This is Popular Front, a podcast focused on the niche details of modern warfare and underreported conflict with me Jake Hanrahan.

Today we speak to journalist Ali Winston about the unique militarization of the

Oakland police force which began when the Black Panthers in the U.S. began to start arming themselves

to fight back against police violence. Since then, the militarizations only got bigger and bigger.

Ali's going to explain how this all played out with the backdrop of serious police corruption in Oakland.

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So you've written this book and a lot of it deals with corruption the

militarization of the Oakland police force various issues there now as we know

the militarization of the police in the US is

nothing new but it seems like a lot of this the real over-the-top shit really

started with the Oakland police. Tell us about that. Why is it?

This book, the writers come out at night.

My colleague Darwin Bond Graham and I spent probably

better part of 20 years combined,

over 20 years combined actually,

reporting on the city and ins and outs of law

enforcement in the criminal justice system there.

And Oakland is actually in many ways a little bit of a bellwether for American law enforcement. It's in a city that's about

450, 400,000 people large. It's a port city, multi-racial, very collar, and it has dealt with, experienced a lot of the major

tumult that most American cities of its size have in the past century or so because most American cities are not New York

...