Posted on 01/22/2014 9:43:24 AM PST by Altariel
Unwarranted NSA surveillance, the passage of NDAA, stop and frisk programs, and the rise of warrior cops, have essentially turned America into a centralized police state.
Blurring the lines between the U.S. military and local sheriff departments sets a dangerous precedent that erodes freedom and civil liberties.
Those lines are being blurred right now in South Carolina.
According to The State, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department will participate in secretive joint exercise Monday and Tuesday with unnamed units from Ft. Bragg.
The drills are scheduled to run up to midnight on both days and occur primarily in Lower Richland, around Hopkins and Eastover. Exercises will also take place around the Screaming Eagle Road near Elgin and North Richland County near outbound Monticello Road.
According to The State, a sheriff’s department spokesman refused to provide which units from Ft. Bragg are involved. Ft. Bragg is home to the U.S. Army’s elite groups, including the Special Forces and Delta Force.
The spokesman also said the drills would be noisy at times.
“Citizens may see military and departmental vehicles traveling in and around rural and metropolitan areas and may hear ordnance being set off or fired which will be simulated/ blanks and controlled by trained personnel,” a sheriff’s department press release said.
The secretive exercises are off limits to the media, reports The Activist Post.
The implications are serious.
Locally elected Sheriffs take an oath to uphold, preserve, and defend the Constitution. They are not an extension of the centralized federal government. They have the ultimate say in their county as the top law enforcement officer.
If sheriff deputies engage an enemy in conjunction with the U.S. military who do they take orders from? The ARMY commander? Or their Sheriff?
This violates the separation of local authorities and the federal government. If the separation of powers are eliminated, who will protect the Constitutional rights of citizens?
“There’s a rather large difference between joint training exercises and having the military enforce street-level laws. Believe me, I’ll be the first to speak out against the latter.”
Why? Because changing the name from soldier to police makes it ‘nicer’? If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and carries an M4 and moves like a soldier...then it is a soldier. Slapping ‘deputy’ on their shoulder doesn’t change that.
Police need training in how to act within a civilian environment, not how to act within Iraq. No wonder the cops in the Dorner hunt opened fire on innocent people, if this is the training they get.
“however ... if you are a hostage in need of extraction .... you will damn well be thankful that these LEO’s have this training. “
And if you are a citizen who wants to live in a free country, this is scary stuff. My odds of being a hostage are nill. My odds of interacting with a soldier/cop is high. I’m more concerned about how the soldier/cop handles his interactions with me, than I am with the negligible possibility of being a hostage.
But people always reach for extreme examples to justify anything. With that thinking, holy crap, they need RPG, SAWs, and everything else, just in case. Of course since they won’t have a legitimate target to use the training and equipment on, they’ll lower the bar so they can play with the battle rattle.
“..... LOL ..... I think your questions should be directed towards the abuse of power rather than the effective training of response units.”
You also need to watch the sources of that power, and the equipment used to exercise it. A soldier is a very different tool than a cop is. They think differently, and they act differently.
To quote a movie “You don’t put on a condom unless you’re going to #$@!”
And you don’t give police military training unless you need your police to act like soldiers.
“I certainly wouldn’t want to put my fate in the hands of the same “highly-trained” SWAT team that destroyed Jose Guerena Ortiz, using tactics more appropriate for Falujah.
38 posted on 01/22/2014 10:58:30 AM PST by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 34 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
To: DuncanWaring
.... please don’t confuse the exception for the norm.”
How many exceptions does it take before it IS the norm?
.... Yes .... precisely .... because on occasion they do have to act like soldiers just as soldiers on occasion have to act like tactical officers.
.... After the initial first operations in Iraq .... the military realized that the training given to our troops was still stuck in the open battleground warfare mode and left them inadequately prepare for urban warfare. Subsequently our troops were then given that training ... much of which was garnered from the training and experience of our urban tactical units as well as special ops unit training.
I know that for many years they had a perfect record of killing every single hostage they were "rescuing".
Well said, and thanks for posting. I'd be totally in favor of limiting police to six-shot revolvers. They don't need more than that.
No, we don’t need police acting like soldiers. Police operate among our own citizens, and should behave accordingly. Soldiers are to do what it takes to serve our nations interests, even at the cost to those they interact with.
Police within our nation can not be so free.
There is a reason Posse Comitatus was created, and it wasn’t so police can walk around like soldiers and start treating US citizens like this is an occupied nation.
http://geinvestigations.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/PoliceMilitarization.jpg
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/boston1.jpg
I see...you can “LOL” at someone else’s point of view, but yours is sacrosanct...
It is but to laugh...you’re tripping all over yourself to justify these activities, all in the name of security.
Speaking of that...a quote by Ben Franklin comes to mind...
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
*shakes head* Thank you for reminding Free Republic how lightly you take the idea of liberty, so lightly that you are willing to laugh at the warnings of history.
But...but...but....that’d be cutting back PROGRESS.
</sarc>
You’re welcome.
They do NOT need to act like soldiers in a Free Republic.
Why are you advocating authoritarianism on a conservative website?
Should it continue? Well, I think people are mistaking what 'training' with LEO truly is. It is not about teaching cops how to be Tier 1 operators. A lot of this training is active simulation ...for instance between Blue Light and Delta per Haney the trainees had to evade FBI agents who would be looking for them. If they could do that chances are they could do the same during a mission to, say, East Germany or Iran in the late 70s. That 'training' with FBI didn't mean they were training FBI. Any benefit was strongly one way.
Talking about the FBI ...if cops wanted Tier 1 training it would be far easier to get it from the FBI's HRT, which is a Tier 1 unit tasked with domestic operations, rather than trying to get ACE or DEVGRU. And anyways, the average cop would rather go ninja/tactical-tacticool rather than be truly hard.
In a nutshell,a lot of that training is strictly one way. For the benefit of ACE. Similar to how drug dealers that bet on illegal dog fights use weak dogs as bait for the real fighting pit bulls.
Maybe. But I will point out that locals are warned this will be a noisy affair, with combat noise. I doubt military units need need combat training in how to engage against a local police force. And I doubt our police need training in how to fight against an invading military force.
This is being done with secrecy. There are two reasons possible for that. Training they don’t want an enemy to know about, or training they don’t want US to know about. Too many things are called secret, not because of an enemy, but because they don’t want public attention.
I don’t trust secrecy when it comes from police. When they go covert, it is for their good, not ours.
Can’t argue with that. A lot has been happening that is quite - well - strange.
Looking at those picture TOTAL FAIL ,,, first rule of combat never bunch up. spread out , couldn’t tell ya how many times the old DI yelled at us during training ‘69
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