Libs: We warned you about big govt. police militarization

[MarcSpaz]

Valid points. However, we can't let crime go unanswered because there are a lot of them happening at the same time and around innocent people. Also, we are already asking people (LEO's) to stand in harms way for situations such as these. I don't want them to be under-powered or under protected.

As you point out, there is no one answer for everything. Each occurrence needs to be reviewed and a judgement call needs to be made per issue. Truth is, we need law enforcement. Be it and over-prep and militarized local PD, State PD or National Guard. When "crime" gets bad enough that its out of hand, someone needs the big guns and cool toys to bring order. As ugly and disappointing as that is.

I have no problem taking it away from local PD as long as an agency is able to respond to a serious issue when needed. I guess that was really the idea I was trying to convey.

I don't think it is the same idea when you compare police trying to bring order to the masses, who violating other peoples rights, destroying property and taking lives; compared to the state or federal government violating our rights by sending the NG to take our weapons because the "State" said so. That will be a just war. There is no just cause for thousands to be rioting because a policeman justly defended his own life.

[jdonovan]

As you point out, there is no one answer for everything. Each occurrence needs to be reviewed and a judgement call needs to be made per issue. Truth is, we need law enforcement. Be it and over-prep and militarized local PD, State PD or National Guard. When "crime" gets bad enough that its out of hand, someone needs the big guns and cool toys to bring order. As ugly and disappointing as that is.

It was my impression that was a role that can/could be filled by the National Guard. The average patrol officer, is looking a lot more like light infantry than Barny Fife anymore.

There is no just cause for thousands to be rioting because a policeman justly defended his own life.

There are some very serious questions that the recent autopsy that calls into question the 'justly defended' part of your statement.

[Taggure]

Please expand on your

There are some very serious questions that the recent autopsy that calls into question the 'justly defended' part of your statement.

statement here. Have you read something that I have not?

[jdonovan]

From the released autopsy report identifying the locations and paths of travel of the shots fired.

[dorminWS]

If there's any clear-cut evidence that it was justified, I'm not aware of it. By the same token, The evidence that it was unjustified is at the very best no more conclusive. In fact, some of it appears to be patently false. It is a damned murky, uncertain mess which has been exacerbated by obfuscation, meddling, perjury, race-baiting and demagoguery. Anyone who can get more than that out of it at this point either knows more than I do or is one of the parties who are doing the obfuscation, meddling, perjuring, race-baiting and demagoguery, IMO.

[mamabearCali]

It really is a convoluted mess.

The autopsy was inconclusive except to make a liar out of Michael Browns partner in robbery (not shot in the back). There are many explanations for how the bullets trajectory went.

What I do know is Obama is getting to grandstand on a mans death and is getting to use race (again) to distract from his horrible record and utter incompetence. Two weeks ago blacks were starting to get the message that the dems had a new special someone....the Hispanics. Now he gets to race bait, do an unnecessary 3rd autopsy and generally usurp the local and state authority in this banner and look like a leader by doing nothing constructive. A great distraction. Thanks a lot.

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[grumpyMSG]

Aside from mamabear's suggestion that all LEOs have cameras, what other solutions has anybody offered. Just using the Ferguson situation as an example, what should be done? People are upset about law enforcement having MRAPs, in a riot, they occupy space and are less easily damaged than an Impala, Charger or Explorer police car. They make good portable roadblocks. LEOs are wearing camo uniforms during a riot instead of black, oh the world will end. Is the solution really make them wear black or dark blue and paint their helmets? Does that stop the talk of militarization? If you have a problem with no knock raids and the war on drugs, I understand. In a riot, I want cops to have armor and be protected. I don't care what color their uniform is.

I recognize 2 distinct groups in Ferguson, those that are peacefully protesting and when it turns dark the group that likes to loot and destroy things. Both groups deserve different responses. Police need to partner with the news organizations to get the coverage of both groups, don't try to shut them down. Try to get them to see and film the inbound bricks and Molotov cocktails from the LEO perspective. If one news organization starts showing both sides of the incident, others will follow suit quickly and then people might start changing their attitudes. When it comes to the looting and destruction, dispersal is not the answer, containment and arrest are. Use non-lethal weapons to facilitate the arrests. Film it all at the same time.

