# Militarization of the police?



## RangerRay

In light of the police shooting and aftermath in Missouri, a lot has been written about the "militarization of the police".

I can't comment on tactics used for crowd control, because I would be going way out of my lane, but I would like to get a discussion going on the wider topic.

I post this article not because I fully agree with it, but it does seem the most balanced of the ones I read, so I thought it would be good fodder for discussion.

Personally, I am not a big fan of the dark uniforms and external body armour, though I do see the logic behind it (dark uniforms: no contrasting torso target for the baddy to aim at; external body armour: easier to doff on and off).

How do people on this forum, particularily those with law enforcement experience, feel about this topic?

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-brew/militarization-protests-north-america-problem-213726079.html



> Militarization and protests in North America – do we have a problem?
> By Matthew Coutts | Daily Brew – Thu, 14 Aug, 2014
> 
> The shooting death of unarmed Michael Brown in a Missouri suburb earlier this week and the rampant police response to demonstrations in its wake have led many to question the scope of police militarization in the United States.
> 
> Brown’s death, a black teenager at the hands of a white police officer, has sparked tense racial outrage in the town of Ferguson and across America, highlighted most viscerally by the nights of unrest that have followed in the community.
> 
> Photographs, live streaming footage and first-hand accounts of Wednesday night clashes between protesters and heavily-armed police forces are jaw-dropping. Armoured tactical vehicles can be seen pawing down the town’s darkened streets. Officers are visible through thick clouds of tear gas, dressed in gear that shouts soldier, not peacekeeper.
> 
> Acoustic Riot Control Devices, or sound cannons, stand at the ready, grenade launchers filled with rubber bullets are seen being fired at will into crowded streets. It’s military action, on North American streets.
> 
> What is happening in Ferguson is a singular instance, comparable only in scope and response to previous conflicts between police and the public on the streets of America, and Canada. But such police responses have indeed happened before.
> 
> In Moncton earlier this summer, the RCMP manhunt for a gunman who allegedly shot and killed three officers involved, according to Vice, armoured vehicles, helicopters and a cadre of heavily-equipped officers in full combat uniforms. Faced with a threat with a proven willingness to shoot, this is perhaps the best argument for access to such equipment.
> 
> Other instances are more troubling. A peaceful anti-fracking First Nations protest in New Brunswick ended in violence earlier this year after a large police presence featuring camouflaged snipers descended on the scene and employed military-like tactics to clear their encampment.
> 
> Four years ago, when the G20 summit brought protesters to the streets of downtown Toronto, an army of officers from various forces responded with strength of numbers against peaceful demonstrators. The result, similar to Ferguson, was allegations of police brutality, an unnecessarily violent response and the wanton use of the weapons available, including rubber bullets and tear gas.
> 
> Darryl Davies, a professor of criminology at Carleton University, says local Canadian police agencies have not gone the way of militarization and are in principle committed to service-based policing.
> 
> But he says Canadian officers and the general public must resist the pressure to perceive the role of police this way, which indeed comes from south of the border, often from fictional television shows.
> 
> “What do we see? We see police officers breaking doors down, we see SWAT teams and tactical units going in,” Davies told Yahoo Canada News. “We got a bit of this during the G8 and G20, so we are seeing some signs of it. What that points to is basically the way which policing is being framed in Canada is absolutely, completely out of sync with the majority of what police do on a day-to-day basis.”
> 
> Davies added: “In the United States right now, police in many cities have gone the direction of this militarization approach.”
> 
> As Newsweek reports, the militarization of American police forces is all but official policy. The 1990 National Defence Authorization Act, updated in 1996, allows the Secretary of Defense to transfer surplus military equipment to federal and state agencies. The policy is known as the “1033 Program” and has seen everything from aircrafts and armoured personnel carriers to guns, boots and canteens transferred to local police forces.
> 
> The 1033 Program accounts for some, though possibly not all, of the military-grade presence on the streets of Ferguson on Wednesday night. It also accounts for scores of other community police forced decked out with gear more often seen in action overseas. It explains how a small Connecticut town received a $733,000 mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle (MRAP) for transfer fee of $2,800 (an apparent necessity, despite the historical absence of landmines in Watertown, Conn.).
> 
> And it also accounts for how Bloomingtown, Georgia, with a population of 2,713, secured its police force four grenade launchers.
> 
> Newsweek’s Taylor Wofford writes:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Given the proliferation of military weapons and military training among America’s police departments, the use of military force and military tactics is not surprising. When your only tool is a hammer, after all, every problem looks like a nail.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Michael Kempa, a criminology professor at the University of Ottawa, says he feels Canadian police forces are trending in the same direction as their American counterparts.
> 
> “There is a long history in Canada of police militarization,” Kempa told CBC’s The Current, pointing to policing around large events, such as Toronto’s G20 or the Vancouver Olympics, which are turned over to the RCMP, a national force that does not have the same direct accountability to the community.
> 
> “If they are doing the planning, and much of it has been militarized with sound cannons and armoured vehicles and the rest of it, we actually have much less control over that as citizens as we would have had in the past.”
> 
> Things may not seem so bleak north of the border, but we have seen our own police forces secure military-grade equipment. The Windsor Star reported earlier this year that the local police force secured a 10-ton armoured fighting vehicle from the Department of National Defence.
> 
> And the Nova Scotia community of New Glasgow received a similar vehicle around the same time, telling local media they intended to use it in situations that require bulletproof cover for officers and civilians.
> 
> Several other towns and cities have also seen their forces equipped with tactical armoured vehicles (TAVs), nicknamed Cougars by the military. Such vehicles have been donated to York Regional Police, Saskatoon police and others through a “Cougars for cops” program over the past several years.
> 
> In 2012, the RCMP received a fleet of TAVs from the Canadian military, complete with gun ports, sentry hatches and capable of high ballistic and explosive protection. A request for information about the use of these vehicles was not immediately returned. At the time, however, Commissioner Bob Paulson said, “It will keep our members safe, and increase their ability to intervene when communities face dangerous circumstances.”
> 
> There have been other instances of local forces securing powerful equipment. In May, the Montreal police service acquired two sound cannons to use in the case of future protests and demonstrations, according to La Presse. Toronto police kept four similar devices that had been obtained ahead of the G20 Summit. In both cases, forces were said to value their communication ability over their ear-piercing crowd dispersal function.
> 
> 
> In his interview with Yahoo Canada News, criminology professor Darryl Davies said he’s not opposed to equipping police with the proper equipment, “But I want them in police uniforms. And I want them using those weapons properly under Canadian law, as dictated by the criminal code.”
> 
> “For me, policing has to be what the community wants the police to do and that is provide a service,” he said. “Don’t call yourself a police service in Canada and run around in army fatigues like they do in the States, kicking doors down in the pursuit of drugs.”
> 
> What’s playing out in Missouri this week is not the same as those instances that have occurred in Canada or anywhere else. But the response, those powerful and overwhelming suppression tactics by a militarized police force, are troubling. Police have a balance to maintain.
> 
> The Canadian Civil Liberties Association wrote recently, in response to the Toronto police shooting of teenager Sammy Yatim, that “police play a critical role protecting public safety in our communities.”
> 
> “It is our view that the motto of ‘to serve and protect’ be a true starting point for police officers to guard against the tensions and ‘us against them mentality’ that can arise between police and the communities they are to serve,” the CCLA wrote.
> 
> One wonders how the police force in Ferguson, Missouri, perceives the public. Are they there to serve and protect. Or is it us against them?
Click to expand...


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## Kilo_302

It's not a good thing. At a time when violent crime rates are dropping I'm not sure how we can justify this type of equipment. Some good points in this article from a veteran's perspective about how ridiculous the situation has become:

http://www.businessinsider.com/police-militarization-ferguson-2014-8


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## Tibbson

I really dont care if the uniform they give me for patrol work is black or some other colour scheme as long as it is standard among the three services.   MP wise at least.   Back in the day when we had one police service and three different uniforms it not only looked bad but it was confusing to the civilians we were required to deal with.

As for external vice internal body armour, and I've worn both over my career, I MUCH prefer the external body armour for comfort and versatility.  Internal body armour goes on and must stay on regardless of duties unless you want to take the time to undress to remove it.  Come in for break, to conduct an interview, for admin duties or for any other reason (and there are many) and the internal body zrmour gets pretty uncomfortable.  Even while wearing it, it can get pretty darn hot.  Much hotter then the external body armour.  External quickly comes off and on regardless of your duties.

I really think the attitude of the officer  (police officer) you are dealing with is much more important then the uniform and/or body armour he or she is wearing.  

When it comes to the current situation in the US I think the whole militarization issue is just a destraction from the real issues of race and special interest groups.   My 2 cants at least.


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## Scoobie Newbie

I think it's a tool in a tool box.  I also think they're using the wrong tools right now.  If you take down a meth lab I can see the need for full battle gear.  Peaceful protest not so much.


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## George Wallace

Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> I think it's a tool in a tool box.  I also think they're using the wrong tools right now.  If you take down a meth lab I can see the need for full battle gear.  Peaceful protest not so much.



With "Black Block", peaceful protests don't stay peaceful for long.


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## Scoobie Newbie

Agreed, that said most instances shields and batons suffice.  Also again you have the tool in the tool box.  If required roll it out.


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## Robert0288

I am a bit out of my lanes when it comes to riot control.  But I'd personally rather see an LRAD in use to clear the streets than other traditional methods such as shield wall with batons or a cavalry charge which puts everyone at risk.  One thing that hasn't gotten any focus on, is that last night (morning of the 17th) police where shot at.  A police car did get shot at.  And a man at a restaurant was shot.  With a gunman hiding in a large crowd that is already disobeying the curfew, I understand why the tear gas and armored vehicles where used.


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## Scoobie Newbie

I've been following twitter and haven't seen any of that.

They are using the LRAD.  Ferguson is writing the book on how to do everything wrong.


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## Nemo888

Militarization of police has happened slowly. In some cities now it is Obey or Die. This naturally alienates the public. Who then no longer call or cooperate with the police in a mutually reinforcing cycle. In some cities in NY state police feel like an occupying force. Police are terrified of the public and act accordingly. The public hatred is constantly given fuel. I hope this does not come north of the border.

The other is use of massive databases. This started in the 80's. Where people near crimes would be asked to identify themselves and the computer would cough up a number/percentage chance they were the perpetrator. This has become more sophisticated, but is the opposite of real police work. Investigating crimes, finding clues, etc. Now all you need to do is be smart enough to game that system and you stay invisible. Rounding up the usual suspects was never good policing. Massaging stats is not the same as preventing crime.


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## Scoobie Newbie

One of the cops live on air threatened to shoot a reporter in the face if he didn't turn his camera off.


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## Nemo888

All this riot gear, assault weapons and armoured vehicles is a waste of tax money. We all like playing with toys. But at then end of the day in my city close to 90% of duties are traffic. There are only 27 crimes per officer per year in Ottawa, roughly 2 crimes per officer a month. With a 280 million dollar budget that is 7000$ per crime.  In the last decade crime has dropped 25% and costs have increased 250%. Ottawa could lose some fat off the police budget. Better be polite on that next traffic stop or citizens will be asking for those budget cuts


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## Old Sweat

Be careful in picking what you wish for. The alternate to the police having the kit and training to handle large public disturbances is to call out the troops. In the sixties and part of the seventies we used to practice crowd and riot control and part of the force structure planning was the ability to cope with major and minor riots in separate parts of the country at the same time. Off hand I can recall a cople of occasions when the Vandoos were called out under Part 11 of the NDA in response to violent civil disturbances in the Montreal area in the late sixties. As well the example of events like the Detroit riots of the mid-sixties did not go unnoticed in Canada. I for one would not wish to see today's soldiers deployed in the streets to battle Canadian citizens. (Note - historically troops were deployed against civilian unrest dating back to Confederation and beyond and it is only in the past few decades that the police had the numbers, equipment and training to replace the army in the streets.)

At the same time the growth in the availability of semiautomatic and automatic weapons and their use by various criminal elements forced the police to form SWAT teams instead of having normal officers confront criminals with vastly superior weapons. This eventually grew into perhaps an overuse of the capability, but on the other hand there is the example of incidents like the recent Moncton murder of three RCMP members to consider whenever one ponders the role and equipment of police.


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## Bruce Monkhouse

Old Sweat said:
			
		

> In the sixties and part of the seventies we used to practice crowd and riot control



We did it for several years after I arrived in 2RCHA in 1978 also.

Nemo,.......if only you had a clue.........


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## Scoobie Newbie

I don't dispute the requirement to have assault rifles etc however they need to be used in the right situation, or on stand by, not the standard go to. The problem in Ferguson seems to be that they have no training in peaceful demonstrations, just violent ones.


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## Bruce Monkhouse

"peaceful"?    That was the massive march in Hong Kong yesterday, very peaceful.

Tell ya' what, let me try and hit you in the head with rocks and crap and then you can tell me I'm being 'peaceful'.  Obviously the CF should go back to "aid to the civil power' training to help people find their clues......


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## Scoobie Newbie

Curfew was unwarrented.  Police started pushing people out WELL prior to the curfew.  If you think for one second the police actions in Ferguson are justified you may want to evaluate things.  Population wants answers not tear gas.  Give them answers and they would have left.

It's CLEAR that the police there have no idea how to deal with the situation.  They are writing the handbook on what not to do.

Why don't you ask why they were throwing stones?  Threatening people (media in this case) with deadly force because they were filiming is justified to I suppose.


