Posted on 08/14/2014 2:41:49 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The outrage over the shooting death of Michael Brown escalated in part because of a sense that nothing had changed, that police officers were still operating in minority communities with a wantonness and brutality that belonged to another era.
But over the past two days — as the police in Ferguson have responded to very angry protests with an alarmingly heavy hand, looking and reacting as if they were not the community's own peace officers but an invading army — something remarkable has happened. The longstanding liberal concerns about police racial hostility has seemed to merge with the longstanding libertarian concerns over police militarization. It isn't just that no one is defending the cops. It's that many of the criticisms from the left and the right sound very similar.
"We need to demilitarize this situation" is how Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill's statement began this morning. The whole piece sounded awfully similar to Senator Rand Paul's op-ed, which appeared a little bit later under the headline, "We Must De-Militarize the police."
Kevin D. Williamson, the roving correspondent for the conservative journal National Review, wrote from Ferguson this morning of "ridiculously militarized suburban police ... pointing rifles at people from atop armored cars, i.e. the worst sort of mall ninjas." (This is the same Kevin D. Williamson who compared a black child to a primate 24 hours earlier.) In a similar vein, the liberal MSNBC host Chris Hayes introduced a segment on police militarization on his show last night by mentioning the surreal fact that the police — in a suburban setting, not a jungle, were wearing camouflage: "What exactly are they trying to camouflage into?"
By no means has every conservative been outraged by the police response in Ferguson. On Fox News this morning, the story was still that the protestors threw Molotov cocktails, and the police responded. But the argument against a militarized police is a longstanding libertarian concern, whose most dogged journalistic proponent has been the libertarian Radley Balko, author of The Rise of the Warrior Cop. Just as notably, the conservative perspective on law and order has been subtly changing, most obviously in the strengthening conservative enthusiasm for reforming prison sentencing, a cause embraced not only by libertarians like Mike Lee and Rand Paul but also by more conventional Republicans like Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan.
Even given this recent history, it was still striking today to see Rand Paul, in his statement, turn from more general concerns about the militarization of police to the specific topic of race: "Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them."
This is exactly the argument that liberals have been making for an awfully long time, but that conservatives have rarely joined. It seems hard to imagine, given how clearly the conversation has turned to militarization, that we won't hear more of this. Watching the reaction to Ferguson, it seems possible that the talk about police militarization might function as a convenient rhetorical backdoor, a way for both liberals and conservatives to address the siege mentality that seems to have taken hold in many police departments and the alienation that breeds in communities.
Militarization is not the deepest problem that surfaced in Ferguson: Race still is. But militarization may be the actionable one.
Are you suggesting the police are unable to perform their duties while wearing standard police uniforms, and must wear military combat uniforms?
Is this why police agencies all over the U.S. have obtained hundreds of military combat vehicles in recent years?
Cops just need to watch old reruns of Dragnet. Joe Friday never needed a SWAT team (and he never killed a dog).
It would be very difficult not to notice them.
The left caused this problem. It is nor something conservatives wanted, supported or ever to my knowledge advocated.
Why do we have to have militarized police?
1. The left encouraged minorities to engage in organized violence
2. Drugs that the leftist want to take. The gangs and cartels are militarized so the police must be as well.
3. The left by encouraging a questioning of legitimate authority has created an atmosphere of distrust
4. By refusing to condemn the anti-social aspects of minority cultures under the color of Political Correctness the left encouraged violence
5. By transforming schools from places of education to political indoctrination camps the left encourages this because youths no longer graduate with job skills.
6. By adopting policies that destroyed minority families the left removed positive role models from the lives of youth
7. By creating a permanent underclass the left has created a whole group of people with nothing left to lose.
There is no moral equivalency here militarized police are a creation of the left to solve the problems they created.
It could be argued that it was done intentionally to foster a police state but I don’t do not think leftist are actually that smart. I do think it is a logical outgrowth of the policies of the left. If you want to see how to reduce crime without a militarized police look at what Rudy G did in New York.
Bump!
No. I am saying that it is only prudent to protect oneself to the extent practicable given that there are some individuals that would take your life in a volatile situation.
No..
Glad to hear that....
The point here is the police have no GD business playing military or dressing up in combat military uniforms...
They need to ditch the this whole military thing and get back to being police.
That’s a thought provoking question. I don’t have time to attempt an answer at the moment. I’ll be back in a few hours.
Hopefully this thread will not have decayed into the usual flame war by then.
The problem with giving local police, military toys, is that they will find every excuse to go out and play with them.....and innocent citizens end up DEAD!
bu... bu... but!
the evil white devil cop who shot the black kid wasn’t using a “militarized weapon” it was a standard issue handgun.
Radical Concept:
Cops focused on preventing criminals from committing crime
NOT raising revenue by writing tickets to innocent civilians attempting to legally go about their day.
Actually they are rivaled by Hispanics in numbers in many regions, but your overall point is still valid.
Law -abiding middle class have advocated for DECADES for more cops and bigger cop budgets. Folks on the right never questioned it because that force was RARELY used against them.
The Left did not militarize the police alone. They had enormous support from the right.
Your argument is more to justify the right's insistence for more cops with more weapons....cause folks in the ghetto rarely advocate for more cop money or more cops.
The right RESPONDED to deteriorating social conditions with cops.
I say it's time to re-think that.
That’s right Larry...
It’s like giving government the authority, money and tools to spy on law abiding American’s, they’ll do it....And they’re doing it.
It is in the eye of the beholder. I am amazed at these comments. Wow, this country really is unraveling.
Militarization is not the deepest problem that surfaced in Ferguson
No it’s not, the the deepest problem is that black culture fosters thuggish criminal conduct.
How many unarmed blacks are shot by cops?
Answer very very few.
How many blacks are shot by other blacks?
Answer thousands.
Yeah, well every body knows white people have way more to fear from white cops than black criminals
Oops, wait, that’s not right.
Yes it is.
I can...Police wearing military combat uniforms routinely in almost every agency all over America now, police agencies given hundreds of military combat vehicles by your government, the use of drones, helicopters, using heavily armed combat units to serve routine warrants, shooting unarmed people and their pets, similar to what happens in brutal war zones and on and on...
Ya been in an isolated cave for the past several decades?
Do you have any idea why there is now growing escalating widespread distrust for law enforcement/government?
??
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