America 'Has Become a War Zone'

An anonymous reader writes, quoting Business Insider: "Eight different law enforcement agencies in Indiana have purchased massive Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAP) that were formerly used in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mark Alesia reports for the Indy Star. Pulaski County, home to 13,124 people, is one of the counties that have purchased an 55,000 pound, six-wheeled patrol vehicles, from military surplus. When asked to justify the purchase of a former military vehicle, Pulaski County Sheriff Michael Gayer told the Indy Star: "The United States of America has become a war zone."'

Comments

War of government against people?

[gweihir]

If law enforcement needs this type of equipment, then it has long abandoned any pretense of serving the people and has instead reverted to its original purpose of fighting the people for those in power.

Re:War of government against people?

[gandhi_2]

the police don't actually have to protect the citizens.

this is worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

it is also worth noting that the US is safer now than ever before.

on the other hand, the real deal is there are a surplus of military equipment that can be useful in all kinds of scenarios. the high clearance of an RG33 would be good in a flood, and good for active-shooter scenarios. might as well snap them up if the price is good.

Re:War of government against people?

[rmdingler]

OR

The Police are the civil servant equivalent of the 40ish divorced guy driving a Corvette.

Big weapons? Tim Taylor grunt...we have big weapons.

Re:War of government against people?

[Jane Q. Public]

This is the most relevant point:

the US is safer now than ever before.

And not just a little. FAR safer. Violent crime is less than half what it was 20 years ago. And even less compared to 30 years ago.

The only "increasing" violence is news-media propaganda. Because chicks hatching on the farm does not sell news.

In fact, some recent studies have concluded that it was news media coverage, and not guns, which led to copy-cat "mass" shootings on college and other school campuses. (But even so, and even though they are splashed all over the news, THOSE are way down, too, compared to 2-3 decades ago.)

American does not have "increasing" internal violence. It has decreasing violence.

And during the same period, it is interesting to not, per-capita gun ownership in the U.S. has gone steadily up. And also during that same period, concealed-carry laws have become much more common.

Statistics do not prove cause-and-effect. But a negative correlation can DISprove cause-and-effect.

We have more guns. (Per person!) According to our own government's statistics. Yet we have less violent crime. This is a direct, indisputable DISproof of the idea that "more guns equals more crime".

[Sources: U.S. DOJ, and for more recent years: U.S. Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics]

Re:War of government against people?

[s.petry]

Well, I certainly agree with most of your points (I normally do) but have to debate one particular omission from yours and GPs comments. Violence by Police departments has escalated drastically in the same time as criminal violence has gone down. Police brutality is close to a daily occurrence today, and not just the cops manhandling a suspected felon but outright killing people.

Sure, some of this happened in the past but not to the extremes we are seeing today.

This has a potentially rubber banding effect on society. Oppressed people surely don't take the same chances as a "Free" public, bottled up it becomes rather explosive.

When police are increasingly violent I have more concerns about them receiving this type of equipment. They surely don't need an MRAP for stopping people speeding on the freeway, so why have this type of gear?

Since this is not a new phenomenon (militarizing police that is) I have done a bit of homework. The first reason for them to gear up this way is that DHS is selling us back equipment that the military purchased for Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a boost to the MIC, and a nice way to double tax us for the same equipment. Yes, DHS sells them for less money but still are selling them to local police. The next reason is obviously a Rambo effect, where cops think they are "cool" in this type of gear. Lastly, and more of a concern than the two previous is that a majority of police training today is geared toward attacking the public. There have been ample leaks from DHS training materials showing this to be true. Military and Law Enforcement agencies are using material claiming that "Patriots" and "Tea Party" type groups are potential terrorists.

There are many good links to find in this page here, pay special attention to the retired Marine Colonel in the 2nd video. Enjoy.

Re:War of government against people?

[dala1]

A negative correlation does not disprove causation any more than a positive one proves it. To see why, consider a simpler example: Town A has 5 police per thousand people, and 3 crimes reported per thousand people every day. The next year, they increase the number of police to 7 per thousand people, but crime rates go up to 5 crimes reported per day.