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## RCDtpr

Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> I'm talking Ferguson.  Curfew was unwarrented.  Police started pushing people out WELL prior to the curfew.  If you think for one second the police actions in Ferguson are justified you may want to evaluate things.  Population wants answers not tear gas.  Give them answers and they would have left.
> 
> It's CLEAR that the police there have no idea how to deal with the situation.  They are writing the handbook on what not to do.



If all they want is answers they would wait until answers can be given.  They were rioting within 24 hours of the shooting....nothing can be determined by then.

The rioters are killing each other....literally.  Go live there, have your store or home looted and wrecked and say the police action isn't justified.  Since you're so sure they are handling it wrong....since you must have all the answers, what would you do?  The fact that the national guard has been called in just shows the situation is out of control.


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## Robert0288

Well out comes the National Guard.



> *Jay Nixon: National Guard to Ferguson*
> http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/ferguson-national-guard-jay-nixon-110097.html
> 
> Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon is deploying the state National Guard to Ferguson to address the “intensifying violent attacks” in the suburb of St. Louis, he announced early Monday.
> 
> The Democratic governor’s announcement came after arguably the most violent night in the Missouri city since unarmed African-American 18-year-old Michael Brown was fatally shot by a white police officer more than a week ago.
> 
> “Tonight, a day of hope, prayers, and peaceful protests was marred by the violent criminal acts of an organized and growing number of individuals, many from outside the community and state, whose actions are putting the residents and businesses of Ferguson at risk,” Nixon said in a statement.
> 
> “Given these deliberate, coordinated and intensifying violent attacks on lives and property in Ferguson,” he continued, “I am directing the highly capable men and women of the Missouri National Guard to assist [Missouri State Highway Patrol] Col. Ron Replogle and the Unified Command in restoring peace and order to this community.”
> 
> Sunday night marked the second evening of a state-imposed midnight-5 a.m. curfew Nixon put in place, a decision he said was necessary to prevent looters from doing more damage but has been criticized by many in the Ferguson community and elsewhere.
> 
> Police officials have acknowledged that they fired several smoke canisters and at least one tear gas canister Sunday, and many of the hundreds of officers in Ferguson Sunday evening appeared in riot gear. *Protesters said the police acted without being provoked*, while the *police reported that they were responding to gunfire and Molotov cocktails thrown by members of the crowd*. Missouri State Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson said *one protester shot another and that the victim was listed in critical condition early Monday morning*. He also said he was forced to “elevate the level” of police response after some crowd members threw bottles at officers.
> 
> A preliminary autopsy performed Sunday showed that Brown was shot at least six times and twice in the head, according to a report by The New York Times. He was shot four times in the right arm and the bullets didn’t appear to be fired from close range, the report said. Attorney General Eric Holder announced on Sunday that he directed the Justice Department to arrange for another autopsy to be performed by a federal medical examiner. Holder said the autopsy was ordered “due to the extraordinary circumstances involved in this case and at the request of the Brown family,” and as part of the greater federal investigation into Brown’s death.
> 
> On Thursday, Nixon directed Johnson to take control of security and law enforcement in Ferguson, and that evening saw no arrests and a much smaller, demilitarized police presence.
> 
> But on Friday, the Ferguson Police Department identified Brown’s shooter as six-year department veteran Darren Wilson, an announcement that angered some protesters by tying Brown to a convenience store robbery. Police later said Wilson was unaware that Brown was a suspect in the robbery. After a violent evening Friday, Nixon announced the curfew effective Saturday, a decision decried by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the ACLU and the Lawyers’ Committee.


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## George Wallace

Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> I'm talking Ferguson.




In the meantime, thousands of outsiders/non-residents are flocking to Ferguson to protest.  

This is a mess that is spiraling out of control.  If you think a curfew was unwarranted, are you advocating anarchy reign unchecked instead?


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## Scoobie Newbie

What I'm saying is that this could have been avoided (Sat I think) when the other police force came in to take over.  It may be too late now I grant you.  I fear it's going to get worse before it gets better.


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## RCDtpr

Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> What I'm saying is that this could have been avoided (Sat I think) when the other police force came in to take over.  It may be too late now I grant you.  I fear it's going to get worse before it gets better.



I reiterate....what would YOU have done to prevent this apparently preventable riot?

I'm not trying to be confrontational.....but armchair quarterbacking something you have no clue about.....is stupid.


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## Scoobie Newbie

I would have let the new police force move in and run the show without a curfew.  If mass rioting and looting fired up I would have then amped up the response.  Things got worse when a curfew was put in place.  It's all about escalation of force.  I'm not saying not to have riot police, but you have them out of sight and if needed call them in.


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## Nemo888

Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> We did it for several years after I arrived in 2RCHA in 1978 also.
> 
> Nemo,.......if only you had a clue.........


Perhaps asking the military or police what powers they want could end up bankrupting other equally important departments. Do we need as much militarization as we have now? When was the last riot? Fixing social problems by turning police into shock troops gives you Ferguson.

Don't you have some cows to milk? Debate is not name calling.


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## RCDtpr

Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> I would have let the new police force move in and run the show without a curfew.  If mass rioting and looting fired up I would have then amped up the response.  Things got worse when a curfew was put in place.  It's all about escalation of force.  I'm not saying not to have riot police, but you have them out of sight and if needed call them in.



There wasn't a curfew initially...it was brought into place on Saturday in response to the rioting....

There were also no riot police the first night and only a handful on the second night.  As we have all seen, that wasn't exactly effective.

Like I said man...armchair quarterbacking this is beyond dumb....if there was a solution it would have been found already.

The rioting was never about the kid being shot.  It was local street gangs doing what they do best under the guise of "protest."  The rest of the town just adopted mob mentality and it went from there.  Look at Vancouver and Toronto, all it takes is a very small group of people to cause everyone to delve into chaos.....and nothing short of violence will stop it when it gets going.


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## Robert0288

RCDcpl said:
			
		

> The rioting was never about the kid being shot.  It was local street gangs doing what they do best under the guise of "protest."





			
				George Wallace said:
			
		

> In the meantime, thousands of outsiders/non-residents are flocking to Ferguson to protest.



This place has become a beacon for anyone who wants to cause trouble, loot, or riot.  And with more professional protesters and wanna be looters on their way this will continue to spiral.


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## Kilo_302

Robert0288 said:
			
		

> This place has become a beacon for anyone who wants to cause trouble, loot, or riot.  And with more professional protesters and wanna be looters on their way this will continue to spiral.





			
				RCDcpl said:
			
		

> There wasn't a curfew initially...it was brought into place on Saturday in response to the rioting....
> 
> There were also no riot police the first night and only a handful on the second night.  As we have all seen, that wasn't exactly effective.
> 
> Like I said man...armchair quarterbacking this is beyond dumb....if there was a solution it would have been found already.
> 
> The rioting was never about the kid being shot.  It was local street gangs doing what they do best under the guise of "protest."  The rest of the town just adopted mob mentality and it went from there.  Look at Vancouver and Toronto, all it takes is a very small group of people to cause everyone to delve into chaos.....and nothing short of violence will stop it when it gets going.




Armchair quarterbacking is dumb, and yet you seem to have this wrapped up into a neat little narrative. "Local street gangs"? I've seen footage from just after the shooting, and outrage amongst average people was already palpable. His body was left uncovered in the street for hours. Witnesses have said he had his hands up when he was shot, and he was definitely unarmed. Against a back drop of what seem to be regular incidents of police shooting unarmed African-Americans, it's only understandable that frustration spilled over into the streets. 

This the kind policing the residents of Ferguson are deaing with:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/15/the-day-ferguson-cops-were-caught-in-a-bloody-lie.html#

The militarization of police is an issue in the US and Canada, but more often than not, the target of this type of overbearing use of authority in the US are minority communities. Just compare the response to these protests to the response to Clive Bundy and his militia friends. Those guys were definitely well armed, and openly threatened to use force against law enforcement who were attempting to remove cattle from public land. There are pics all over the place of these militia guys actually staring down their sights at federal agents. Now imagine what would have happened if the citizens of Ferguson had done the same and shown up to their protests carrying AR-15s. It's a clear double standard, and you're kidding yourself if you think it isn't noticed. Cops in the US (as recently revealed) have far more to fear from racist white conservatives packing serious weaponry than black gang members and Islamic extremists (both of which are used to justify the fact that cities of 21,000 "need" MRAPs).


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## JesseWZ

Nemo888 said:
			
		

> All this riot gear, assault weapons and armoured vehicles is a waste of tax money. We all like playing with toys. But at then end of the day in my city close to 90% of duties are traffic. There are only 27 crimes per officer per year in Ottawa, roughly 2 crimes per officer a month. With a 280 million dollar budget that is 7000$ per crime.  In the last decade crime has dropped 25% and costs have increased 250%. Ottawa could lose some fat off the police budget. Better be polite on that next traffic stop or citizens will be asking for those budget cuts




You must make a lot of friends...

Are you an Ottawa area copper? Where are you getting those statistics? Are those calls for service or actual criminal acts where charges were laid at the end of the investigation? Many calls for service result in either an unfounded complaint following an investigation or are non crime related (Dispute Mediation, Apprehending Mental Health, Minor Liquor/Noise violations, etc). All of the above cost time and tax-payer money. Crimes per month is a lousy way to rate the busyness of a particular service. There is much more to modern policing then just arresting criminals and laying charges. Basing a stat of $7000 per crime is *ludicrous nonsense*. There is a much wider spectrum of what police are expected to do then simply responding to crime. What about crime prevention? Community Relations? Recertification Training for members? Calls for service that didn't involve a crime or were blown out of proportion by a panicked resident...


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## George Wallace

Nemo888 said:
			
		

> Perhaps asking the military or police what powers they want could end up bankrupting other equally important departments. Do we need as much militarization as we have now? When was the last riot? Fixing social problems by turning police into shock troops gives you Ferguson.
> 
> Don't you have some cows to milk? Debate is not name calling.



Please.  You really have no clues.


The comment on milking cows in this debate is a further indicator that you are sadly lacking in knowledge on these matters.  Name calling innuendo on your part is also not a part of this debate.  

The Police force, like the Fire Department, and all Emergency Services must be prepared for the worse case scenarios.  What you are advocating in hamstringing the Police, and in essence all Emergency Services, amounts to advocating anarchy.  If you want Chaos to reign supreme, then your suggestions are valid.  If you don't, then we must prepare for worse case scenarios.  

Most here will agree, that the case of Ferguson has spiraled down the toilet and has been grossly mismanaged.  The steps taken by the Governor of the State to impose a curfew was an attempt to quiet the situation that was inflamed by the local police force.  Anarchy made that decision a good reason to up the Police presence and now call in his National Guard.  All of this hinders the legal investigation underway and keeps the truth from all.  Once the criminal and professional protester elements are removed from the equation and peace is returned to more level headed citizens, the matter may find a reasonable conclusion.  Until such time, we will continue to see more of the same on both sides.
  
a


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## Robert0288

> Witnesses have said he had his hands up when he was shot, and he was definitely unarmed


Even under most Canadian Police forces use of force policies, there are circumstances where shooting an unarmed individual is justifiable.  And not all the information is out.  As you said, this is what witnesses have claimed to see.  The same witnesses who didn't come forward for a couple of days and where coached on what to say.  If you don't believe me, take a look at the witness statements made on CNN live prior to going to the police, spot some of the legal articulation in there.  It shouldn't be difficult.



> Just compare the response to these protests to the response to Clive Bundy and his militia friends.


It's like comparing apples to rocks.  I have no experience with dealing with this, but from my limited perspective; One is an armed militia with Waco-esque connotations acting in a passive resistant manner (despite the rifles and the extreme risk), in a isolated area with only people who want to be there.  Time and Distance are your friend for de-escalation.  

In an urban rioting environment (which I am outside my lanes for)  You have to also balance welfare of the people who live on that street, the damage to local business and a riot is an active environment.  You can't create as much time and distance because it will only give looters more stores to target.

In addition, the Ottawa Police Service has hardly any cost recovery for events outside the normal scope of community policing.  For example all the protests on parliament hill, Foreign Dignitaries etc...

If a police force is offered a $750,000 MRAP for $1000, I think they would be silly not to acquire it.  If only for the fact they could probably sell the parts and make a profit off of them.


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## George Wallace

Kilo_302 said:
			
		

> The militarization of police is an issue in the US and Canada, but more often than not, the target of this type of overbearing use of authority in the US are minority communities.



Sad fact is, it is usually a crime and poverty ridden minority community/slum that will necessitate police responses a larger percentage of the time than the Upper and Middle Class communities.  Claims of Racism are likely less accurate than the criminal or income status* of the persons being stopped by authorities.   (* Lower income status would not mean targeting by the police, but rather the fact that of 'derelict' or 'homeless' persons requiring assistance or attention. )


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## RCDtpr

Kilo_302 said:
			
		

> Armchair quarterbacking is dumb, and yet you seem to have this wrapped up into a neat little narrative. "Local street gangs"? I've seen footage from just after the shooting, and outrage amongst average people was already palpable. His body was left uncovered in the street for hours. Witnesses have said he had his hands up when he was shot, and he was definitely unarmed. Against a back drop of what seem to be regular incidents of police shooting unarmed African-Americans, it's only understandable that frustration spilled over into the streets.
> 
> This the kind policing the residents of Ferguson are deaing with:
> 
> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/15/the-day-ferguson-cops-were-caught-in-a-bloody-lie.html#
> 
> The militarization of police is an issue in the US and Canada, but more often than not, the target of this type of overbearing use of authority in the US are minority communities. Just compare the response to these protests to the response to Clive Bundy and his militia friends. Those guys were definitely well armed, and openly threatened to use force against law enforcement who were attempting to remove cattle from public land. There are pics all over the place of these militia guys actually staring down their sights at federal agents. Now imagine what would have happened if the citizens of Ferguson had done the same and shown up to their protests carrying AR-15s. It's a clear double standard, and you're kidding yourself if you think it isn't noticed. Cops in the US (as recently revealed) have far more to fear from racist white conservatives packing serious weaponry than black gang members and Islamic extremists (both of which are used to justify the fact that cities of 21,000 "need" MRAPs).



