Posted on 06/27/2020 8:05:36 AM PDT by COBOL2Java
Other reforms make sense and are long overdue. Among these are proposals to put a halt to measures that have seemingly transformed many departments into quasi-military forces that act and are seen by those they are supposed to protect as an occupying military force.
Adam Walinsky, a former speechwriter for the late Robert F. Kennedy, had a friend who resigned from the FBI years ago when that agency created its first SWAT team because he believed once it came into existence there would be more and more pressure to use it regardless of the wisdom of doing so. Today, numerous federal agencies and thousands of state and local law enforcement agencies have their own SWAT teams. By 2014, The Washington Post reported that they executed a combined total of as many as 80,000 raids on businesses and homes a year and that number has increased since.
Many of these raids are on people who no one perceives as a danger, but are nevertheless rousted out of bed by camouflage outfitted officers carrying automatic weapons who break down their doors, shoot their dog if they have one, throw them to the floor and point weapons at them while they literally destroy their residence searching for drugs, gambling paraphernalia or weapons. Few of these raids lead to arrests and convictions, but do leave traumatized homeowners and children behind...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
My very conservative rural wealthy county west of Richmond, VA does NOT have a SWAT team. For many of the reasons listed above. Our Sheriff & his deputies are very conservative, generally. I know none who are not.
They do have a small team specially trained with a lot of “SWAT” type equipment (tried some on myself), but it is rarely and hesitantly used - BUT NEVER AS A FIRST RESPONSE.
The team has a non-threatening name I can’t remember now, and only is called in by officers who are facing a difficult and threatening encounter who need additional help and re-inforcement.
I really like their thinking and approach. I’ve taken the Sheriff’s Academy training, and it is great.
I’ve said for a long time that police shouldn’t be militarized. Give people toys and they will eventually want to play with them. Likewise, get rid of the tactical pants and other gear, and get them back in regular police uniforms.
A few years ago an NRA magazine had a full dressed SWAT member on its cover with an article extolling the creation of SWAT. I sent them a letter that that is exactly what I would expect to see at my door one day to confiscate my firearms.
Take a look at how the cartels in Mexico are armed. Th cartel armory is full of high powered military grade weapons. All the way from assault rifles too heavy machine guns.The Mexican military is just as well armed. Local police or sheriffs departments need to be able to deal with US criminals armed like the cartels.I remember a bank robbery in LA several years ago where two robbers In body armor and armed with assault rifles totally out gunned the officers who responded to robbery. Shotguns and 9mm pistols were worthless. It was not till officers were given assault rifles by local gun shops that they ended it. Law enforcement needs trained SWAT to deal with incidents like took place in LA.
Many years ago (like a generation ago) my enlistment was coming to an end so I applied for jobs with police departments. At the time I really wanted to go with the County Sheriffs because they had basically a small military organization. They had aircraft, one had what amounted to a cavalry with horses for remote patrols, rescues and protests. Except in major metro areas, the SWAT teams for the entire county resided with the Sheriffs office. They were the special forces, only called in during extreme situations. Eventually even small city departments had SWAT teams many poorly trained. Combat vets brought a higher level of skill learned in places like Fallujah. Add in No Knock Warrants initiated by SWAT teams and it is a recipe for a disaster. Innocent people have been killed in SWAT led raids. During the war, Marines and Sailors were in the break room watching the news. It was showing a live news feed during a police raid. The SWAT team stacked up to rush the door. The men in the room had just returned from Iraq and were being medically screened. They started laughing and joking about the stupid cops, that's not how you stack up....they must have received Army training....etc (they were Marines) Today some of those men or others like them are on SWAT teams and they are very efficient in conducting house to house operations.
No. The only way to beat the drug cartels is to put them out of business. End this insane second prohibition and legalize recreational drugs subject to strict government regulation and make their manufacture and sale a government monopoly. Require people seeking a prescription for their drug of choice to attend a drug counseling program. We won’t save everyone, but we will save a lot and it is far less expensive than warehousing a significant percentage of the population at public expense. And drug related crime would drop drastically.
The cartels would be out of business in a few months.
I agree with demilitarization of the police force. It seems like a purposeful loophole/bypassing of Posse Comitatus to have military strength police units.
It compensates for the decline in the quality of the police, since PC BS started taking over police departments in the 70s.
Also (sorry I wish there was an edit feature), You have to ease restrictions on self defense along with demilitarization of police. People are just going to have to accept that. We can’t ask the police to lighten up, but then keep going so hardcore after self defense cases.
