Rise of the ROIDS.... Rise of the ROIDS....people dead over a few pot plants
yay for us
Ever since the so-called War On Drugs (WOD) and, now, the War On Terror (WOT) — actually more like the War On The Bill of Rights) — began, our civilian cops have been undergoing MILITARY training. The “authorities” gentle it down with the prefix “Para” but those “dynamic entry” teams would be more at home in Baghdad than Boston. (Well, unless they hit John Kerry’s front door at 3 am, Boston might not be a good example.) Watch “Dallas SWAT” for a dose of how it works.
I have long thought that that sort of activity within the ranks of otherwise “civilian” law enforcement was a push by those with an agenda to bypass posse comitatus for purposes BEYOND the WOD/WOT and other currently criminal behavior.
That the mass of that shrinking minority – the American citizen (thank you Mr. Open Borders Bush and Total Amnesty Obama) – has NOT objected to this erosion of personal liberty does NOT bode well for the future of freedom here.
I wonder what sort of body count of innocent grandmothers and others it will take before folks begin to grasp that they might be more at risk from the cops than the criminals and bring the situation back under control?
My Uncle Bob (R.I.P.) would be horrified.
My Uncle Bob was a 30-year veteran of a police force in suburban Cleveland. He was best man at my wedding in 1962. He served in an era when MOST cops embodied the now frequently hollow motto emblazoned on police units all over this country: “TO PROTECT AND SERVE.”
The last 10 years of his career were spent as the chief Juvenile Detective in his department. When he died, a number of the young men whose lives he had touched years before came forward to tell how his timely and sometimes tough-love intervention turned them around.
I know that many officers STILL try to live that creed today. I also know that there are officers out there who, despite the rulings by the Supremes that they have no obligation to specific, individual citizens (see Warren v. DC for some fascinating and frightening reading on that), would stand between one of us and a bullet – and have.
Having said that, I must also lament that SOME cops are “cowboys.” Too many are simply power driven megalomaniacs who would have dropped on the OTHER side of the law had their lives drifted a degree or two off the course they did take.
I believe this to be especially true of far too many federal law enforcement types who have allowed their egos and hubris to become as bloated as the bureaucratic federal behemoth they serve. (See footnote below). Their mandate is no longer to “…protect and serve” the citizens who pay their salaries: It is to crush any meaningful resistance to a growing body of procedures, regulations and policies – too frequently enforced under severely tortured interpretations of the underlying legislative enactments (if any) – and often put in place by executive fiat. The massively abused SEIZURE statutes – laws the author of which now seeks to RESCIND! — spring to mind.
And one cannot but help to wonder how the clear to anyone with half a brain criminality of the Clintons and now Obama – and their subsequent avoidance of any penalty – has played into the problem? There now seems to be a bright line between the easy, highly flexible, slap-on-the-wrist law for the rich and powerful and the rigidly enforced law against even the tiniest victimless “crimes” committed by those of us further down the food chain. Does anyone in his right mind believe THAT will NOT engender added disrespect for ALL law?
Could those things be a large part of the problem in some of the highly disturbing – and DEADLY (on BOTH sides) – confrontations we have witnessed over the past decade or so? Gordon Kahl, Ruby Ridge, OK City, Waco, Beck… This list WILL lengthen and we’d all better pray that WE will be spared.
Roman historian Tacitus warned that one could tell the level of corruption in a society by the NUMBER of its laws. Anyone doubt the level of corruption here?
Am I the only one who thinks we’re long overdue a serious review of the NUMBERS of laws under which we are now forced to exist – and which are increasingly used not to assure our safety or well-being, but to COMMAND AND CONTROL us and KEEP US IN LINE.
Only the most tyrannical and power-crazed members of law enforcement could possibly object to that.
The modern counterparts of my uncle would not object.
It is THEY, after all, who are most likely to catch that bullet – probably fired by someone who has symbolically screamed to himself “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANY MORE” — referred to earlier when they sally forth to serve that flimsy warrant or make that bogus arrest.
