He has a good case for a suit. IMHO.
I would be making plans to visit a certain Lt. Rhoades and not writing a polite letter to the editor. And Lt. Rhoades and his family wouldn’t like it, not one little bit.
L
This rhoades clown would make an excellent Brown Shirt...
"The short-sighted notion that we should always protect ourselves endangered us more in the long term"
In long, low-intensity wars, soldiers become cops.
Later, cops become soldiers.
Alex Horton just replayed a story of what went on the Colonies that pushed the colonists to revolt against England and create the United States. It seems history is being repeated. Now the powers that be have taken away our rights, become militarized and too aggressive and they need to be stopped. legislation, lawsuits and reprimands have only made the situation worse. The Colonists appealed to the Magistrates and King of England in the same manner, and were met with military force.
I hate to say it, but the only recourse may be armed revolt against the powers that be. At first i was angry that African Americans were marching in the streets because a very small percentage of them were burning and looting. But now I realize they have been pushed into a corner by the Militarized police. And these situations are happening in cities and towns led by Democrats. And the Democrats are using militarized force. And their police are killing unarmed citizens. And the Democrats are using this as a pretense of racism. But it is the Democrats that are causing the means and the effect for political reason to point hatred to the party who is not involved. Are the Democrats of today the King George Military of Yesterday? Are we on the verge of a new American Revolution, one that will transform the country back to a Republic?
Maybe it’s time to lock arms with the African Americans, and point all this to the WH and the domestic policies of the Democrats. The shooting war has already begun. And the Democrats are winning it by spilling the blood of Americans in the streets.
I have little use for the WaPo. (aka the Washington ComPost)
But I agree that the militarization of the police is a serious and growing problem. It desensitizes us for our own destruction.
Several months ago when the Twin Peaks Biker fiasco took place in Waco, TX; I posted a link for the following article to the @WacoPolice twitter account (personal site of Sgt Swanton, aka Waco Police mouth(y) piece). He blocked me for my effort. Not that that amounted to much.
“Militarization Is More Than Tanks and Rifles: It’s a Cultural Disease, Acclimating the Citizenry to Life in a Police State”
Within an hour of posting it, that article disappeared from his site. Yep, Feds had to do that. It later reappeared with slightly different title. The article did not fit someone’s agenda.
That incident months down the road has all the earmarks of a Fed Directed Screw UP. Nobody but a bureaucrap could handle things like they are. 9 lives lost, 20 injured, 170 people still in limbo. Most jailed for about 2 months. For most of them it was about nothing more than “being in the wrong place”.
Yep, smell the police state. And that is in Texas. Headshake
Military is intended to combat enemies of the State.
Police Officers are intended to protect and serve the public.
They are training Cops to behave like that the public is now the enemy of the State
the police were very lucky the homeowner was not “ready” for them when they burst into his bedroom (as would have been the case had he had a dog or a burglar alarm ..as many homeowners do)
the police were very very very lucky
It appears that the author is unaware that police are not soldiers. They’re civilians.
Ah, Vietnam. Same-same.
” the managers of my apartment complex moved me to a model unit while a crew repaired a leak in my dishwasher.”
What? He was moved to another apartment because of a leaky dishwasher? A 1/2 hour job by any plumber? I did hundreds of these jobs. Never had to have anybody move out!
I call bullshit on the whole article.
The guy is a liberal.
He called a rifle an assault weapon. Gave himself away.
This sh1t is why if shtf many folks will not help the cops.
This kind of badge thug bullsh1t from amped up LEOs, not peace officers.
Our house was raided by mistake by the King County Swat team 17 years ago. Fortunately, I was at work but my wife had guns pointed at her and was held up against a wall while people ran around the house yelling and tearing things up. We never did get an explanation that made any sense.
I wonder if the writer knows that the same urban tactics he used in Iraq were developed by the police...
My take on this article is this. The police conducted what was essentially a building sweep for a possible intruder. Search tactics, firearm placement, lpriority of Fire...all this is for efficient and safe searching. The melodramatic prose notwithstanding. My coworkers and I have done hundreds of these. Most of the time there is no one actually inside...but we practice our training to keep up muscle memory. Finding someone inside a residence that “is not supposed to be there” would be handled by a cover officer and a contact officer. It’s not complicated. I guarantee that the call came in from a neighbor who was afraid of a break in next door. That’s all the information that was given. Maybe they should have made an extra effort to check and see if the apartment was legitimately occupied...but it sounds as if they announced their presence and didn’t get an answer...so the made entry to clear it. Anyway...maybe they were too aggressive, maybe not. Information is power...maybe they could have had more...maybe not.
When I got out of the hospital after Vietnam, still recovering from a serious gunshot wound, I was pulled over violently by an LAPD officer while I was driving on a residential street. "Violently" is defined as running my car off the road and over the curb and when I opened my door I stared down the barrel of a 12 gauge riot shotgun. I was deeply shocked and positive that my next second was going to be my last, so I froze (and shook all over). The cop yelled at me to get out of the car and he was shaking with adrenaline and anger. I had trouble getting out of the car because I still had a full-length steel leg brace on and couldn't move easily or quickly. He kicked me to the ground and kept the shotgun pointed at my head.
It turned out that the cop had gotten a call that there was some robbery nearby and he mistook my car for the getaway car and he came within a hairsbreadth of killing me. When he finally confirmed that the real suspect had already been caught, he very angrily issued me a ticket for "making and unsafe lane change".
Welcome home.
I put a large part of the blame for incidents like this and others on the officer’s training.
If your training since day one ends with you shooting someone you are being told that every incident MUST end in someone’s death. A complete, not a whitewash, investigation ever takes place after a SWAT shooting you will discover that none of their training exercises have a no shoot solution.
Even the FBI in the 1930s knew there has to be situations where shooting in NOT the proper result. Too bad local LEOs haven’t been taught this life saving training.