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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?"
Before things improve, they will get worse.
knot any longer than the other
As a Brit, the stuff I read about the cops in the USA freaks me out, maybe because of the relative lack-of-guns here.
I read articles saying even your tax collectors are doing armed raids on houses, is this right? It seems like something from a Terry Gilliam film, nightmare-ish.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Full disk encryption. & Call my attorney.
Do not talk to police without an attorney.
...you have nothing to fear, right?
At least that is what the early proponents for increased surveillance and by extension armament of the police forces kept saying.
It is the lawmakers and the police that keeps escalating trivial issues to full out combat.
They did it during the occupy demonstrations as well. Kept battering peaceful demonstrations wearing riot gear, then go nuclear when someone had the audacity to tell them to stop.
It is a disgrace.
If there are no checks and balance to stop this from happening, then over the years it will creep forward slowly getting worse. Imagine being stopped for slightly speeding, you have your family in the car and the officer approaches with gun drawn, nice thought that... The police will say they do it to protect themselves, overwhelming force...perhaps sometimes it does go their way, other times it will not.
Who has the power to not pay for this?
Yes, don't forget Poland!
On a related note: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCzT4njsyH4
Fuck yeah.
Violent crime in the US is occurring at the lowest rate in my lifetime and still declining rapidly. There are some, I'm sure, who would say that SWAT teams are a contributing factor to that. I'm skeptical of that claim. I would argue instead that declining violent crime rates make SWAT teams irrelevant. The wasted money alone is reason enough to quit using them; the number of extra-judicial "accidental" killings is a stronger reason.
I've lived in the Boston metro area for over 15 years, and the only incident I've seen or heard about that justified use of a SWAT team was the apprehension of the marathon bombing suspects. Frankly, something that we need that rarely, we would be better off without. Let the governor call out the National Guard when the threat to public safety is enough to justify military force.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
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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In Auburn, WA a corrections officer was seeking another person. The DOC officer and King County police shot an unarmed man (Theoharis), the officers later claiming say they thought he (Theoharis) was reaching for a gun, though no weapons were found in the room.The independent review also found evidence the sheriff's office was more interested in advocating for its officers than uncovering the facts behind the shooting.
3 things 1. This site does not cover only tech, part of the stuff that matters. Even still if you wanted to argue it there is plenty of tech going into these militarized police. 2. When you became a cop you knew what you were getting into. You knew it was a dangerous field and this goes into number 3 3. You swore an oath to uphold the constitution. To violate it, like in this way, should mean instant termination, and jail time.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Cheye Calvo, then mayor of Berwyn Heights, MD: His crime was bringing a package inside his home. It turned out that this was a package of pot that the police had been tracking and put on his porch, and as soon as the package was inside the SWAT team stormed his house, shooting his dogs, nearly shooting his mother-in-law (cue jokes), no knocking or announcing. It turned out that the only reason that the package had been addressed to his home was that some drug dealer had gotten his wife's name and address at random, and then have the local UPS delivery guy just take the packages to whoever was really supposed to get them. There was also an obvious entrapment issue, as Calvo would never have seen the package without the police putting it there.
Nowadays Calvo spends most of his time traveling the country giving talks about out of control SWAT teams. He also points out that there are lots of people who this happens to that nobody paid attention to because they were poor and/or not-white, rather than relatively well-to-do, white, and the local mayor.
I am officially gone from
Hi BM, I did a quick google search and found the following chart:
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/27/16196680-police-deaths-down-23-percent-this-year-across-us?lite
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/AJDocs/121227_PoliceDeaths.pdf has a chart.
Is the US counting in new ways? Trying to reduce compensation costs from the 1970's numbers?
Thanks.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Who has the power to not pay for this?
The billionaire 1%'ers. Their money is off-shore - tax free.
When you have 50,000 raids a year ... you will get the ones that will swing wide off the mark. I am sure they will get the address wrong, a cat will fall on the officer's face as they break in and they will gun down a whole convent. The officers are shit scared that 12 year old is holding a fully automatic weapon as per it's God given right.
You got shot for investigating what the founding fathers called "gardening". That's what's truly f***end up about your story.
As occupational hazards are concerned, Law Enforcement isn't even particularly high on the list. What happened to you is unfortunate, but is not especially common. If police cruisers came with grenade launchers and they blew up every car they pulled over then it would be even more rare, but I think we've long passed "eye for an eye" and are now looking at a situation where cops kill more people than people kill cops.
Saw the near miss on fark earlier, and I must say, the thing that got me the most was Wiggins comment:
I did find the link on Fark but I hadn't read the comments. HOLY FARK - it's over 500, I'll look for Wiggins.
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Years - and people wonder why the police are militarized, why violence is prevelant, why mass shootings happen, why bombings happen. It is because our culture is one of death and destruction, because 'merica. Endless war has done this, the value of life is nonexistent in our government.
Nevermind, Wiggins was the cop, not a Farker. When I shared the link on Facebook I copy pasted it - here's what I shared there:
Goldsberry wasn't arrested or shot despite pointing a gun at a cop, so Wiggins said, “She sure shouldn't be going to the press.”
She absolutely positively should have gone to the press, and the court system and brought the press along there. Not that the the press cares about real justice anymore, just steering sheep for their kickbacks.
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The police are increasingly regarded with fear and distrust, which insulates them from the community they work in, which makes their behaviour in turn more aggressive and antagonistic. This widens the gap to the point where the police are not a part of a community, but something that oppresses it.
History has proven that a lot of people are happy to mistreat or kill or torture others, assuming they see the other as an "enemy".
The Warrior Cop seems to me to be not just a result of militarisation, but politicalisation. Cops are told again and again they are fighting wars against drugs, or terrorism, or crime, and unsurprisingly they turn into a war making institution. Not only that, but an institution that sees everyone as an enemy.
This seems to me a result of consistently electing lawmakers who are too fucking stupid for words.
http://www.inquisitr.com/860668/louise-goldsberry-police-swat-team-raids-wrong-apartment-59-year-old-nurse-pulls-gun/
When you cant win, ad hominem.
All you needed to do was watch the coverage when they were trying to get the other Boston Marathon bomber. As far as I could tell they literally had thousands of these basically soldiers running around which was surreal to me given that they were trying to catch one guy.(Who had some homemade bombs and a pistol.) I think I saw FBI, CIA, ATF, plus Watertown, Cambridge, and Boston police soldiers. I mentioned to my brother if anything this would only encourage more terrorism since basically 2 guys for probably well under a $1000 shut down at least 3 cities and probably induced a cost in the several hundreds of millions. Oh and the worst part, they didn't even catch the guy. BTW should I mention even libertarian with conservative leaning sites like instapundit think this is horseshit?
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
If gun ownership in a society is as ubiquitous as in the United States then the police necessarily have to be at least as well armed and trained in military tactics.
which, in turn, stems from the stance of the government. The Second Amendment isn't about deer hunting or self-defense, per se, it's about being able to overthrow your government when you need to, as the guys who wrote it had just done.
This massive military government was never envisioned - the Army was only to be able to be stood up for two years at a time.
It's a failing of the highest order, and makes the People less safe. The answer to "does the Second Amendment allow people to own a nuclear weapon" is clearly, "if that's a problem then the government should get rid of its nuclear weapons."
A constant escalation by both sides cannot end well. Actually, just that we have 'two sides to the conflict' is damning evidence enough.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I am the victim of a Police SWAT which happened in 2007. I lost my (food svc.) job at the time. When it happened I was visiting with a couple of neighbors in my apartment. The police at the time did not read a Miranda warning, and called the judge to obtain a warrant and permission to hold trial right there. After being asked a few innocuous questions, I was taken to the local hospital behavioral medicine unit. The police were frantic, and I believe this took place on a Sunday night. The Landlord had indicated I was going to be evicted, but IIRC I was well within the allotted time-frame to prepare to move. A number of years have passed since that time. Only a few years ago, a thief broke the lock on my storage unit and stole a few computers and most everything I had except my books and files. I am and was nonviolent. I am not and was not addicted to any drug, and I had not drunk nor smoked. I did not shout nor yell. The above happened in the freedom-loving community of Provo, Utah.
One other pressure is that being a cop can be pretty boring. Wrestling drunks, traffic patrol, walking/driving the beat, arguing with crazy people. Then you have the relative lack of genuine promotion opportunities most communities only need a tiny number of detectives or major crimes investigators. Plus the reality is that via tickets issued and petty crime prevention being high priorities for most local governments, they don't really want many cops to be anything but uniforms driving marked units.
So then comes along SWAT. With the occasional columbine the cops are able to convince the local politicians that they don't want to be caught with their pants down. Internally they wont meet much resistance because who doesn't want to play soldier and act all tough. You get to do cool training (pit maneuvers, kicking down doors, and lots of shooting). Basically action hero stuff; who didn't become a cop without at least a small hero fantasy in the back of their brain.
But then the last factor is that most police departments are by nature separate from the politicians. This is sort of a requirement otherwise politicians could too easily interfere with investigations "I can vouch for him personally, he would never do anything like that, I think you should drop it, Now." Plus the police need to be able to distribute their resources as they see fit. Again the politicians would distribute the policing according to political needs which would generally be very different than distributing the resources for crime prevention.
But the real question becomes one of authoritarianism vs libertarianism. This is the true divide in North America, not left wing and right wing. There are those who believe that we should be exposed to no risk and aim to impose some kind of perfect Disney society. They believe that with enough rules that this society can be achieve. The war on terror and the war on drugs are perfect examples of this. Yet the simple measure of the impossibility of this would be maximum security prisons these places are full of drugs and violence. If near 100% removal of liberty and relentless monitoring can not work in these facilities, what hope is there outside in "free" society? Bizarrely the various police agencies are slowly turning "free" society into those very failed prisons.
This sort of behavior often has many unintended consequences. This us against them mentality might first pervade the police but it then pervades the public. You end up with a public who stop cooperating with the police as a rule thinking that any cooperation will be used against them. This significantly reduces the usefulness of the police while reinforcing their mentality of us against them.
But then this feedback loop seems to get worse. The authoritarianism begins to spread to the legal system where you get angry prosecutors and hanging judges trying to prove that the system still works. The politicians are then harangued to make the penalties stiffer and stiffer as toleration of any libertarian policies would be to admit failure.
But luckily fantasy can only hold out so long against reality and as we are seeing a few jurisdictions have effectively eliminated their marijuana penalties. The world did not come to an end. Money is being save and lives aren't being ruined. But the authoritarian types are still desperate to hit people with sticks. So they are now making DUI laws where you will test positive a week or more after smoking up. Also these involve taking a blood sample. A fairly invasive and nasty privilege to give to the police.
