A line of Orange County Police Officers block a freeway overpass leading to Disneyland during a protest to show outrage for the several officer involved shootings on July 29, 2012 in Anaheim. (Photo by Jonathan Gibby/Getty Images)

Today is day one of Urban Shield, an annual gathering of SWAT teams, law enforcement agencies and military contractors from around the world. The three-day long event, hosted by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, includes a trade show, competitions and training exercises involving simulations of SWAT team raids and mock protests to test out suppression techniques, all in the name of “disaster preparedness” to fight terrorism.

This comes on top of a damning report released earlier this month by the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations detailing the rise in crackdowns on peaceful protests by police departments around the globe, including inside the United States.  In the past, police forces from countries notorious for abusing protesters, such as Israel and Bahrain, have participated in Urban Shield. This year, the Boston Marathon bombings have provided the impetus for further militarization.

In what’s either an ironic coincidence or Oakland’s sick way of proclaiming victory over demonstrators, today also happens to mark the second anniversary of Occupy Oakland’s violent eviction. As Police Magazine proudly declared in 2011, “Law enforcement agencies responding to two high-profile manhunts and Occupy protesters in northern California credit Urban Shield for their effective teamwork.” In response, a coalition of 20 anti-police brutality groups across the Bay area have formed the Facing Urban Shield Action Network (FUSAN) to organize protests against the gathering. (More irony: As cops attending Urban Shield participate in protest suppression training exercises, police outside Urban Shield will be engaged in the real thing.)

This year’s event, which received $7.5 million in federal funding, is sponsored by major weapons manufacturers, like Lockheed Martin, ATK and Colt, as well as for-profit prison service providers like Corizon, all of which are participating in the event’s trade show. That means the federal government is essentially financing a major marketing opportunity for companies invested in police militarization and criminal justice privatization.

Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, is the Defense Department’s largest supplier of munitions, including depleted uranium (DU) munitions, which poisons the populations at their receiving end.

Colt manufactures firearms for the military and law enforcement, but it’s difficult to tell the difference between the two (I think that’s the point). Here is how Colt advertises its products to police departments: “From the jungles of Vietnam to the burning sands of the Middle East, Colt weapons have been combat tested under the most extreme conditions by the U.S. armed forces.” Colt is just one of many military contractors whose products blur the thinning line between soldier and police officer.

Another is Lenco Armored Vehicles, which makes, well, armored vehicles for the military and law enforcement SWAT teams. They’re a complete waste of money for domestic policing and have no real purpose outside of a war zone. Still, police departments around the country continue to purchase them with money they receive annually from DHS.

Fulcrum Concepts, which boasts on its website that it’s “made up, almost exclusively, of retired Army Special Operations personnel, trains law enforcement in strategies indistinguishable from military tactics.

IntegenX is perhaps one of the creepiest companies to sponsor Urban Shield 2013. It’s handheld device allows for the collection and delivery of DNA in just 90 minutes, which plays into efforts to create a massive database of DNA profiles by collecting DNA samples of individuals upon arrest. (here’s why that’s a problem)

A little-known company called micro drones GmbH will be holding an exhibition featuring aerial drone technology with a multitude of applications. The company’s tagline is “eye in the sky”.

The party wouldn’t be complete without less-lethal weapons manufactures, like RAP4, to assist in domestic policing’s crowd control needs. And don’t even get me started on the surveillance companies that will be in attendance. As John Knefel’s latest article at Rolling Stone reveals, US law enforcement agencies have their own NSA-like spying rings directed exclusively at protesters.

Unlike NSA spying, which targets just about everyone, police militarization tends to anger only those at the receiving end of police violence, i.e. communities of color and political dissidents. But if NSA surveillance has taught us anything, it’s that authoritarian police state tactics do not stay isolated to marginalized groups forever.