“Someone is causing a lot of trouble.”
Josh Stearns, a reporter who has covered the Occupy movement extensively, asks, “Why is this children’s book teaching my kid about SWAT vehicles and Riot Control practices?” From his blog post:
Visiting the local library yesterday my son picked out a book all about police. I was stunned when, after pages and pages of info about police cars and police offices, there were these two pages about Riot Control Trucks and SWAT Vans.
Even after months of tracking conflicts between police and the press I still have a profound respect for much of law enforcement and the jobs they do in our communities. However, the descriptions of water cannons being turned on protesters and the taunting opening on the SWAT page, “Someone’s causing a lot of trouble…,” all seemed out of place. Given the increasingly militarized response we have seen to citizen protests, seeing Riot and SWAT teams portrayed this way in a children’s book was troubling.
If you’d like to pick up a copy as a gag gift for your favorite police-beaten Occupier, the book is “Police Cars.” Google Books has a few scanned pages here.