So my suggestion is to fight fire with fire. New fundamental laws need to be put into place that will severely punish any members of the legal system who violate people's rights. There should be a people's jury that can be called that can permanently remove from office any official who is accused of abusing rights (judges, police, prosecutors). Freedom of information laws should be massively strengthened to the point where when a FOI request is issued that the officials will place it at the top of their todo list with little recourse to say no. Information is truely the lever of power and by giving information back to the people the people will regain the power that is rightfully theirs.
I have a question for the police chiefs around the country. When an officer conducting a raid "accidentally" shoots an unarmed person, why are there no consequences for that incident? It would seem to me, someone who will accidentally pull the trigger during a raid is exactly the kind of person who should not be trusted to participate in raids.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Well he was right. The US Constitution had to be amended to prohibit alcohol, as the Federal Government did not have that power. It was repealed. Nothing was added to the Constitution to give it the power to prohibit ditch weed, or anything else of the sort. The whole War on Drugs is illegal - at least if the Constitution is still in effect.
When people swear to defend it against enemies foreign and domestic, these are the domestic ones they're talking about. I'm saddened that this veteran saw death as his only way out.
Somebody in DC thinks we're better off now then we were before, when he had 16 plants in his house.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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The worst part is that the GBI (State of Georgia's version of FBI) swat team went to other offices of professors unrelated to the incident and pointed these assault rifles in their face. Talk about overwhelming force.
3.Well we can start with the 4th amendment if you like ;
Right to feel secure in your persons. Right against unreasonable searches and seizes.
But there is also the right to privacy.,
When you cant win, ad hominem.
I used to be a pizza delivery guy in Niagara Falls, NY. I've delivered pizza to places with crack and guns on the table in the living room. Let me know when you've been standing in front of a cracked out gangbanger with hundreds in your pocket and nothing to defend yourself with but a 2 liter of diet coke. Yeah, that's what I thought.
The cops are taking steroids. There's no stigma against it like in pro sports, but just as much pressure to perform. You all know there are many performance enhancing drugs, not just steroids but even something as simple as ritalin or adderal. Cops have easy access, too.
I'd like to see random drug testing of cops, and drug testing of cops following these ridiculous events where they fire hundreds of rounds for no particular reason other than that all the other trigger-happy cops are firing. You can't substitute calm, rational peace-keeping with hyped-up cops over-compensating for their tiny guns.
We need to raise awareness of cops who are pulling a Lance Armstrong.
I'm surprised the (otherwise excellent) article neglected to include the Cato Institute's map of botched paramilitary police raids.
This really is a serious problem. I teach home defense along with my concealed weapon permit classes, and the question always comes up "If someone is breaking into my house, how do I know if it's the police?" The answer, of course, is that you can't know, but if you guess wrong it could cost you your life. Good luck.
In my opinion, raids are simply too risky to be justified unless there's an imminent threat to an innocent's life. The reason for using aggressive entry tactics in the vast majority of cases is to prevent the destruction of evidence. That's simply not a good enough reason the kind of high-risk situation the aggressive tactics produce.
I think there are very rare circumstances in which SWAT really is appropriate, and we should scale SWAT capabilities appropriately. Perhaps each US state should have a single group of state troopers who form such an elite force, and are equipped with transportation that allows them to respond quickly anywhere in the state. A big, populous state like California may need two or three such units. But when every podunk PD has its own SWAT team, their mere existence is going to guaranteed that they get used for all sorts of other things. They're too expensive, and too cool (to the police), to just leave sitting around all the time.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Do I just go down to the local police station and ask them to give up all their cool body armor and to please refrain from raiding unarmed civilians in full gear with automatic weapons drawn? Do I write my congress critter and ask them to quit sending millions of dollars to local police forces (and then be called out by their colleagues for "not being tough on terrorism")? Not to be cynical - I seriously would like some recommendations for a course of action for the average man.
Given free reign, most authoritarians will opt for the most egregious display of power they can muster. Their goal is to intimidate all who might question or oppose them, even within their own ranks or among their allies. Of course, such as an Edward Snowden is to be nipped in the bud. Furthering this agenda is the fact that SWAT teams burn huge amounts of money on each outing, requiring larger budgets and thereby aggregating more power to the commanders. It is a vicious circle owned and managed by those who profit from it. Unfortunately, that condition has developed in many of society's institutions, such as Wall Street or Congress.
Next time, carry a pack of Mentos with that Diet Coke and maybe you'll have a chance.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Ruby Ridge and Waco, examples contradicting your race baiting.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
The answer to why police have become more militaristic is because criminals have become more murderous against cops.
More murderous as compared to when? Crime rates have been falling in this country for years.
They are tired of being shot at ... there is safety in numbers ... I'm a medically retired cop ... who was shot in the line of duty while investigating a massive marijuana grow ... I was alone.
It sounds like you're talking about the opposite extreme. No reasonable person is going to complain about sending several officers when there is a potentially dangerous situation. Personally I'd complain if they didn't. But there is an enormous difference between that and sending fully militarized SWAT teams in under situations that clearly don't warrant it.
I wonder if the SWAT teams don't make things more dangerous for the police, especially in the long run. If you know you may come up against a military assault team, it's tempting to arm yourself likewise. Unless perhaps you're wanted for murder or something, the dumbest thing you can do is shoot a cop. I know many criminals aren't the brightest of people, but if military assault teams weren't the norm even they might come to realize that. Hey Charlie, you may do some time for growing pot or jacking cars, but it's a lot less time than for shooting a cop.
Arms races go both ways, and I suspect that this militarization, in addition to making police lose the respect of the public, ultimately may make things more dangerous for the police.
It's an occupational hazard, the sort that is greatly amplified by stupid management. In your case, it seems a bit idiotic to send one man, alone, to investigate a "massive" marijuana grow. As idiotic as sending a dozen officers wielding submachine guns to get an unarmed optometrist who used to bet $50 with his friends.
That was the 1990s, which was coincidentally exactly the time that libertarians like Radley Balko got interested in police violence.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Interestingly, These same scumbag cops dont have the balls to do that to a Motorcycle rally or a Gun rally.
Cops only use these tactics on soft targets, they act exactly like street gangs.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Robert Peel, the founder of our police, believed in 'policing by consent'. We, in the UK, are drifting further and further from that with armoured police vans, tasered up thugs 'patrolling' and [one recent incident I witnessed] 10 police for one angry unarmed man in a incident in a bus queue. Birghtly painted cars including one I've seen recently marked 'interceptor', they've obviously been watching Mad Max. They are rude and patronising if you ask them something and violent towards any protestors. Crime is declining here too.
Most of the bad trends tend to drift in here from the US and this is one.
I was mugged last year. It wasn't very serious, but, in spite of 12 similar incidents they couldn't catch the guys because their main 'method' was 'look at CCTV footage', they are not 'near' the community, something that would enable them to do 'police work'. Go figure.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
If the cop did not announce himself, he deserved to die. If a cop comes crashing through my door or window unannounced, they will get 2 maybe 3 deer slugs to the chest.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I served in Iraq. I know what it feels like to be under threat of death daily. Instead of a crazy crack head every so often, I dealt with roadside bombs, mortars, and snipers. Daily.
I disagree with you in the utmost.
If you are too scared to do your job without violating peoples rights, then you should not be doing the job. In fact the whiny attitude that you have about wanting drones and more officers because then you would be "whole" Just proves that you were never fit for the job to start with.
Lets say that all police officers are 100% honest and honorable (HAH!) We then trust them with equipment that allows them to violate rights at will. (Drones, license plate camera with massive storage, etc) This is not a problem because of how honest they all are. What happens when those honest cops get replaced with dirty cops. We have given the dirty cops the ability to violate our own rights.
This is compounded because cops never rat each other out. It is one big circle jerk that falls back to the old canard that the dirty cops just wanted to make sure they went home every night.
If the police actually monitored themselves, and kept their own house clean I would not worry about them having powerful new technology. As long as "clean" cops protect dirty ones, I think poorly of all police officers, and do not trust them.
I will again reiterate. If you are too scared to do the job, then find a new profession. I do not want you to be scared after all.
Ohh and the pro weed argument. You will hear it. The ban on weed it an over reach of the state. What right does the state have to tell me what I can and cannot put into my own body. In fact I feel that federal regulations on it are an inherently unconstitutional abuse of the commerce clause.
TFA says NASA has its own SWAT. "Along with the formidable force of standard security at Kennedy, a highly trained and specialized group of guardians protect the Center from would-be troublemakers. They are the members of the Kennedy Space Center Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team and they mean business. " http://www.nasa.gov/returntoflight/main/swat_feature.html
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Dont try to turn this into a left vs right. This has been happening just as much under the right.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
My grandfather had a machine gun he brought home from germany. 100% legal for him to own... we would shoot it on the 4th.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"ans" I would attribute to a typo, the d is next tot he s. In addition sometimes, such as preceding an h, as in hour "an" seems to feel more appropriate for some reason.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Why do SWAT teams wear black? It may seem like a small point, but when designing uniforms symbolism and psychological effect are certainly considered. When I see a black uniform the first thing I think of is Gestapo. I'm sure that I'm not the only one. What other uniforms are black?
Don't say it's for camouflage, as any solid color is bad camo. Even at night straight black is far from the best - that was known as least as far back as WWII. The standard, and immediately recognizable, color for (local) police uniforms in this country has always been dark blue. State police and sheriffs deputies may wear grey or khaki. Recognizability is useful - that's why certain brands of products have "trademark" colors. It says much that they want black associated with SWAT.
The problem(in addition to the effects on the public being 'protected and served') is that this sort of disproportionate force isn't even a positive development for officer safety.
Doing no-knock full SWAT raids probably improves safety against people who are willing to shoot police; but those people are relatively rare: shooting at cops is risky, and you have to be guilty of a lot before you won't notice the additional jail time. Against people who wouldn't ordinarily be motivated to shoot police, though, it's performing a very convincing violent home invasion(a situation where a great many more people would consider shooting to be a reasonable thing to do) for no good reason. Overwhelming force might usually mean that the resident loses; but you only have to get unlucky once.
There is actually an example of this. There is a neighborhood in Fayetteville NC, called Bonie Dune. Any time police would send cars, for any reason, they would get shot at from a lot of the houses, but the ambulances went in without molestation. the local swat decided it would be a good idea to use an ambulance to go in and conduct a raid, and I think you can see where this is going, now the ambulances get shot at and cant go into the area.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
2: It is not just a job. Being a police officer should be a calling, a willingness to sacrifice anything and everything to protect and serve. Just like being a soldier is a calling to defend the country from enemies.
In fact I want any officer that treats it as "a job" to be drummed out of the force ASAP. I
"In God we trust" ... not. Power is what you should worship, whether it is cars, money or guns. Power can solve all your problems. America has granted the individual the illusion of personal sovereignty in the full knowledge they can no more exercise it than fly to the moon.
So there are lots of guns, and the cop gangs carry lots more guns just in case. But in practice there's no "just in case" and SOP is to go in with maximum suppressive cover.
