>>325032
Not really.
Blame Bush/9-11 and the WTO protestor shits.
After the WTO riots in 1999, there was a push in major cities to beef up their police forces in the event of further WTO-esque riots by way of getting police outfitted with military grade riot gear.
When 9-11 happened, Homeland Security started the process of offering grants to local cops to give them government money to beef up their police force gear "to fight terrorism".
This led to big and small town police departments all running to get Homeland Security cash, to buy all of the tacticool gear many police chiefs and swat commander unit leaders, had lusted over for years but could not afford on a small town police department (or big city police department) budget.