Despite the negative correlation, this doesn't disprove the idea that having a greater police presence reduces crime. It could be that poverty rates went up due to recession, resulting in more crime and prompting politicians to increase police funding. It could be that the police are corrupt or inept, or that legislation changed such that committing crime is more profitable or less risky. There could be any number of explanations for that data that don't require causation.

Re:War of government against people?

[sycodon]

The Feds used one when they burned some 50 women and children to death in Waco.

Re:War of government against people?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is where the USA gets it WRONG.

Its the attitude which is the problem, not the gun.

In the USA it is acceptable to buy a gun with the intent to use it to kill someone (self defence, stand your ground, what ever you call it)
and the large number of hand guns posed for this purpose makes the attitude clear, " It is OK to kill people"

Other countries who have large numbers of guns dont have this attitude, in fact if authorities even think you want a gun for "self defence" you will be denied ownership and the use of a gun "for self defence" can see you charged with murder/man slaughter, because the idea of killing another human being is considered abhorrent .

Hence in these countries gun crime is lower, murder rates are lower and mass murder is pretty much unheard of.

The US population is paranoid, delusional, and frightened.
Freedom is not expressed by ones ability of own a gun and be able to shoot someone (in defence or what ever),
it is not needing one, knowing you are safe with your family, neighbours, fellow citizens.

Re:War of government against people?

[Runaway1956]

Exceptionally good example of logic.

Call me less disciplined, but I am convinced that increased gun ownership actually causes crime to go down. Strict rules of cause and effect be damned - empirical evidence weighs in on my side. Time and again, when cities and states make gun laws stricter, crime increases. And, repeatedly, when gun laws are relaxed, there is a short initial period of increased violence, followed by a decidedly downward trend in crime.

Many criminals are just plain stupid, but not all. The criminal who is not outright stupid understands the risk of assaulting an armed citizen. Like any corporate shark, the common criminal is going to minimize his risks whenever possible. If he's pretty sure that 50% or more of his potential victims are armed, he is going to get very choosy about which victims to hit. Heck, even stupid people seldom WANT to be shot!

Further, the most dangerous cities to live in today, are precisely those cities with the strictest gun control.

The preponderence of evidence is enough for me.

Re:War of government against people?

[jedidiah]

Ready access to guns may not suppress violent crime but ratcheting up the gun laws certainly seems to do nothing to stem the tide. Assuming that gun laws are a reactionary, knee-jerk response to high levels of gun crime, the results don't seem very promising.

Perhaps something else is actually going on and fixating on guns is an easy way to avoid solving the real problem which is really hard and will make liberal busybodies squirm.

Re:War of government against people?

[stoploss]

It's a crime what they pay police officers. They practically guarantee corruption.

I agree, but for the opposite reason you purport. In my locale, we have cops retiring on full pension in their 40's. Furthermore, until a few years ago, the cops were all "spiking" their pensions so they were pulling down $100+k/year pensions (pension pay was based on the last 18 months of income better retirement, and they all loaded up on scads of overtime during their leadup to retirement). Actuarially, they are going to live another 30+ years while drawing these $100+k/year pensions. Of course, they will immediately launch into a second career after retiring in their 40's, so their income is actually the full pension plus their new career.

That's certainly a "living wage" *cough*.

The fire and police unions are driving my city into a race to the bottom. We are half a billion dollars in the hole for the pension fund thanks to these people.

The problem is that the police/fire unions have served as "kingmakers" for the mayoral elections for the past few decades. It's no wonder their contracts have gotten "recommended" enhancements by the mayors. We finally broke the back of the union kingmakers in last year's election... a candidate they opposed won, on a platform that included bringing the unions to heel. Hopefully we can claw back the criminal amounts we are paying these people.

Re: War of government against people?

[Anonymous Coward]

Self defense is a human right (see Locke). Any government that tries to take that right away from you needs to be removed from power.

Re:War of government against people?