It's no surprise stuff like this happens given the parameters the system has been setup with. And there's no easy way back, because of grass-roots indoctrination of the *illusion*. Stupidity and aggression are easy bedfellows.
If gun ownership in a society is as ubiquitous as in the United States then the police necessarily have to be at least as well armed and trained in military tactics.
That actually makes doing SWAT-style raids a worse idea most of the time. If there are lots of people with guns(but, by the numbers, not a lot of people interested in shooting police officers), playing 'armed home invasion' and trusting that superior force will keep you from getting shot, rather than just, say, telling everyone to come outside, is a risky strategy.
Notice how swat usage skyrockets within a decade of the US Army replacing the M14 with the M16, a true assault rifle.
The M-14 was a fully automatic weapon that fired a large 7.62x51mm cartridge. By comparison the M-16 is a pop gun firing a 5.56x45mm cartridge. They switched because the M-14 and its ammo are heavy. Many people who were around at the time objected because they felt the M-16 lacked firepower.
theoretical is 875-1000 rpm for the M16
Actually they slowed it down a little to 850rpm to reduce fouling, but either way with a 30 round magazine you can't fire for long at that rate. Modern versions are limited to 3 round bursts for just that reason.
BTW, in the 1920's civilians could freely buy fully automatic weapons like BAR's and Tommy guns, so your screed about the choice of weapons makes no sense. You should also note that the military has a different job than the police.
I think the "shock and awe" SWAT tactics just reveal an underlying fear in the police that they could deal with the situation any other way. I guess this is what you get if you have a society where everyone may have a gun and be willing to use it on unwanted visitors, so the default setting of society is excessive violence. Reminds me of that South Park animation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDCh4-pKrrE -- America was built on scared people (running away from Europe on the Mayflower -- don't blame me, South Park folks said it), and has continued in that great scared tradition (excessive military, excessive foreign intervention, excessive fear of others in society, excessive use of guns, etc, etc). Probably better to rewind 400+ years and try again.
I thought everyone who watched a Warner Bros cartoon knew that - if you can see the big hole at the end, you are being threatened.
"If everybody is thinking alike, somebody isn't thinking" - Gen. George S. Patton
...until the degree of brutality reaches to levels that everyone can see.
Which takes us back to the final sentence of TFS:
How much bloodshed will it take for America to realize such a disproportionate response is unwarranted and disastrous?"
Trouble is, what everybody can see and what can be done about it are two different things. If you have a State that is content to say FUCK YOU, then, well, you're fucked. It really doesn't make any difference whether or not you protest, the behaviour will remain the same. There are only two things you can do about such treatment, and one of those (most likely) will make you a criminal as far as the law is concerned. The other, of course, is to do nothing. Good luck with that.
There is no point in placing asinine hope in democratic processes: we have been shown (time and again) that where these exist (!), they will be subverted by those who do not have your best interests at heart.
What do you expect from the WSJ? They're a well known far left radical pacifist publication. It's not like this was in the mainstream media or anything.
I remember a while back (this was in the nineties) watching a small Hispanic boy running in a supermarket in downtown L.A.and suddenly stopping to look up in stunned silence at a very large man dressed in dark clothes,. One of L.A.'s finest.
You know what that cop said to the little kid (he couldn't have been more than four years old)?
"Do I scare you?"
Right there and then I thought to myself: something very wrong with this man, something very wrong with the police in this town.
Actually you may wanna brush up on your constitution. You dont have a right to impede and investigation in your neighborhood. Now if this was on your property in your home that is another story, but good luck, unfortunately, of using that as a defense in a court of law.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
I live in Kansas City and I've noticed--in somewhat disbelief--over the last few years, the number of everyday cops rising who wear increasingly comprehensive body armor for regular patrolling and traffic stops. The armor itself almost appears to be intimidating on purpose (it makes them look like bad asses). This is not yet universally the case here, but it gets worse every year. To make the situation even more fun, the more they militarize the bigger assholes they become. Unless they are simply out collecting for their quotas on speeding tickets, they can cause a lot of trouble and their intimidation techniques make me disappointed in my country. I have a story about recently being pulled over for a tail light, that highlights all, but I don't have time to hammer it out here, so just trust me it was bad, but after an hour they finally had to let me go because they didn't have shit on me. Funny part is, after the hour long ordeal of being severely harassed and having certain rights trampled on, they had completely forgotten about the tail light by the time it was all said and done. We really do live in a police state, and I'm not sure if we can do anything about it.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Cops have been breaking down doors, shooting people and abusing their power ever since the dawn of civilization. I think there is something about the Sheriff of Nottingham written about that. "Fritz the Cat" came out in 1972 and cops were called "pigs" then.
Just because your adult life is more recent, or your selective memory prefers to discard negative events (as human memory does), does not mean things have changed much. They did not call it "SWAT" or "raid" then, but they did the same thing.
That's not to say any of that is a "good" thing. But the false nostalgia for the "good old days when a friendly cop stood on the corner smiling to children and waving a friendly nightstick" is just that, and it's dangerous if used as a pretext to "let's go back to those wonderful times". Those times sucked. Move forward, fix things today.
And was; the introduction of the Federal level ban on alcohol was merely the completion of a process that had been carried out at state level in many places. You are however right. because the 'commerce' clause has been used to extend the competence of the Federal government in ways that the Founders did not intend. It was mainly done to outlaw racial discrimination by federal law - which 'everyone' agreed was a 'good thing' - but opened the door to the power being used to allow the Feds to do everything, including banning weed etc.
Well you were talking about impeding an investigation "in my neighborhood," not at your door.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Hello US citizens, I'm an Egyptian engineer, seeing my country falling apart due to the too deep police/security engagement into a broad aspects of life. They control clubs, universities, magazines, TV channels, governmental careers,...and the list goes on. I wish for you to control your police playground limits, and hit hard whenever they cross it. Don't wait for too much blood, don't wait before it's too late. Salam.
And this is why the "militarization of the police" is a problem. You're not a soldier, this isn't war, and you aren't an occupying force dealing with insurgents. If you think you are, and you treat all non-police as potential threats, you need to turn in your badge and gun and get psychological help.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Strawman, no one is claiming cops come to a house unarmed, but they dont need a swat team in 99% of the cases they use them.
"I find this whole subject silly in that we are making out police to be the evil" Some police are evil, no one is making them all to be evil, no one is even making out the vast majority of them to be evil. But some ARE evil.
"Where in the world do the police go around with no guns?" Define your statement a little better, no guns as in any cops dont carry? If that is the case then easy, last I checked UK has beat cops that cary sticks instead of guns. In any case you have us on a red herring. No one is claiming cops should not cary guns, but they should not have a team of 20, in full riot gear, with fully auto machine guns, knocking on the door to serve summons and warrents to non violent offenders.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
If gun ownership in a society is as ubiquitous as in the United States then the police necessarily have to be at least as well armed and trained in military tactics.
Gun ownership is protected by law. And that is all the more reason that the police should behave in a calm and civil manner; they are creating the problem they fear by behaving like violent criminals themselves. "I have to to home at night" will never be an excuse for breaking into someone else's home and creating situations where people get murdered (and the murderers get off being put behind a desk, rather than behind bars).
If they get a warrant describing the specific place or persons to be searched, knock, and calmly identify themselves and their purpose before drawing arms (as they are expected to), they have nothing to fear from normal citizens.
As to the cases where there is genuine risk from armed criminals involved (which remains the case regardless of the legality of arms), well, quite frankly they were aware of that risk when they signed up. If they are not willing exercise more due diligence first or put their lives on the line to protect and serve, then they should find another line of work.
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!
Training isn't the issue. Military-style raids to arrest non-violent people are the issue.
but Obama's statement is completely new
First, that statement can mean any number of things. If you believe that statement means anything, do you believe "hope and change" means anything? Politician's statements mean little to nothing. Look at what they do, not what they say.
vast databases on American citizens collected ... as a provision of Obamacare
Does that mean that Canada is already a police state? They've had universal health care for decades.
I think that many trends, like the absurd (and often unconstitutional) collection of data on everyone, and the militarization of police forces, are a serious issue. Discussing it the way you do though makes people prone to dismissing you as a right wing conspiracy theorist.
Yeah crazy drug gangs surely explain why cops feel the need to taze old ladies and beat random black people.
ambulances went in without molestation
That's often the case. Everybody likes the folks who may save your life. A friend of mine used to work for NYC EMS, and she said that green uniform had an amazing effect. Every cop would treat you as an honored guest, and she could walk through the worst neighborhoods without a care in the world.
About the difference: "there is something social at play here". That is such a polite way to put it.
There is so much you can say about this, but I'd rather stay silent.
I don't want to be shot 85 times over a small remark about a terminally ill system.
Not that that is going to help. We all have heard about mister Dotcom
Common solution for computers: remove malware, install patches and protection and reboot.
Privacy is terrorism.
the local swat decided it would be a good idea to use an ambulance to go in and conduct a raid
For which the genius who approved that idea should have been fired without pension, if not summarily executed. Even in a war zone they don't send in soldiers under cover of a red cross.
There are lots of things not in the constitution, that are still constitutionally protected rights.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Funny enough, none of that really applied until after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Prior to that, the US was myopic to the extreme, and really appeared to only want to mind its own business, as far as excessive military, foreign intervention, etc. Fear of others in society was something that started to be brought forward in the 70s and 80s with hijackings, bombings, and hostages, mostly overseas, but didn't take hold locally until 2001, which could have been prevented IMHO with merely having followed a single piece of advice from the Israelis: secured cockpit doors.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Most SWAT is used at 3am when the suspect ASLEEP.
It's about TERROR and the raid being punishment.
Radley Balko here. I was 17 during Ruby Ridge. 18 during Waco.
So you are incorrect. I started getting interested in police issues in the mid-2000s.
You might start by Googling the name "Cory Maye."
How you define people they save? How do you estimate things like criminals who dont attack you because they know you own a gun?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Radley Balko here. I was 17 during Ruby Ridge. I was 18 during Waco.
So you're assertion that I only got interested in police issues after white people were raided is incorrect.
I got interested in this issue in the mid-2000s. You might Google the name "Cory Maye."
And you should really know what you're talking about before you imply racial motives to someone you don't know. Especially when there's very public information available to contradict you.
The argument over who's at fault entirely misses the point. With a little planning the officers could have searched the house without mounting a paramilitary style assault with a SWAT team. They could, for example, have entered the man's house while he was at work. That would have been a safe, predictable, and effective way of obtaining the evidence they needed. Instead the police chose a dangerous and unpredictable alternative.
There's no reason to believe the cops didn't announce themselves, but the instant they *do*, the clock is ticking. If the suspect actually *is* armed and hostile every second waiting increases the danger to the officers on the raid. That puts them in an automatic escalation mode. There's no way for officers put in this situation to distinguish between the case where the occupants aren't responding because they'are asleep, as in this case, or because they are preparing to repel the assault with force.
