The Pentagon has donated hundreds of MRAP vehicles to police departments nationwide.
Posted on 06/28/2014 10:13:01 AM PDT by Perseverando
The Pentagon has donated hundreds of MRAP vehicles to police departments nationwide.
Snip:
Historians looking back at this period in America’s development will consider it to be profoundly odd that at the exact moment when violent crime hit a 50-year low, the nation’s police departments began to gear up as if the country were expecting invasion — and, on occasion, to behave as if one were underway. The ACLU reported recently that SWAT teams in the United States conduct around 45,000 raids each year, only 7 percent of which have anything whatsoever to do with the hostage situations with which those teams were assembled to contend. Paramilitary operations, the ACLU concluded, are “happening in about 124 homes every day — or more likely every night” — and four in five of those are performed in order that authorities might “search homes, usually for drugs.” Such raids routinely involve “armored personnel carriers,” “military equipment like battering rams,” and “flashbang grenades.”
Were the military being used in such a manner, we would be rightly outraged. Why not here? Certainly this is not a legal matter. The principle of posse comitatus draws a valuable distinction between the national armed forces and parochial law enforcement, and one that all free people should greatly cherish. Still, it seems plain that the potential threat posed by a domestic standing army is not entirely blunted just because its units are controlled locally. To add the prefix “para” to a problem is not to make it go away, nor do legal distinctions change the nature of power. Over the past two decades, the federal government has happily sent weapons of war to local law enforcement, with nary a squeak from anyone involved with either political party. Are we comfortable with this?
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Funny thing: I'm bother much less by drugs than I am by the institutional perfidy and duplicity employed by, and ingrained into, modern police agencies and their personnel.
You know what would help these out-of-control cops win back good public opinion?
Start looking like police officers instead of Hollywood caricatures of soldiers from bad movies.
Lots of cops with delusions of Seal Team Six grandeur lift weights to look as menacing as possible, and they’re obviously getting help from steroids.
Police departments need to institute regular drug testing, the same kind of tests that are administered to professional athletes. Any cop who uses steroids should be fired.
Steroids engender a hair trigger temper in an otherwise normal person, who in this case carries a gun. (It’s science, not cop-hate. You know what else is science? Total number of dogs shot so far this year by itchy trigger-finger ‘roid ragers. And babies blown up by flash grenades.)
Also, cops shouldn’t be allowed to shave their heads. A chrome dome is an escalator because it’s aggressive and threatening. And it’s intended to be.
Why should citizens have to deal with a ‘roided out chrome dome whose mien and appearance are expressly designed to cow and threaten at a at a traffic stop? You work for us, ‘roid ragers, and you should look like us.
Americans love their soldiers. They just don’t like cops playing soldier games with the American people, as if the American people were the enemy.
Act like cops, not soldiers making war on our own citizens, and you might regain some of the respect you’ve lost in recent years.
No knock warrants need to be the rare exception, .......
Agree 100%.
45,000 SWAT raids per year? That is (another) absolute travesty in modern America. Police forces should simply not be armed or act like military units. I don’t care if some guilty people temporarily escape punishment. The police shouldn’t resort to violence until every other avenue has been exhausted.
Wanting to learn more about the local PD, I enrolled in and completed the citizen police academy.
Very interesting class, learned a lot about laws, policies, practices, everything about the PD; from local patrol and traffic enforcement, to criminal investigations involving murder and child abuse (gawd-awful some of the photos and the child abuse would make you cry).
Anyway, very interesting class on the local PD.
Had a session on SWAT team operations.
The usual that you would expect, sniper rifles and AR-15’s, to a lesson on tear-gas and flash-bang grenades. No armored vehicles though. All the SWAT guys were physically studded-out. Steroid abuse, I think.
Anyway, they showed us a video from a no-knock raid on a residence they conducted.
They wore personal cameras so we saw the raid from their perspective.
Set-up: Seems some guy was lurking in shopping centers and waiting for unsuspecting women to leave the stores and drive home, with him following. He would then follow them into the garage and rape them in their home.
The SWAT teams had him under surveillance for several days at his residence, actually, his parents’ home, and knew his routine and that he slept on the living-room couch fold-out bed.
The SWAT team conducted a no-knock raids at 0300hrs and the video was full of noise (flash-bang), yelling and breaking glass.
One SWAT member goes down the hall to the rear of the home and the dad stumbles out from the bedroom in his t-shirt and shorts and was yelled at to get down while at the same time thrown to the ground.
