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Rise of the Warrior Cop: How America's Police Forces Became Militarized
FuzzNugget writes "An awakening piece in the Wall Street Journal paints a grim picture of how America's police departments went from community officers walking the beat to full-on, militarized SWAT operations breaking down the doors of non-violent offenders. From the article: 'In the 1970s, there were just a few hundred [raids] a year; by the early 1980s, there were some 3,000 a year. In 2005, there were approximately 50,000 raids.' It goes on to detail examples of aggressive, SWAT-style raids on non-violent offenders and how many have ended in unnecessary deaths. Last year, after a Utah man's home was raided for having 16 small marijuana plants, nearly 300 bullets in total were fired (most of them by the police) in the ensuing gunfight, the homeowner believing he was a victim of a home invasion by criminals. The U.S. military veteran later hanged himself in his jail cell while the prosecution sought the death sentence for the murder of one officer he believed to be an criminal assailant. In 2006, a man in Virginia was shot and killed after an undercover detective overheard the man discussing bets on college football games with buddies in a bar. The 38-year-old optometrist had no criminal record and no history of violence. The reports range from incredulous to outrageous; from the raid on the Gibson guitar factory for violation of conservational law, to the infiltration of a bar where underage youth were believed to be drinking, to the Tibetan monks who were apprehended by police in full SWAT gear for overstaying their visas on a peace mission. Then there's the one about the woman who was subject to a raid for failing to pay her student loan bills. It's a small wonder why few respect police anymore. SWAT-style raids aren't just for defense against similarly-armed criminals anymore; it's now a standard ops intimidation tactic. How much bloodshed will it take for America to realize such a disproportionate response is unwarranted and disastrous?"
These raids being discussed above are to get the populace to accept them as normal, and to eventually get immediate compliance and prostration on "routine" raids in the future. Then disarming people, or shooting them, "for their own good" so that "misunderstandings" don't happen in "routine" raids in the future. These early raids will weed out those who will resist, as they ramp up eventually they'll get everyone who would resist.
People think there are sheep and wolves. Truth is there are sheep, wolves, and sheep dogs. The job of the wolf is to get the sheep to fear the sheep dog - and it's working. The sheep dog is the biggest threat to the wolf, and the wolves are systematically weeding them out.
A near miss.
Nowhere near a miss.
My thoughts on that one.
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As an american I watched in disgust as the brits did nothing for 25 minutes as one man hacked up another in the middle of the street while being recorded. In the end special police units with guns had to be called and they still used the same amount of overkill american police use.
Which is scarier?
The American system by far. Did you notice the asshole didn't have a gun? And did you notice that the police didn't shoot any innocents? Compare and contrast this situation with the Christopher Dorner killings. During that fiasco, the LAPD tried to extrajudicially execute an elderly lady and her daughter (100 shots fired) for simply having a similar car to Dorner near where he lived.
The answer to why police have become more militaristic is because criminals have become more murderous against cops.
Sorry, officer, but you're full of shit. 160 police officers died in 2010, a 37% increase from 2009. Ten years earlier 150 died. That's out of 794,300 cops. And remember, those are all deaths including squad car wrecks.
To put that in better prospective, 774 construction workers died in the US in 2010.
Being a cop is a hell of a lot safer than being a construction worker.
Here's a little hint, Officer Moore: you might want to google before making a fool of yourself.
Free Martian Whores!
It's gone way out of proportion. Guns get pointed at people for no proper reason at all. It feels like cops are not trained in the art of deescalation anymore.
In comparison of SWAT teams busting friendly poker games this may sound a little bit irrelevant. But that dog incident a couple of weeks back illustrates perfectly why the cops don't feel like a civilian organization anymore.
The cops were busting somebody. A guy came along and proceeded to film him with his cell phone. Things escalated and he got cuffed. Here two things had already gone wrong.
The cops reacted to being filmed. Why? What's wrong with that? Aren't they accountable for what they do? Then they cuffed him. Which comes way WAY too easy for them nowadays. Cuffing somebody is a major thing to do and should come as a last resort. Repeatedly saying no to the request to stop filming does NOT warrant detaining somebody.
The guy had a dog with him. Who got excited by the cops handling his owner. The guy was asked to lock his dog in his car, which he did. The cops continued their cop thing. The dog got even more excited and broke out of the car. Cops shot the dog. Dying dog all over Youtube.
Here's my thing. If you point a gun at me and mine then I will not treat you as an officer of the law. I will treat you as a threat. I will treat your uniform as very elaborate gang colors. And I would imagine I am not the only one who feels that way. And that's why I totally buy into the stories where cops got wasted in a SWAT style home invasion for being mistaken as violent gangsters.
