As Charlie Pierce says:

The actions of the police department in Oakland last night were a military assault on a legitimate political demonstration. That it was a milder military assault than it could have been, which is to say it wasn’t a massacre, is very much beside the point. There was no possible provocation that warranted this display of force. (Graffiti? Litter? Rodents? Is the Oakland PD now a SWAT team for the city’s health department?) If you are a police department in this country in 2011, this is something you do because you have the power and the technology and the license from society to do it. This is a problem that has been brewing for a long time. It predates the Occupy movement for more than a decade.

The Honolulu Police Department has been getting at least $10M a year since 2003 for anti-terrorist activities from the Feds, and has spent it in lots of different ways, as far as I can tell. You could say they’ve been successful, since we haven’t had a terrorist attack here in those eight years. Or you could say it could have been spent in other ways that might have been more beneficial.

We’ve had numerous events here where the police have shown up with 20 squad cars, two SWAT teams, and a helicopter, all to apprehend a guy who perpetrated a hit-and-run accident. As Pierce says, they do it because they can.