[dorminWS]

http://humanevents.com/2014/08/18/ameri ... on-moment/

I personally believe there can be no doubt that giving all that nifty hardware to local cops has, as a general rule, motivated them (or at least way too many of them) to find ever more reason to "need" to deploy same. Are there many, even a majority, who could be trusted with this responsibility? I'm sure there are. But the problem is that it only takes one "Barney Fife" moment.

So, if there is a compelling reason to have this stuff available, then I'd argue that (1) EVERY little Podunk town doesn't need one - it ought to be regionalized; and (2) there needs to be strict accountability for deploying the stuff. If not a requirement of full judicial hearing beforehand, then certainly within 24 hours after; and with severe sanctions on law enforcement for misinforming or "gaming" that system in any way. Experience has already shown that the potential for abuse is too great to leave this monster unchained. JMO.

[dorminWS]

http://humanevents.com/2014/08/18/ameri ... on-moment/

I personally believe there can be no doubt that giving all that nifty hardware to local cops has, as a general rule, motivated them (or at least way too many of them) to find ever more reason to "need" to deploy same. Are there many, even a majority, who could be trusted with this responsibility? I'm sure there are. But the problem is that it only takes one "Barney Fife" moment.

So, if there is a compelling reason to have this stuff available, then I'd argue that (1) EVERY little Podunk town doesn't need one - it ought to be regionalized; and (2) there needs to be strict accountability for deploying the stuff. If not a requirement of full judicial hearing beforehand, then certainly within 24 hours after; and with severe sanctions on law enforcement for misinforming or "gaming" that system in any way. Experience has already shown that the potential for abuse is too great to leave this monster unchained. JMO.

\
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

By the way, I think the same chains ought to be put on use of such assets by all the FEDERAL agencies that have access to them.

[dorminWS]

10 Reasons Why Is There So Much Anger In Ferguson….
By Michael Snyder (The Economic Collapse Blog | Original Link) · On August 19, 2014

When people feel like they don’t have anything else to lose, they are likely to do just about anything. Many in the mainstream media seem absolutely mystified as to why there is so much anger in Ferguson, but as I pointed outyesterday, all of this anger did not erupt out of a vacuum. Economic conditions in Ferguson, and for African-Americans as a whole, have been deteriorating for years. Sadly, many white Americans are totally oblivious to any of this. Many of them have absolutely no idea that the unemployment rate for black Americans is more than twice as high as it is for white Americans or that the average white household has 22 times as much wealth as the average black household. But these are things that black communities are acutely aware of. Many African-Americans that live in poor neighborhoods deeply resent the fact that most of the people that live in the “good neighborhoods” are white while most of the people that live in “bad neighborhoods” are people of color. In fact, in America today a black child is nearly four times as likely to live in an impoverished neighborhood as a white child is. And when you throw endless police brutality and growing racial division in America into the mix, it is easy to understand why so many black Americans are so angry and frustrated these days.

Things didn’t have to turn out this way. If we had all learned how to love one another and not judge one another by skin color, we could have had the kind of society that Martin Luther King once dreamed about…


And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we’re free at last!”

But instead we have allowed ourselves to become increasingly divided. And I am sure that fact will once again be reflected in the comments following this article. There is so much anger and hatred in America today, and people seem to love to express their anger and hatred on the Internet.

For white Americans (myself included), I think that it would be good for us to put ourselves in the shoes of the people of Ferguson for a few moments. For years, the economy of Ferguson has been declining. The following is how Brookings summarized the current economic situation…


The city’s unemployment rate rose from less than 5 percent in 2000 to over 13 percent in 2010-12. For those residents who were employed, inflation-adjusted average earnings fell by one-third. The number of households using federal Housing Choice Vouchers climbed from roughly 300 in 2000 to more than 800 by the end of the decade.

