In Ossining for the fireworks tonight and I was shocked and disturbed at the recent militarization of their police force.
I expect a strong showing of police on nights like tonight. I’ve been down here for this show decades, and it’s a lot of people. I’ve never seen anything too rowdy. Mostly families just down to enjoy the show with their kids. The crowd this year was no different. What was different was the militarized police force. All police outfitted with body armor, anti riot gear, helmets, and equipped with drawn and ready automatic rifles. Under the overpass they had gigantic military armored truck. I am a supporter of Ossining police, who I usually think are excellent. But this was honestly pretty intimidating and disturbing. I’m not sure why they even have this kind of equipment, and I don’t understand why they felt it was a situation where they had to flex like this. Everyone I talked with about it was like “yeah, WTF is going on here?” It was disturbing.