[TubeSteak]

Well, I certainly agree with most of your points (I normally do) but have to debate one particular omission from yours and GPs comments. Violence by Police departments has escalated drastically in the same time as criminal violence has gone down. Police brutality is close to a daily occurrence today, and not just the cops manhandling a suspected felon but outright killing people.

I would question this conclusion.
I'm inclined to think that the police have always been brutal, the only difference now is increased reporting (and video recording).
As a point in case, the proliferation of cell phone video has led to a proliferation of lawsuits against police who have confiscated phones or arrested the videographer.

It's something of a society wide problem, where in the past we didn't have a grasp on the extent of many problems, either from willful blindness or unintentional ignorance.

Re:War of government against people?

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

So just a counterpoint of logic:

Hypothesis: A increasing leads to B increasing.
Measured: A increases, B does not.
Revised hypothesis: A therefore does not lead to B increasing, since there is a negative correlation.
Reality: A increasing leads to B increasing, C increasing leads to B decreasing. During the measured period, A increases and C increases. If the effect of C increasing exceeds the effect of A increasing, then B decreases.
Result: By not measuring or accounting for C, the measured results appear to be a negative correlation between A and B.

The difficulty in a scenario like gun control is in the elimination of outside influences in the study. Unless all of the influences are accounted for, then negative correlation can mean that there is no causal relationship, or it can mean that the causal relationship is being overwhelmed by some other factor. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Re:War of government against people?

[vux984]

If law enforcement needs this type of equipment,

RTFA. They don't need it. They KNOW they don't need it. They freely agreed they'd prefer a smaller, lighter, more practical civilian police vehicle like a BearCat but that costs $200,000 to $300,000. That 55,000 lb MRAP listing north of $700,000 only cost them a measly $5000 as army surplus.

Hell, even a police issue dodge ram, with typical law enforcement upgrades is going to cost an order of magnitude more than $5000.

OTOH, although they got the MRAP for $5k, its going to be a beast on gas, and god help them if or when they need to replace any parts on it.

I guess if they actually need something even lightly armored, if this thing runs for a year or three and they can turn around and sell it for 55,000 pounds of scrap metal after that they probably actually saved the taxpayers some money vs operating something else.

The news here isn't that the police are looking to arm themselves with military gear, its that they are on tight budgets and military surplus is overkill specs, but is a lot cheaper than suitable civilian gear.

Re:War of government against people?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the fact that the USA's major source of violent crime comes from fewer than fifteen counties (that's right,counties...not states), logically, the remainder USA must be a remarkably safe place to be, despite all of the guns, all of the media violence.

The US has very poor areas with low violence rates, very rich places with low violence rates, and it has places where the very rich and the very poor share the same relatively cramped geography. The trend is the violence is most often found in the latter. My belief is the greatest contribution to violence is wildly varying income disparity.

Face recognition, Armored vehicles, Phone spies

[Anonymous Coward]

The United States of America is a war zone, the government is at war with its citizens.

$5k

[reanjr]

For five grand, I'd be tempted to buy one, too.

Re:$5k

[Daniel_Staal]

This. The sheriff said he'd rather have a more police-oriented armored vehicle for his SWAT team, but they cost $300,000, and this only cost $5,000. It's bigger, slower, and uses more gas, but it's cheaper overall. He's working within a budget and it's budget-effective.

The rest is window dressing and statements to appease the press.

SHeriff Michael Gayer

[geekoid]

needs to go to a war zone for a few months.

Violence has been trending down for decades. This dumb ass just get a hard on with driving around in the military vehicle.

Plus he is in Johnson county doing Sheriff duties. Not anything close to a war zone. Using a few stories from the news to claim America is a war zone is so fucking stupid this guy should be fired. Clearly he can not do basic statistics within his field. Someone anyone making purchasing decision should be able to do.
Tell me what crime you deal with the requires this?
http://www.jocosheriff.org/ind...

AND it's going to be more expensive to maintain, and the police should never use military anything, ever. They are NOT the military. Too many people are loosing touch with what the difference is.

