to come and arrest you". You might even make out those kinds of plans.

Now, when you get into a situation where you have the anarchists who come in and they infiltrate demonstrations and they want to create big problems, the police are going to have no choice but to respond and usually that response has a military look to it. But again, what is the level of professionalism that the police apply to this thing? In many cities, big cities, they're doing a pretty good job. And in many others, they're not, because you can tell by looking at their response that they are not well commanded, they are not well supervised, and they're not well trained. And their planning was dismal going into the situation.

What’s your take on what’s happening in Ferguson? It seems to be one of the most striking of police militarization to-date.

Ferguson’s police department saw the first demonstrators as the enemy and they ratcheted up to a show of force greater than I understand a lot of veterans from Iraq say they take into combat. And so Ferguson demonstrated a much more serious attitude of impunity toward their people.

At the same time, the leadership is defending what they’re doing and defending the shooting [of Michael Brown] without having any investigative results. What they should have been doing was bringing in community leadership, showing that we’re together, promising to fast track the investigation, promising to see that justice is brought and promising to be transparent. That at least diffuses the situation, but they did none of that.

Do you have any sense of why they took the actions that they did with the protesters?

First of all, Ferguson’s major problem is it was clear they had none of what I call “a reservoir of goodwill.” None. One of the first rules of crisis management is that you go to your reservoir of goodwill to help you work your way through this crisis that you’re dealing with. Well they had none. And then what did they do? After that massive show of force, after gassing the entire community, after putting troops on the street that point weapons in people’s faces, when even the military doesn’t do that, they lock them up with a curfew.

They should have gathered leadership in the community—block captains and people who belong to local clubs that have supported you in the past, if there’s any, as well as civilian politicians from the council all that. They should have brought them in and used them to help them calm the community, to make promises and to isolate the two looters and criminals from the mass of the community.

But instead of doing that, They treated everyone on the street as if they were a criminal. One looter, 20 people go to jail. One Molotov cocktail thrown, 50 people go to jail. And that’s not the way to police an American city.

They demonstrated an attitude of militarism toward their community. The U.S. Constitution disallows the military to operate on our soil, and there’s one reason for that: The military has a defined enemy and that enemy is targeted to be killed. That’s what the military does. American law enforcement are peace officers. They have no enemies. The worst criminal is still an individual who is entitled to the protections of the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. And the Ferguson police department and the surrounding police departments forgot that message.