Escalating crisis. police/black community (snipers kill three cops, ten more injured)

[SeasiderDude95]

My original point was that the use of grenade was justified. I am not sure where u get that the american police forces are better equipped than american coalition troops in Afghanistan.

my point is that a trigger happy police force and military grade hardware will probably not make for a happy couple, or a happy america

to the second point

Let me repeat that: the police in Ferguson have better armor and weaponry than my men and I did in the middle of a war. And Ferguson isn’t alone — police departments across the US are armed for war.

Many combat veterans have since pointed out that the SWAT officers are more heavily armed and outfitted than they themselves were while patrolling the streets of Iraq or Afghanistan.

a great deal of ex-servicemen have pointed out the disparity too, i'd have linked u to a few tweets but i don't know how to link to tweets and i figured a couple quotes and links to interesting articles would be enough

edit: can't actually post links for some reason, first one is from a bill moyers article entitled 'Iraq Vet: Small-Town Cops Have Better Armor and Weaponry Than We Carried in a Combat', second is from the huff and called 'Actual Military Veterans Say Cops In Ferguson Are Excessively Armed, Untrained Wannabes'

 

[SeasiderDude95]

final point. these paramilitaries aren't just being used for race riots. swat get called out like 8,000 times in a year now, mostly for drug related raids, or DUIs or expired warrants. there's a great paper out there from the cato instiute, a decade old but relavent more now than ever, entitled 'overkill: the rise of paramilitary police raids in america'. has this great/awful passage

SWAT teams are also increasingly—and oddly—being called in to negotiate with suicide cases, again sometimes yielding tragic results.89 In one case that made national headlines in 1995, the family of a depressed 33- year-old Albuquerque, New Mexico, man named Larry Harper called police out of fear that Harper was about to commit suicide. Police responded with a nine-member SWAT team, dressed in full military gear and armed with automatic rifles and flashbang grenades. Harper’s family overheard one member say, “Let’s go get the bad guy,” before the SWAT team chased Harper through the woods of a local park. According to the New York Times, Harper died when the SWAT team “found him cowering behind a juniper tree and shot him to death from 43 feet away.”

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

It's probably more to do with the military industrial complex than anything else. They bribe politicians to back huge military spending programs and then you end up with the military selling surplus stuff on to the police on the cheap. Some even ending up with armoured vehicles and shit.

 

[SeasiderDude95]

yeah that's a big part of it. obama managed to roll it back a little last october. found this rather worrying quote on it though

effective immediately, the federal government will no longer fund or provide armored vehicles that run on a tracked system instead of wheels, weaponized aircraft or vehicles, firearms or ammunition of .50-caliber or higher, grenade launchers, bayonets or camouflage uniforms. The federal government also is exploring ways to recall prohibited equipment already distributed.

not sure if that means the option was in place for police forces to get bayonets on the cheap, or if police forces had actually acquired them. it's all rather unnecessary, but, as you said, killing is big money and money rules

 

[SeasiderDude95]

here's another good quote from the cato paper

The most obvious problem with the militarization of civilian policing is that the military and the police have two distinctly different tasks. The military’s job is to seek out, overpower, and destroy an enemy. Though soldiers attempt to avoid them, collateral casualties are accepted as inevitable. Police, on the other hand, are charged with “keeping the peace,” or “to protect and serve.” Their job is to protect the rights of the individuals who live in the communities they serve, not to annihilate an enemy. Former Reagan administration official Lawrence Korb put it more succinctly: soldiers are “trained to vaporize, not Mirandize.”114 Given that civilian police now tote military equipment, get military training, and embrace military culture and values, it shouldn’t be surprising when officers begin to act like soldiers, treat civilians like combatants, and tread on private property as if it were part of a battlefield. Of course, it’s hard to overlook the fact that the soldiering-up of civilian police forces is taking place as part of the larger War on Drugs, which grows more saturated with war imagery, tactics, and phraseology every day

 

[G-Dragon]

While I agree there have been some circumstances where the police have maybe used more firepower than necessary, it is wrong to make it out as if they are patrolling the streets with AK-47, grenade or any other military grade weapons on their hands. This is not something you see on the streets everyday.

Similarly, the police being charged with “keeping the peace,” or “to protect and serve” only works in an ideal world. But we don't live in that kind of world anymore, at least in the United States. Not only guns, but assault rifles are easily available for the criminals to use. When a routine traffic stop results in an offender coming out with an assault rifle and spraying the bullets at the police, are these "peacemakers" even equipped with enough firepower? Without taking into account the whole country, just a city like Chicago have war-zone statistics.

Obviously there are going to be times when police use more than necessary firepower when dealing with a particular situation. And I have no problem criticizing that. Personally, I don't see any issue with SWAT being used for drug raids. But to sensationalize stories and make it seem like regular police officers going around the streets of the US with military grade weapon and gear is ridiculous.

I think it is more important to figure out and solve the underlying issues than just blame the police for everything. Completely different point but it is the same with BLM protests. Not every black mans death at the hands of a white police officer is racially motivated! BLM protests has done more harm than good.

 

[Abertawe]

I pity you.

 

[G-Dragon]

I pity you.

Good argument. Maybe that will solve the problem.

 

[nousername]

It's probably more to do with the military industrial complex than anything else. They bribe politicians to back huge military spending programs and then you end up with the military selling surplus stuff on to the police on the cheap. Some even ending up with armoured vehicles and shit.

A good article about this topic: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/05/militarisation-americas-police

"The American Civil Liberties Union found that the value of military equipment used by American police departments has risen from $1m in 1990 to nearly $450m in 2013. Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams (ie, paramilitary police units) were deployed about 3,000 times in 1980 but are now used around 50,000 times a year, often to handle relatively modest crimes, like breaking up poker games. Incidents of police violence and related protests in the past year have helped bring these practices to light."

 

[G-Dragon]

People worried on the internet about police having militarized weapons...

Until then (if and ever...) let the police defend themselves from the criminals. Let them do their job properly. We don't need another police questioning (hesitate) himself and getting killed just because others might call him racist for his actions.

 

[Jockney]

Three more coppers shot dead. This time in Baton Rouge, where Alton Sterling was murdered.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-36820782

 

[silkyman]

Apparently not related. Just your average common or garden assault rifle crime in the US.

 

[G-Dragon]

bbbbbbbbbbbut police too heavily armed! bbbbbbbbbbbut only black lives matter!

 

[silkyman]

Or not.... Who knows. This is what happens when you follow this shit on twotter!

 

[silkyman]

bbbbbbbbbbbut police too heavily armed! bbbbbbbbbbbut only black lives matter!

It helps to disprove the old 'good guy with a gun' argument.

But literally no one is claiming that 'only' black lives matter. That's like complaining about a cancer charity because 'what about heart attacks you bastards'

(At least) one of the victims was black.

 

[G-Dragon]

smh CNN. Employing some clueless person as Don LEMON...

 

[G-Dragon]

Someone sensible.