Amid these changes, poverty skyrocketed. Between 2000 and 2010-2012, Ferguson’s poor population doubled. By the end of that period, roughly one in four residents lived below the federal poverty line ($23,492 for a family of four in 2012), and 44 percent fell below twice that level.

And as the New York Times recently detailed, racial tensions have been rising in the city for a very long time…


As African-Americans moved into the city and whites moved out, real estate agents and city leaders, in a pattern familiar elsewhere in the country, conspired to keep blacks out of the suburbs through the use of zoning ordinances and restrictive covenants. But by the 1970s, some of those barriers had started to fall, and whites moved even farther away from the city. These days, Ferguson is like many of the suburbs around St. Louis, inner-ring towns that accommodated white flight decades ago but that are now largely black. And yet they retain a white power structure.

Although about two-thirds of Ferguson residents are black, its mayor and five of its six City Council members are white. Only three of the town’s 53 police officers are black.

So it is understandable why a lot of Ferguson residents are so angry and so frustrated.

However, there is absolutely no excuse for the looting and the property destruction that have taken place.

Alternatively, there is absolutely no excuse for how brutally the (mostly white) police have handled peaceful protesters and the media. The police have been using smoke bombs, tear gas, flash bang grenades, rubber bullets and LRAD sound cannons against protesters that are not even armed. Meanwhile, the police have been doing next to nothingto stop criminals from looting stores and businesses all over Ferguson. It has pretty much been a textbook case of what not to do during a period of civil unrest.

Hopefully cooler heads will prevail and things will calm down in Ferguson soon.

But that doesn’t mean that the underlying problems will have been fixed. The truth is that I believe that this is just a preview of what is coming to America in the years ahead. And much of the anger and frustration that is bubbling just under the surface in our communities has an economic element to it. The following are 10 startling facts about the massive economic gap between white America and black America that we see in our country today…




#1 For decades, the unemployment rate for black Americans has consistently been more than twice as high as the unemployment rate for white Americans. In July 2014, the official unemployment rate for white Americans was 5.3 percent. Meanwhile, the official unemployment rate for black Americans was 11.4 percent.

#2 A report released earlier this year discovered that the “underemployment rate” for African-American workers was 20.5 percent. But for white Americans it was only 11.8 percent.

#3 A study released back in 2012 found that the average white household has 22 times as much wealth as the average black household.

#4 African-American households make up only about 13 percent of the population, but they receive more than 26 percent of the food stamp benefits.

#5 One study discovered that 82 percent of white students graduate from high school but only 63.5 percent of black students do.

#6 Pew Research found that the income gap between white Americans and black Americans has continued to grow ever since the late 1960s…


The difference in median household incomes between whites and blacks has grown from about $19,000 in 1967 to roughly $27,000 in 2011 (as measured in 2012 dollars).

#7 In the United States today, 12 percent of white children live in areas of concentrated poverty, but 45 percent of African-American children do.

#8 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 19.9 percent of white children live in single parent homes. But for black children, the number is an astounding 52.1 percent.

#9 Since 1960, the percentage of white American adults that are married has declined from 74 percent to 55 percent. But for African-Americans the decline has been even more dramatic. Since 1960, the percentage of black American adults that are married has declined from 61 percent to 31 percent.

#10 In the United States, the incarceration rate for black men is more than six times higher than it is for white men.

So how do we solve these problems? People have been debating this for years, but nothing ever seems to actually get accomplished.

Meanwhile, the middle class continues to collapse and things continue to get even tougher for African-American communities. The following is an excerpt from a recent piece that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote for Time magazine entitled “The Coming Race War Won’t Be About Race“…


Dystopian books and movies like Snowpiercer, The Giver, Divergent, Hunger Games, and Elysium have been the rage for the past few years. Not just because they express teen frustration at authority figures. That would explain some of the popularity among younger audiences, but not among twentysomethings and even older adults. The real reason we flock to see Donald Sutherland’s porcelain portrayal in Hunger Games of a cold, ruthless president of the U.S. dedicated to preserving the rich while grinding his heel into the necks of the poor is that it rings true in a society in which the One Percent gets richer while our middle class is collapsing.

