ninja’d
I would agree. In the 1980s there was a sort of panic that the drugrunners were far outgunning the Law, that the criminal gangs would be packing vanfuls of converted-automatic Mac-10s and exotic Assault Rifles loaded with Teflon copkiller rounds, against Sherriff Retiresnextweek and Deputy Rookie with their .38 Special six-shooters. By the early 90s the LEAs were already busy buying MP5s and AR15 variants and streetsweepwer shotguns and large-mag 9/10mm/.40cal handguns (which made sense as did body armor) and “tactical” rig. Now, it was true that the average officer-on-the-street c. 1980 was kind of underequipped/trained but things seem to have got a bit out of proportion. Most visible perhaps in potential-riot and house-raid situations: where once we would have riding helmets, long nightsticks, horseback units & dogs, maybe a few teargas canisters or the firehoses, now we’ve got armored vehicles, guys in full armored battle rattle, sniper/assault rifles openly brandished, flashbang grenades. SWAT do not arrive in a van anymore, they ride MRAPVs. It’s as if the expectation were that at any moment the crowd may open fire en masse or set off IEDs.
The WOT was icing on the cake providing for a more real-war-like “war footing”, and the drawdown of forces in real wars the last few years has created a pressure to do *something *with the surplus matériel and/or find a way to keep the assembly lines running until next war.
Yes, “the al sharptons(sic)” of the world are the ones who forced white people to engage in slavery, Jim Crow, and several centuries worth of oppression.
Beyond that, isn’t it a bit of well-poisoning to claim you’ll be called a racist for making a statement.
Calling the St Louis County police in Ferguson “militarized” is an insult to the military. I was in Iraq for two years and our standards for use and escalation of force was much less aggressive than what I’ve seen in Ferguson. They’re pointing rifles directly at protestors! Anyone who so much as shot a BB gun when they were 7 knows you don’t point your weapon at anything you don’t intend to immediately kill.
I’m wondering what would’ve happened had the cops acted like this with the Cliven Bundy fiasco. White people with guns barely gets a reaction from police, unarmed black people results in cops with machine guns. There was that militia guy on the bridge pointing a rifle at cops and nobody did anything. It isn’t just the militarization of police, it is the racial discrepancy between this incident and the Cliven Bundy incident.
In this kind of situation, how can people call for non-violence and hope to be taken seriously? It makes no sense. If you are white you can be violent and the cops will treat you with respect. if you are black and non-violent the cops will abuse and terrorize you. What incentive is there to be non-violent, the cops will abuse and terrorize you anyway? Even if blacks arm themselves a la a new black panther party for self defense all of a sudden the same pro-gun people will be calling for gun restrictions the same way they did in the 70s.
That’s because the cops in the Nevada situation acted like responsible professionals, not like a bunch of overgrown teenagers who’d played paintball way too often.
well ya know,at least blacks wernt shoved into gas chambers and ovens like the jews.do you see them bitching as much as blacks have did?
so you think the cops should just sit their and get molotov cocktails and everything else thrown at them? im wondering what would happen if america actually looked past skin color
also,it was worse during the cliven bundy fiasco.at least they arent authorizing drone strikes on ferguson mo like they did the bundy ranch.my guess is,it has to do with a certain skin color of the folks in Ferguson
AB, I guess you’ve seen on the news by now that the governor of MO has de-militarized the response and that appears to be working. Also, the Highway Patrol has been put in charge of the situation. A black highway patrol captain is in the lead role and is doing a very good job of halting the escalation of the last few days, marching with the protestors, etc.
So, no backlash required so far. As long as the sort of overwrought weaponry exists in the general populace, I would think LEOs would want to err on the side of caution and safety so as not to, you know, get killed. I cannot really say I blame them.
In this case, putting away the weaponry, body armor, fortified vehicles, tear gas, etc. worked. In this case, due to years of animosity between the community and local PD, bringing in an outside entity (MHP) worked. Who is to say this (or any) is a typical case. Each is different, each requires the insight and courage of wise people who have a stake and a say in the matter.
Ferguson blew up again last night. I take back my post. Apparently, the have-nots get theirs when rioting occurs. Let’s go to the Pit thread and trash 'em.
To the best of my knowledge, the notion that a drone strike was authorized against the Bundy Ranch is utterly unsupported by any facts. Do you have a cite for your assertion?
The adults are trying to have a conversation here, please go back to the kids table and amuse everyone by shooting milk out your nose instead.
There’s no money to be made in scaling back military-grade weapons with police forces. So, no, this will not be the beginning of any reversal of militarized police forces.
Coffee shot out of my nose when I read this. Thanks.
Seems to me that “strong Second Amendment supporters” and the armaments they’re amassing are precisely the reason for the trend. If their basements look like the arsenal of a South American revolutionary army, what do they expect the police to do except try to stay one step ahead? I still remember a time when police carried old-style revolvers; now even the most humble beat officer carries a semi-automatic. Whereas in the UK, ordinary police don’t even carry guns at all, and gun fatalities involving the police are 40 times lower than in the US.
I agree.
I’d say police are less racist in general now than ever before, and when they are racist it is less tolerated than ever before.
Not really no, the equipment was made available but it was not “shoved” on any department by the Federal government or military, maybe by local politicians. Many small towns have wisely done a true analysis of this “free” equipment and found that it costs a shit ton of money to maintain some of this stuff that may get used once every 3-5 years for a small town PD, and turned it down.
Generally not, the standard patrol man, if there is such a thing, carries a pistol and probably a shotgun in their car that is easily accessed. They wear vests under their uniform but this has been standard for many, many years. They don’t wear tactical gear but police uniforms, if they have headgear it’s a uniform hat and not a helmet etc. They do usually have a lot of random shit in their trunk, to the point a VA police officer I know has said he’s had to call in help for a flat tire because it would have simply been too difficult and dangerous (due to leaving lots of equipment laying out) to get to the car’s jack and spare tire himself.