Witnesses stated he had his hands up?  Open and shut case then....witnesses have never been known to lie ever.  People hate the police, more so in economically challenged neighbourhoods as that's typically where the crime is and therefore where the police are.

Members of the African American community are very quick to throw their ethnicity in the face of police when it's convenient for them.  I can't tell you the amount of times I've had the line "you're just doing this because I'm black" with no basis to their argument whatsoever.  Last week alone I had one guy claim I only arrested him because he's black when I found him in the middle of assaulting someone.  That same shift I was accused at 330 in the morning of only pulling another member of the community over because he's black.  He knew that I couldn't see into the car to see if he was black or whate or purple, he just made the commotion in hopes I'd back down.  His passengers then jumped on the bandwagon and I had 5 people aggressively accusing me of being racist.

Cops have shot unarmed white people too....people were mad....they didn't tear up their communities though.

As for a town of 21000 people needing an MRAP...well I've never been to Ferguson so I can't say one way or the other.  Unless you've spent time there...neither can you.


----------



## sandyson

An observation: seems to me that police forces are a recent phenomena.  The army was the only 'police' a couple of centuries ago.  The militarization of policing is being noticed at the same time as the military are being 'policified'. i.e. adopting policing techniques in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Are the two forces coming together?  Treasury might ask why do we need both the RCMP and the CF?  Why not combine them and save money?  >


----------



## Fishbone Jones

Bit of a side track here.

More has come out on the victim.

He was involved in a convenience store robbery on the same day. http://www.torontosun.com/videos/3733006765001

He also doesn't look like the same person in the picture that is being circulated by the family and press.

He is quite the imposing looking big boy, in reality.

Just observations. Not coming down on either side.

Even though it had nothing to do with the actual stop, it sure changed the picture I had in my mind of the cherub that was a victim of 'wanton police brutality'. Things appear a little more plausible in relation to the shooting now.

Let's just hope the cop gets a fair hearing and trial, and doesn't become an expedient way for someone like Sharpton to burn on the extremist pyre of race relations, if he is found not guilty.

_edit-spelling_


----------



## jpjohnsn

I going to stay miles away from the situation in Ferguson but I did want to comment on the overall appearance of militarization among the police.   After my dad got out of the army he became a cop for a few years.  I respect the hell out of the men and women who do that job but the law enforcement in the city I live in has shifted further and further into a Hollywood version of law enforcement.  

We have our own tactical unit that seems to treat every problem as a proverbial nail in need of hammering.  As one of the cities with one of the lowest crime rates in the country, they get called out WAY more than I have ever heard of anyplace else.   And I got ringside seats to two of their operations - one of which was little more than I want to experience again.

So,  in my condo building there was a guy renting a unit who the rest of us were pretty sure was dealing weed.   Aside from have way too much foot traffic going in and out of his place, the place started reeking of the stuff.   The cops knew about it but nothing really happened until one evening, I'm sitting down to supper  when we hear all kinds of glass breaking, the door being knocked down and all kinds of indistinct yelling.  We're freaked because we think it's some gang-thing when we discover it was the tactical unit.  Everyone in that apartment was arrested - all released except one visitor who was in possession of stolen property.  No drug changes laid or weapons found and the tenant, a paralegic, returned home.  [As an aside, did you know having a tactical unit destroy a rental unit isn't grounds for eviction according to the Landlord/Tenant rights board?]

Okay, with drugs involved, you can't be too careful but we were pretty sure the place had been under surveillance for a while so I'm not entirely sure what they thought they'd find.  But, I'm not going to second guess them.

Smash-cut to 8 months later.  Sitting on my balcony which is at the rear of the building.  I hear a strange noise, get up and look over the side to see half-a-dozen tactical guys stacked up working their way down the side of the building towards that rental unit again.  One of the guys looks up and points his C8 at me for what seemed like forever before waving me back.  I went in and got my wife and kid as far away in the unit as we could before the glass breaking, door busting and yelling.  This time, however, they decided to use enough distraction devices to sound like automatic gunfire that created enough smoke to fill the building and set off the fire alarms - and did I mention the dogs?  We're stuck between wondering if the building is on fire or if we're going to be hit by a stray round or chewed up by dogs.  The building eventually empties out until the fire dept gets there and clears us to go back in.  And out come the tactical guys wheeling the same guy in the wheelchair again.  No weapons were reported to have been found but drugs were.  The guy was definitely going to jail.

By the way, did you know that having a tactical team bust up a rental unit TWICE isn't grounds for eviction?  The landlord eventually got the guy out and everything is tranquil once again.  For the record, it really is a nice neighbourhood - this was just an anomoly.  The current tenants of that unit are great people.

My point is that the other people in the building were far more frightened by the cops then we ever were of the bad guy or the company he kept.  And the tactical response escalated a LOT in less than a year.    Again, there might have been some intelligence that suggested going in harder the second time but I can't see what might have led them to that conclusion considering what they actually found.  I'm not a JBT-fearing, tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist but what I've seen with my own eyes does cause me some concern as to where this is headed.


----------



## George Wallace

Sorry to hear that you have had the rare occasion to have witnessed a Tactical Unit take down an individual, and even rarer occasion to witness it a second time.  Most of us have never witnessed such an event.  The only times I have, have been in Training that I was a participant; not the same thing at all.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

More frightened because the cops came in daylight with guns in plain sight.........whereas your 'friend' may not have thought twice about shooting you in cold blood to protect the commerce of those 'coming and going'.


----------



## jpjohnsn

Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> More frightened because the cops came in daylight with guns in plain sight.........whereas your 'friend' may not have thought twice about shooting you in cold blood to protect the commerce of those 'coming and going'.


I'm just trying to do an apples to apples comparison here.  Same guy, same apartment, similar reason for executing the warrant but two different levels of response separated by 8 months.  Did they go in harder the second time because they had some reason to suspect he might now be armed?  Were they worried that, after the last time, he was more likely to be armed this time?   Was it a case of using more because they had more - and, by this last one, was it something new to the inventory that they would have used the first time OR just shiny new toys to play with?

Like I said, I respect the police and give them the benefit of the doubt whenever possible but, apples to something as close to apples as possible,  it still leaves me wondering.


----------



## RCDtpr

Sending out tac teams costs money.  They employed the team because there was a need to.

Too many people think, especially when it comes to police, that if it's not in plain sight....it's not there.  None of us know why the tac team deployed to that place....and none of us ever will.  So why sit there and try and compare it to anything?

I'll never understand the second guessing of police.  Would you question the fire dept if they sent a couple trucks to a little fire?  How about questioning a coy commander if he sent a full platoon when it appears at face value a section could handle the task?

Too many people watch cops, law and order etc, and think they are policing experts these days.


----------



## J.J

jpjohnsn said:
			
		

> I'm just trying to do an apples to apples comparison here.  Same guy, same apartment, similar reason for executing the warrant but two different levels of response separated by 8 months.  Did they go in harder the second time because they had some reason to suspect he might now be armed?  Were they worried that, after the last time, he was more likely to be armed this time?   Was it a case of using more because they had more - and, by this last one, was it something new to the inventory that they would have used the first time OR just shiny new toys to play with?
> 
> Like I said, I respect the police and give them the benefit of the doubt whenever possible but, apples to something as close to apples as possible,  it still leaves me wondering.



Or here is a crazy idea, maybe they had more information?! As crazy as that sounds, the police do not randomly pick a house to do forced entries. Your local drug unit would have done several hours/days of surveillance, spoken to informants and relied on information they already knew (street checks, past arrests etc) and then applied for a search warrant, with an appendix to request forced entry. It’s not an easy task and not something the courts will allow if there isn't enough grounds to BELIEVE a criminal offence is/has occurred and generally forced entries are only permitted for high risk individuals or where weapons are BELIEVED to be present.


----------



## JesseWZ

WR said:
			
		

> Or here is a crazy idea, maybe they had more information?! As crazy as that sounds, the police do not randomly pick a house to do forced entries. Your local drug unit would have done several hours/days of surveillance, spoken to informants and relied on information they already knew (street checks, past arrests etc) and then applied for a search warrant, with an appendix to request forced entry. It’s not an easy task and not something the courts will allow if there isn't enough grounds to BELIEVE a criminal offence is/has occurred and generally forced entries are only permitted for high risk individuals or where weapons are BELIEVED to be present.



Truth! 

Forced (or "no knock") entries must be authorized by a warrant. If it's good enough for a learned Judge, it's good enough for me, and *should be* good enough for the arm-chair quarterbacks out there. Drug houses in particular can be quite dangerous and the owner/occupants often have a "prepared position."  Not just for defense against cops, but against other nefarious persons (Grow Rips being the token example).


----------



## Fishbone Jones

Nemo888 said:
			
		

> All this riot gear, assault weapons and armoured vehicles is a waste of tax money. We all like playing with toys. But at then end of the day in my city close to 90% of duties are traffic. There are only 27 crimes per officer per year in Ottawa, roughly 2 crimes per officer a month. With a 280 million dollar budget that is 7000$ per crime.  In the last decade crime has dropped 25% and costs have increased 250%. Ottawa could lose some fat off the police budget. Better be polite on that next traffic stop or citizens will be asking for those budget cuts



Where did these stats come from?


----------



## Nemo888

recceguy said:
			
		

> Where did these stats come from?


The OMBI(Ontario Municipal Benchmarking Initiative) 2010 annual report. I can't find it online. It's turning into an issue in Ottawa because most municipalities are around $2000 to $4000 per crime and Ottawa was at $7000 in 2010 and climbing steadily. Ottawa is not your average city and is probably overspending on police. If Ottawa police got some bad publicity the axe would come down pretty quick. Councillors on both sides are talking about it quietly.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

But not so quietly that you can hear their voices I guess........


----------



## Nemo888

A centre right politician told me about the report and it is something I'll be discussing with my (lefty)ward councilor this Sunday. After a point more police don't prevent crime. The money may have more effect reducing crime elsewhere in the city.


----------



## Fishbone Jones

Nemo888 said:
			
		

> The OMBI(Ontario Municipal Benchmarking Initiative) 2010 annual report. I can't find it online. It's turning into an issue in Ottawa because most municipalities are around $2000 to $4000 per crime and Ottawa was at $7000 in 2010 and climbing steadily. Ottawa is not your average city and is probably overspending on police. If Ottawa police got some bad publicity the axe would come down pretty quick. Councillors on both sides are talking about it quietly.



Thanks for the speculation, which you really need to stop doing without qualifiers, before it gets you in trouble here.

Of course, taking their total budget and dividing it by the amount of crimes is simplistic at best and criminal* to be accepting it all.

None of that takes into account, training, equipment, overtime at the city's request, wages, administration and the fact that Ottawa is Canada's national capital. Keeping the dregs of society from our Capital city comes at a cost.


(* see what I did there  )


----------



## Nemo888

That may be so but police don't get a blank cheque. If the councilors think they need to cut back that is exactly what will happen. If their reputation is tarnished the cuts will come. It is a good way to keep the relationship between the public and police cooperative. I don't think police state tactics will work up here. Obey or die would probably be a budget killer in most of Canada. Treat your clients well.

The army was not safe from crippling cuts and everyone loves them.


----------



## Fishbone Jones

Nemo888 said:
			
		

> That may be so but police don't get a blank cheque. If the councilors think they need to cut back that is exactly what will happen. If their reputation is tarnished the cuts will come. It is a good way to keep the relationship between the public and police cooperative. I don't think police state tactics will work up here. Obey or die would probably be a budget killer in most of Canada. Treat your clients well.
> 
> The army was not safe from crippling cuts and everyone loves them.



'What ifs' are not part of a real discussion. Unless the discussion is about options. That is not what you're trying to sway the discussion with. Stay on track or don't post your pseudo stats.

Others may be inside of your head, but you are not in theirs. Quite speaking like you know what they would do.


----------



## RCDtpr

Nemo888 said:
			
		

> That may be so but police don't get a blank cheque. If the councilors think they need to cut back that is exactly what will happen. If their reputation is tarnished the cuts will come. It is a good way to keep the relationship between the public and police cooperative. I don't think police state tactics will work up here. Obey or die would probably be a budget killer in most of Canada. Treat your clients well.
> 
> The army was not safe from crippling cuts and everyone loves them.



You're so far out to lunch it's laughable.  Where to begin debunking your nonsense...

First off, as was stated before, calls for service vs criminal charges laid are two very different things.  I can tell you with 100% certainty that what a city police officer does is not "90 percent" traffic.  In fact, in large urban centres, most patrol guys are lucky to have time to do a single traffic stop in a shift.  It's call to call to call.

Second, council can talk all they want about cutting costs, but it's not going to happen.  Like 90% of a city's policing budget is spent on salary.  The union will not allow the salary to drop, and the Police service act in Ontario means you can't just lay off cops without going through the courts (which would cost more than it would save).