What you say is true, maybe, along the border, but that does not justify why a police department for a small city in North Dakota or podunk Nebraska needs to be militarized or have MRAPS or conduct no knock warrants. SWAT teams are a necessity, but they should be the exception not the rule. A cadre of highly trained men used in special circumstances not serving warrants.
During the North Hollywood shootout the LAPD did an excellent job in isolating and containing the robbers until SWAT did arrive. The robbers had been hit in extremities and bleeding so they may well have bleed out or surrendered eventually. This shootout accelerated the police being militarized, but it was an exception not the norm. Interestingly, apparently the AR-15 rounds did not penetrate the body armor. The robbers had home made body armor suits with level IIIA plates. There were multiple hits from 9mm rounds in extremities not protected by armor. That meant the patrol officers did a good job considering the unequal fire power.
If law enforcement is a war, then the state has become solely a military force, externally and internally.
There is always a need to have highly trained police for the “break glass” moment but police need to get back to community policing and walking the beat. I like when they are on the street. One of my fondest memories was the Philadelphia Mounted Police who were great for us kids in Fairmount Park.
Ain't that the truth! As a young Captain, I worked at a place then called the Air Defense Board at Fort Bliss. It was the testing agency for new air defense artillery systems in development.
One of my main jobs was giving the informational briefing to nearly all VIPs that visited Fort Bliss. My boss' directive to me was I handled all briefings up to 3 star general and civilian equivalent. He would handle visitors above those grades, but I would be the one handling all questions. It wasn't long before I was nearly able to give the briefings without notes (I always had them for backup, though, I wasn't that foolish).
I was giving these briefings normally 3 days a week. Preparation was easy, as we had our own audio-visual section to prepare the slides and other visual aids.
After 4 1/2 years in Germany, it was a great job. The pace was much slower there, gave us returnees the opportunity to lead a normal life.
What made the job special was that it was the first, and probably only job where I enjoyed implied power from the first day on the job. My boss was my last battalion commander in Germany, and he asked me to go work for him when we were back in El Paso. As luck would have it, we rented our apartments at the same complex.
Having that "power" came with additional responsibility, of course. The last two years in Germany, I was butting heads nearly every day with higher HQ, and I grew weary of the constant battles.
Getting back to the topic, oh yeah, those generals couldn't wait to see those weapons deployed...warts and all...they never had to deal with the damn warts.
Except the cartels are that armed to fight EACH OTHER. And they own the cops and the military. We don’t need armed cops to fight them like in a gang war. You want to beat drug cartels, take the money. And no the LA thing wasn’t about getting assault rifles from the local gun shops, the basically let the bad guys run out of ammo, and hit them in unarmored parts of their body. And it’s worth nothing the robbers were the only 2 people in that whole thing that died. And we’ve never had another incident like that again anywhere in the country. Hardly a reason for police to become military units all over the country.
If you don’t want them to have military overtones, then don’t demand that they conform to paramilitary regulations, and training.
The ONLY solution is to eliminate SWAT teams, no knock warrants and possession of military weapons or equipment of any kind with absolutely no exceptions. It can't be that police have this stuff but only use it as a last resort. Government simply does not work that way ever. Take any government power or rule and it will be used everywhere, all the time, anytime it can be justified by even the most unreasonable excuse. The reason is simple and that is there is never anyone outside of government to say NO once they have power over any given situation. That is just the nature of government.
This is the reason we can't have SWAT at all. It will NEVER be used in a reasonable controlled manner and the results we have today speak for themselves. In fact we tried limited swat and no knock warrants on a limited basis. No one ever said they should be used as a first choice but again we were believing a fairy tale. Government is NOT reasonable by it's very nature. This should be obvious to everyone by now. It's all or nothing in government and the only acceptable answer in this case is nothing. The police must not have the ability to make war.
Lastly, while some see the issue of militarization of the police as just one aspect that needs reform the reality is it is the root of all the conflict that we see today. Everything wrong with our police stems from the one evil seed of SWAT, the possession of military equipment and no knock warrants that enable their use. Take these "tools" away and the conflict will resolve itself.
What if we built a farm/warehouse/camp where drugs were accessible. All the addicts could live there away from society. We could buy the drugs wholesale directly from Columbia and cut out the cartels. We could also ship all the confiscated drugs there saving us money. Anyone that wanted out of the camp could do so by just giving up the drugs.
Hard to sell drugs in society if all your customers are in a camp isolated.
Get off the drugs, David Keene.
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