Comment by Semiapies

I honestly have no idea what the numbers are, it's one of those things I've been meaning to research, but have never gotten around too. But from my experience, a large number of troops coming back from the war enter law enforcement.

But I also think (key word, think, it's a hypothesis, no current hard data to back this up at this point, see above paragraph on how I need to do this, but I've been too lazy/busy) this may be highly regional. In the sense that I live in a state with a large number of military bases/troops/persons who go into the military. They come back from their deployments, they go back home, they join the local PD. Some states have less of this than others.

Further, others have made this point, and I guess I was not as clear as I should have been, but in part, you only need one officer who's a vet to come into the department and he says, "When I was in Iraq, this is how we did it..." I don't think that's a huge influence, but I do think it's part of spreading the military culture that the original article is talking about.

Call it militarization of the police, hero worship, cargo-cult, whatever. I believe at the end of the day, the effect is the same, the GWoT has had negative impacts on how America has chosen to police itself.