You'll have to forgive Sheiff Gayer

[rahvin112]

You'll have to forgive Sheriff Gayer, after all it must feel like a warzone when you spend all you're available time and money engaged in the war on drugs because it's so damn profitable for the cops.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...

Nineteen eighty-four was the year that Congress rewrote the civil forfeiture law to funnel drug money and "drug related" assets into the police agencies that seize them. This amendment offered law enforcement a new source of income, limited only by the energy police and prosecutors were willing to put into seizing assets. The number of forfeitures mushroomed: Between 1985 and 1991 the Justice Department collected more than $1.5 billion in illegal assets; in the next five years, it almost doubled this intake. By 1987 the Drug Enforcement Administration was more than earning its keep, with over $500 million worth of seizures exceeding its budget.

The numbers are only worse now. States like Minesota that are average size take in around 8 million dollars and almost every penny of that money is given right back to the cops.

Junk

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the MRAPs are junk. The only thing they're really good at is absorbing a blast coming from under the vehicle. They're unstable and they guzzle fuel because of their weight and lack of aerodynamics. The citizens should be more concerned about how much of the municipal budget is going into fueling these pieces of shit.

violent crime has plunged

[SuperBanana]

"There's violence in the workplace, there's violence in schools and there's violence in the streets. You are seeing police departments going to a semi-military format because of the threats we have to counteract. If driving a military vehicle is going to protect officers, then that's what I'm going to do."

Uh, yeah, except violent (and property) crime has fallen to levels we haven't seen in 50 years (police-involved shootings, however, have gone up - in part, I'm sure, because of all the war vets getting preferential hiring in police jobs.)

This reminds me of the firefighters in our city. Fires have become extremely rare, thanks to better standards/code for electrics, building, appliances, etc...as well as education, etc.

Instead of laying off firefighters, they started sending them out to respond to medical calls. So we have giant ladder trucks responding to grandma saying her chest hurts, instead of spending that operating expenditure on ambulances that can respond quicker, or, say, pivoting the "fleet" towards much smaller, faster SUVs that carry high-tech equipment. Everyone thinks they're still really busy fighting fires. Win-win, except for citizens, screwed by both unnecessary expenditure and ineffective utilization of budget...

Just read their stats - nothing that needed this

[Animats]

Just read the statistics for the sheriffs department involved. 133 "crimes against persons" so far this year. But that includes a lot of bad checks, which they list as a crime against a person. It also includes telephone harassment, and "criminal threats". Some assaults, some rapes. No murders. About 63 drug offenses, mostly from traffic stops. Nothing for which an armored vehicle would be useful. It looks like a cop shop that has some real business maybe a few times a day.

They don't need an MRAP. They need a collection agency for the bad checks and a social worker for the domestic disturbances.

This is bullshit

[Rigel47]

> "The United States of America has become a war zone," he said. "There's violence in the workplace, there's violence in schools and there's violence in the streets. You are seeing police departments going to a semi-military format because of the threats we have to counteract.

You are no longer an officer of the peace.

You are a new armed wing, a great example of the militarization of the American police force. As part part of the Deep State you see yourself as being on one side with the quarrelsome public and their whining on the other.

Violent crime in the US is at a multi-decade low.. and yet you seek tanks to patrol the streets of US cities.

It is any wonder that people freak when the DHS tries to buy 3 billion bullets?

Military industrial complex

[rsilvergun]

Yep, it's a by product of the military industrial complex that's been propping up our economy since the end of WWII. Since we couldn't have socialism we just built lots of army vehicles. And that means lots of surplus and a heavily militarized police force. I don't think anyone really planned it, it's just one of the twisted distortions from our way of keeping the economy going...

Re:education

[Hategrin]

OP's logical failure is called the fallacy of the single cause. After half a dozen logic classes and 4 textbooks... I wouldn't be so quick to judge his professors, but it's odd someone could pass a logic course without knowing basic ELEMENTARY logic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...