Some times, but mostly it’s just military surplus APCs and such, which are just like really heavily defended trucks. Think not much different than armored cars which scurry back and forth between banks and businesses all day every day in almost every town.
I would agree many police departments either through their own foolishness or the foolishness of local politicians have acquired more equipment than they need, to their financial detriment.
No, I think you’re wrong on cause/effect here.
What gear are you referring to, in specific? Tear gas has been the most controversial item used in Ferguson, and it’s been used since I think the 1960s by police forces. Other than that you’re talking about assault rifles and submachine guns which SWAT teams have had for probably 25-30+ years, so that’s nothing new. I don’t think having a heavily armored truck makes the police more dangerous to citizens.
If “we” includes you and some others here, probably very high. If it includes society at large, very low.
FWIW I think the actual problem is linked to two concepts:
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No-Knock Warrants. A no-knock warrant allows police to knock a door down and burst into a residence to effect the warrant. A standard warrant requires police to knock on the door and announce themselves. No-Knock warrants are almost intrinsically violent, because the police are breaching a door and going in expecting a firefight. No-Knock warrants were historically only supposed to be used in a situation where there was a very strong need for it. Like they knew they were going into somewhere that say, a very serious armed criminal was believed to be hiding. The expanded use of no-knock warrants to cover simple cases where they suspect a drug dealer might have drugs in a house has lead to a lot of problems.
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No Risk to Officers Philosophy. This is a term I just half-made up, but in the past it was accepted that being a police officer meant you could retire in 20 years at a good % of your pay, get great benefits and etc, but that you were willing to place yourself at risk, sometimes risk of death, to defend the community you were policing.
The current NYPD Commissioner, in his days as a beat cop, deescalated a confrontation with an armed robber who had a gun to a woman’s head. He put himself at risk by standing in front of the man and calmly talking him out of the confrontation, he didn’t draw his gun on him. He recognized his first responsibility was to getting this dangerous criminal off the street without killing his hostage or anyone else, and not his own safety. This was in the 1970s.
Today, I don’t feel that this would be standard police operations in most major cities. Instead they police would probably be behind barricades with rifles and at the first twitch they’d load the guy (and hostage) up with bullets. In Colorado maybe a decade ago a pedophile stormed a high school and took 4-5 girls hostage in a classroom and started sexually assaulting him. Later, the police stormed the classroom and filled it with bullets, killing the man and one of his victims. The guy had a gun, but never fired it.
These are anecdotes, repeat, I’m labeling them as anecdotes. But they are to describe in specific what I feel is a difference between policing of the past and policing today. Police of the past were probably more likely to beat you up and face no punishment, but I also think they were a lot more likely to take risks. I think modern police are taught they should never risk themselves for any reason. I think this leads to the concept that the only way to correct a problem is through force, because you have to treat every encounter as if it could be life/death.
The problem is, if you treat a confrontation as life/death it makes it difficult to think clearly, and I think it leads to a lot of what we as citizens view as “overreactions.” I think some of that goes into stuff like the Eric Garner situation. I think when cops are hyper alert to all encounters, to the point of thinking an obese out of shape dude with contraband cigarettes who has a long criminal record that doesn’t include violence (meaning it’s a good indication he’s not dangerous) it leads to actions that in the past just wouldn’t have happened. Police in the past knew their local crooks, and would not have had to deal with them like that because they knew which ones to be afraid/cautious around and which ones were not a serious threat. Police were also willing to take lumps in the past without responding with deadly force.
I think these are far more of what’s going on these days than anything to do with availability of equipment.
I think you’re making a bad argument. The Cliven Bundy incident is just so materially different. For one, it’s borderline a civil issue and local police were not super interested in getting into a civil land use debate over Federal land between a local and the Federal government. So it was Federal officers who would be doing whatever they’d be doing. Second this thing started off with witnesses. If it was just Cliven Bundy by himself out there I suspect he would’ve been arrested and his cattle dealt with. But with hundreds of witnesses, there are now political concerns about how things “look” regardless of what’s right/wrong legally.
Bundy was actually confronted with heavily armed agents, lots of the Federal officers out there dealing with him were very heavily armed. But the Federal government is a lot more experienced in dealing with touchy situations like this, and has dealt with many of them very badly in the past. This makes it much more likely that they are going to respond to it in a way designed to mitigate political trouble.
The Ferguson PD had probably never dealt with a serious protest before, and they were also simply less professional and probably worse trained than the Federal LE dealing with Bundy.
I’d bet all the money I have that if the same Federal officers that confronted Bundy were doing crowd control at the Ferguson protests things would be a lot different right now.
I think the problems I’ve noticed started with the drug war as well. The drug war is what directly lead to far more no knock warrants, and also a general view that all criminals could be ultra violent, essentially “soldiers” on the other side. And the other side’s soldiers are enemies that must be eliminated, and you should never risk an officer’s life for the enemy or even “collateral” damage. It’s a very inappropriate view of what a police force is, but again, I think it’s not driven by equipment so much as philosophies that I’ve already detailed.
This is entirely my point, from the OP onwards. Most police never deal with mob or riot situations, or even heavily armed standoffs. An elite unit - SWAT or whatever - that is trained for such occurrences is one thing. Simply handing ridiculously heavy gear to an entire police department, in theory to give them the tactical ability to take on extreme (and still quite rare) situations, is just a recipe for disaster. When APCs and combat armor come out for unarmed civilian unrest, something is going to go very wrong.
Agreed. The North Hollywood shootout changed how law enforcement throughout the country rearmed .