Everything conspiracy theorists mistakenly think is being done across seven southwestern states by highly trained special forces units in Operation Jade Helm 15 is, in fact, being done — only it’s being done by poorly trained police officers dressed up like soldiers in cities across America. The situation in Berkeley on Monday is merely emblematic.

Emilie Raguso’s coverage of a police manhunt wasn’t extraordinary because the of who the suspect was or what crime he committed — a young black male with “silver teeth” who robbed a laundromat at gunpoint — or because it ended in any particularly compelling fashion — the police never found him — it was extraordinary because of how casually Raguso reported what the Image here  strongly suggested was a full-scale Military invasion of a Berkeley, California neighborhood.

Raguso’s prose is measured, conveying the idea that nothing out of the ordinary was happening. The police statements she reproduced — “We are currently searching the area for the suspect who may be in the block” — are equally innocuous, suggesting that the situation is being professionally managed by a police force that deals with armed suspects like this one on a daily basis.

But the art accompanying that measured prose is something else entirely. Instead of the police cruisers and uniformed officers one would expect to see in photographs accompanying an article about a manhunt for a laundromat robber, readers are greeted with images of heavily armed soldiers emerging from military-grade armored vehicles.