So your little mole in city council can talk all he wants, but it's nothing more than that...talk.

As for your little comment about police state tactics...straight up shove it up your ass man.  You little hipsters these days like to go on about how Canada and the US are police states.....which is a slap in the face to people in this world who really do live in such circumstances.  Until you've been driving down the road, get stopped at a police checkpoint, and get told to pay or die (which you will) then you can bitch and moan about police states.  I can't believe you believe this nonsense you're posting.


----------



## Franko

Nemo888 said:
			
		

> The OMBI(Ontario Municipal Benchmarking Initiative) 2010 annual report. I can't find it online. It's turning into an issue in Ottawa because most municipalities are around $2000 to $4000 per crime and Ottawa was at $7000 in 2010 and climbing steadily. Ottawa is not your average city and is probably overspending on police. If Ottawa police got some bad publicity the axe would come down pretty quick. Councillors on both sides are talking about it quietly.



I have no dog in this and I've never squared off with you before so I'm going to tell you once.

Any more jibber jabber without being able to back it up with fact and you're gone. 

You constantly do the ol' make shit up, back down when you can't produce facts then redirect the conversation. 

The membership has had it.


*The Army.ca Staff*


----------



## Nemo888

I guess the Ottawa Chief is also wrong when he suggests more support for the mentally ill? Police make terrible social workers. Money better spent elsewhere. Enjoy your echo chamber.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-police-chief-says-force-doing-too-much-1.1399495


----------



## George Wallace

Nemo888 said:
			
		

> I guess the Ottawa Chief is also wrong when he suggests more support for the mentally ill? Police make terrible social workers. Money better spent elsewhere. Enjoy your echo chamber.
> 
> http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-police-chief-says-force-doing-too-much-1.1399495



What exactly does this have to do with the discusion on the "militarizaton of the police"?


----------



## Kilo_302

RCDcpl said:
			
		

> Witnesses stated he had his hands up?  Open and shut case then....witnesses have never been known to lie ever.  People hate the police, more so in economically challenged neighbourhoods as that's typically where the crime is and therefore where the police are.
> 
> Members of the African American community are very quick to throw their ethnicity in the face of police when it's convenient for them.  I can't tell you the amount of times I've had the line "you're just doing this because I'm black" with no basis to their argument whatsoever.  Last week alone I had one guy claim I only arrested him because he's black when I found him in the middle of assaulting someone.  That same shift I was accused at 330 in the morning of only pulling another member of the community over because he's black.  He knew that I couldn't see into the car to see if he was black or whate or purple, he just made the commotion in hopes I'd back down.  His passengers then jumped on the bandwagon and I had 5 people aggressively accusing me of being racist.
> 
> Cops have shot unarmed white people too....people were mad....they didn't tear up their communities though.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> As for a town of 21000 people needing an MRAP...well I've never been to Ferguson so I can't say one way or the other.  Unless you've spent time there...neither can you.



The point is, no one in this community trusts the police. So whether the witnesses are right or not, that's what everyone is hearing. I can't speak to your personal experiences in law enforcement, but the situation in the states is far different. Just look at the stats:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/police-shootings-michael-brown-ferguson-black-men

How could it NOT be a different situation when a black man is shot? They seem to get shot with alarming frequency in the US. The whole system is racist.

And no, it doesn't take a visit to Ferguson to know that an MRAP is over the top. New Glasgow in NS has an armoured vehicle for #$@#'s sake. This is about emphasizing one style of policing, one tool in the box.


----------



## Kilo_302

George Wallace said:
			
		

> What exactly does this have to do with the discusion on the "militarizaton of the police"?



If I can jump in here, it's about spending money on weapons and vehicles versus preventative measures. Take Toronto for example, our police budget is being increased, but crime rates are at historic lows. We cut social services ( housing, mental health services)  all the time. These are proven measures that reduce crime in the longer run. But cutting the police budget? No way.


----------



## George Wallace

Kilo_302 said:
			
		

> And no, it doesn't take a visit to Ferguson to know that an MRAP is over the top. New Glasgow in NS has an armoured vehicle for #$@#'s sake. This is about emphasizing one style of policing, one tool in the box.



Granted it is almost a Century too late, but the New Glasgow Miners Strike was one of the largest and most violent protests in Canadian history.  The Army was called out to patrol New Glasgow and Cape Breton.  Perhaps this is just 90 years of paperwork finally catching up with them.   >


----------



## Kilo_302

George Wallace said:
			
		

> Granted it is almost a Century too late, but the New Glasgow Miners Strike was one of the largest and most violent protests in Canadian history.  The Army was called out to patrol New Glasgow and Cape Breton.  Perhaps this is just 90 years of paperwork finally catching up with them.   >



haha duly noted. While trying to NOT get into the politics of capital and labour though, these are the concerns many people have with this type of equipment. Do we want to emulate Russia and it's famous "anti-democracy" trucks? If the police forces of North America are equipping themselves to deal with growing social unrest in the future, we should ask the question: who are they serving and protecting? I've never worked in a mine in Nova Scotia around the turn of the century, but I would bet the working conditions were horrific, and probably merited striking.  

If we look at the situation in Ferguson, a city with a history of racist policing, then it becomes clear the population has been subject to different forms of violence, some obvious, some not. If a community experiences violence at the hands of the "system" it only follows that they will themselves act out violently at some point. I'm not justifying anything here, but I AM trying to understand.


----------



## Franko

Nemo888 said:
			
		

> I guess the Ottawa Chief is also wrong when he suggests more support for the mentally ill? Police make terrible social workers. Money better spent elsewhere. Enjoy your echo chamber.
> 
> http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-police-chief-says-force-doing-too-much-1.1399495



Yer done. Trolling. BANNED

*The Army.ca Staff*


----------



## cupper

Part of the problem with the militarization of Law Enforcement is that it becomes easier to escalate the response without taking into consideration the consequences of increased response. We've seen this several times during the past week.

The original intent of the congressional act which provided funding and equipment to law enforcement for military equipment and training was to address the disparity in weaponry between police and members of the illegal drug trade. 

Then after 9/11 bags of free money were thrown to any and all law enforcement organizations, ostensibly to purchase communications equipment which was compatible across various jurisdictional units so one agency could communicate with another (also allow state and municipal level agencies to set up intel centers that could access federal systems, and feds to access lower levels).

However, as with all well intentioned plans, mission creep set in, and the equipment provided under various programs started to be used more and more in regular policing situations.

I have to agree with the comments that the Ferguson situation is example after example of how not to do this.

And understand that police are not infallible. There have been very notable situations where mistakes were made. And unfortunately they were compounded by having investigations carried out by their own forces, which at best leads to a perception of conflict of interest, and at worst covering up to protect ones own.

*Militarized police overreach: “Oh, God, I thought they were going to shoot me next”*

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/10/militarized_police_overreach_oh_god_i_thought_they_were_going_to_shoot_me_next”/



> Cheye Calvo only intended to be home long enough to grab a bite to eat and walk his dogs. Calvo worked full-time at an educational foundation in Washington, D.C., but he also had an unusual part-time job: he was mayor of the small town of Berwyn Heights, Maryland. In 2004, at age thirty-three, he was the youngest elected mayor in the history of Prince George’s County, Maryland. Now thirty-seven, he lived with his wife, Trinity Tomsic, her mother, Georgia Porter, and their two black labradors, Payton and Chase. Calvo was due back in town later that night for a community meeting.
> 
> As Calvo took the dogs out for a walk the evening of July 29, 2008, his mother-in-law told him that a package had been delivered a few minutes earlier. He figured it was something he had ordered for his garden. “On the walk, I noticed a few black SUVs in the neighborhood, but thought little of it except to wave to the drivers,” he would later recall. When Calvo and the dogs returned, he picked up the package, brought it inside, then went upstairs to change for his meeting.
> 
> The next thing Calvo remembers is the sound of his mother-in-law screaming. He ran to the window and saw heavily armed men clad in black rushing his front door. Next came the explosion. He’d later learn that this was when the police blew open his front door. Then there was gunfire. Then boots stomping the floor. Then more gunfire. Calvo, still in his boxers, screamed, “I’m upstairs, please don’t shoot!” He was instructed to walk downstairs with his hands in the air, the muzzles of two guns pointed directly at him. He still didn’t know it was the police. He described what happened next at a Cato Institute forum six weeks later. “At the bottom of the stairs, they bound my hands, pulled me across the living room, and forced me to kneel on the floor in front of my broken door. I thought it was a home invasion. I was fearful that I was about to be executed.” I later asked Calvo what might have happened if he’d had a gun in his home for self-defense. His answer: “I’d be dead.” In another interview, he would add, “The worst thing I could have done was defend my home.”
> 
> Calvo’s mother-in-law was face-down on the kitchen floor, the tomato-artichoke sauce she was preparing still sitting on the stove. Her first scream came when one of the SWAT officers pointed his gun at her from the other side of the window. The police department would later argue that her scream gave them the authority to enter the home without knocking, announcing themselves, and waiting for someone to let them in.
> 
> Rather than obeying the SWAT team demands to “get down” as they rushed in, Georgia Porter simply froze with fear. They pried the spoon from her hand, put a gun to her head, and shoved her to the floor. They asked, “Where are they? Where are they?” She had no idea what they were talking about. She told them to look in the basement. She would later tell the Washington Post, “If somebody puts a gun to your head and asks you a question, you better come up with an answer. Then I shut my eyes. Oh, God, I thought they were going to shoot me next.”
> 
> Calvo’s dogs Payton and Chase were dead by the time Calvo was escorted to the kitchen. Payton had been shot in the face almost as soon as the police entered the home. One bullet went all the way through him and lodged in a radiator, missing Porter by only a couple of feet. Chase ran. The cops shot him once, from the back, then chased him into the living room and shot him again.
> 
> Calvo was turned around and put on his knees in front of the door the police had just smashed to pieces. He heard them rummaging through his house, tossing drawers, emptying cabinets.
> 
> Calvo and Porter were held for four hours. Calvo asked to see a search warrant. He was told it was “en route.” The police continued to search the house. At one point, a detective got excited when she found an envelope stuffed with cash. According to Porter, the detective was deflated when she found only $68 inside and noticed that the front of the envelope read: “Yard Sale.” At one point, Porter overheard a detective call to ask a relative to schedule a veterinary appointment. The sight of the dogs’ bodies apparently reminded her that she need to make an appointment for her own pet.
> 
> Even after they realized they had just mistakenly raided the mayor’s house, the officers didn’t apologize to Calvo or Porter. Instead, they told Calvo that they were both “parties of interest” and that they should consider themselves lucky they weren’t arrested. Calvo in particular, they said, was still under suspicion because when armed men blew open his door, killed his dogs, and pointed their guns at him and his-mother-in-law, he hadn’t responded “in a typical manner.”
> 
> Trinity Tomsic came home about an hour later to find a blur of flashing police lights and a crowd gathering on her front lawn. She was told that her husband and mother were fine. Then she was told that her dogs were dead. She broke down in tears. When she was finally able to enter her home, she found her dogs’ blood all over her house. The police had walked through the two large pools of blood that collected under Payton and Chase, then tracked it all over the home. Even once the police realized they had made a mistake, they never offered to clean up the blood, to put the house back together, or to fix the front door.
> 
> As Calvo and Porter were being interrogated, one of Calvo’s own police officers saw the lights and stopped to see what was going on. Berwyn Heights officer Amir Johnson knew this was his mayor’s house, but had no idea what the commotion was about because the Prince George’s County Police Department hadn’t bothered to contact the Berwyn Heights police chief, as they were required to do under a memorandum of understanding between the two agencies. Johnson told the Washington Post that an officer at the scene told him, “The guy in there is crazy. He says he is the mayor of Berwyn Heights.”
> 
> Johnson replied, “That is the mayor of Berwyn Heights.”
> 
> Johnson then called Berwyn Heights police chief Patrick Murphy. Eventually, Murphy was put in touch with the supervising officer, Det. Sgt. David Martini. Murphy recounted the conversation to the Post: “Martini tells me that when the SWAT team came to the door, the mayor met them at the door, opened it partially, saw who it was, and then tried to slam the door on them,” Murphy recalled. “And that at that point, Martini claimed, they had to force entry, the dogs took aggressive stances, and they were shot.”
> 
> If that indeed was what Martini told Murphy, he was either lying or repeating a lie told to him by one of his subordinates. There was never any further mention of Calvo shutting the door on the SWAT team— because it never happened. Calvo later had his dogs autopsied—the trajectories the bullets took through the dogs’ bodies weren’t consistent with the SWAT team’s story.



Continued in next post.