Ultimately the responsibility for the officer's death lies with the commander who ordered an assault because it was his automatic way of dealing with drug searches. A little thought could have reduced the danger to which his officers were exposed, not to mention anyone who happened to be in the house. A SWAT team is a powerful tool, and like any such tool fools can get enamored of the power and use it where a little finesse would be simpler, safer and more effective.
Nobody deserved to die in this situation, but somebody deserved to lose his job.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
they are state backed thugs. a "Warrior" has a code of ethics and honor. these assclowns have no such thing.
A little 3am knock and bash really helps normal people feel bad about their parking tickets.
The best use of the situation is SWATing by far. In LA you can just about dial-a-murder if you call 911 screaming and crying with somebodies address you want done in. Somebody just has to start picking obscure relatives of police that wont get flagged.
Astounding. Someone defends the Second Amendment, and you assume they are a complete out-and-out racist, so ape all that in a cowardly post, because in your mind they are one and the same thing.
How's starving 30 million peasants who don't wanna move to the city to make things in factories going for you, comrade?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
That animation is from Bowling for Columbine, not South Park.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
Seems to me if you are in a location similar to what you mentioned, providing a service in a questionable area, you're in the safest locale. I don't think anyone would mess with you..
BTW.. since when was pizza so popular with crack heads?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Sorry, no. America was imperialistic long before the Pearl Harbor attack. Go read about the invasion of the Phillipines, the Spanish-American war, and the Banana Wars. Don't forget the Barbary Wars. America has been big into foreign intervention since the early 1800s.
Yep. If somebody breaks down your door and shines a light into your eyes so you can't see them properly then it is your damn right to shoot the bastard. At that point it propably is even your duty if you've got a wife and kids cowering in the room behind you. This kind of police action is ok when they are intervening to interrupt an ongoing physical assault on somebody. It's propably even a bad idea even then. It is a damn bad idea if they want to pick up any amount of dope, kiddie porn or whatever. They also seem to be damn sloppy in their procedures. There are far too many instances where they did so little recon that they even get the wrong house.
Now I am sorry, any tactical computer game requires more preparation than that. If you did that in X-COM then you would have a lot of dead people at your hand and you will get shut down.
Damn overreacting unprepared idiots. Their uniform is nothing more than gang colors. Yet if they get killed by a frightened family father THEY get the full honors burial complete with flag and trumpets the widow will get sued for damages by the cop's family.
20 minutes into the future
"It's probably news because white people are being raided now, whereas previously it was only scary black people like Fred Hampton who got murdered by militarized police."
Radley Balko here. I was 17 during Ruby Ridge. I was 18 during Waco.
So you're assertion that I only got interested in police issues after white people were raided is incorrect.
I got interested in this issue in the mid-2000s. You might Google the name "Cory Maye."
And you should really know what you're talking about before you imply racial motives to someone you don't know. Especially when there's very public information available to contradict you.
I have awaken from my near-decade-long Slashdot slumber to rebut the attempted race-baiting of Radley Balko.
Radley Balko is the type of person who calls out injustice, individual and institutional, regardless of who it impacts. And has done so for a long time.
Radley Balko is also the kind of person who has spent hundreds of hours of his personal time meeting with, writing about, agitating for the release of, and providing assistance to, wrongfully-accused defendants... most of whom, in my thirty seconds of scanning the 'net, are black.
"Google Corey May." Classic. Well done, sir.
Radley Balko is a goddamn American Hero.
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
So helping a country declare independence is imperialistic?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
The response of increasing arms is not proportional to FACTS. While small areas of big cities are worse, he rest if the country is more peaceful.. And THAT is where SWAT is rolling out, where it was never nerves before.
As for "I don't do anything bad" all it takes is somebody on yhe internet getting your address and calling up the cops at 3am that you have a gun to your wife's head... SWAT will be there in 20 minutes to blow you away. The whole point of the article is that half the people didn't do wrong or didn't do wrong past expectation of a speeding ticket.
When my 11 year old son was handcuffed in middle school for being autistic while following the IEP, the school was held accountable and we were made whole with respect to their actions. Our lawyer, however, told us not to pursue the officer. She was concerned that our son would be charged with assault and resisting arrest if we went to the prosecutor. She also told us about the "Blue Wall" that protects officers involved in even the most egregious misconduct.
Our son was covered in bruises, especially around the neck. The security camera footage from two angles clearly demonstrated the brutality of the officer applying positional asphyxiation and twisting his arm around far enough to see his opposite wrist visible from the other side of his back.
I arrived after 45 minutes and the cuffs were immediately removed. We left the school 15 minutes later after my son calmed down enough to travel.
The same officer had also arrested another student at school for running away from home the following day. The department refused all FOIA requests, and stonewalled at every turn. So we gave up and withdrew our son from their school for his safety. This same child is now an honor student at another district and has completed advanced placement classes several grades ahead of schedule.
Owership, as in the number of families who own guns, not the number of guns per capita: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/us/rate-of-gun-ownership-is-down-survey-shows.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/03/chart-day-gun-ownership-30-year-decline
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Again, ownership, as in the number of families who own them, not the number that a person may have.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
If this were war, that would be against the Geneva conventions...
If this were a war game, it would be held at the Lake Geneva convention...
you don't think that they should at least announce who they are when they are doing a raid and give a surrendering chance? of course that takes the advantage of surprise away from them.. but that's they're police and not military doing a sneak attack, they got time to wait it out - or at least should. if they did, then at least one cop and one smalltime grower would both still be alive. doing surprise rushes and stand your ground laws don't really mix that well! shouldn't take a genius to figure that part out.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
If the cops want to go home alive, they should avoid 'dynamic entry'. If there is a gun in the house they invade, there will be shots fired even if the people inside aren't criminals. Honestly, a completely innocent and law abiding citizen SHOULD fire on a pack of goons that bust in unannounced. Wanna go home alive? Don't be part of a pack of goons. Behave like an officer of the law. Don't fall for the super badass all black combat gear, wear that big yellow 'POLICE' marking with pride. Don't be a domestic enemy of the people. Don't shoot old ladies, family pets, and children. Don't unleash a hail of bullets that go into other people's homes.
Strength in numbers isn't the same thing is busting in in the middle of the night and shooting anything that moves.
The american way is shoot first and keep shooting until there is nobody left to ask questions to.
If that is the impression people get from the news, there surely there must be a problem somewhere.
Privacy is terrorism.
So out of the entirety of the statement the only thing you can harp on is that there is a missing n in ownership... I am sorry but I dont think I am the one who looks dumb.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Funny enough, none of that really applied until after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Prior to that, the US was myopic to the extreme, and really appeared to only want to mind its own business
Incorrect. The US had plenty of involvement in World War 1.
The US involvement in World War 2 started by supplying the allied nations with weapons and money.
Pearl Harbor happened after the US, in coordination Britain and Netherlands, cut off Japans oil supply. Japan needed the oil for their war effort in China and decided to strike against Pearl Harbor after that.
Before World War 1 there was the Spanish-American war that was started on very flimsy grounds.
But they don't need to use them as the first resort. Knock on the door first. Let them know the house is surrounded and that they should give up. Almost all of them will without firing a shot.
That animation is from Bowling for Columbine, not South Park.
Oops, seems you're right. It comes up right at the top of the search for "south park history of america", though!
There's nothing like ringing the doorbell and suddenly all the lights go off. OTOH, I got some really good tips by being polite and minding my own business.
Perhaps you should read up on why the Spanish American war started, and what the results were. The same could be said of the Barbary Wars. The Philippines were part of the Spanish American war, although that one probably comes closest to supporting your statement, if you move to the Philippine revolution. Note that in all cases, americans were attacked, and the US merely reacted, after trying other avenues first. That is not imperialism.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
WRT the near miss, if the cops had behaved more professionally by not dropping the F bomb every other word, they might have seemed more like police and less like armed thugs pretending to be police.
Understand: the reason for no-knock raids is so that the people committing victimless crimes can't destroy the evidence of their victimless crimes. That's pretty much the only kind of evidence you can destroy in the amount of time serving a warrant takes. If you've kidnapped somebody you certainly can't kill that person and dispose of the body with cops surrounding your house, you can't get rid of most stolen merchandise that quickly, you can't do much of anything that quickly except perhaps get rid of drugs. With kidnapping and robbery you have victims to offer testimony. With drugs there is no direct victim unless the person in question has committed some other crime in the process, in which case the need for a no-knock raid is pretty much zero.
This is all about cops never wanting to lose. That and wanting to continue to intimidiate the populace. They can shoot us without consequence just about any time they feel like it, it seems. If we shoot back, it has to be in the context of a full on revolt in order to have any serious effect. Otherwise you might win the battle but you'll either be executed by more cops or in the unlikely event of your actual capture, be sentenced to absurdly long jail time or death because you've killed or injured a "hero".
So helping a country declare independence is imperialistic?
If you setup a puppet state then yes.
Besides the US has invaded plenty of countries.
If we do not like this, we could always repeal the second amendment and get the semi-automatic guns out of the general population. There would be less reason to carry out raids with such a show of force. Until then, we have the society which we have sown.
How did America's policy forces become militarized? The second amendment.
the people they're supposed to be raiding would still have guns.. and you didn't have this amount of raids back when full auto weapons were legal in USA... despite having prohibition gangsters going around at the same time.
but it's actually real simple. if you invest in a swat team you're going to use that swat team.. it's just good use of money... but if you use them as a swat team that doesn't announce it's presence when starting the raid(no door knocks and waiting and serving the warrant) for cases that would have been previously handed like normal warrant searches of course the amount of times things go fucked is going to grow. so cities which have swat teams are assigning them searches that shouldn't be handled by swat teams - and the swat teams handle of course every case as seriously as any other case because "that's just smart", even if the proper procedure for that case would be acting completely differently.
what's worse is of course the same clowns then moonlighting giving home defense courses on how you should shoot home invaders! WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Sorry, no. America was imperialistic long before the Pearl Harbor attack. Go read about the invasion of the Phillipines, the Spanish-American war, and the Banana Wars. Don't forget the Barbary Wars. America has been big into foreign intervention since the early 1800s.
The Barbary Wars were not imperialistic.
"The First Barbary War (1801–1805) ... Barbary corsairs led attacks upon American merchant shipping in an attempt to extort ransom for the lives of captured sailors, and ultimately tribute from the United States to avoid further attacks" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War
"The Second Barbary War (1815) ... brought an end to the American practice of paying tribute to the pirate states and helped mark the beginning of the end of piracy in that region" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Barbary_War
Now I am sorry, any tactical computer game requires more preparation than that. If you did that in X-COM then you would have a lot of dead people at your hand and you will get shut down.