Dick Bachert (1999) Updated 12/2010
FOOTNOTE:
At a cocktail party back in the late 80’s, I struck up a chat with a fellow — his name was Joe M. — whom I’d met on one or two previous events. After my first encounter, Joe’s neighbor and my boss at the time told me that Joe was an alcoholic who had just retired from 25 years with the IRS. Needless to say, I was guarded in expressing my political views to Joe as the IRS had helped my dad into an early grave in 1977 — at age 59 over an estate matter. Joe was pretty deep into his cups at the function in question and began telling IRS “war stories.” Most had to do with clear cases of criminal conduct by not very nice people. Joe — who was a few years short of 60 — sounded to me like someone who enjoyed helping getting really bad people off the street and I asked why he’d retired early. He told me that what he called “the service” had changed for the worse. Then I asked him about the new people coming in. He shook his head, actually teared up and said that many of them were “really bad.” I pressed. “Really bad” meant incompetent? “No — DANGEROUS,” he responded “they like to hurt people.”
It was then that I think I understood why Joe drank.
Eventually someone other than me is going to ask why the cop-wanna-be-warriors why they can’t just wait to take a suspect down on the street in front of his house as he’s getting into his car or something, take him back to his house, and do a search. Why all the Gestapo tactics? And I do mean Gestapo!
Can't tell you how that rubs me the wrong way.
That's a pussies way out. It sure as heck isn't a man's man way out.
My take on this is that if everyone who participated in these raids had to have their home addresses published in the local media within 24 hours, we'd see a lot of the nonsense portion of these raids cease immediately.
The cop generation of the last, especially 10 years is a disgrace.
Oh well - live like a thug you might die like one. All this over pot plants?
The following paragraph struck me.
A number of federal agencies also now have their own SWAT teams, including the Fish & Wildlife Service, NASA and the Department of the Interior. In 2011, the Department of Education's SWAT team bungled a raid on a woman who was initially reported to be under investigation for not paying her student loans, though the agency later said she was suspected of defrauding the federal student loan program.
WTF is happening to this country?
1993:
today:
tomorrow:
In 2011, a school district cop was shot just outside the high school near my house in a Los Angeles suburb. (Turned out later the cop, who didn’t die, had discharged his own weapon in a bizarre love triangle cover-up, but never mind. OFFICER DOWN!)
The LA Times verified that over 1,000 police officers cordoned off a seven square mile residential area. 1,000 cops. To catch one guy. There were hundreds of police cars mustered up and down the main avenue. There were cops at every intersection — nobody allowed in. If you drove out, they searched your vehicle. If you tried to leave on foot, you were stopped and questioned.
Cops were at both intersections by my house. No one was allowed back into the neighborhood for fifteen hours, well into the night. Everybody coming home from work went to a friend’s or hotel.
If you left, you weren’t allowed back in. Neighbors coming out of their houses and trying to approach the sentinels on the corners to ask questions — “Hey, what time can I tell my husband he can drive home from work?” — were screamed at and threatened with arrest if they didn’t go back inside their houses immediately.
Nine schools were placed on “lockdown,” whatever the hell that means. In this case, it meant that frantic parents were not allowed to pick up their kids, nor were they even allowed access to the streets near the school.
No would say it, but martial law was declared in Los Angeles by... whom? Cops. On whose authority? We never found out. If your movements are restricted, if areas of the city are closed off, if there are guys who look like soldiers, not cops, standing on every corner with guns and threatening to arrest you for not “obeying orders”... that is martial law.
We saw the same behavior in Boston... in part because no one did anything when it happened in Los Angeles.
When did the cops appropriate that kind of power for themselves?
I read the article and I still don’t understand how we got here.
THEN GO SELL LIFE INSURANCE, PUZZZIE!
The PA State Bulls I knew when I was a kid, (and because dad and uncle's repair shop was an authorized cruiser repair shop, we knew MANY of the guys at the local barracks) were REAL MEN. They didn't brag, they didn't bully, they didn't use obscenities or shout in your face.
They didn't NEED to.
They were quiet, cool and very professional. And you KNEW in your heart, messing with them might be a fatal mistake. And they did all that with a smile.
Most professional people I have ever known.
Now, they are just Rambo Wannabees.
Good article! I disagree that it can’t be stopped or turned around. Like the author said, stopping the federal grants is a good start. Cities, counties and states can pass laws and criteria to stop most of the nonsense. People need to talk to their local politicians, communicate through local papers, local radio and television. The militarization of our police forces can be stopped.
And don’t forget the latest in tacticool fashions. Those’ll make a warrior. ;-)
I fired off a letter to WSJ right after I read the article yesterday:
Dear Sirs: Why don’t we just subject our SWAT Teams to the same ROE (Rules of Engagement) that shackle our military? Surely American citizens deserve the same consideration we give the Taliban.
bfl