----------



## cupper

> But the lies, obfuscations, and stonewalling were only beginning.
> 
> The police department would first claim that they had obtained a no-knock warrant for the raid. They then backtracked and blamed Calvo’s mother-in-law, arguing that when her scream blew their cover, they were no longer obligated to knock and announce themselves. (This was an interesting theory, given that the knock-and-announce requirement, by definition, would have required them to blow their own cover. That’s the point of the requirement.) Maj. Mark Magaw, commander of the Prince George’s County narcotics enforcement division, claimed that the SWAT team couldn’t have obtained a no-knock warrant if they had wanted to, because the state of Maryland doesn’t allow them. This too was false. The state had passed a bill allowing for no-knock warrants in 2005. It’s the sort of law that one would think would have a day-to-day impact on the drug unit of a police department that conducts several raids each week. Yet the head narcotics unit in Prince George’s County was completely ignorant of it. Three years later, Magaw would be promoted to Prince George’s County police chief.
> 
> The affidavit for the search warrant was prepared by Det. Shawn Scarlata. It is incredibly thin. In a few paragraphs, Scarlata relates that he intercepted a FedEx package containing thirty-two pounds of marijuana at one of the company’s warehouses. The package was addressed to Trinity Tomsic at her home address. A police officer disguised as a delivery man then took the package to Calvo’s house, where it was accepted by Georgia Porter. There was also a one-paragraph description of Calvo’s home. That’s the only information in the warrant specific to Calvo and his family. The remainder of the six-page affidavit is a cut-and-paste recitation of Scarlata’s training, qualifications, and assumptions he felt he could make based on his experience as a narcotics officer. As Calvo described the warrant in an online chat, “It talks about all the stuff a drug trafficker should have in his or her home and then says something like, ‘Although we know that the police have no evidence of these things, they can be inferred from the very nature of the charge.’ It is circular reasoning that says because we are suspicious of you, there must be evidence of your guilt.”
> 
> On August 7, police arrested a FedEx driver and an accomplice and charged them with various crimes related to drug trafficking. Trinity Tomsic was never supposed to receive that package of marijuana. A drug distributor in Arizona had used her address to get the package into the general Prince George’s County area, at which point an accomplice working for the delivery company was supposed to intercept it. The police had found several similar packages. Worse, county police knew the scheme was going on and knew some packages had been delivered to residences unbeknownst to the people who lived in them. The Washington Post reported a couple of months later on cases in which innocent people had been arrested. “Defense lawyers who practice in the county said authorities appear to arrest and charge anyone who picks up a package containing marijuana without conducting a further investigation,” the Post reported. “The more I think about that, the angrier I get,” Calvo later told Post columnist Marc Fisher. “They knew this scheme was going on, yet it never occurred to them from the moment they found out about that package that we were anything but drug dealers.” Prince George’s County police chief Melvin High still couldn’t bring himself to rule out the Calvos as suspects, telling the Washington Post, “From all the indications at the moment, they had an unlikely involvement, but we don’t want to draw that definite conclusion at the moment.”
> 
> Two days later, after the raid had made national and international news, the Prince George’s County Police Department finally cleared Cheye Calvo and his family of any wrongdoing. They did it by way of a press release they put out at 4:30 p.m. on a Friday, the time and day of the week when bad news is typically buried. It also happened to be the night of the opening ceremonies for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
> 
> Perhaps even more baffling, officials continued to insist that the raid shouldn’t have happened any other way. Even as they acknowledged that Calvo and his family were innocent, in the months and years following the raid they would repeat again and again that not a single officer did anything wrong, and that no one had any reason for remorse. In 2010 Sheriff Michael Jackson was asked during his campaign for Prince George’s County executive if he had any regrets about the raid. His response: “Quite frankly, we’d do it again. Tonight.” Even when Chief High called Calvo to tell him that he had been cleared of any criminal suspicion, High made sure to explicitly tell the mayor that the call should not be interpreted as an apology. The statements from county officials over the next several months were also astonishingly callous. A day after he called Calvo, High told the press that the raiding cops showed “restraint and compassion” and insisted that they should be credited for not arresting Calvo or members of his family. (The only incriminating evidence found in the home was the unopened box of marijuana that the deputies themselves had delivered.) Months later, Prince George’s County executive Jack Johnson said something even more preposterous. He insisted that once Prince George’s County police agencies had cleared themselves, that was the only apology necessary—and in fact that they deserved praise for clearing Calvo’s name after nearly killing him. “Well, I think in America that is the apology, when we’re cleared,” Johnson said. “At the end of the day, the investigation showed [Calvo] was not involved. And that’s, you know, a pat on the back for everybody involved, I think.” On September 8, about five weeks after the raid, Sheriff Jackson’s office announced that his internal investigation had cleared his deputies of any wrongdoing. Everything was done according to procedure. Or, as Jackson put it, “the guys did what they were supposed to do.” Nine months later, Jackson’s office would conclude another investigation, again clearing his deputies. Neither outcome was surprising, given that Jackson had been defending his deputies since the night of the raid. It’s probably also worth noting that the father of Det. Shawn Scarlata—the officer who initiated the investigation leading to the raid— was on the internal affairs team that conducted the investigations.
> 
> The officials in Prince George’s County, two of them elected, openly and without reservation stated that they had no problem with the collateral damage done to the Calvo family. It was part of the war against getting high—which even they had to know is a war that can’t be won. They didn’t even really think it was something to regret or learn from, or to try to avoid in the future. As Calvo himself pointed out on several occasions, this isn’t a problem that can be laid at the feet of the police officers who raided his home. This problem can’t be fixed by firing the police involved. This is a political problem. It’s a policy problem.
> 
> Calvo understood all of this almost immediately. Someone sent him a copy of “Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America,” the paper on police militarization I had written for the Cato Institute two years earlier. A policy wonk at heart, Calvo devoured the paper, reading it on his subway rides to and from work. Still traumatized from the raid, his wife didn’t like the image on the cover—a close-up of a SWAT officer with his hand on a machine gun. Calvo then began reading up on the case law behind these raids. Within a few weeks, the charismatic, accessible small-town mayor had become a compelling advocate for reform. I moderated a forum about the raid at the Cato Institute in September 2008. As Calvo spoke about what he had gone through—and particularly about his dogs, and how angry he was that the police tried to blame the dogs for their own deaths—about a fourth of the audience was in tears. He told his story on CNN, the morning network talk shows, and the BBC. And to his credit, he recognized that what had specifically happened to him was part of a broader problem of policy, not of individual cops.
> 
> “The reality is that this happens all the time in this country, and disproportionately in Prince George’s County,” Calvo told CNN. “Most of the people to whom it happens don’t have the community support and the platform to speak out. So I appreciate you paying attention to our condition, but I hope you’ll also give attention to those who may not have the same platform and voice that we have.”
> 
> As Calvo continued to advocate for reform, he started to hear from other victims of mistaken police raids, both in Prince George’s County and around the state of Maryland. Several included the routine, sometimes callous killing of the family dog. Within a week of the raid, for example, Prince George’s County residents Frank and Pam Myers came forward to say that they too were raided by sheriff’s department deputies. Indeed, that raid the previous November had been covered by some local media. When the couple told the deputies that the address on the warrant was two doors down, the police refused to leave. They continued to look around the couple’s house for another forty-five minutes. Then two shots rang out from the backyard. A deputy had gone into the backyard and shot the couple’s five-year-old boxer, Pearl. He claimed that he feared for his life. Pam Myers told a local news station, “I said, ‘You just shot my dog.’ I just wanted to go out and hold her a bit. They wouldn’t even let me go out.”
> 
> Amber James, another Prince George’s County resident, also came forward. Police raided her home in May 2007 looking for her sister, who didn’t live in the house. According to James, when their search came up empty, they promised to return the next day—and to kill James’s dog when they did.
> 
> A series of police raid horror stories from Howard County, Maryland, also emerged. Kevin and Lisa Henderson said they were the victims of a mistaken raid in January 2008. At 1o p.m. the night of January 18, a raid team opened the family’s unlocked front door. Inside were the couple, a twenty-eight-year-old houseguest, their two teenage sons, and their sons’ friend. The police first met the family dog, a twelve-year-old lab/rottweiler mix named Grunt. According to the lawsuit, one officer distracted the dog while another shot it point-blank in the head. When one of the couple’s sons asked why they had shot the dog, one officer pointed his gun at the boy’s head and said, “I’ll blow your fucking head off if you keep talking.” The police found marijuana in a jacket pocket of the Hendersons’ house guest. He was arrested. Four days later, after Lisa Henderson called to complain about the raid, she and her husband were also arrested for possession of marijuana, even though the police hadn’t found any drug anywhere else in the house. Ten months later, a state judge acquitted the couple of all charges. The Hendersons believe that the police intended to raid a different house in the neighborhood that looked a lot like their own. A subsequent raid on that house turned up marijuana, scales, and cash.
> 
> Karen Thomas, also a resident of Howard County, told a Maryland State Senate hearing in 2009 that police shot and killed her dog during a mistaken raid on her home in January 2007. Even after they had surrounded her in her bedroom, she said they still hadn’t yet identified themselves, and she thought the gunshot had been directed at her son. “In my mind, terrorists had just killed my son, and they were going to kill me next.” Boyd Petit told the same committee, “Our collective lives flashed before our eyes” during a mistaken raid on him and his family in April 2008. Mike Hasenei, his wife, and their twelve-year-old daughter were subjected to a nighttime raid when police received a tip that Hasenei’s stepson and a friend might have stolen items from a police car, including a rifle and ammunition. They also raided the home where the stepson actually lived, as well as the friend’s home. They found none of the stolen items and made no arrests. Hasenei and his wife Phyllis told the Baltimore Sun that they were still reeling from the trauma. “They had their guns drawn, Angel and I were screaming,” Phyllis Hasenei said. “They had their black-on-black uniforms. All you could see were their eyeballs.” Hasenei added that had police done a bit more investigating, “they would have found out that neither of us are violent criminals, we don’t have criminals records at all.”
> 
> Armed with these incidents, Calvo went to the Maryland legislature to push for reform. The bill he proposed was modest. It required every police agency in Maryland with a SWAT team to issue a quarterly report—later amended to twice yearly—on how many times the team was deployed, for what purpose, and whether any shots were fired during the raid. It was a simple transparency bill. It put no limits or restrictions on how often or under what circumstances SWAT teams could be used.
> 
> Yet it was the only bill of its kind in the country. And it was opposed by every police organization in the state. One Maryland lawmaker attempted to amend the bill to prohibit the use of SWAT teams in cases involving known misdemeanors, a seemingly reasonable restriction. That measure was rejected after more lobbying from police groups.
> 
> But the main bill passed the Maryland house in March 2009 by a vote of 126–9, and the state’s senate in April by a vote of 46–0. It was signed into law by Gov. Martin O’Malley. Calvo sent the media a response to the legislation.
> 
> Although the botched raid of my home and killing of our dogs, Payton and Chase, have received considerable attention in the media, it is important to underscore that this bill is about much more than an isolated, high-profile mistake. It is about a growing and troubling trend where law enforcement agencies are using SWAT teams to perform ordinary police work. Prince George’s County police acknowledges deploying SWAT teams between 400 and 700 a year— that’s twice a day—and other counties in the state have said that they also deploy their special tactical units hundreds of times a year. The hearings on these bills have brought to light numerous botched and ill-advised raids in Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Howard, Montgomery, and Prince George’s counties that also have had devastating effects on the lives of innocent people and undermined faith in law enforcement. . . .
> 
> Although I applaud lawmakers for passing this bill over the objections of law enforcement, I was disappointed that state law enforcement groups decided to oppose this measure rather than embrace it as an opportunity to restore the public trust. I remain especially concerned with the argument put forward that only law enforcement should police itself and that it is somehow inappropriate for elected leaders to legislate oversight and accountability. I cannot disagree with this argument more. As elected officials, we must take full responsibility for the law enforcement departments that we fund and authorize, and we must hold our law enforcement officials to the highest standards and ideals.
> 
> By the following spring, the Maryland Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention released the first batch of statistics. They were predictably unsettling. For the last half of 2009, SWAT teams were deployed 804 times in the state of Maryland, or about 4.5 times a day. In Prince George’s County alone, which has about 850,000 residents, a SWAT team was deployed about once a day. According to an analysis by the Baltimore Sun, 94 percent of the state’s SWAT deployments were to serve search or arrest warrants, leaving just 6 percent that were raids involving barricades, bank robberies, hostage takings, and other emergency situations. Half of Prince George’s County’s SWAT deployments were for what were called “misdemeanors and nonserious felonies.” More than one hundred times over a six-month period, Prince George’s County sent police barreling into private homes for nonserious, nonviolent crimes. Calvo pointed out that the first set of figures confirm what he and others concerned about these tactics have suspected: SWAT teams are being deployed too often as the default way to serve search warrants, not as a last resort.
> 
> In January 2011, Calvo settled his lawsuit with Prince George’s County. Although the details haven’t been made public, we know that it involved a substantial sum of money as well as reforms to the way Prince George’s County uses its SWAT teams, the types of cases in which the teams are deployed, and better training in dealing with the pets they encounter in raids, as well as treating them more humanely.
> 
> Excerpted from “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces” by Radley Balko.  Reprinted with permission from PublicAffairs Books.



When you start to only use a hammer for your only tool, every problem starts to look like a nail.


----------



## Jarnhamar

Role creep isn't cool when it comes to LEOs, especially when cops start thinking they're supposed to_ close with and destroy the enemy._

There's a ridiculous amount of law enforcement agencies in the US.


----------



## OldSolduer

Kilo_302 said:
			
		

> If I can jump in here, it's about spending money on weapons and vehicles versus preventative measures. Take Toronto for example, our police budget is being increased, but crime rates are at historic lows. We cut social services ( housing, mental health services)  all the time. These are proven measures that reduce crime in the longer run. But cutting the police budget? No way.



Crime rates are at an all time low because  people aren't reporting them as much. Just my opinion.

In Winnipeg about eight years ago the drug squad served a warrant. As they entered the house, the suspect hid in a bathtub and fired a shot gun at the arresting officers. He wounded one, and it is probably pure luck that none were killed. At that time Winnipeg had a "part time as needed " tactical response team. 
Now the tac team is full time, and they go along to serve what is considered "high risk" warrants - violent criminals, drug houses etc.