Now I am sorry, but you do everything perfect in X-Com, blaster bombs take out 4/5 of your squad, and the rest of the squad panics. Sometimes the correct action is to land the skyranger, take some pot shots with heavy rockets, and lift off again.
But real life isn't a computer game, and cops shouldn't treat it like one.
The feds have been fighting weed using the commerce clause as an excuse since long before they gave a damn about racism.
Newly manufactured "military grade assault rifles" have been banned from civilians since 1986.
In ten years will we be asking, "Why do SWAT teams wear skulls on their caps?" (Citation: "Are We The Baddies?" by That Mitchell and Webb Look http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU)
These early raids will weed out those who will resist, as they ramp up eventually they'll get everyone who would resist.
The tin-foil is thick with this one.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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
I don't think it's fair to say that he used deadly force to protect his pot plants. He used deadly force to protect himself.
Google something yourself why don't you?
160 cops died, out of 800,000 or so in 2010? Death rate of 1 in 5000
774 construction workers died in 2010, out of a workforce of over 11 million. Death rate of 1 in 14000. Being a cop is hardly safer than being a construction worker. In fact you're about 3x more likely to die on the job.
Your biased claim is no better than GPs. Worse, actually, since you declared him full of shit and berated him for not using google.
Then why are the prevalent paramilitary tactics new? Gun ownership has been a right in the U.S. from the beginning and for most of that time, cops have gotten by with a baton and a revolver.
They are not stupid. They know what you care about, and how to make you think they care about those things, too. But what they actually care about may be orthogonal or even antagonistic to what you care about.
The will use what you care about to advance their own agenda, which more often than not seems to be the transfer of liberty and property from you to them.
This is what we get for electing smooth-talking sociopaths as lawmakers.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I love that show! :D
Seriously, you mean NCIC.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Which part, the part where they need to get a warrant or have probable cause, which is apparently the unwillingness to open the door now?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Perhaps you shouldnt have stuck your nose where it didnt belong. I have no sympathy for your injury while upholding immoral law. You shouldnt have been there in the first place. You paid the price for your stupidity.
Good-bye
When they run out of crack, they get REALLY hungry!
A successful dealer doesn't do his own shit, he SELLS it.
You either make stash or money selling, but never both.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Security cameras, and plenty of them, with signs you can't miss announcing their presence. Record audio and video to a secure or, better yet, offsite location. Make arrangements to have it posted online if you are arrested and unable to do so yourself.
Will we ever have the right of Habeas Corpus again?
Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.
He's just another example of people who know very little about guns and want to ban them completely. They think that because they survived so far without having to fire a gun in anger, no one at all has any need to have a gun. They know what's best for us.
Gee, this couldn't have anything to with all of the idiot (yes they are all idiots) Americans having guns and ammo in their houses, would it? If I was cop I'd be afraid to enter most of these places myself. How many officers have been killed just for doing their job? I'm all for the SWAT approach. Get rid of the household appliances (guns) and you'll get a more humane constabulary. And, no, you paranoids, you won't end up with a police state.
First Barbary War (1804). The attempted invasion of Canada (War of 1812). The Monroe Doctrine. The 1846 invasion of Mexico. The banana wars. U.S. imperialism is well documented. Also well documented is the use of excessive force against unarmed civilians. Good example is the Ludlow Massacre of 1914.
The three round burst limit has two reasons - the one you mention, and the other is that even as a "pop gun" it's very hard to stay on target full auto with a light M4-class .223. No point shooting at the sky, for anyone. I know, I'm a gunsmith, I have a few really nice toys and have used them on ranges. Even great single shot "rapid fire competition" guys can't handle a full auto for crap. Which is also another reason they stopped the '14 from being full auto - too many bullets went "no where useful" - those things really do have a kick.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
It is a war. It's a war on drugs, it's a war on "terror." It's a war intended to never be won.
... to the age of being "tough-ass" on crime. With equal parts of both.
But real life isn't a computer game, and cops shouldn't treat it like one.
My point exactly. They should do better.
20 minutes into the future
Police are cowards then.
Considering the massive amount of wiretapping and various info collection, the Boston door to door searches, the cover-ups of Fast & Furious, Benghazi, the face both the presidential candidates cheated in the primaries, Obama in 08, Romney in 12, then Obama again in the actual election, torture in Gitmo and the FBI giving summary executions on US soil, and that's the tip of the iceberg. I think those of use who wear tinfoil have been recently vindicated.
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I think the "shock and awe" SWAT tactics just reveal an underlying fear in the police that they could deal with the situation any other way.
There is high gun ownership in other parts of the world; however, in this country you have a situation where police bring violence to non-violent situations. That can spiral out of control, of course, so now the police bring overwhelming force type violence, so that nobody gets hurt, except the other guys.
There is also the US attitude towards guns. In Switzerland, every young man (about 20 years) is required to keep a military assault rifle in their house -- part of being in the army. The swiss don't have the same attitude towards guns. They aren't for self-protection of no (generally) for fun. They are tools for doing their job in the army.
Many states in the USA have "stand your ground" laws which are a recipe for disaster. Shoot someone and then just claim you were afraid, or defending yourself. Gang thugs in Chicago have successfully used these laws to get out of jail time for murdering other gang members. (Yes, your honor, I was terrified, and *had* to defend myself with lethal force. Otherwise I'd be going to jail!)
Politics in the USA is broke, and gun politics is part of the problems. Militarized SWAT teams is just a symptom of paranoid authoritarianism. It will never be fixed while the media just acts as cheerleaders for special interests. (In this case, defense contractors and gun manufacturers.)
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Ivory tower? Most of the western world lives in that ivory tower. It seems you're living in a sewer rather than everyone else living in an ivory tower.
See, this is the problem; you think, "I see something bad, therefore everything bad I predict must be true." The scandals for Obama are coming quickly, but you're implying that some ominous entity is trying to kill people who resist, pre-emptively.
You might as well suggest that aliens are controlling the whole thing, it doesn't follow logically; it's non-sequitur.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Actually, what happens when the subjects are known to be armed is quite the opposite. Overwhelming force may be lined up outside if the encounter turns violent, but the violent no-knock raid is generally not used against an armed household.
Your assumption that every little thing that happens does so independently with threat of escalation frightens me. Mostly because so many are like you.
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as far as excessive military, foreign intervention
That just simply isn't true. From the very beginnings of the USA, the hawks had their eyes on other people's territory.
Before the turn of the 20th century, the USA founded and supported Liberia (!) in Africa. The USA was also involved in China (along with France, Britain and Russia), pushing unfair trade treaties on a very weak emperor. And then there was also the occupation several islands in the pacific, including a war with the Philippines, and subsequent occupation. And of course the Spanish-American War, where the USA said to Mexico: "all your base are belong to us."
In the early 20th century (before WWII), the USA extensively interfered with Central and South America: in Panama (political buy off), the Dominican Republic (invasion), Cuba (occupied as part of a treaty to the Spanish-America war), Nicaragua (backed coup, and then later an invasion), Mexico (invasion), Haiti (invasion) and Chili (political/military influence in civil war.)
Outside the Americas, the USA got involved in WW1 (of course), and also the Russian Civil War (1917-1922).
The USA has always being going to war for sh*ts and giggles.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I'd argue it has been imperialistic well before that. Talk to the native American tribes (or rather, what's left of them).
War on drugs. Thanks Nixon! Thanks Reagan!
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Welcome back, old friend. And thanks for defending Radley Balko.
The attempted invasion of Canada (War of 1812).
America did not invade Canada in 1812 because Canada didn't exist in 1812. The country known as Canada wasn't formed until July 1st 1867.
So helping a country declare independence is imperialistic?
No comrade, helping the American proletariat declare independence from the yoke of capitalism is not imperialistic. It is moral.
Go read about US foreign policy from the 1800s through to 1940, and you will see the stomach imperialism at its best. Invasions. Coups. Interference in civil wars. Trade negotiations down the barrel of a gun. You name it, the USA was doing it. I wonder if you think slavery is the only black mark on American history, because it isn't.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Yep. That will probably be forced upon you when the rest of the world colludes to stamp out the threat that is American Expansionism. At least the Nazis had the good taste to keep the streets free of McDonalds wrappers. W00t!
Requiem for the American Dream
Actually, gun ownership is WAY UP. Some estimates have more than 1 gun per person already. Any stat about gun ownership that is more than 6 months old is out-of-date, considering NICS numbers.
I know people in local EMS (Boston, MA) and they have to wear bullet-proof vests regularly. They do get shot at, knifed, and so on. People are fucking crazy around here.
doh! Without threat of escalation
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No mods to +1 you, but thanks.
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.
Could we put that in your tombstone? What are your chances against a full swat team? What are your chances to survive or at least not get massively injured if you move a finger toward something that in the dark with thick fog could look as a potential weapon? Don't worry, you won't be alone, probably anyone that you care about that were with you could end that way too.
"Civilian National Security Force"? This could either be what the framers had intended or (fsck Godwin) the Gestapo. Human nature compels me to believe it is the latter.
If truth makes me a racist, so be it.
well it does sound that the intention is to make the cops act like military.
have fun having your own Baghdad in every major US city! what kind of a stupid plan is that..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Liberia was a repatriation colony established by former black slaves. Neither the US Government nor the US Military were involved in it, it was an entirely private concern.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberia
The US was involved in China, yeah, trying to compete with the long standing British stranglehold on China's products. We never had any sort of colonial cities or 99 year leases on Chinese islands (Britain, Portugal, Spain looking at you guys).
I'll even throw you a freebie that it was a military demonstration that opened up trade with Japan for the US, so what?
You fail to mention that the majority of our military use overseas was either because our trade vessels were attacked or we were openly at war with the Europeans who'd long ago colonized those areas.
The US has done some shady things over the course of it's time, but don't act like we're somehow morally bankrupt next to Europe who may be all "Human rights are awesome!" now but have more blood on their hands collectively than the Mongol Hordes. Who were also worse than us, btw. Go back to school and stop taking History courses filtered through Twitter.
Is like holding a knife by the blade and say that you pretend to use it to defend yourself, odds are high that you will be the one hurt, specially (but not only) if you try to use it.
One of the above comments raises a great point: the police look, talk, and act like thugs. That's our community police we all get chided so often to hold so dear; but they consider themselves as gangsters "above the law". So how do you think they will choose their actions to portray their image? Police are likely to do the thuggest bullshit to a person just to present a tough-guy, no-holds-barred, untouchable image. It's not necessary, it's not strategically sound, it's not even sociable. It's just thuggery, and the only people interested in police work now-a-days are thugs. People who aren't thugs look into the courses, I'm sure, and if they aren't turned off by their classmates' presentation and attitude, then they get swiftly turned-about by their instructors for not "fitting in". The day isn't too far off when police accountability will be completely nil and police corruption won't be a flash in the pan but will be the daily mire for every community in America. If you don't think so, go ask some affluent, peaceful gardening town what they think of their village police force's latest SWAT team and urban assault vehicle. It's not even an urban area, why the fuck would they need an urban assault vehicle? It's a bunch of townhouses and Victorian cottages. But there you have it -- nobody's policing the police. When your nine year old boy asks for a rocket launcher for his birthday what do you tell him? "Sure, we'll put it in the budget"?
