September 5, 2014

Photos: Inside Urban Shield, the Convention for Warrior Cops

Where else can you pick up a 3-D printed drone or a flashlight that blinds your target?


Each year, the Alameda County Sheriff’s office hosts Urban Shield, a trade show and series of exercises for first responders, primarily police department SWAT teams from around the nation. (Similar events have also been held in Boston and Dallas.) The first two days are taken up by a trade show, where vendors show off gear from armored vehicles to dog-mounted cameras and anatomically correct medical dummies. Mother Jones’ Shane Bauer is attending this year’s event and has been tweeting some of the highlights.

Here’s all the gear that was being hawked:

Some choice quotes, photos, and video from the convention:

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

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