Libertarian ping! Click here to get added or here to be removed or post a message here!
Ferguson does not “have” this conservative challenging military style police.
I’ve been opposing the militarization of the police for about 30 years.
Change the name of the FBI - which carries 'feeling of Eliot Ness= - to the CET - Chicago Enforcement Team. Then put Bill Ayers in charge.
Let's be honest about what's happening.
This might be the first time I’ve seen Americans realize they might be next instead of just thinking “hey, go ahead, kick somebody else’s ass”.
Does having a DEMOCRAT with LOTS of POWER make a difference, OR if the President was let’s just say, WAS a REPUBLICAN, would this still be a BIG DEAL because of the issue of the need to fight crime?
Thank-you for your response. :)
I wish they would stop this crap. There are no tanks theres and not of the equipment, with perhaps the exception of some of the rifles, was ever issued to the military.
Most of the gas masks they are wearing was issued directly after 9/11 by FEMA.
While I am concerned by the militarization of police, I am more immediately concerned with scenes of looters shooting open the doors & windows of businesses, & rioters throwing fire bombs & rocks, while police only WATCH!
Every bomb & rock thrower, every looter should be arrested. If that takes an MRAP to do so, fine. The fire bomb throwers in particular, should be shot on sight.
De-militarize the police, and re-militarize the military!
Just wondering how expensive it would be to replace police cars that are overturned and burned during something like Ferguson...as opposed to using a heavy vehicle that cant be overturned or damaged as easily...
I remember seeing liberals agreeing with each other on how it would be appropriate for their President to direct drone strikes against Americans who declined to turn in their firearms not too long ago. I wonder what they’re saying about Ferguson? Pretty sure they’re singing a different tune now. That’s a liberal for you. See my tag line to see where I stand on this issue.
I think the most irritating thing about this whole “militarized” police thing is the way people go full stupid. Rather than taking the issue up with the people who approve it in state county and local governments they throw meaningless tantrums at police themselves.
Most police departments don’t need much in the way of armored vehicles or other riot control gear but many cities do need it as we see in Ferguson where people are actively shooting at police.
Not since Richard Nixon, Howie. The government has been a leftist cudgel used to bash Americans who don't tow the federal line for at least that long.
I heard Mark Levin say the other day “no liberals are complaining about the militarization of federal agencies, NOAA, DOE, etc)
Who wants to tell the police they can’t have the equipment they think they need to protect themselves? Would we do that to the military or to fire fighters? Not me.
“...Why Ferguson has conservatives challenging military-style police”
Obviously, none of these conservatives own and operate a convenience store on Main Street, Ferguson, MO.
There was nothing military at all about the Brown incident. He was a regular police officer in a regular squad car using a regular weapon and making a regular stop.
As fir riot police having heavy equipment - this ain’t your granpa’s riot. These are coordinated, frequently involving the hiding if weapons parts in advance (to be assembled by the rioters), and always involving lower tech devices such Molotov cocktails and slingshots with ball bearings (which can kill you very nicely).
This militarization meme is all a Dem ploy to remove police presence from dangerous places so that their boys can run them. Don’t snitch, remember? Just do what your Dem thug overlords tell you.
“The images of police in riot gear armed with heavy weaponry and tanks has at times become the alarming backdrop for the Ferguson story, with pictures that television can’t resist.”
I haven’t seen any tanks in Ferguson, has anyone?
Armored personnel carriers are a reasonable way for cops to protect themselves when dealing with rioters throwing bricks, bottles, molotov cocktails, and shooting at them.
Without adequate protection the cops would be forced to start shooting the rioters to protect themselves. Is that what the liberals want?
This argument that the rioters are out-gunned by the police is the same BS liberal bedwetters spew about the terrorists
in Gaza.
My reply is...Good, I’m glad they outmatched!
What good are all of those military weapons and accoutrements when Gov. Jay Nixon and Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson have the police force just standing there watching the criminals looting the local stores?
Importantly, while liberals and conservatives are now both opposing paramilitarized police, they are doing so for very different reasons.
Liberals want the police to stop arresting criminals, even violent ones. Liberals do not want them arrested or put in prison, especially if they are black.
Conservatives, on the other hand, want law and order, but do not want paramilitary police to do so, because the interest there is not law and order, but using violence to politically control the public.
Importantly, those columnists and commentators coming out to defend the idea of paramilitarized police neglect the obvious: if we need or want paramilitarized police, then why not get rid of the police altogether, and replace them with soldiers?
If we don’t need the US Army acting as police 99.9999% of the time, we don’t need a paramilitary police doing so, either.