There is a need for a tac team in a large city. Winnipeg had to learn the lesson the hard way. 

As for "militarization" of the police - IMO this is a distraction from the real problems - lack of opportunity, poverty, poor race relations (this goes both ways), a self serving bunch of lawyers and media portrayal of the police as "bad guys" and the "poor down trodden masses" that continue to riot and loot.

Just my two cents, plus GST.


----------



## RCDtpr

Kilo_302 said:
			
		

> The point is, no one in this community trusts the police. So whether the witnesses are right or not, that's what everyone is hearing. I can't speak to your personal experiences in law enforcement, but the situation in the states is far different. Just look at the stats:
> 
> http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/police-shootings-michael-brown-ferguson-black-men
> 
> How could it NOT be a different situation when a black man is shot? They seem to get shot with alarming frequency in the US. The whole system is racist.
> 
> And no, it doesn't take a visit to Ferguson to know that an MRAP is over the top. New Glasgow in NS has an armoured vehicle for #$@#'s sake. This is about emphasizing one style of policing, one tool in the box.



They are shot with an alarming frequency because they statistically commit more crimes.  This isn't a race thing, it's a crime stat thing.  No different in Canada how aboriginals are hugely over represented in jails.  The fact is, crime stats don't lie.

Look up the stats for a predominately white state such as Utah , Oregon, or Montana.  I wouldn't be shocked to see police shoot more white people there than minorities.

I don't discriminate...I'll shoot and kill a white guy just as fast as an Asian, African American, Native etc etc.  I, like all others I work with, are far more concerned with going home than letting someone hurt us because it may offend a particular ethnic group.

Here's the question I pose to you...why would have it been "acceptable" had the officer in question be black?

I also want to throw this out there to ensure I'm not being misconstrued.  I'm 100% for a proper and thorough investigation being done on this, and if the officer was wrong then fire him, toss him in jail etc etc.  What I don't believe in, is people getting mad and destroying their city or hurting others in the name of "justice."  What the public is doing there is not the answer and frankly my personal belief is that it's no longer about the kid being shot, it's about the fact that those people have open season to do whatever they want and human nature is taking over.  The public is going to denounce the heavy handed police response that WILL be necessary to finally quell this.....yet they are bringing it on themselves.


----------



## Fishbone Jones

Kilo_302 said:
			
		

> The point is, no one in this community trusts the police. So whether the witnesses are right or not, that's what everyone is hearing. I can't speak to your personal experiences in law enforcement, but the situation in the states is far different. Just look at the stats:
> 
> http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/police-shootings-michael-brown-ferguson-black-men
> 
> How could it NOT be a different situation when a black man is shot? They seem to get shot with alarming frequency in the US. The whole system is racist.
> 
> And no, it doesn't take a visit to Ferguson to know that an MRAP is over the top. New Glasgow in NS has an armoured vehicle for #$@#'s sake. This is about emphasizing one style of policing, one tool in the box.



You're quoting from a sensationalist, extreme left wing magazine. What did you expect?

No one in the community? Pretty ballsy statement, speaking for an entire population.

The whole system is racist? Your own lopsided bias is showing. Maybe you're the racist. :dunno:

Better tone down your rhetoric and take a sugar pill for that bitterness that's eating you up.

You're still on thin ice for previous outbursts.

---Staff---


----------



## cupper

RCDcpl said:
			
		

> I don't discriminate...I'll shoot and kill a white guy just as fast as an Asian, African American, Native etc etc.  I, like all others I work with, are far more concerned with going home than letting someone hurt us because it may offend a particular ethnic group.



Might want to dial that one back just a bit.



			
				RCDcpl said:
			
		

> Here's the question I pose to you...why would have it been "acceptable" had the officer in question be black?



No one has said it would have been "acceptable". The facts that are currently known and not in dispute about the incident are that a police officer shot and killed an unarmed individual. Everything else that has been brought up is either not relevant to the shooting itself, or has yet to be substantiated.

As it is, the local police have done more to stir up emotions within the community that they have done to calm the situation. Releasing the video showing the shooting victim in the commission of a strong arm robbery prior to the shooting after being advised by the Justice Department that there could be significant backlash. Making contradictory statements as to the officer having knowledge of the robbery or not. The heavy handed response, arresting media observing from a McDonalds.


----------



## cupper

More on the so-called Mission creep of the militarization of police, and questionable justifications for it. This is the first part of the Salon article I referenced in my prior posts. (just posting a couple of highlights this time but worth reading the whole article)

*“Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”: The new warrior cop is out of control*

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/07/“why_did_you_shoot_me_i_was_reading_a_book_the_new_warrior_cop_is_out_of_control/ 



> Sal Culosi is dead because he bet on a football game — but it wasn’t a bookie or a loan shark who killed him. His local government killed him, ostensibly to protect him from his gambling habit.
> 
> Several months earlier at a local bar, Fairfax County, Virginia, detective David Baucum overheard the thirty-eight-year-old optometrist and some friends wagering on a college football game. “To Sal, betting a few bills on the Redskins was a stress reliever, done among friends,” a friend of Culosi’s told me shortly after his death. “None of us single, successful professionals ever thought that betting fifty bucks or so on the Virginia–Virginia Tech football game was a crime worthy of investigation.” Baucum apparently did. After overhearing the men wagering, Baucum befriended Culosi as a cover to begin investigating him. During the next several months, he talked Culosi into raising the stakes of what Culosi thought were just more fun wagers between friends to make watching sports more interesting. Eventually Culosi and Baucum bet more than $2,000 in a single day. Under Virginia law, that was enough for police to charge Culosi with running a gambling operation. And that’s when they brought in the SWAT team.
> 
> On the night of January 24, 2006, Baucum called Culosi and arranged a time to drop by to collect his winnings. When Culosi, barefoot and clad in a T-shirt and jeans, stepped out of his house to meet the man he thought was a friend, the SWAT team began to move in. Seconds later, Det. Deval Bullock, who had been on duty since 4:00 AM and hadn’t slept in seventeen hours, fired a bullet that pierced Culosi’s heart.
> 
> Sal Culosi’s last words were to Baucum, the cop he thought was a friend: “Dude, what are you doing?”





> The raid on Sal Culosi was merely another red flag indicating yet more SWAT team mission creep in America. It wasn’t even the first time a Virginia SWAT team had killed someone during a gambling raid. In 1998 a SWAT team in Virginia Beach shot and killed security guard Edward C. Reed during a 3:00 AM raid on a private club suspected of facilitating gambling. Police said they approached the tinted car where Reed was working security, knocked, and identified themselves, then shot Reed when he refused to drop his handgun. Reed’s family insisted the police story was unlikely. Reed had no criminal record. Why would he knowingly point his gun at a heavily armed police team? More likely, they said, Reed mistakenly believed the raiding officers were there to do harm, particularly given that the club had been robbed not long before the raid. Statements by the police themselves seem to back that account. According to officers at the scene, Reed’s last words were, “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book.”





> But the mission creep hasn’t stopped at poker games. By the end of the 2000s, police departments were sending SWAT teams to enforce regulatory law. In August 2010, for example, a team of heavily armed Orange County, Florida, sheriff’s deputies raided several black-and Hispanic-owned barbershops in the Orlando area. More raids followed in September and October. The Orlando Sentinel reported that police held barbers and customers at gunpoint and put some in handcuffs, while they turned the shops inside out. The police raided a total of nine shops and arrested thirty-seven people.
> 
> By all appearances, these raids were drug sweeps. Shop owners told the Sentinel that police asked them where they were hiding illegal drugs and weapons. But in the end, thirty-four of the thirty-seven arrests were for “barbering without a license,” a misdemeanor for which only three people have ever served jail time in Florida.
> The most disturbing aspect of the Orlando raids was that police didn’t even attempt to obtain a legal search warrant. They didn’t need to, because they conducted the raids in conjunction with the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation. Despite the guns and handcuffs, under Florida law these were licensure inspections, not criminal searches, so no warrants were necessary.





> But other legal challenges to paramilitary-style administrative searches have been less successful. Consider the bizarre case of David Ruttenberg, owner of the Rack ‘n’ Roll pool hall in Manassas Park, Virginia. In June 2004, local police conducted a massive raid on the pool hall with more than fifty police officers, some of whom were wearing face masks, toting semi-automatic weapons, and pumping shotguns as they entered. Customers were detained, searched, and zip-tied. The police were investigating Ruttenberg for several alleged drug crimes, although he was never charged. The local narcotics task force had tried unsuccessfully to get a warrant to search Ruttenberg’s office but were denied by a judge. Instead, they simply brought along several representatives of the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and claimed that they were conducting an alcohol inspection. Ruttenberg was cited only for three alcohol violations, based on two bottles of beer a distributor had left that weren’t clearly marked as samples, and a bottle of vodka they found in his private office.



Also check out the celebrities who have been taken along on raids, such as Shaquille O'Neal and Steven Segal.  :facepalm:


----------



## Shamrock

cupper said:
			
		

> Also check out the celebrities who have been taken along on raids, such as Shaquille O'Neal and Steven Segal.  :facepalm:


And Brian Cranston on that documentary he did about cancer treatment.


----------



## Lightguns

George Wallace said:
			
		

> Granted it is almost a Century too late, but the New Glasgow Miners Strike was one of the largest and most violent protests in Canadian history.  The Army was called out to patrol New Glasgow and Cape Breton.  Perhaps this is just 90 years of paperwork finally catching up with them.   >



All our strikes in New Glasgow and Trenton were violent in the 70s.  As teenagers, we would sit on the stone wall above the Trenton Works at midnight on the first night of the strike.  Purpose: to laugh at the commissionaire climbing out the bathroom window of the guard shack as the union arson team light the shack on fire out front.  Happened everytime, that and the burning of the managers' cars in their driveways.


----------



## GAP

Interesting, but nutty article from a weird site regarding the ongoing issues ......

http://downtrend.com/71superb/philadelphia-mayor-young-black-men-are-not-responsible-for-their-actions/


----------



## Dkeh

I think the term "militarization"  is easily misused, and in the case of the United States (at least in my opinion), an exaggeration. 

Police need to be better armed than the criminals they are defending the general population from. I would argue that this is indisputable. 

When you have criminals arming themselves with higher tech weaponry, the police must compensate to maintain their competitive edge. 

Another factor that I think people are overlooking is access to information. With the rise of the internet in the last ~25 years, anyone can easily look-up how to make HME, listen in on police frequencies, organize a violent protest (black bloc), etc. Physical weaponry aside, a rise in access to information for criminal elements constitutes a very real ability for said criminal elements to escalate force effortlessly and without warning. A domestic violence call could (potentially) erupt into a full blown gun battle, and a bank robbery could escalate into a car full of criminals driving around detonating HME. Yes, it is extreme and unlikely, but just because it is unlikely does not mean that Police should not be prepared for it. 

It isn't just the United States or Canada that are equipping they LEOs with more capable equipment. Take a look at these two BBC articles, written by the same author, almost exactly two years apart:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19641398  - Why British Police don't have guns

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28656324 - British Police on armed patrols

While this is obviously not the same as giving a county sheriff an MRAP, it represents the same thing.

Do I think everyday police officers should be kitted out in ballistic plates, wearing balaclavas, and doing the jtfsniperninja thing? No.
But I do think they should have access to equipment they MAY need, and have the training BEFOREHAND. If that means having a drone and MRAP in every major city (or within a few hours of travel time), then so be it. Should police be walking the streets with assault rifles? No, but there should be one available close at hand. 

Just my opinion, of course.


----------



## Scoobie Newbie

Amnesty International has for the first time sent a team to a spot in the USA. That should say something. Do the cops need every tool available?  Yes. They also need proper training and proper mindset. You can't think of the people you serve as animals.


----------



## Dkeh

Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> Amnesty International has for the first time sent a team to a spot in the USA. That should say something. Do the cops need every tool available?  Yes. They also need proper training and proper mindset. You can't think of the people you serve as animals.



Agreed 100%. Is the mindset of the police that these people are the enemy? Possibly. It is easy to make that mistake when you see the face of hatred mirrored across a crowd. 

I think part of it is due to the large number of baby boomers retiring, and the ranks being swelled with younger, more immature, and more desensitized  officers. I don't have any stats, but that is my opinion.


----------



## Scoobie Newbie

Good article by a former cop. 
http://m.vice.com/read/a-former-police-chief-speaks-out-against-police-brutality-818?utm_source=vicetwitterus


----------



## Kilo_302

recceguy said:
			
		

> You're quoting from a sensationalist, extreme left wing magazine. What did you expect?
> 
> No one in the community? Pretty ballsy statement, speaking for an entire population.
> 
> The whole system is racist? Your own lopsided bias is showing. Maybe you're the racist. :dunno:
> 
> Better tone down your rhetoric and take a sugar pill for that bitterness that's eating you up.
> 
> You're still on thin ice for previous outbursts.
> 
> ---Staff---




That article is citing academic studies, not drawing these conclusions out of thin air. I don't know about you, but I hear Stanford is a reputable school. And when I say the "whole system is racist" I mean the US justice system. This is hardly controversial, as study after study bears this out (see below), so I am not going to tone down my "rhetoric." Nor am I bitter. I am a white male living in Canada. What in the world do I have to be bitter about? 


https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/news/2170-new-study-by-professor-david-s-abrams-confirms#.U_NR7ekg-70

http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/07/23/372400/newark-police-racially-biased-study/

http://www.civilrights.org/publications/justice-on-trial/

 I can only presume that when you say "outburst" you are referring to the instances where we have seriously disagreed on this forum. So if I am still on "thin ice" because we had words in February 2013 I would suggest it is you, not I, who is bitter.