Serve and protect it once was. Now with all this "Getting tuff on jaywalking" they are just plain bullies. Trust is at an all time low and we always suspect some CYA coverups happening. And while we are at it, have them wear name plates. And for fucks sake ban those ridiculus mirror shades. They hide behind them and I'm always tempted to check my hairdo in them.
20 minutes into the future
Taking 3 steps back = Resisting arrest.
So the officers deliberately get too close, natural reaction it to preserve personal space and step back. Three small steps and now you are resisting arrest.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This statement is so ignorant of American history that I have to start from its beginning.
First of all, the United States is a land of conquered nations and foreign intervention. There were only 13 states in the beginning. We committed genocide to conquer the midwest and the west, invaded Mexico and took their land (where do you think the name for New Mexico came from?) and we have been invading neighbors consistently and for the sole purpose of directing their internal affairs since the 1820s. The only thing that stopped our numerous invasions of foreign lands was the Civil War.
Here is a list:
1915 invasion of Haiti by the United States
1900 invasion of China by the Eight-Nation Alliance (including the United States)
1898 invasion of the Philippines by the United States
1898 invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States
1898 invasion of Spanish Cuba by the United States
1893 invasion of Hawaii by the United States
1846 invasion of Mexico by United States
1813 invasion of Canada by United States
1812 invasions of Canada by United States
1805 invasion of Tripoli by United States and mercenaries
Those are just the "official" wars. There is much more detail here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations
Please read just a bit on the topic before you make misleading comments like this. America learned everything from it's ancestor, Great Britain. We've been invading, conquering, taking, and killing since our inception. This whole ridiculous and infantile notion of America's Exceptionalism, even in our imagined good old days, is pure bullshit. The real difference back in those days was whether the United States should stop at our "natural" borders, which included all of North America, the Caribbean (including Cuba), and Hawaii, or if our "manifest destiny" was to continue marching west until we conquered the entire world.
I know it's difficult to see from inside of the news you're exposed to, but the truth remains: we are the empire.
For the past 12 months I have had the great honor to lead over 328,000 service members and 38,000 civilian employees along with all of their families. Our area of responsibility is diverse and complex. Stretching from California to India, the Indo-Asia-Pacific encompasses over half of the Earth's surface and well over half of its population.
This region is culturally, socially, economically, and geo-politically diverse. The nations of the Indo-Asia-Pacific include: five of our nation's seven treaty allies; three of the largest and seven of the ten smallest economies; the most populous nations in the world, including the largest Muslim-majority nation; the largest democracy; and the world's smallest republic.
The Indo-Asia-Pacific is the engine that drives the global economy. The "open and accessible" sea lanes throughout the Indo-Asia-Pacific annually enjoy over 8 trillion dollars in bilateral trade with one-third of the world's bulk cargo and two-thirds of its oil shipments sailing to or from nine of the world's ten largest economic ports.
By any meaningful measure, the Indo-Asia-Pacific is also the world's most militarized region with seven of the ten largest standing militaries, the world's largest and most sophisticated navies, and five of the world's declared nuclear armed nations.
When taken together all of these aspects represent a region with a unique strategic complexity and a wide, diverse group of challenges that can significantly stress the security environment.
Effectively engaging in the Indo-Asia-Pacific requires a committed and sustained effort, and USPACOM, as the military component of this commitment, is clearly focused in our efforts to deter aggression, assure our allies and partners, and to prevent should our national interests be threatened.
Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III
Commander
U.S. Pacific Command
House Armed Services Committee, 05 March 2013
During that fiasco, the LAPD tried to extrajudicially execute an elderly lady and her daughter (100 shots fired) for simply having a similar car to Dorner near where he lived.
The shooting of newspaper delivery women happened not where Dorner lived, but where some police boss lived. The shooting was done by his protection team.
There is a very small chance that those ladies could know the location of Dorner's house; but there is exactly zero chance that they could possibly know where protected persons live. Therefore they couldn't just avoid the area. Besides, it was their duty to deliver newspapers to those addresses. The police acted as Elite Guards of some paranoid dictator.
To preface this, I live in a fairly affluent area with extremely low crime. My town has no standing police force, just a satellite sheriffs office. Next town over has about the same demographics but has a 300+ member police force. A few years ago they trained a swat team and bought a very expensive 'urban assault vehicle'. I'm not sure for what, there is zero gang related activity, almost no drug stuff aside from the usual medical marijuana, and as far as I know no dangerous criminals have ever been brought in from the community.
Of course, this comes at the expense of things like schools, where we're jamming 30+ kids in a classroom and the teachers can barely do classroom management, let alone actually teach something.