Posted on 06/19/2013 7:13:06 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
All over the United States, frustrated homeowners are banding together, arming themselves and patrolling their own streets. One of the primary reasons this is happening is because police budgets all over the nation are being slashed at a time when violent crime rates in the United States are increasing and many our our largest cities are being transformed into crime-infested war zones. So instead of waiting for government to come up with a solution, many Americans are taking matters into their own hands. For example, one community group in Milwaukie, Oregon has started posting flyers with an ominous message for potential criminals: "This is a Glock block. We don’t call 911." You can see a photo of this flyer right here. One of the founders of the "Glock Block" is a breast cancer survivor named Coy Tolonen. She decided to arm herself after a thief stole one of her favorite statues out of her front yard while she was watching...
It’s mostly petty crime that neighbors are sick and tired of: stolen lawn ornaments, vandalism. But for neighbors like Tolonen, a breast-cancer survivor, that’s enough: “I will defend myself — and my home,” she told KOIN 6 News.
Tolonen recently had a beloved statue she calls “Lilly Rose” stolen off her front porch. She said she even saw the man who stole it and tried to chase him down — but he got away.
This was the last straw for Tolonen, who decided to take a class to get her concealed carry permit.
We are seeing similar things happen in other areas of the nation. As I wrote about yesterday, the size of the police force has been cut in half in the city of Detroit over the past ten years. Meanwhile, crime rates have skyrocketed. So frustrated citizens are now teaming up with the police to patrol their own neighborhoods...
Volunteers given radios and matching T-shirts help officers protect neighborhoods where burglaries, thefts and thugs drive away people who can’t rely on a police force that lost a quarter of its strength since 2009. With 25 patrols on the streets, the city hopes to add three each year. Meanwhile, the homicide rate continues rising.
In some wealthier neighborhoods around the country, citizens are pooling their resources and are hiring private security firms to ward off criminals. Just check out what is happening in Oakland...
After people in Oakland’s wealthy enclaves like Oakmore or Piedmont Pines head to work, security companies take over, cruising the quiet streets to ward off burglars looking to take advantage of unattended homes.
“With less law enforcement on the streets and more home crime or perception of home crime, people are wanting something to replace that need,” says Chris de Guzman, chief operating officer of First Alarm, a company that provides security to about 100 homes in Oakland. “That’s why they’re calling us and bringing companies like us aboard to provide that deterrent.”
According to Steve Amitay, the executive director of the National Association of Security Companies, this is also happening in other high crime cities such as Atlanta and Detroit. In fact, it is being projected that the "private cop" business is going to absolutely boom in the years ahead.
But not everyone can afford to hire private cops. Those with more limited resources are trying to cope with rising crime any way that they can.
In Chicago, firefighters are actually being enlisted to provide security for public school students walking to and from school...
The city of Chicago has ordered its firefighters to provide security for public school students walking to and from class through the city’s gang turf, according to an official memo from the Chicago Fire Department that WND obtained.
The memo, signed by Chicago Fire Commissioner Jose Santiago, states that the fire department will have “a strong physical presence” along student walking routes for three weeks at the beginning of the school year in the fall.
Sadly, this is just the beginning. As the U.S. economy continues to get even worse, so will crime, gang activity and social decay.
But that doesn't mean that everyone will be bad.
The truth is that there are still some decent people out there.
Today, someone sent me a story about human decency that made me smile. In Laguna Niguel, California a man accidentally sold a wooden watch box for $10 that contained his wife's $23,000 wedding ring. When his wife found out about it, she was absolutely crushed...
Racquel Cloutier was distraught after her husband, Eric, told her he had sold the wooden watch box in which she had hidden the ring before going to hospital to have their fifth child. “I immediately started crying,” said Mrs. Cloutier, 31, of Laguna Niguel, California. “I just wanted the ring to be in a safe place and out of reach from my two-year-old twins.”
Fortunately, the box had ended up with a very honest couple...