The SWAT guys told us how it was a great arrest and worked according to plan.
I asked the SWAT guys what would have happened to the father if he came out of the room with a firearm.
They answered he would have been “taken down.”
I replied, ‘wait, you told us the parents didn’t know what their son was up to and if someone breaks into my home in the middle of the night I’m coming out shooting.”
The SWAT guy, with a smirk, replied, “Well, officer safety comes first.” Totally missing the point.
I then asked the SWAT team why they did a middle of the night no-knock raid when they observed this guy for days and knew his routine and all they had to do was wait for him to come out his front door in the morning and arrest him.
Stunned, deer-in-headlights moment.
Stammering an answer was something along the lines of “Well, we um, we couldn’t risk him getting away.”
Rubbish and I told them so. They we not pleased with me.
Met with the Chief of Police and relayed my concerns. He is a new chief and is a nice guy and was not from around here when the raid happened. He told me that since he arrived he has been taking on the SWAT team for ‘issues’ he discovered.
I think he is getting a saddle on those boys.
A couple years ago, male police officers in one NJ town petitioned to wear earrings on the job, to make them look more intimidating.
Earrings. On male police officers. To make them look more intimidating.
I can’t even wrap my mind around that.
It’s an industry that pays for bennies, vacations, tuition, health insurance, retirement... What’s not to love about WOD?
Hmmm, I wonder ....
Incorporate our little prepper compound as a city. Then create a police force, then ask the government for all kinds of goodies.
If you can’t beat ‘em ... join ‘em
Not only is the equipment over the top, but it’s an absolute waste of money. So what if it’s free to start with. Those things are not cheap to maintain or operate.
I have no doubt there are still many good men and women in the various departments. The root problem, however, is the policy that’s facilitating the militarization and those attracted to it.
No, they don't. Enough Molotovs will roast the contents satisfactorily.
When it reaches the point that they are attacking us with military hardware, the "contents" are no longer fellow citizens just doing a job; they are the regime.
Did anyone think to ask exactly who those cops are fighting that they need to “intimidate”?
If you’re defending against an INVADING ARMY, by all means, paint your face blue, Braveheart. You’re a soldier fighting an enemy.
But cops? You need to look like the citizens you work for. Don’t try to intimidate us. WE’RE NOT YOUR ENEMY.
I got a terrifying taste of the new soldier/cop mentality a couple years ago when my Los Angeles neighborhood suburb was sealed off by cops looking for someone involved in a shooting nearby.
Cops with rifles and body armor on every corner. Streets barricaded. You couldn’t drive in or even walk back to your home. We were “ordered” to stay inside our houses.
After eleven hours, a couple neighbors and I finally approached the cop on the nearest corner to ask when family members could come home. He wouldn’t speak to us — he just starting SCREAMING at us not to take another step toward him and to go back inside our houses immediately or we’d all be arrested. He put his hand on his rifle butt and started jabbering into his radio for back-up.
He was a shaved head, ‘roided out a-hole, completely out of control, who had no business handling a machine gun in the suburbs.
I will never forget it. Martial law was declared by... whom? Not a the mayor. Or the governor. It was a bunch of cops playing soldier.
But when they said "Don't worry; We are just going to use it for Search and Rescue." I laughed. A more useless vehicle for traversing hiking trails I have never seen. Horses, ATVs or motorcycles are what they need for that.
But the new Police Chief is a political appointee with very little field experience as a police officer, by our corrupt and fascistic Village council, so it is only a matter of time.
Only a matter of time.
Bookmark to your post #20.
Seems the SWAT teams are afraid of the GANGS...
The gangs and there is a lot of them..
Operate with impunity...
The SWAT teams know where they are, what they are doing, and basically who they all are..
BUT.... the gangs continue to operate..
Could be the SWAT teams are gangs themselves and respect each other..
Unless the gangs pay the SWAT-TERS OFF...
There are lots of gangs.. like,, Congress, the Supremes, and the Executive Branch..
WHo have all the respect of a Woverine toward each other..
The Journalists work with all of them.. and keep track of who currently the meanest is..
Pillars of each community (the only law-abiding civilians/bosses, according to judicial authority law enforcement academies) have good reasons to fear. Things are getting to be more unsafe every day. Artillery should be issued to them.
;-)
The gangs are controlled and kept in line by the most influential political constituents who own them and the associated local governments. And that’s okay, you know, because “there’s corruption everywhere.”
Moose have antlers?
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