That’s not hyperbole; statistics prove this to be true. According to a 2012 Pew Research Center report, just half of U.S. households are middle-income, a drop of 11 percent since the 1970s; median middle-class income has dropped by 5 percent in the last ten years, total wealth is down 28 percent. Fewer people (just 23 percent) think they will have enough money to retire. Most damning of all: fewer Americans than ever believe in the American Dream mantra that hard work will get them ahead.

I wish that I could be more optimistic about the future of this country.

I wish that I could believe that we won’t see a tremendous amount of chaos in the streets of America in the years ahead.

Unfortunately, the truth is that what is happening in Ferguson right now is just the tip of the iceberg. Once we hit the next major wave of our ongoing economic collapse, unemployment and economic despair in our major cities are going to grow rapidly. This will fuel more anger, more frustration, more protests, more looting and more rioting.

It has been said that desperate people do desperate things. And in the years ahead, ordinary Americans are going to become increasingly desperate.

I hope that you are getting ready for that.

[WRW]

Yet those poor that he is feeling the pain of have a better standard of living than practically the rest of the world. For me, it always comes back to the statements I have heard by so many from the Appalachian region, "We didn't know we was poor.". Even saw Chuck Yeager say that in his autobiography. So, what I see from articles of this nature is an apologist for class envy.

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[mamabearCali]

You know what....let us all play on the smallest violin that saddest tune. If anyone is to "blame" it is LBJ and his great society that basically facilitated the destruction of the black family.

Many people have been impoverished in much more oppressive circumstances. They still live in an amazing country. Free education up to the age of 18 which can include trade training. Then you are set free to do whatsoever you choose, be whoever you choose to be.

Don't want to live in poverty. Do these three things.

#1 Finish your education or at least get a GED
#2 Stay away from substance abuse--nothing good ever comes from that and it takes your $$
#3 Dont get pregnant or get anyone pregnant until you have completed #1 and preferably are in a stable relationship.


Do those things and you can beat poverty 90% of the time, no matter what your skin tone.

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[kelu]

how nice... http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2014/ ... rotesters/

[MarcSpaz]

I highly doubt that is a real/official Army publication.

[kelu]

I highly doubt that is a real/official Army publication.

Link to the pdf file. Looks legit to me, or a very elaborated hoax: http://info.publicintelligence.net/USAr ... s-2014.pdf

[MarcSpaz]

Well, damn... that sucks.

Here it is, straight from the Army themselves. Chapter 2 is very enlightening.

http://armypubs.army.mil/doctrine/DR_pu ... _39x33.pdf

[mamabearCali]

Great.......

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[Taggure]

Very Interesting this

2-8. The Constitution of the United States provides two exceptions for which the Posse Comitatus Act
does not apply. These exceptions are based upon the inherent right of the U.S. government to ensure the
preservation of public order and to carrying out governmental operations within its territorial limits by
force, if necessary. These two exceptions are—
 Emergency authority. A sudden and unexpected civil disturbance, disaster, or calamity may
seriously endanger life and property and disrupt normal governmental functions to such an
extent that local authorities cannot control the situation. At such times, the federal government
may use military force to prevent the loss of life or wanton destruction of property and to restore
government functions and public order. In these circumstances, federal military commanders
have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the
President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation,
to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil
disturbances (see DODD 3025.18).
 Protection of federal property and functions. When the need for the protection of federal
property or federal functions exists, and duly constituted local authorities are unable to, or
decline to provide adequate protection, federal action, including the use of military forces, is
authorized.
2-9. Laws passed by the U.S. congress include four exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act. With the first
three laws discussed below (10 USC 331–333) there is a prerequisite that the President must take personal
Control Force Planning and Tactics
21 April 2014 ATP 3-39.33 2-3
action, including the issuance of a proclamation calling upon insurgents to disperse and retire peaceably
within a limited time. The four exceptions, based on law are—
 10 USC 331. When a state is unable to control domestic violence and they have requested
federal assistance, the use of the militia or Armed Forces is authorized.
 10 USC 332. When ordinary enforcement means are unworkable due to unlawful obstructions or
rebellion against the authority of the United States, use of the militia or Armed Forces is
authorized.
 10 USC 333. When a state cannot or will not protect the constitutional rights of the citizens, due
to domestic violence or conspiracy to hinder execution of State or Federal law, the use of the
militia or Armed Forces is authorized.
 House Joint Resolution 1292. This resolution directs all departments of the U.S. government,
upon request of the Secret Service, to assist in carrying out its statutory duties to protect
government officials and major political candidates from physical harm.

