Posted on 02/11/2013 9:28:25 PM PST by smoothsailing
The number and scope of police abuses in the US is escalating out of control.
The LAPD’s recent actions, I hope, are a tipping point where conservatives will get their heads out of the ground and stop being fawning holster-sniffers. It’s long past time to start demanding real accountability from law enforcement, and it’s even longer past due to take a pretty good whack at their compensation packages and their spending on military and para-military toys.
Didn’t the Nazis have a SWAT equivalent back in day?
This is an excellent article.
I was recently witness to an abandoned and empty warehouse fire, next to my place of work. It was started by some vagrants trying to keep warm, and if I had one handy, I probably could have extinguished it myself with a long garden-hose.
Instead, we had 70 firefighters on the scene, about 15 cops, paramedics, two-helicoptors - and even 2 scary-looking, totally-black Homeland Security SUV’s. Even the Red Cross had to show up with their donut truck to hand out free coffee as there were so many public-safety officials standing around doing nothing.
Just as important as the security-paranoia is to the growth of these Gov’t paramilitaries, it is also about the Gov’t funding spigots that were opened without control after 9/11, for everything from TSA to Customs to your local police department. I call it the “Bin Laden Tax.”
I think Bin Laden will destroy America after all, but even he didn’t realize how it would eventually do it.
Yes, Waffen SS
Yep. We’re living in a police state.
Give up your guns, and it’s all over but the cryin’.
I agree. The troop deployment is drawing down, and there is no reason for a lot of this patriot act stuff anymore after 12 years. We can and should have a case for drawing down the American occupation. It should be as much a part of our platform as the second amendment.
This is what is alarming. You have all these goobers with brand new used mil-surp stuff looking for a mission. All dressed up and nowhere to go. And they can't wait to try out all the stuff they learned at "tactical school".
They are the modern pirates with weapons paid for by us to collect money for the government thugs that approve their pay raiese.
More and more, it seems, they are just that.
Nah, they knocked first.
This is just so messed up it’s unfathomable.
They had several, overlapping groups that did domestic police and security stuff which you could sort of equate with modern SWAT teams, but nothing exactly like SWAT.
The first was the Gestapo, “Geheim Staatspolizei” or “secret police.” The Gestapo was noted for doing all manner of surveillance and snooping, but they broke down more than a few doors in military get-up in their days to act on information.
The SD, in later days, was sorta-kinda an up-weaponed police force. But... I can’t see as much similarity to SWAT units in that the SD (and later units build off the SD) wasn’t ever really responsible for domestic law enforcement.
Then there were the SS Polezei, the SS Police, which came about when the “Green Police” (known in German as “Ordnungpolizei” or “order police”) were sucked into the SS. Before ‘39, the Ordnungpolizei did what you’d expect normal civilian police to do - domestic crime enforcement, cats up trees, public safety, etc.
After ‘39 or so, the Ordnungpolizei (or “Orpo” for short in German) were sucked into the SS, and then the Orpo acquired para-military units known as “SS Polizei Bataillione” and these yahoos would do about what SWAT does today: Dress up like infantry, but not see actual battle. Instead, they worked on terrorizing the population with various door-to-door raids, looking for pesky Jews who might be resisting the grand plans of the Nazi intellectuals, etc.
I’d count the SS Polizei Bataillione as the closest thing to modern SWAT, mostly because of the military light arms and uniforms (including the coal-scuttle helmets), but never seeing actual combat. That comes pretty close to describing SWAT teams today: Lots of donut-munchers playing dress-up.
The Waffen SS was a personal infantry and mechanized infantry force of Hitler’s, and they weren’t really involved in any police work. They did for-real military engagements and killing on the front lines, often as shock troops who were sworn to die before retreating.
Vince Ferrer: “...there is no reason for a lot of this patriot act stuff anymore after 12 years.”
Agreed. You’d think there would be popular support, from traditional liberals as well as people on the right, to roll this police state crap back. I grew up thinking the police were my friends. Now I want nothing to do with them, as I see any interaction as potentially negative. It doesn’t even matter if I’m a law-abiding citizen (as much as that’s possible in this day and age of laws for virtually everything). The best one can hope from an interaction with the police (or the completely arbitrary legal system) is that one escapes relatively unharmed.
Unless we want a true police state, we need leaders willing to tackle asset forfeiture, militarization of police, and criminalization of relatively benign acts. We need to restore the constitutional protections of private property and freedom from search and seizure without probable cause and a warrant.
If the psychology can be applied across the population, the act of creating a police state will create its opposite as well, terrorist organizations. Terrorists, and terror organizations will form that wouldn't have even existed had the police not become so militarized.
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