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
I used to be a pizza delivery guy in Niagara Falls, NY. I've delivered pizza to places with crack and guns on the table in the living room. Let me know when you've been standing in front of a cracked out gangbanger with hundreds in your pocket and nothing to defend yourself with but a 2 liter of diet coke. Yeah, that's what I thought.
If you are carrying that much money on you while delivering pizzas, then you are a fool.
Be seeing you...
First things first- what does this have to do with technology?
Without privacy and with full monitoring of communication, anything that you said, even in private, could make you target for Texas sharpshooters. Thats when police, swap teams and guns get involved. That is stuff that matters.
That's entirely possible now that the Posse Comitatus Act has been effectively repealed.
That's ok, your inability to engage in rational discussion frightens me. Do you understand that you did not respond to a single point in my post? You used a rhetorical technique to avoid it entirely. I'll bet you do that a lot, which is why you are so easily seduced by conspiracy theories.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Somebody has never read any Nathaniel Hawthorne...
.: Semper Absurda
So you made up these points of view by older people in the world between your ears. Make sure your geriatric 40+ straw men get plenty of straw fiber. Meanwhile, in the real world, those of us over 40 are very concerned about our decline into a fascist police state.
You realize that the Philippine war was an extension of the Spanish-American war right? And by the time the Spanish Empire was on the road to self-destruction the Filipino's were pretty much willing to team up with anyone to get rid of Spain lording over them for the last 300 years. And the Barbary pirate wars was of course caused by muslims raiding american shipping and taking anything they wanted, and capturing people to sell them.
Om, nomnomnom...
the local swat decided it would be a good idea to use an ambulance to go in and conduct a raid
For which the genius who approved that idea should have been fired without pension, if not summarily executed. Even in a war zone they don't send in soldiers under cover of a red cross.
Perhaps you are not aware of the ruse used to assassinate Osama bin Laden.
But sleeper cells are the ones you need to watch out for!
FUCK DA POLICE!
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
This cartoon was written by Moore and produced by Harold Moss. Not by Trey Parker / Matt Stone. There was a whole stink about it from them because Moore made it appear as though it is by the South Park creators. It was not done by them.
Funny enough, none of that really applied until after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The irony of that statement is palpable. Has it occurred to you to wonder what a US military base was doing at Pearl Harbor in the first place? This would be Pearl Harbor, on the island of Oahu, in the US territory of Hawaii. The US territory of Hawaii that was formerly the US puppet "Republic of Hawaii" and the Hawaiin Kingdom before that.
Problem is overuse of "shock and awe" raids. Nothing wrong in having weapons and knowing how to use them. But the tragedies described in the article heppened because the raided people were taken by surprise and reacted as if they were being assaulted. Actually they were assaulted.
If you suspect someone is armed inside a building the last thing you want is to take him by surprise. Knock on the door or tell him to surrender trough megaphone if you think he is some kind of armed hothead.
The only case i can think of when you want to take people by surprise is when they could very quickly erase evidence in case of a very serious crime. Growing pot in a cave is not one of these case. Even storing heroine would not be.
You know, the founding fathers thought the same thing, and they referred to that civilian security force as the militia. That is to say, all able-bodied men within a certain age range.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
the homeowner believing he was a victim of a home invasion by criminals.
The homeowner was correct.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Yeah, but in the 1900's is was extremely unpopular among citizens to get involved in foreign wars. Even after the Lusitania was sunk it was a year or so before the population could be drug along into WWI. The Lusitania incident is often cited as the catalyst, but it wasn't like the US jumped into the war as soon as it happened--there was a strong political tide against it--as well as a great distrust of government, even in a time where there were actual good people serving as statesmen in service to the people. Fast forward to today where there every politician is a pure-bred snake and the people hoot and holler while jumping around spilling their beers as they watch innocent people obliterated in a campaign called "shock and awe."
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
With that comment I see someone dousing your straw-man with gasoline as you stand there with a coy smirk lighting a cigarette.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
No, really, go read about the Spanish-American war.
The Cuban rebels were about to kick out the Spanish, we showed up "FOR FREEDOM!" (Also, "Remember the Maine!" even though we didn't know what exactly blew it up) and then installed a puppet government and our corporations showed up to claim their mineral resources, timber, and sugar fields.
And the Philippines was just a straight-up bloody, conquering mess. Call it a prequel to Vietnam.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Small arms manufacturers have virtually no political power, probably less than nurses. The ones who do have power are the ammunition manufacturers which are directly tied to large defense contracts and who make all of the munitions for tanks and other large guns.
As an aside:
One day I was researching Speer to see who owned them and what they were tied to (I was reloading ammunition at the time using Speer bullets). I found them installed in major facilities manufacturing depleted uranium munitions for tanks. After stumbling upon this and seeing one of the facilities they were in, I noticed a posting on one of their websites for a facility they were sub-leasing. The ad touted the ability for someone to obtain funding from the USDA to establish a munition/arms manufacturing plant in that location (it was already approved for that activity). I found it odd that the USDA handles funding for defense contractors.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
The united states has a long history of undeclared wars. Vietnam and Iraq being the most recent obvious examples, but the list goes on. The public was unaware of much of what was going on. Just look at Panama.
zosxavius photography
You want a more direct reply to what you've said? Fine, look up U.S. Army Regulation 210-35 and FM 3.39.40, these support my statement.
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There is also the US attitude towards guns. In Switzerland, every young man (about 20 years) is required to keep a military assault rifle in their house -- part of being in the army. The swiss don't have the same attitude towards guns. They aren't for self-protection of no (generally) for fun. They are tools for doing their job in the army.
Keep in mind that while in the Swiss army you get to take your rifle home with you, the ammo you would use in that rifle is much more tightly regulated. You can't just go down to the local sporting goods store to get some ammo and then go out to a public shooting range.
Many states in the USA have "stand your ground" laws which are a recipe for disaster. Shoot someone and then just claim you were afraid, or defending yourself. Gang thugs in Chicago have successfully used these laws to get out of jail time for murdering other gang members. (Yes, your honor, I was terrified, and *had* to defend myself with lethal force. Otherwise I'd be going to jail!)
[citation needed]
"Many states in the USA have 'stand your ground' laws which are a recipe for disaster. Shoot someone and then just claim you were afraid, or defending yourself."
I don't literally want to see this, but as a mental exercise (the poor defender would probably end up overwhelmed and not make it to a trial), I'd like to know what would happen if someone used this defense with a menacing cop.
"To stop the terrorists."
Those prove that some ominous group is trying to enslave Americans? You're an idiot.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Considering both of those documents are available from the U.S. Army website (or were, the FM doc had it's security fixed) you're an idiot for not being worried about it. The FM document is the real tell all. Are you perfectly okay with the DHS gaining power and increased fire power?
Define enslaved. If 100% of your labor is taken by "the master" not many will argue you're enslaved. What about 90%? 60%? 50%? 30%? At what point is it not slavery? What if it's 100%, but you're provided with "freedom", a car, an apartment, a plentiful food ration, Internet access, health care and cable? What if it's only 50%?
I don't know - there at the beginning of our discussion I gave you about an 80% credibility rating on calling me an idiot. Now I'm calling you an idiot and it's looking about 70/30 in my favor.
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Bingo! We have a winner! Your post comes closest to the truth than any of the others. It always comes down to money and protecting your job.
Uh huh, so who is it, the UFOs? The Illuminati? The Club of Rome? Who is your boogeyman?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Since the US policy of generating foreign born terrorists to justify its military industrial complex has worked so well, why not try the same thing at home and justify the dismantling of the constitution in the homeland. Very soon you'll start hearing about how all this action against citizens is protecting you from home-grown crazies.
Does it have to be that organized? A few judges (check), politicians (check), at multiple levels (check) with similar views that they think everyone else should share (check) and it happens "legally". You don't have to have one particular force driving tyranny, just a few people with similar goals in rule making positions. When those people all agree that it's in everyone's interest some rights be repealed (already been done effectively) and certain people removed from the flock (see above references) then by golly it's gonna happen and you don't have to put an already existing name on it!
(BTW 80/20 now)
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Warriors go to battle against armed opponents. They're not over-armed thugs who kick in the doors of the innocent or peaceful to shoot them and their pets.
Calling these jackboots "warriors" is an insult to everyone who has ever served in the armed forces.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
It's weird how often it seems government officials watch movies like Robocop or read books like 1984 and say to themselves "now there's a good idea!"
Ask a Hittite, if you can find one. Native American tribes got off easy for a very long period of world history. Well, except for the other native American tribes and civilizations. It wasn't exactly unicorns and rainbows before European contact (or Asian contact).
It wasn't unicorns and rainbows, but that doesn't change the truth of the matter even a little bit.
You're looking at the wrong numbers, Mr. mcgrew. Police DEATHS are down because of advances in medical knowledge and technique. I wish I had the exact reference for you but the expert who can fill you in if he's ever teaching in your area is Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman. He's a many-times author, and expert on killing. Which is to say, the psychological effects on the person who does the killing. Some of his books are mandatory reads in the academy. He's also a fantastic lecturer. You need to be looking at the numbers for Aggravated Assault on peace officers. After all, it ain't murder if the doctors (bless em all) can save the life. Then it's attempted murder or agg assault. You might want to be more informed of the broad scope of the topic before you assume I'm a fool. As for the person who called me whiny- that was an if/then scenario I laid out. I totally accept my lot and have forgiven the shooter for the sin committed against me. Whiny? I don't think so. For the Anonymous Coward from the military... thanks for serving. Sadly tone doesn't convey well in the written word. In my career I was only ever scared exactly once, and then I shot the guy who was filling me with lead and tearing my body apart one 5.56mm bullet at a time. I speak of doing things safely, rather than recklessly. And yes, to all the rest of you, I agree that people make stupid decisions and send in SWAT teams when they are definitely not warranted. And the ambulance story above makes my head hurt.
But it does change the context within which we understand it.
Anybody over forty right now could care less about what the police are doing.
Careful with the broad brush there, kid. I'm over forty, and so are a lot of my Libertarian friends who have been warning people about this shit for decades.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Yes, basically. However, it still doesn't fit the description of a country that only minds its own business. A "myopic" country that stays internally focused and doesn't look outward, such as Japan back in the 1700-1800s, doesn't worry about pirate attacks on the opposite side of the world (the Mediterranean was well outside the US's "neighborhood" back in the early 1800s). Such a country doesn't care as long as the pirates don't affect anything going on on the mainland, and it certainly doesn't worry about the trouble its citizens get into when they go far away abroad. The Barbary Wars had only one purpose: to improve the US's ability to trade with foreign countries.
