Posted on 08/16/2014 4:38:17 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Good point! Of course, having a corrupt police force is really bad for society.
I live in Texas and I pity the fool that breaks into my home.
Seriously, they have radios. They can call for a special squad of armed LEs. They do it in Britain all the time.
/johnny
I find your comments specious and unserious.
The writer points to extreme cases when it might be nice to be up-armored. However, the practical application of this militarization is in everyday activities. When the government has a hammer, everything they see seems to be a nail.
Likewise, and I doubt many Freepers ever need a firearm pointed at them to make them follow the law.
Not necessarily — one could simply believe as Adama of Battlestar Galactica: There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.
:’)
It was a good thread, in that it got me to express my opinion to the officials that I elect.
/johnny
He uses some false analogies. For example, because the LAPD need to turn out in force because of a major riot in south-central LA, does that mean that police in thousands of cities and towns in the US need military arms in case there is a major riot in Podunk?
Do police in a small town need an armored vehicle, explosives and fully automatic weapons? Many years ago, one well known Sheriff tried to justify having a .30 caliber, belt-fed Browning machine gun on the grounds that if someone hijacked a commercial aircraft near his airport, he wanted the means to *shoot it down*. Uh, no. Not your job.
And beyond the weapons and equipment, the reason police departments all over the US created SWAT teams was because of a small number of police assassinations by radical leftists in the 1970s. Encouraged by the federal government, police changed their training to assume, for example, that *everyone* could be a potential cop-assassinating terrorist. Which is utter hooey.
It is as irrational as the TSA searching an elderly Irish grandmother in a wheelchair because she *might* be a terrorist, and we *certainly* don’t want to *profile* young Saudi Arabian Arabic Muslim men with beards, carrying Korans, who try to smuggle cigarette lighters on board even though they don’t smoke.
You are right to consider the potential danger the federal government posed to the citizens. The sheriff departments across the land are a safety valve to political police departments (a reason Maryland is trying to eliminate them). Sheriffs, voted in by the people, are not beholding to immediate political whim.
Prior to around 1920 any British subject could wank into a hardware store & buy the equivalent of a military rifle any pistol or shotgun . The trouble started with the Communist Revolution & the whacking of the Czar & his family.
Congratulations!
You've just posted the most idiotic idealistic drivel I've ever read on FR.
Word to the wise: Idealism gets people killed.
Inadvertently, of course, but people still get killed nonetheless.
Are you seriously this detached from reality?
I guess, according to some FReepers, police should only be equipped with flint-lock muzzle loaders; anything more is “militarization.”
They certainly turned everything into a crap sammich.
/johnny
The term militarization of police is at most an analogy.
You seem to be taking it literally. This is why I said I found your comments specious or not serious.
“Serious enough to take the time, because of this thread, to write my State and Federal elected officials, reminding them of my position that police at all levels need to be de-militarized, and their budgets reduced significantly.”
Police are local. It is telling that you want the Federal government to be able to control what a local community decides to do with their own money.
I agree that Federal grants to local police can be a type of honey-trap and that can be addressed Federally and locally.
Most of the police work done by my local PD doesn't require firearms, and the locals know it.
They could easily call in some special squad if required.
On the other hand, I have loaned a local cop a towel so he could help animal control pick up a big, wet dog and put it into the animal control truck without trashing his fresh, start-of-shift uniform.
The local didn't shoot the dog. He didn't need his gun at all. He needed a towel or a smock to protect his dry-cleaning.
/johnny
Interesting.
State & local funding of local police is more than sufficient to arm local & state police forces with sidearms/shotguns & rifles.
What they do on their own time, with their own money is up to them, since they are citizens, too.
/johnny
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