A dozen kilometres away, in Mission Viejo, Alyssa and Andrew Lossau were frantically searching for a set of keys. They looked inside a box that Mrs. Lossau’s mother, Chaundel Holladay, had bought at a garage sale and given them as a gift.
Inside, they discovered the three-carat diamond ring. Mrs. Lossau found an email address for Mrs Cloutier and contacted her. “It is giving me faith in people again,” said Mr. Cloutier, 38. “By the grace of God it ended up with the most honest people,” said his wife.
So that story had a very happy ending.
There are still people out there that are ready and willing to do the right thing.
But not everyone is that way. It has been said that desperate people do desperate things, and when the next major wave of the economic collapse strikes there are going to be millions of very desperate people out there on the streets of America.
Now is the time to get prepared for that.
Glock and load! Glocks rock!
I remember Walter E. Williams advocating this when he sat in for Rush Limbaugh several years ago. It was in reference to a neighborhood infested with drug dealers. He said if the police wouldn’t do anything about it it was up to the men of the neighborhood to band together and chase them off with baseball bats and guns if need be.
They should carry tricked out AR15s too.
Shotguns. All the short range effectiveness at much less cost.
And for the 1911 fans, some will prefer a “Colt Community”.
It’s important to promulgate the idea that “police are just a convenience”, that “all honest citizens enforce the law”.
In truth, the police are in effect 24/7 security guards, invariably in too few numbers to perform that role. They also “clean up after” crimes, gathering forensic evidence. And their most affirmative role is persistence in tracking down identified criminals after the fact.
The glaring omission to this is immediate crime prevention, which is the role of the honest citizen. They do this both passively, with locks, gates, etc.; but they must also take an *active* role in their own and neighbor’s security.
The extent of this active role is determined by the level of the perception that the police are restricting criminal activity, and that criminals are removed from society promptly, and kept out of it for a long time. If the police and courts are seen as not being able to do this effectively and on an extended basis, the citizenry step in to take up the slack.
Importantly, the police and the courts are under very strict rules as to how they do this; but the public has far fewer constraints. Virtually any act that is both a felony and has potential to, or has caused serious injury or death can be met with lethal force from the public. And to some extent, so can felonies that pose little or no threat of injury or death.
Granted, this use of injurious or lethal force has its own set of rules. But these rules are less formal, and based more on public consensus, which varies from place to place and even by circumstances of the crime and other factors.
And the public can be very fickle about this.
In truth, courts exist to give an alternative to street justice, to prevent blood feuds, and to insure that punishments are carried out. So they are also part of the equation. If the police are efficient in arresting criminals, but the courts let them go promptly, then the wrath of the citizenry may also be invoked.
Yet all told, the public enforce the laws, if government fails in this role; and many in the public are willing and able to do so.
This is a good example of what the second amendment exists for, among other things.
Police in some cities are relegated to only protecting businesses, because that almighty dollar is much more valuable than an irreplaceable life :( .
At home camera/security equipment is also a good thing. There is a woman in my apt. building who has 15 aggravated robbery charges (felonies) sitting on her right now. She’s out on bail, but she’s looking to “go away” for a long time, and rightfully so.
She broke into people’s houses to steal their valuables to support her drug (meth) and gambling habit. One home had cameras. She’s lucky she wasn’t shot by more than just a camera. It’s sad to know that she spent 6 years in prison once before, for doing the very same thing.
If this woman thought with reasonable certainty that the homes she broke into contained people who protected them with guns, would she still have taken that risk? Somehow I think most of her crimes would have been curtailed. Knowing that she’s lost everything that she worked hard to accomplish wasn’t enough to divert her activities.
Protected homes save more than just your stuff. It saves all of us from the taxes required to pay someone to do our job of protecting our homes and families. Protected homes do keep criminals at bay along with the resulting court/appointed lawyers/maintainance of the jailed...
If there wasn’t much out there to steal, they’d have to work!!
And yet Zimmerman is having to put up with a dead thug’s legacy.
This will be made illegal. Can’t have any more rat voters getting shot (though they are even more useful as voters once they are dead).
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