Even after Barack Obama, prompted by Ferguson, ordered a government-wide review of the provision of military hardware to police, lethal weaponry, vehicles, equipment and cash continue to funnel down to police – only now with more layers of red tape.
In addition, the Pentagon supplies surplus military hardware to police forces at virtually no cost.
China's party-state has deployed an army of cyber-police, hardware engineers, software developers, web monitors and paid online propagandists to watch, filter, censor and guide Chinese internet users.
Some of this hardware "flowed to local police forces because they were increasingly being asked to assist in counterterrorism", Eric Holder, the Attorney General, said at the weekend, while conceding that "displays of force in response to mostly peaceful demonstrations can be counterproductive".
Some are reflected in the hardware and energy used to police the system.
Those in doubt just have to see the police and military hardware that will be out in force.
After what was described to me as a "brawl" broke out at one of the gates of MetLife Stadium, in East Rutherford, New Jersey, the gates were shut and the police deployed military hardware to disperse concertgoers.
As a boy, Aaron Greene fixated on weapons and explosives: he rigged booby traps, assembled crude pipe bombs and fashioned a potato launcher with materials he bought at a local hardware store, according to the police and former neighbors.
Later in the day a White House official said President Barack Obama had ordered a review of the distribution of military hardware to state and local police, out of concern at how such equipment was used during the racial unrest in Ferguson.
Anvil, like many of its predecessors, combined the legal framework of a police action with the hardware and the rhetoric of war.