I'm not saying the Barbary Wars were a bad idea: trade was important to the US's economy at the time (and always has been), and the piracy attacks and demands for "tribute" were a big impediment to that. They also caused a lot of other problems; the stupid European countries used the pirates against each other, paying off the pirates to attack their foes. The pirates also kidnapped a lot of southern European citizens from port towns and held them as slaves. It was rather shameful how the European rulers preferred to let the problem fester so they could fight proxy wars with each other than to nip it in the bud.
However, calling pre-Pearl Harbor America "myopic to the extreme" makes it sound like Edo-era Japan or China at some points in its history, countries that had no trade or diplomatic dealings with other nations whatsoever, and that's not at all the way the US was, ever.
Actually the "Prutian Sepratists" were kicked out of europe for advocating regicide (trying to get someone to kill the king). They were granted title to what is now Verginia but decided to stay where they made landfall instead (not very good sailors). And they didn't come for freedom of religion, they wanted to set up their very own Jonestown (Guyana). It's right there in their name "puritan sepratists".
We don't necessarily have a thing for fear. We have a thing for authoritarianism.
So dear Europe, the next time you decided to export all your religious wacos, don't sent them all to the same place... it weakens the gene-pool.
There just happens to be a high correlation between fear and republicanism, so they run on the more police, more prisons, and to do so the conservative media bias is deliberately miss-sold as a liberal one. It's a self-perpetuating cycle.
On top of that, criminals all want to be cops, but only the petty criminals can make it though the background check. The cirminals want a taste of the power that previously held them down. So you end up with a lot of well armed, otherwise petty criminals ganged up in one profession exercising their egos.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
I see, you have a DDOS on freedom.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It just means imperialism has a long tradition.
I figured that when they are finally hungry, they really hungry and right now.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Indeed. In fact, one might say it has been the norm throughout recorded times. No matter what civilization you're talking about.
Although some (not all) LEOs would differ, mass gun ownership isn't much threat to police (remember the PERCENTAGE of weapons used in crime is microscopic) and no great number of so-called "assault weapons" are used against them.
" The Second Amendment isn't about deer hunting or self-defense, per se, it's about being able to overthrow your government when you need to, as the guys who wrote it had just done."
That's a good thing. Americans are so heavily armed that if it does become necessary to kill a toxic government we can damn well do it with overwhelming force. It would be bloody, but the number of weapons owned by US citizens dwarfs that in places such as Syria.
Our military is tiny and dispersed and the police would be completely outnumbered (besides both groups being promptly divided) if the shit hit the fan. Even unarmed rioters are barely controllable in some situations. There are more than 2 million AR-15s and relatives alone in circulation.
If our government truly turns on us we should do what our Founders did and waste the fuckers until they quit.
We wouldn't have a country if our predecessors hadn't punctured their lawful government and its armed forces with shot and shell.
In the end, political power flows from the barrel of a gun. That means you aren't "free" without the power to slay your opponents. That power may be delegated if you trust others sufficient, but it must exist.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Military become police!!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
So helping a country declare independence is imperialistic?
Was that the way the Phillipines or Cuba were 'helped' that you're referring to? One of the characteristics of any successful imperial state is that its own propaganda is more effective that others, especially on its own citizens.
Eg. read "Little Brother".
In practice, yes.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Careful with the broad brush there, kid. I'm over forty, and so are a lot of my Libertarian friends who have been warning people about this shit for decades.
Problem is, you're like the economists who warned about 12 out of the last 3 recessions. Cry wolf too often and people stop listening, even if there are wolves out there. It's just human nature.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Having had the experience in working with and for a local police department for 4 years, which also had its own SRT (Strategic Response Team), I can tell you the animosity and disrespect the public gave these local cops was atrocious. These cops were long-time members of that same community. The fact of the matter is, the police response to various situations is proportionate to the increased risk; as the public has more access to resources for home made weapons (e.g. IED) and full-out arsenals... the police have to keep up with this threat to protect themselves as well as the community at large. A quick Google search provides a cornucopia of options for explosives, and this wasn't available 20-30 years ago. I for one, am proud to have such a strong police force to protect my family and property.
Care to share a source for that urban legend?
I guess that's a reasonable analogy. It's like prohibition - there wasn't exactly a single driving force behind pushing it, it was an attitude that spread and several charismatic people picked up the torch and pushed the hell out of it until the democracied it down the throats of everyone on-board or not.
BTW - I love that Who's your boogieman?! question. I'm trying to turn it into a catch phrase on another network I'm on.
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Actually - the US did not have a lot of involvement in WW1 until roughly the last year. WW2, the US mostly served as convoy protection, although they were more prone to engage Axis ships. Providing food and money is not directly engaging the enemy. No one says you have to sell oil to anyone. Roosevelt decided to stop supplying Japan with oil to get them to come to a diplomatic solution to Japanese aggression in Indo-China. The Spanish American war officially started with Spain declaring war.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
That would be about the only one that really applies, I'll give you that one. 1 invasion does not an imperialist make, however.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Unfortunately teh US has become a bigger is better mentality driven society. And when they want to make an example out of people, which now is all the time, they will do it big or go home. But who is to blame, the ones that promote this through their daily rituals that all want to supersize their fries, the ones that flock to the latest blockbuster movie, that has the biggest car chase or fight scene since the last blockbuster, or maybe the fact that we always want bigger guns, because the last was just not big enough.
This mentality is what is wrong, so you get a cop that wants to get ahead, how will he be seen or noticed for that "BIG" promotion, by doing something "BIG". Enter Vic Macky wanna bes...the ones that think the whole world rides on their shoulders until they are benched and given a small desk job in some corner and realize the world didnt change after all from all their "BIG" antics.
In Canada we have many flaws, but guns is not one o them, and when cops come to your house, they have almost no fear that you will be armed to the teeth with the latest semi auto available at Walmart or Online shops, and have to deal with laying down gunfire. Put yourself in that situation for a second, we also see in the news, cops getting killed just by going into someone's house to issue a warrant search. So who is right or wrong, I think we all are...they are just as fallible as we are, and the downward spiral continues.... :(
So it goes both ways.
BTW - I love that Who's your boogieman?! [photobucket.com] question. I'm trying to turn it into a catch phrase on another network I'm on.
lol thanks
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"The Gun Is Civilization"
By Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.
The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat - it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.
People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.
Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.
People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.
The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation... And that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.
Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret.)
So the greatest civilization is one where all citizens are equally armed and can only be persuaded, never forced.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
The only difference between doorkickers in Fallujah and doorkickers here in the states is that here in the states, they wear different patches on their uniforms.
I think the constitution is fatally flawed in one major way: the founders did not anticipate the idea of full-time law enforcement agencies as we know them today. Quoting Wikipedia's history of law enforcement, "In the United States, the first organized police service was established in Boston in 1838, New York in 1844, and Philadelphia in 1854." The idea that somehow the citizens would willingly allow today's highly militarized police to exist is something I believe would never have crossed the founders' minds.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
1 invasion does not an imperialist make, however.
One annexation of a sovereign nation after deposing its government does not an imperialist make? I'm curious how many it takes then? How many robberies makes a robber? How many murders makes a murderer? If the answer is that it just has to be more than once, then does most of the land area of the US that was taken from the Native American nations count? How about Guam, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines? American Samoa? The US Virgin Islands? The Panama canal zone?
In any case, I wasn't arguing about US imperialism. I was responding to your statement about the bombing of Pearl Harbor (which I will note again was ironically located in a conquered US territory) and that:
Prior to that, the US was myopic to the extreme, and really appeared to only want to mind its own business, as far as excessive military, foreign intervention, etc.
Now, you've qualified that with the term "excessive", but that's fairly vague. The simple fact is that's not really true. The US didn't suddenly wake up in December of 1941 and say: "Hey, there's a whole world out there I haven't noticed before!"
I guess this is what you get if you have a society where everyone may have a gun and be willing to use it on unwanted visitors, so the default setting of society is excessive violence.
Thing is, US has had lax gun laws and overall attitude towards them for pretty much most of its history, and yet cops managed just fine with a single .38 revolver on their hip, which they mostly resorted to using after trying the baton. This whole modus operandi where you have door kicked in by a SWAT team in full assault gear, with ballistic vests and assault rifles with fingers on the trigger, is a very recent development, and seems to correspond mostly to rising criminal violence stemming from the War of Drugs (i.e. the problem that the government has itself created).
Nearly anybody could be armed in this country back in 60s, too, but you didn't have innocent people having their homes raided by guys in armor with assault rifles "by mistake" (cuz, you know, wrong address) back then.
For which the genius who approved that idea should have been fired without pension, if not summarily executed.
No, he should be conscripted as an ambulance driver in that area.
I'll even throw you a freebie that it was a military demonstration that opened up trade with Japan for the US, so what?
We may not have leased land or started colonies, but we did engage in unequal treaties forced on other nations such as Japan with military power that treated them like economic colonies. Japan was one of the different ones that although seeing the writing on the wall agreed to such treaties began almost immediately with both diplomatic tours in an effort to build up political power and allies to get better treaties and a course of modernization to make sure they had a military power to resist the nations forcing these treaties on them and other nations such as China.
Shhh. You'll ruin his fantasy world, where wars and defense aren't justification for military actions.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Shh. you'll ruin his fantasy world where self defense is "imperialism", as is "coming to someones aid when they request it".
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
DHS is militarizing local police in a "use it or lose it" typical way.
smalltown USA now has a local office of homeland security that helps gives police tanks, drones, tactical weapons and other military gear.
how soon before we start turning in our neighbors for reading 'bad' books?
-badford
So at the very least, be sure the threat is real. Where the threat is concocted, the police and militarily are instruments of an attack.
If Wikipedia says it then it must be true.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
U.S. cops watch too much U.S. TV dramas on cops and imitate them. I doubt it is the other way around.
No such thing as a clean cop. I assume that was the reason for the quotes.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
heroholsters.com(what a circle jerk that is)? You are probably far too stupid to understand acronyms so for your edification - Go And Get Fucked(GAGF). You aren't a hero you are a loser. You investigate a massive marijuana grow by yourself? You are far too stupid to live. You should be a Darwin Award. After reading your post I think I would like to shoot you too.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
It hasn't been ten years. Isn't your training finished yet? I forget what is the level above geek?
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
militarized swat teams is a big part of the problem.
gun politics is a side show, and a distraction.
cops shoot far more innocent people than all the mass murders combined.
It depends on the statistic. The proportion of the population that owns at least one gun is down. However, the average number of guns per gun owner happens to be way up and climbing.
