My experience in the military and in law enforcement has been a bit different than Tom’s. I too served in the Marine Corps, where I earned a 3rd award Expert rifleman’s badge and graduated from 2nd Mar Div Scout/Sniper school.
I also attended a Law Enforcement sniper school at Camp LeJeune where the Marine Instructors treated us very well and didn’t call us ‘wanna-be’s’ or other derogatory names. At least not to our face, which I suspect any Marine worth his salt would have done if he had a problem with us.
We conducted ourselves in a professional manner and they did as well. We must have done something right because we went out drinking with them several times. Some of them even asked us about getting hired at our PD after they were discharged.
I served on my Dept. Swat team for 15 years along side USMC Vietnam Veterans and veterans of the Gulf War.
I understand the ‘militarization’ of the police is a popular topic right now and Tom is giving his opinion. He has some points that are on target but others; not so much.
The founders understood that our Constitution would only work with a moral educated honourable people. We are loosing the battle on those grounds especially in the cities.
Here is a slightly different perspective from Tom, who I like. I have been reading his site for a while.
“Police Militarization Is More Than Tanks And Rifles: It’s A Cultural Disease- It’s acclimating the citizenry to life in a police state”
http://www.westernjournalism.com/militarization-is-more-than-tanks-and-rifles-its-a-cultural-disease/ … you will easily understand
Actually his site is pro LEO.
There is a reason that Obama decided to restrict the flow of surplus military equipment to local police forces, it no longer fits his agenda.
I despise everything to do with Obama, I have known from the beginning what he is.
But over the years we have had an increasing number of SWAT Team events that were on wrong location, killed innocent people because of wrong info, bad “intelligence’ (military term) or because of poor judgement at the administrative level (LEO, DA, Judge).
The medical profession has an obligation to “do no harm”. It should always be the same with law enforcement. Serve and protect is for most LEO’s the reason they exist. Old school Law Enforcement Officers understand that.