Posted on 04/20/2014 7:33:14 AM PDT by wildbill
This stuff is going on all over the country according to news reports.
The problem seems to stem from two areas:
1. Encouragement of SWAT teams at the local level by the Department of Homeland Security by means of financial grants and supplying equipment like armored vehicles.
2.Desire of local police units to have ‘elite’ teams who get special pay and perks.
Once you have a SWAT team, the desire to put it to use is overwhelming. Every supposed criminal turns into the terrorist Symbionese Liberation Army.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014779601#post53
And their supporters back them. There are calls on that thread for attack helicopters and armed drones to "take out the teabaggers"...
“I don’t recall saying that. What do you think?”
I guess I should have used a sark tag. You were painting a picture of a bucolic town. My remark was to the effect that the cops there, having nothing better to do, gin up trouble so they have the opportunity to crack some heads. Personally, I see a lot of that kind of thinking. It’s like they are pissed off that they “can’t get into battle, so they go looking for situations where they can escalate a situation.
“Judas effing priest
I live in a police state”
Pal, we all do! Between a lawless administration and lawless local LEO’s, our freedoms are being seriously eroded. Unless there is change soon, there are going to be some very bad outcomes in interactions between the citizens and the cops. Cops today don’t either protect or serve us.
Leawood cops are like the Eddie Murphy Hollywood cop movies. There job is to keep the Kansas City riff raff out of Leaswood. State Line Road divides Kansas City, MO from Leawood. Drive through Leawood in your 80’s ghettomobile with Missouri plates and you will get pulled over. If you have Missouri plates, you better be driving a Lexus or a BMW and you better be headed for Hawthorne Plaza.
We have lived in a police state for a while:
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
Steyn / JBT ping.
Mark Steyn ping.
Freepmail me, if you want on or off the Mark Steyn ping list.
Thanks for the ping Slings and Arrows.
Some Barney Fife with nothing to do recorded this guy's license plate at a hydroponics store. To Deputy Fife there is only one thing to do with that equipment - grow pot. Except that's not true. The guy's kid was running a science experiment.
These idiots actually were intercepting the guy's trash and found "plant material." Months had passed during all this but it now became of paramount importance to raid the guy's house before a lab test could be obtained for the "plant material." The cops claimed a "field test" showed it to be pot. Now you know that was just a damn lie to get a warrant.
After the raid they got the lab report - the stuff was tea, loose, used tea.
I used to think the cops were on our side, were our protectors. Not any more.
I suspect that your instincts are the same as mine. This is a leadership and traininig issue. The cops are doing what they are trained to do and what their leadership expects them to do.
When you see a unit that is screwed up like Hogan’s goat, it is almost never the soldiers. The training and the chain of command are the issue. The big problem is that these indicators are happening nationwide which can only be the case if leadership policy and training emphasis is coming from the Federal Government. We should all be very concerned.
When I see small town cops getting SWAT gear and MRAP’s I get very concerned.
That is the problem. Know someone in law enforcement and he says this is a very bad idea. Only the big cities should have SWAT teams, and those are not always managed correctly.
However, please consider the thousands of cops who do a dangerous job every day, doing things most people couldn’t, maintaining their discipline in the face of all kinds of verbal and physical assaults, and being paid rather poorly. Watch a few episodes of Cops or Jail and see how you would feel about doing these jobs. Also, when you have a split second to decide whether someone is pulling a gun or a phone out, what would you do?
The training is the problem. And doing everything "by the book" is the problem.
"The book" keeps changing, and the book for Leawood or anywhere else should not be the same as the book for Cleveland or anywhere else.
Cleveland's had some problems with it's book, as have most cities of any size. You get real problems when every suburban and rural "cop" uses the same book as the most dangerous and drug-riddled precints (urban or rural) use.
I use the term "cop" affectionately...my late father-in-law was a big-city police officer. That was in the old days, and things have only gotten more difficult and dangerous since then. It's a thankless job in too many ways these days for the good ones. Not unlike the military.
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