This story tells an important reason why the police want to form more SWAT. Who are these people shooting police cars from the houses, and why they are doing the shooting? Unless the police in the cars are shooting at the houses, no one has a right to shoot at the police cars. In all likelihood, the ones doing the shooting are violent criminals, and it is therefore no surprise that the police feel the need to concentrate their force into SWAT.
Your story about the ambulance being shot is even more illustrating. While it may well be stupid for the police to use ambulance as transport vechicle, no one has the rights to shoot at the ambulance. No matter whether it is the terrorists or police being inside the ambulance, the ambulance should not be shot unless the people inside the ambulance shoot first. If these people feel free to shoot at police cars or ambulance passing through the road, do you think they will sit calmly when the police come to arrest them?
All police activities must be recorded for future prosecution/analysis.
Casteism
While the police may be stupid to use ambulance as transport vehicle, it is not appropriate to compare this situation to that of a war zone. In a war zone, everyone is shooting at the others. Not shooting red cross is an humanitian exception. However, in a civilian settings, no one has the right to shoot at any passing vehicle, regardless of whether the vechicle is a police car or an ambulance, unless people inside the vehicle shoot first. It is important to point out that these people who shot at ambulance are not soldiers who are doing their duty, but criminals who use violence for their own benefits.
There seems to be some ambiguity as to whether you believe both private citizen and the government should have nuclear weapons, or both private citizen and the government should not have nuclear weapons. If the former, then instead of hearing news about shooting like the Aurora, Colorado one that killed dozens of people, news of nuclear detonations that kills millions of people would be heard occassionally from time to time. It does not take a genius to figure out that if a single person or a small group of people can control a piece of nuclear bomb, it is unavoidable that eventually one or more crackpots would be willing to press the button to detonate it. There is no lack of terrorists in this world who are willing to commit suicide in order to cause great harms to their "enemy". If the latter, you seems to not know that in addition to the government in United States, there are actually many other governments in the world. Once the USA government get rid of its nuclear weapons, governments in other countries who have nuclear weapons would have their power and influence over the rest of the world, including USA, greatly enhanced. However, you can be assured that there would be no immeidate danger of any foreign country invading USA. Astute statemen like Vladimir Putin make calculation rationally. They would first use their countries' nuclear advantage to obtain economics and political concessions first. Only when their opponent is sufficiently weakened, then they will consider the use of military force to achieve their objectives, when the cost to them is minimal.
I've friends who are A&E (ER to those across the pond) nurses, and they don't walk anywhere in their uniforms. Especially my friend in Hackney, London - because idiots think they'll still have drugs on them.
That said, the local police are very supportive, and the new ones that aren't get informed very quickly by their colleagues to change their act.
From a country that regularly kills it's school pupils in production-line numbers ... that would be hilarious if it didn't have an element of tragedy about it.
Admit it, Americans, you like having lots of blood and gore on your streets.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
"The proportion of the population that owns at least one gun is down."
That statistic measures the proportion of the population who are naive enough to tell a stranger that they own guns. Based on my own personal experience, most gun owners would never answer a survey truthfully about their personal gun ownership. Considering the perceived approach of tyranny over the years, it is quite logical that fewer and fewer people would admit to owning firearms.
Furthermore, local gun shops near me have PLENTY of first-time buyers. Young couples with babies in their arms looking for cheap AK-47s for home defense, grandmothers looking for an inexpensive 20-gauge, young men just out of the military looking to buy their first as a civilian, professional women on their lunch break looking for a carry piece, the works. And I live in a very liberal, anti-gun area of the country.
In other words, those statistics are not trustworthy.
This post is going to get buried, but it seems applicable to put here.
I was "escorted" off of a bus by a SWAT team, at least three of them pointing automatic weapons at my head while the six or so people on the bus were removed.
Fortunately for me, the SWAT team that was doing the "evacuating" had enough trigger discipline to not end up shooting me in the face.
Learn something new.
Indeed. Cops kill several orders of magnitude more innocent people than cops are killed per year.
With multiple deliveries in a metro area, many times there's no choice.
The reason would be that "hour" is pronounced as starting with a vowel since the "h" is silent.
He was trying to make a point that criminals are getting deadlier, when there were only 10 more deaths in 2010 than 2000. The last few police deaths I've heard around here are accidental deaths caused by negligent drivers; from what I read, writing a speeding ticket on an interstate is pretty damned dangerous.
I'm not saying there job isn't dangerous, it certainly is, but it's not in the top ten most dangerous.
Free Martian Whores!
You said that criminals are getting more murdeous when the numbers don't support your assertion. Policing is of course dangerous, but from what I see in the newspapers (and police deaths, accidents, and injuries almost always get reported in the media) I'd say the most dangerous part of your job was writing speeding tickets on the side of the interstate. We had so many police fatalities in Illinois that state law now says you have to move to the left if there's a police car parked on the shoulder with its lights on.
Police officer isn't even in the top ten list of dangerous jobs.
As to assaults, I have no numbers but I'd wager a civilian has a much larger chance of being assaulted by a criminal than a cop does. You'd have to be crazy to assault a man armed with a gun and a taser.
Free Martian Whores!
From the mouths of Anonymous Cowards...
Halfway through the thread and finally, somebody gets it right. So sad my mod points expired.
Eh? Since when does the black helicopter a Navy Seal Team flies have a red cross on it?
Sorry - been a little busy. Short and quick - Hawaii requested to be annexed. You can argue about the ruler changes etc, or the "marines landing" that were nothing more than there and admittedly should not have been, or the firing of the Minister to Hawaii, or the Wilcox Rebellion, etc.
All the Spanish American war pieces can be lumped under "Spain declared war" and also potentially engaged in the initial acts of war (sinking of US ship in Havana). That leaves Panama, which was done by treaty. You can call it dirty politics, or be on the side of the "losers", but the fact is we offered to not do the treaty and step away. Note that the treaty allowed for US troops in the Canal Zone.
I qualified nothing with "excessive", since you pasted that from a different thread, if you'll go up one or two, you'll see it was a direct quote from the person I was responding to. That aside - there was a completely different world view after 1941.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Well, to my credit I am 35 (hardly a "kid" if being over 40 is somehow magically "adult") but to yours, I know plenty of people over 50 and upwards who are pissed off. But I wrote the comment as a piss-take and the exaggeration and generalization were meant to be comical but also partially honest. Thanks for your feedback.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Granted, it was a straw man argument. All the same, perhaps it's a matter of differences in culture. I know that the culture in Michigan and much of the Midwest, while not exactly as I described, is worthy of the generalization and the crass indictment as I wrote it.
I know things are more "open" and Libertarian on the West coast and out West in general. I'm glad for that and so is my family who live out that way. But towards the East coast, most people are hillbillies and when they're over 40, they're just hermits.
If you have the gonzo to bust my nuts for being under 40 and saying these things, maybe you should redirect your energy and go on a crusade rousing up your Midwesterner age-peers to get them more inspired and more instigative about the issues facing us today.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Sorry - been a little busy. Short and quick - Hawaii requested to be annexed. You can argue about the ruler changes etc, or the "marines landing" that were nothing more than there and admittedly should not have been, or the firing of the Minister to Hawaii, or the Wilcox Rebellion, etc.
Hah! Yeah, that's funny. The perfectly legitimate, and completely representative of its constituents, four-year old puppet Republic of Hawaii requested to be annexed. Good one. I mean seriously, are you so steeped in the US exceptionalist attitude that you can't even fess up to that one. You can argue that the people of Hawaii were better off for it in the long run and you could make some very good arguments for that if you tried. You can't even find that many Hawaiians of native descent today who strongly believe that things haven't pretty much worked out in the long run. Pretty much none of them will agree with you that Hawaii wasn't simply taken by the US and US interests, however. It's frankly shameful to pretend that it wasn't.
All the Spanish American war pieces can be lumped under "Spain declared war" and also potentially engaged in the initial acts of war (sinking of US ship in Havana).
Or the ship just sank, or it was a false flag operation by some other government (possibly even the US). When some CIA analysts floated a proposal back in the day to start a war with Cuba, and listed murdering US citizens and blaming Cuba as one the options, they referenced that sinking as an example (whether or not the CIA agents in question would actually know if the US was involved or not is certainly questionable and they probably didn't). In any case, I never denied that Spain and the US went to war. The fact that the US seized its land and people after the fact is an imperialist act. In a historical context, it's not particularly unusual for the times. All the kids were doing it. It still is what it is, however. Trying so say that it wasn't is unreasonable.
That leaves Panama, which was done by treaty. You can call it dirty politics, or be on the side of the "losers", but the fact is we offered to not do the treaty and step away. Note that the treaty allowed for US troops in the Canal Zone.
Funny, I thought I mentioned more than just the Spanish-American war assets and Panama, but whatever. Yes, there was a treaty. Perfectly fair and reasonable and agreed to 100% on all sides. The Panamanians were naturally grateful to the US which had just created its country by invading Columbia, after all. Oh, and, just like pretty much every treaty, the countries in question could drop out at any time... Or maybe just the US. Treaties with the US for things they want to keep tend to swing that way. Can't say the US doesn't keep it's side of the bargain in those sorts of treaties, no sir. For example, they pay their $340 per month for the 45 square miles of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to this day (on a side note, I wish I could find 100 acres or so of good land for $14.17 a year in rent. Know anyone?).
I qualified nothing with "excessive", since you pasted that from a different thread, if you'll go up one or two, you'll see it was a direct quote from the person I was responding to.
Actually, it was from this post, which is the great-great-great grandparent of the current post, and definitely in this thread. You wrote:
Prior to that, the US was myopic to the extreme, and really appeared to only want to mind its own business, as far as excessive military, foreign intervention, etc.
The direct parent to that post wrote:
America was built on scared people (running away from Europe on the Mayflower -- don't blame me, South Park folks said it), and has continued in that great scared tradition (excessive military, excessive foreign intervention, excessive fear of others i
As a bystander who happened upon this thread, I say: bless you, sir!
It's gotten to the point where the moment I hear "racism", I immediately assume that whoever said it is completely full of shit until and unless proven otherwise. In years and years I have never once seen "racism" called when there was an actual instance wherein a person claimed that one race was inherently and genetically superior to another race. I have, however, seen many instances where it was a cheap, cowardly and dishonest manner of shutting down a debate that said person was losing.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
A SWAT team is a powerful tool that takes a large budget to maintain and requires use in order to justify it's existence
Yeah, the fact that it exists means it will be used, if only to justify it's purchase and existence (and possible future increase) in the first place. Everything else is collateral damage.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
^this. To serve and protect...a people that hate and fear you. I'm not saying I hate all of them, but damn...some officers just have it wrong. Officer, I'm not your enemy--in fact, I'm technically your boss. See, I'm a member of the public, and you're a public defender. I know your job can be dangerous at times, but most of the time you're not really in any danger, so calm down during times of safety and act like a respectable human being.