Can you say “Police State?”
LUTFA!
Must be getting used to the police and military working together like in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Why would the St. Cloud police need a vehicle like that on the bottom of that photo? Bizarre.
If they could get the vehicles cheaply and convert them for peaceful and useful purposes, I wouldn’t have a problem with that. As they’re using them, I’ve got a big problem with it.
We aren’t going to be able to stop the proliferation of the military weapons to local police forces.
It’s important, however, to change those things we can, and in this case one thing to change is our perception of those weapons.
We need to begin thinking of them as resources for our side, resources being maintained and fueled for us to use when they are needed.
Well the MRAP’s look scary but in reality if a semi rams one and turns it on its side what then? Its a metal bug in the road. Or if some enterprising miscreant with a .30 cal snipes those two air brake tanks in the rear undercarriage the brakes lock up and its now a bug sitting dead in the road.
I’ll venture a guess that if another unknown miscreant let off a few slap rounds the engine block would be toast and yet another bug in the road filled with para military. They have to come out sometime.
But more to the point this insanity needs to be dealt with at the official levels. The Congress and Courts are going to have to step in or we will see the public at war with the police.
There needs to be a class action lawsuit calling attention that local police departments are now as powerful, if not more so, than the military and they’re breaking the posse comitatus law. The Founding Fathers, I believe, would have made the law more about local police had they known what was coming down the pike.
hmmm .....
The equipment in those photos are over-the-top, especially for small towns. They are Big Boy Toys, and once the departments get them they are itching to use them. After all, what’s the point of having toys if you don’t get to play with them?
This was evident in Watertown, Massachusetts after the Boston Marathon attack. A tank rolling down residential streets in the search for a suspect fleeing on foot, in hindsight, was pretty useless. But they got to play with the toys and intimidate their neighbors!
That baby has certainly learned a lesson about drugs.
The problem with the war on drugs is that it incentivizes the pushing of drugs thus creating a need for money and it diverts the harm to innocent victims like this baby or some little old lady mugged on the street.
This would be a good time to repost the “How to disable an MRAP” thread....
My father was a NYPD lieutenant in the 40s, and 50s. He said the militarization of the police forces, which he saw happening after WW2, would create an ‘us against them’ attitude. He always said the best policemen were everyday working class men, like truck drivers.
Rep. Stewart Introduces Bill to De-Militarize Federal Regulatory Agencies
Washington, D.C. – Today, Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) introduced the Regulatory Agency De-militarization (RAD) Act, which stems the trend of federal regulatory agencies developing SWAT-like teams.
In recent years, numerous federal regulatory agencies – including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Food and Drug Agency and the Department of Education – have created their own special law enforcement teams to conduct their own arrests and raids. This is in part a product of the 2002 Homeland Security Act, which gave most Offices of Inspector General arrest and firearm authority.
You know what would help these out-of-control cops win back good public opinion?
Start looking like police officers instead of Hollywood caricatures of soldiers from bad movies.
Lots of cops with delusions of Seal Team Six grandeur lift weights to look as menacing as possible, and they’re obviously getting help from steroids.
Police departments need to institute regular drug testing, the same kind of tests that are administered to professional athletes. Any cop who uses steroids should be fired.
Steroids engender a hair trigger temper in an otherwise normal person, who in this case carries a gun. (It’s science, not cop-hate. You know what else is science? Total number of dogs shot so far this year by itchy trigger-finger ‘roid ragers. And babies blown up by flash grenades.)
Also, cops shouldn’t be allowed to shave their heads. A chrome dome is an escalator because it’s aggressive and threatening. And it’s intended to be.
Why should citizens have to deal with a ‘roided out chrome dome whose mien and appearance are expressly designed to cow and threaten at a at a traffic stop? You work for us, ‘roid ragers, and you should look like us.
Americans love their soldiers. They just don’t like cops playing soldier games with the American people, as if the American people were the enemy.
Act like cops, not soldiers making war on our own citizens, and you might regain some of the respect you’ve lost in recent years.
45,000 SWAT raids per year? That is (another) absolute travesty in modern America. Police forces should simply not be armed or act like military units. I don’t care if some guilty people temporarily escape punishment. The police shouldn’t resort to violence until every other avenue has been exhausted.
Wanting to learn more about the local PD, I enrolled in and completed the citizen police academy.
Very interesting class, learned a lot about laws, policies, practices, everything about the PD; from local patrol and traffic enforcement, to criminal investigations involving murder and child abuse (gawd-awful some of the photos and the child abuse would make you cry).
Anyway, very interesting class on the local PD.
Had a session on SWAT team operations.
The usual that you would expect, sniper rifles and AR-15’s, to a lesson on tear-gas and flash-bang grenades. No armored vehicles though. All the SWAT guys were physically studded-out. Steroid abuse, I think.
Anyway, they showed us a video from a no-knock raid on a residence they conducted.
They wore personal cameras so we saw the raid from their perspective.
Set-up: Seems some guy was lurking in shopping centers and waiting for unsuspecting women to leave the stores and drive home, with him following. He would then follow them into the garage and rape them in their home.
The SWAT teams had him under surveillance for several days at his residence, actually, his parents’ home, and knew his routine and that he slept on the living-room couch fold-out bed.
The SWAT team conducted a no-knock raids at 0300hrs and the video was full of noise (flash-bang), yelling and breaking glass.
One SWAT member goes down the hall to the rear of the home and the dad stumbles out from the bedroom in his t-shirt and shorts and was yelled at to get down while at the same time thrown to the ground.
The SWAT guys told us how it was a great arrest and worked according to plan.
I asked the SWAT guys what would have happened to the father if he came out of the room with a firearm.
They answered he would have been “taken down.”
I replied, ‘wait, you told us the parents didn’t know what their son was up to and if someone breaks into my home in the middle of the night I’m coming out shooting.”
The SWAT guy, with a smirk, replied, “Well, officer safety comes first.” Totally missing the point.
I then asked the SWAT team why they did a middle of the night no-knock raid when they observed this guy for days and knew his routine and all they had to do was wait for him to come out his front door in the morning and arrest him.
Stunned, deer-in-headlights moment.
Stammering an answer was something along the lines of “Well, we um, we couldn’t risk him getting away.”
Rubbish and I told them so. They we not pleased with me.
Met with the Chief of Police and relayed my concerns. He is a new chief and is a nice guy and was not from around here when the raid happened. He told me that since he arrived he has been taking on the SWAT team for ‘issues’ he discovered.
I think he is getting a saddle on those boys.
Hmmm, I wonder ....
Incorporate our little prepper compound as a city. Then create a police force, then ask the government for all kinds of goodies.
If you can’t beat ‘em ... join ‘em
But when they said "Don't worry; We are just going to use it for Search and Rescue." I laughed. A more useless vehicle for traversing hiking trails I have never seen. Horses, ATVs or motorcycles are what they need for that.
But the new Police Chief is a political appointee with very little field experience as a police officer, by our corrupt and fascistic Village council, so it is only a matter of time.
Only a matter of time.