(Updated 12.15.06)

Check out this video: (I removed the Youtube video because Firefox 2.0 users and Safari users had trouble.)

This one may be more representative. Check it out as well.
The relationship between police and citizens in urban spaces with large non-white populations can be at the very least compared to the relationship between a colonial army, and colonized subjects. They are obviously not equivalents, but particularly after the sixties, what we began to see is the growing usage of military equipment, strategies, and tactics, to deal with men, women, and children, who are citizens. In fact the way police and millitary units actually share tactics, strategies, and resources across space (within a country, or between countries) is woefully understudied.

For the uninitiated the surge drill is used by the NYPD solely as a way to instill fear into citizens by displaying a public surge of force. What is particularly interesting here is that there is no perpetrator. That is to say, the police aren’t actually RESPONDING to anything here. I’m assuming that New Yorkers have taken this type of thing for granted.

They shouldn’t.