Urban Shield 2014

Urban Shield, a law enforcement conference that includes SWAT competitions, training exercises, briefings, and a large vendors show, is underway again in Oakland this year. The downtown Marriott hotel and conference center is packed with police officers and police-industrial contractors selling everything from machine guns to drones. Alyssa Figueroa of Alternet has a good story about Urban Shield and the protests against it this year, and Ali Winston and I wrote about the event last year.

I briefly walked through the conference this morning. What’s different this year is the size of the event. It feels bigger, and attendees said they thought there were more participants and vendors.

Here’s some photos from the vendors show.