----------



## Container

There isnt the proliferation of armoured vehicles in Canada that they have in the states. Yes they have at least one in all the provinces- Im not sure why that is too much? New Bruinswick just showed how necessary they are- so much so that there was NOT ENOUGH and Brinks trucks had to be brought in and rented. They have their role. 

We need to keep a jaundiced eye on the subject in Canada but we are far from being "Militarized". That said- we need to ensure that the roles and equipment are justified. Anyone who manages a budget for buying kit knows that their is always "new and shiny"- and a non-stop flow of people trying to sell you the next revolutionary idea. And with a wind down overseas- the police are the big budgets being sold to.


----------



## Fishbone Jones

Kilo_302 said:
			
		

> That article is citing academic studies, not drawing these conclusions out of thin air. I don't know about you, but I hear Stanford is a reputable school. And when I say the "whole system is racist" I mean the US justice system. This is hardly controversial, as study after study bears this out (see below), so I am not going to tone down my "rhetoric." Nor am I bitter. I am a white male living in Canada. What in the world do I have to be bitter about?
> 
> 
> https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/news/2170-new-study-by-professor-david-s-abrams-confirms#.U_NR7ekg-70
> 
> http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/07/23/372400/newark-police-racially-biased-study/
> 
> http://www.civilrights.org/publications/justice-on-trial/
> 
> I can only presume that when you say "outburst" you are referring to the instances where we have seriously disagreed on this forum. So if I am still on "thin ice" because we had words in February 2013 I would suggest it is you, not I, who is bitter.



So, I guess 'the whole system is racist' also pertains to the US Supreme Court. Is Clarence Thomas racist against whites or are you suggesting he's an Uncle Tom?

I guess when Eric Holder announced he was putting the Newark PF under investigation and a three year watch, he means to leave out people of colour because his office is racist?

Regarding your links (yes, I read them) 

Given what graduates from universities today, Professors can be suspect about where they lean and what they teach.

Press agencies are a 'Blood\ racial controversy' leads and false over the top, and sometimes outright lies, misinformation, collusion and fabrication of stories is not that uncommon in order to keep a hot topic going and increase advertising revenue. It's been stated many times, the MSN has moved from reporting fact and letting readers judge, to manufacturing and massaging stories to tell their readers and watchers what their CEO want them to think.

Civil Rights Organizations? I have no real opinion on them, other than they appear to be a self licking ice cream cone and have their own extremists and racists. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson come to mind. 

Studies and polls, which you must agree, decide on the outcome they want and then build the questions\ information around it. They will elicit whatever you want them to. That is common practice.

As to the thin ice issue, which you seem to want to disparage me with and keep going, it has nothing to do with me or personal opinion. It's based on PMs, report to Mods and privileged conversations. Just stay cool and it goes nowhere, it was merely a friendly warning.


----------



## Kilo_302

This isn't being report by the mainstream media just yet, but it's looking pretty bad for the Ferguson PD.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/08/18/ferguson-pd-busted/


----------



## Dkeh

Hyperbole aside, I don't think this overly affects anything at this point. From what I understand, the officer didn't know anything about any shoplifting at the time of the stop.


----------



## Infantryman2b

I don't see how beefing up American police is at all wrong considering the criminals and gangsters these days are carrying automatic assault rifles and heavy machine guns. Are they supposed to just continue using hand guns and riding around in lightly if at all armoured patrol cars? When a large population is rioting and looting in a country where firearms are plenty I think its fair that the police are as well armed and protected as possible. Gun violence is to much of a norm in America for the police not to be as equipped as possible. Its not like there patrolling the streets in APC type vehicles on the regular. Certain circumstances call for certain measures, and I fully support the police.


----------



## KerryBlue

Kilo_302 said:
			
		

> This isn't being report by the mainstream media just yet, but it's looking pretty bad for the Ferguson PD.
> 
> http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/08/18/ferguson-pd-busted/




What about this video and story that has also be ignored by MSM which corroborates the Police's story. 

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/08/17/He-Kept-Coming-Toward-Him-Video-in-Aftermath-of-Michael-Brown-Shooting-Describes-the-Incident



> Transcript via Theconservativetreehouse.com:
> #1 How’d he get from there to there?
> 
> #2 Because he ran, the police was still in the truck – cause he was like over the truck
> 
> {crosstalk}
> 
> #2 But him and the police was both in the truck, then he ran – the police got out and ran after him
> 
> {crosstalk}
> 
> #2 Then the next thing I know he doubled back toward him cus - the police had his gun drawn already on him –
> 
> #1. Oh, the police got his gun
> 
> #2 The police kept dumpin on him, and I’m thinking the police kept missing – he like – be like – but he kept coming toward him
> 
> {crosstalk}
> 
> #2 Police fired shots – the next thing I know – the police was missing
> 
> #1 The Police?
> 
> #2 The Police shot him
> 
> #1 Police?
> 
> #2 The next thing I know … I’m thinking … the dude started running … (garbled something about “he took it from him”)


----------



## jpjohnsn

Infantryman2b said:
			
		

> I don't see how beefing up American police is at all wrong considering the criminals and gangsters these days are carrying automatic assault rifles and heavy machine guns. Are they supposed to just continue using hand guns and riding around in lightly if at all armoured patrol cars? When a large population is rioting and looting in a country where firearms are plenty I think its fair that the police are as well armed and protected as possible. Gun violence is to much of a norm in America for the police not to be as equipped as possible. Its not like there patrolling the streets in APC type vehicles on the regular. Certain circumstances call for certain measures, and I fully support the police.


Doraville Georgia (population 8330) must be an absolute hotbed for gang violence:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAMhv7J39KM


----------



## The Bread Guy

Now those wild & crazy Anonymous funsters are jumping into the fray ...

We have the web page - "Anonymous Operation Ferguson" - as well as the Twitter feed - @OpFerguson  - a Twitter call for support ....


> ACTION ALERT: Please donate food, water, bike helmets, bulletproof vests, first aid kits, ear plugs, and goggles to protesters in Ferguson.


.... as well as a National Day of Action





THAT'LL help calm things down ....


----------



## Dkeh

Awesome, more Anon shitposting.


----------



## OldSolduer

This could be a turning point in history....we best watch it carefully.

We also should take anything the media says with a grain of salt, all media...not just the media we dislike.


----------



## Dkeh

Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> This could be a turning point in history....we best watch it carefully.
> 
> We also should take anything the media says with a grain of salt, all media...not just the media we dislike.



Very true.

As always, this image is valid.


----------



## Scoobie Newbie

Anon has a roll to play.
That pic fyi is a guy throwing a CS can back at police



			
				milnews.ca said:
			
		

> Now those wild & crazy Anonymous funsters are jumping into the fray ...
> 
> We have the web page - "Anonymous Operation Ferguson" - as well as the Twitter feed - @OpFerguson  - a Twitter call for support ........ as well as a National Day of Action
> 
> 
> 
> 
> THAT'LL help calm things down ....


----------



## Haggis

Kilo_302 said:
			
		

> New Glasgow in NS has an armoured vehicle for #$@#'s sake.



Which came at next to no cost as this is part of the former MND's riding.


----------



## Scoobie Newbie

Cost isn't the question.  Reason is.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> Cost isn't the question.  Reason is.



Maybe so a good guy doesn't get killed by a bad guy??  The same reason I'd love to see you guys with the safest kit possible.   Too bad you can't extend the fucking courtesy.......


----------



## Container

I'd love to hear the insane reason that the police in Nova Scotia can't have an armoured vehicle with no weapons used as mobile cover. Also- I'm not coming at you sheepdog. I'm wondering what you think the reason they obtained it is beyond exactly what it's used for? One armoured vehicle in a province does not an occupying force make. The damned things are always busted anyways

I'll leave this here too. It's also interesting.

http://ulstermanbooks.com/officer-darren-wilsons-eye-socket-blown-michael-brown-prior-shooting/



			
				Dkeh said:
			
		

> From what I understand, the officer didn't know anything about any shoplifting at the time of the stop.



Also. Brown had not "shoplifted". He had robbed. There is a huge valley between the too. It is important because Brown would be a)'motivated to escape b) think the officer knew.


----------



## RCDtpr

Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> Cost isn't the question.  Reason is.



I pose this question to you.  If a member of your family was killed and the local police service could have potentially saved their life if they had an armoured vehicle but their explanation to you was "we could have had an armoured vehicle for cheap...but didn't really think we'd need it.  Now that it's evident a situation can happen we will definitely get one so it doesn't happen again."  Would you be satisfied with that answer?  I wouldn't.

The old saying rings true here...... It's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.  It's not like the thing is out on patrol, it's parked in a hangar and comes out for training, dog and ponies, and god forbid really world scenarios.

Does the military NEED new planes, or tanks, or kit?  We aren't fighting any wars against conventional armies and haven't in quite some time, so by your logic the answer is no.


----------



## cupper

RCDcpl said:
			
		

> If a member of your family was killed and the local police service could have potentially saved their life if they had an armoured vehicle



Can you give me an example of where this situation would actually occur?


----------



## Scoobie Newbie

You want to make it personal go right ahead.  I think maybe you've been drinking the blue koolaid to long as well as seeing the worst in people for too long that it's clouding your judgement.



			
				Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> Maybe so a good guy doesn't get killed by a bad guy??  The same reason I'd love to see you guys with the safest kit possible.   Too bad you can't extend the fucking courtesy.......


----------



## Container

cupper said:
			
		

> Can you give me an example of where this situation would actually occur?



Considering it's used in shoring up cover where none is present- sealing off armed people from escaping and one of its roles is to extract injured people  from hot zones....

I can think of a variety of situations.

Better than that. Since we use them all the time- can you give me an example in Canada where they have been used in a fashion that suggests the police were treating anyone but bad guys as bad guys?


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> You want to make it personal go right ahead.  I think maybe you've been drinking the blue koolaid to long as well as seeing the worst in people for too long that it's clouding your judgement.





			
				Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> Cost isn't the question.  Reason is.



Then try something better then this drive-by shooting.......


----------



## Scoobie Newbie

Population under 10,000.  maybe the county mountie here can get his own APC.  He may after all need one seeing he's the only act in town.


----------



## Container

Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> Population under 10,000.  maybe the county mountie here can get his own APC.  He may after all need one seeing he's the only act in town.



What? The vehicle is for the division.


----------



## Scoobie Newbie

You started it with your courtesy comment.  Your not dealing with some noob you can bully here.  Feel free to try though.



			
				Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> Population under 10,000.  maybe the county mountie here can get his own APC.  He may after all need one seeing he's the only act in town.


----------



## Scoobie Newbie

The question is is there a good chance they need it.  What are the crimes like there?  If they need it sure no question.  If it's just something new and shiny then maybe priorities should shift elsewhere.

If Bruce has any further comments he can PM me.  This thread is derailed as it is.



			
				Container said:
			
		

> What? The vehicle is for the division.


----------



## Humphrey Bogart

Infantryman2b said:
			
		

> I don't see how beefing up American police is at all wrong considering the criminals and gangsters these days are carrying automatic assault rifles and heavy machine guns. Are they supposed to just continue using hand guns and riding around in lightly if at all armoured patrol cars? When a large population is rioting and looting in a country where firearms are plenty I think its fair that the police are as well armed and protected as possible. Gun violence is to much of a norm in America for the police not to be as equipped as possible. Its not like there patrolling the streets in APC type vehicles on the regular. Certain circumstances call for certain measures, and I fully support the police.



I have refrained from weighing in on this until now but this is the exact sort of sensationalist nonsense that is fuelling the militarization of the police force.



> I don't see how beefing up American police is at all wrong considering the criminals and gangsters these days are carrying automatic assault rifles and heavy machine guns. Are they supposed to just continue using hand guns and riding around in lightly if at all armoured patrol cars?



When have organized criminal groups or gangsters ever been seen with Browning .50 Cal HMG's?   When have police ever been required to drive around in vehicles designed to defeat IED's, RPG's and Sustained Small Arms Fire?  Stuff that you would find in the worst warzones in the world.  I will grant it to you that occasionally, this sort of response is called for but it's a tiered response and not everyone should have it.  This response should also be measured against infringing against the rights of the citizens the police are sworn to protect.  



> When a large population is rioting and looting in a country where firearms are plenty I think its fair that the police are as well armed and protected as possible.



Ferguson, Missouri with a population of 21,000 represents a large part of a country of 318,000,000 people  :  Again, more sensationalist nonsense fuelled by addiction to social media streams.



> Gun violence is to much of a norm in America for the police not to be as equipped as possible. Its not like there patrolling the streets in APC type vehicles on the regular.



What is a norm to you?  Is it a norm because you saw it on TV or read it on Facebook or the latest Twitter feed?  Or, is it actually something that is statistically significant?

Also, contrary to what you said and given some other articles people have posted, it appears the police are patrolling the streets in APC type vehicles and using SWAT teams "regularly"



The fact is, statistically speaking, you and I have never been safer!  Homicide-rates in Developed Countries are declining every year and overall crime rate is at an all time low yet you always hear about how much more dangerous the world around us is?  Or is it?