[MarcSpaz]

So, if I read that right, Posse Comitatus Act does not apply the way I thought it did.

I was always under the impression that if there was an exception, it would be to protect the People of the US and its respective States. If I am following the logic listed in that publication, the opposite is true, to the point that the federal military can act to protect the federal government.

How can Posse Comitatus protect the people from oppression if there is an exemption to protect the government from the people?

[MarcSpaz]

So... I mentioned that I seriously think the local PD's around the country are over using their SWAT resources with crowd control and no-knock warrants. I said I would even be in favor of taking that capacity away from local PD's if we could get a fast enough response times for regional SWAT teams.

Well, I know it was a long time ago, but I mentioned that there may be a need because of situations like the LA Riot in 92 and the LA bank robbery in 97. These two incidents are examples of the reason we are where we are today.

We all know that eventually the local PD gave up in 92, but I didn't know many specifics about the 97 shootout. So, I looked into some stats on the shootout and found some interesting things.

The bad guys:

1.) There were two suspects.

2.) armed with illegally modified full-auto fire Norinco Type 56 S-1s (Chinese AK-47), a Bushmaster XM15 Dissipator (m16a1), and a HK-91 (.308 carbine)

3.) several high capacity drum magazines

4.) armor piercing rounds

5.) body armor

6.) known to have used this combo to violently takeover and rob several banks and armor bank trucks.

7.) fired an estimated 1,200 to 1,500 rounds at police and citizens.

The Police:

1.) it required over 400 police officers, and still could not stop them

2.) they were armed with a variety of 9mm and 38 Special hand guns, a few had shotguns

3.) many of their handguns only held 6 rounds and shotguns were only 4 rounds

4.) all of their pistol ammo was FMJ

5.) a few had Kevlar vests

6.) a few officers commandeered some semi-auto AR-15's and an Armored bank truck to rescue injured citizens and police officers who were pinned down buy hostile gunfire

7.) fired and estimated 500 to 700 rounds

Where was swat during all of this and why didn't they respond? Well, they did... 45 minutes after it started. See, even though LA had a swat team, there were only 4 team members on duty and they could only find 3 of them while they were out on a jog. It took 18 minutes just to find those 3. Then, they had to be taken back to the station, get their gear and go out to were the bad-guys were.

Once they were on scene... yea... still wearing sneakers, shorts and tee-shirts under their protective gear. BUT, those 3 guys stopped the one of the two bad guys, while the other one killed himself with a self inflicted pistol shot to the head.

And how about the Army National Guard? Well, thanks to politics and lot of BS red tape, it took 4 days to get the Guard mobilized during the LA riot. I guess they didn't bother to go that route, knowing it may be awhile.

I don't want military roaming our streets; not even the NG. I don't want military tactics in every day life via the PD's. But lets at least give these guys a fighting chance during a brown fan moment. They should not have to requisition privately owned armored vehicles and weapons in order to stay alive, protect others, and stop the bad guys.

If I can own AR's, green tips, body armor and an armored vehicle, surely its reasonable to let the LEO have something too. There is a very good chance of them running into bad guys with this stuff. They just need to dial back the use until more appropriate times.

Found this video. Thought it was decent.