This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, August 14, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Americans are seeing images this week of the realities of police militarization.

The protests in Ferguson, Missouri follow the kill. realities of police militarization.

The protests in Ferguson, Missouri follow the killing of an unarmed teenager by police.

Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute,

evaluates the police.

What we're seeing out of the police,

what we're seeing out of Ferguson, Missouri is shocking. It doesn't look like the United States.

And people see it and they wonder why are armored vehicles going through a town just outside St. Louis, why are police dressed in camouflage when this is not the desert,

this is a landscape of convenience stores and gas stations.

Why the sharpshooters, why the immediately classic photo of a protester, I protester waving a sign with the tell-tale red dot of a

laser pointer on his or her chest from a sharp shooter just having fun I guess or thinking of aiming

at them now first thing I ever heard about gun safety was don't point a gun at someone unless you would be willing to pull the trigger and shoot them.

And yet everyone saw from Ferguson the police, including ones mounted on top of vehicles, aiming at the people

who were just protesting.

Now, there's so much to unpack there, there's so many different police

mistakes in the Michael Barn case, but the militarization is the background and it is something that's not just Ferguson, it's not just a relatively poor

inner suburb, it is across the country. It is rural counties that have hardly any crime.

It is affluent towns like Redwood City, California, filled with Silicon Valley workers.

All these police departments are arming themselves with what would be seen normally as warlike materials and equipment.

And so it's, this has brought it on to the front pages, but we've been waiting for something like this to happen

...