The reason for this perception is due in large part to the increasing proliferation of media in our daily lives.  No longer must we wait until the next day or week to get the latest news from around the globe.  Nope, I can go on youtube and watch the latest video of a Jihadist blowing himself up, or watch a guy gun down a cop, or watch a fight, see car accidents, really anything scary, terrifying or horrific if I want to I can go online and in seconds access media footage of it.  

Seeing as Humans are curious creatures we will want to watch this material and the internet along with 24/7 News (If you call violence and war news) have given us unprecedented access to an assortment of media which provides us with near continuous stimulation.  As a result, it has changed the way we see and interpret information, the suggestion above that the "entire country is rioting and looting" is a perfect example of this.

Of course, lobbying groups have also cleverly used this proliferation of 24/7 media to their advantage and the police force, possessing a very powerful lobby, are no different in this regard.  Through media, they have been able to create a false construct that the world around us is growing more dangerous and more unpredictable and as a result have been able to secure increased funding even though statistics show that the actual need for their services is in decline.  The military could take a few cues from police lobbyists on how to open up the government coffers but I digress.


To conclude, the world is getting safer and safer everyday, the real danger in my mind is the increasing influence the media has over our society and its influence on our leaders decision-making processes.
Do I believe police forces are becoming more militarized?  if by more militarized you mean more heavily armed and using more heavy handed tactics, than yes I do.  This isn't the fault of the police or security forces though who are only carrying out tasks in accordance with the mandate they are given.  It's a fault of our politicians and of the judicial system for not having the fortitude to stand up to lobbyists and the media who increasingly shape how we think and act.  

My  :2c:


----------



## Container

Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> The question is is there a good chance they need it.  What are the crimes like there?  If they need it sure no question.  If it's just something new and shiny then maybe priorities should shift elsewhere.
> 
> If Bruce has any further comments he can PM me.  This thread is derailed as it is.



True. Not unfair. I don't know what their volume is. I'm under the impression that each division got one- not dependant on calls


----------



## J.J

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lapd-pursuit-suspect-identified-20140819-story.html
An  excerpt from the article;


> [The department's SWAT team used one of its two BearCat armored vehicles, a $150,000 rescue vehicle bought in 2003, to shield them as they approached Jones.
> 
> Smith said Jones peppered the BearCat with bullets, striking the SWAT officer, before he was killed by return fire, Smith said.
> 
> "Thank goodness we had that armored vehicle as a shield because a regular police cruiser would have been Swiss cheese," Smith said.



I am a LEO, so I have intimidate knowledge of what the capabilities of the bad guys are.

I'm sorry RoyalDrew if you think gun violence in the US is sensationalist, but I live across from Detroit, I have work commitments there where I'm there weekly. In the last 6 months for work I've been in Atlanta, NYC, DC, Miami, Buffalo, Columbus, Cincinnati etc. Its not the big bad police making stories up, these are dangerous cities where the bad guys possess automatic weapons, armour piercing RDS, grenades etc. 


EDIT: Fixed quote box


----------



## Scoobie Newbie

LA should have APC's, so should any major municipality.  No argument there.


----------



## J.J

Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> LA should have APC's, so should any major municipality.  No argument there.



How about Moncton, NB? Maythorpe, AB? Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal?


----------



## Scoobie Newbie

Yes to all except Maythorpe and only because I don't know enough about the place.
I'd add Wpg, Edm, Calgary, Quebec City, Fredericton, Saskatoon, Regina to name a very few.


----------



## Humphrey Bogart

WR said:
			
		

> http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lapd-pursuit-suspect-identified-20140819-story.html
> An  excerpt from the article;
> The department's SWAT team used one of its two BearCat armored vehicles, a $150,000 rescue vehicle bought in 2003, to shield them as they approached Jones.
> 
> Smith said Jones peppered the BearCat with bullets, striking the SWAT officer, before he was killed by return fire, Smith said.
> 
> "Thank goodness we had that armored vehicle as a shield because a regular police cruiser would have been Swiss cheese," Smith said.quote]
> 
> I am a LEO, so I have intimidate knowledge of what the capabilities of the bad guys are.
> 
> I'm sorry RoyalDrew if you think gun violence in the US is sensationalist, but I live across from Detroit, I have work commitments there where I'm there weekly. In the last 6 months for work I've been in Atlanta, NYC, DC, Miami, Buffalo, Columbus, Cincinnati etc. Its not the big bad police making stories up, these are dangerous cities where the bad guys possess automatic weapons, armour piercing RDS, grenades etc.



Gun Violence happens no doubt about it but the scale and depth of the problem is greatly exaggerated.  I deployed to Jamaica for close to six months in 2012 and spent almost every weekend and some weeks for work in Kingston.  I made regular stops in Spanish Town, Downtown Kingston, went to the clubs in New Kingston, not once did I ever feel unsafe.  If your unaware, Kingston is one of the most violent cities in the Western Hemisphere with an average of 1 murder every 6 hours.  95% of Murders go unsolved.  Statistically speaking, it is a very dangerous city but in reality the danger is confined to certain parts and gangs leave the average joe alone.  

When we would deploy down to Spanish Town or West Kingston for exercises we would have close protection with us, you know what it was?  Three or Four Jamaica Defence Force NCO's with M16's slung on their shoulders just to show that we were there and armed.  We didn't need MRAP's or fancy *** crap in a country where the weapon of choice for gang bangers is the AK47 and gang bangers all have heavy weaponry.  In fact the locals are very very friendly and helpful to the Jamaica Defence Force because they act in a professional manner and treat the population with respect when conducting internal security operations, unlike the Jamaica Constabulary Force who are known for being heavy handed and whom the local population despise.

I think your job as a LEO is actually making you have bias in this instance.  The article you cited is a worst case scenario and not indicative of every day events, again two guys in a country of 318,000,000 people decide they want to go on a shooting rampage and you cite that as being indicative of a massive problem with gun violence.  You're only proving my point with your response.  

I have a massive amount of respect for what police officers do and what they have to deal with on a daily basis but their is no justification for some of the things they are doing now.  The overuse and proliferation of tactical teams, the idea that cost of an operation is more important than preservation of human life (WHICH IS A CONSIDERATION WHEN THEY DECIDE TO SEND IN THE SWAT TEAM), etc, etc, etc...

You signed up to be a cop and we understand it's a dangerous job but that doesn't give you carte blanche.  


Edit:


Too add, cops are much like soldiers, we always think we need more resources to do the job at hand and we think the government is never giving us enough.   We also always think our individual situation is worse than anyone elses.   It's the #1 reason why we aren't allowed to make any REAL decisions or police ourselves.  We are almost always incapable of objective self-reflection.


----------



## a_majoor

It's not just the police who are being militarized, many US federal bureaucracies are also becoming militarized, as the article below highlights. At least some members of the Congress have woken up to the problem, and are starting to work towards some demilitarization:

http://overlawyered.com/2014/08/demilitarize-regulatory-agencies/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=demilitarize-regulatory-agencies



> *Let’s demilitarize the regulatory agencies too*
> by WALTER OLSON on AUGUST 18, 2014
> 
> One consequence of the events in Ferguson, Mo. is that people are talking with each other across ideological lines who usually don’t, a symbol being the attention paid on both left and right to Sen. Rand Paul’s op-ed last week in Time. And one point worth discussing is how the problem of police militarization manifests itself similarly these days in local policing and in the enforcement of federal regulation.
> 
> At BuzzFeed, Evan McMorris-Santoro generously quotes me on the prospects for finding common ground on these issues. The feds’ Gibson Guitar raid — our coverage of that here — did much to raise the profile of regulatory SWAT tactics, and John Fund cited others in an April report:
> 
> Many of the raids [federal paramilitary enforcers] conduct are against harmless, often innocent, Americans who typically are accused of non-violent civil or administrative violations.
> 
> Take the case of Kenneth Wright of Stockton, Calif., who was “visited” by a SWAT team from the U.S. Department of Education in June 2011. Agents battered down the door of his home at 6 a.m., dragged him outside in his boxer shorts, and handcuffed him as they put his three children (ages 3, 7, and 11) in a police car for two hours while they searched his home. The raid was allegedly intended to uncover information on Wright’s estranged wife, Michelle, who hadn’t been living with him and was suspected of college financial-aid fraud.
> 
> The year before the raid on Wright, a SWAT team from the Food and Drug Administration raided the farm of Dan Allgyer of Lancaster, Pa. His crime was shipping unpasteurized milk across state lines to a cooperative of young women with children in Washington, D.C., called Grass Fed on the Hill. Raw milk can be sold in Pennsylvania, but it is illegal to transport it across state lines. The raid forced Allgyer to close down his business.
> 
> Fund goes on to discuss the rise of homeland-security and military-surplus programs that have contributed to the rapid proliferation of SWAT and paramilitary methods in local policing. He cites Radley Balko’s Rise of the Warrior Cop, which similarly treats both manifestations of paramilitary policing as part of the same trend.
> 
> As McMorris-Santoro notes in the BuzzFeed piece, Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) has introduced a bill called the Regulatory Agency Demilitarization Act, citing such unsettling developments as a U.S. Department of Agriculture solicitation for submachine guns. 28 House Republicans have joined as sponsors, according to Ryan Lovelace at National Review.
> 
> There has already been left-right cooperation on the issue, as witness the unsuccessful Grayson-Amash amendment in June seeking to cut off the military-surplus 1033 program. As both sides come to appreciate some of the common interests at stake in keeping law enforcement as peaceful and proportionate as situations allow, there will be room for more such cooperation. (& welcome Instapundit readers; cross-posted at Cato at Liberty)



Looking at the narratives, most of these situations could have been handled by a friendly visit from the Sherriff's department, or in the case of the fraud investigation, a detective or investigator. The entire purpose of SWAT, ERT or whatever name they are given is to deal with unusual emergency situations, not day to day poise activities. And the purpose of bureaucracies is to deal with paperwork and regulations, not attack taxpayers with submachine guns and armoured vehicles.


----------



## Humphrey Bogart

Thucydides said:
			
		

> It's not just the police who are being militarized, many US federal bureaucracies are also becoming militarized, as the article below highlights. At least some members of the Congress have woken up to the problem, and are starting to work towards some demilitarization:
> 
> http://overlawyered.com/2014/08/demilitarize-regulatory-agencies/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=demilitarize-regulatory-agencies
> 
> Looking at the narratives, most of these situations could have been handled by a friendly visit from the Sherriff's department, or in the case of the fraud investigation, a detective or investigator. The entire purpose of SWAT, ERT or whatever name they are given is to deal with unusual emergency situations, not day to day poise activities. And the purpose of bureaucracies is to deal with paperwork and regulations, not attack taxpayers with submachine guns and armoured vehicles.



Great Post, it's a perpetuating self-licking ice cream cone that is being fed to us through the use of media and effective lobbying.  I am hopeful that we are soon reaching the tipping point.


----------



## Scoobie Newbie

Most recent I think was Home Land launch a raid on a couple who imported a vehicle that didn't meet emission standards.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

If any of it is even remotely true.................nice thing when one side probably legally can't comment.  
Every inmate I escort to a public hospital is more than happy to tell the nurses/doctors/ etc that he's in for drunk driving.  Meanwhile on the CPIC in my pocket is his list of child molestation offences and all I can do is sit there and listen.


----------



## Fishbone Jones

Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> LA should have APC's, so should any major municipality.  No argument there.



Windsor, ON has one. Cougar IIRC. Wouldn't give us the pumpkin launcher though, even though there's plenty of us here that are qualified to use it ;D


----------



## Scoobie Newbie

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/1/feds-raid-nc-home-to-seize-land-rover-in-epa-emiss/
http://www.wbtv.com/story/26075071/woman-has-questions-after-agents-seize-land-rovers


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

Umm,....WTF was that??   Do you know this woman??  is she reputable??    Is she a drug importer??   

Oh,...you can't answer even ONE of those questions.   Well I guess you did read it on the internet so it must be true.............


----------



## OldSolduer

To a small extent the police are militarized already. The RCMP has its own Depot, and most major police forces have their own academy.

As for being armed with armoured vehicles and automatic weapons, it makes sense but are only required in the most dire of situations.


----------



## Humphrey Bogart

Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/1/feds-raid-nc-home-to-seize-land-rover-in-epa-emiss/
> http://www.wbtv.com/story/26075071/woman-has-questions-after-agents-seize-land-rovers



It's these sort of incidents that are causing people to lose faith in law enforcement.  Again, I don't blame LEO's themselves, rather I blame the bureaucracy and the politicization of law-enforcement.  The government needs to reign this problem in.  You lose credibility with the population you are supposed to serve, you won't have a foot to stand on.


----------



## OldSolduer

RoyalDrew said:
			
		

> It's these sort of incidents that are causing people to lose faith in law enforcement.  Again, I don't blame LEO's themselves, rather I blame the bureaucracy and the politicization of law-enforcement.  The government needs to reign this problem in.  You lose credibility with the population you are supposed to serve, you won't have a foot to stand on.



A good assessment IMO. High River, Alberta will likely not trust the RCMP for a bit after the shenanigans they pulled last year during the Calagary flood.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

RoyalDrew said:
			
		

> It's these sort of incidents that are causing people to lose faith in law enforcement.  Again, I don't blame LEO's themselves, rather I blame the bureaucracy and the politicization of law-enforcement.  The government needs to reign this problem in.  You lose credibility with the population you are supposed to serve, you won't have a foot to stand on.



Wait,...the vehicle is illegal to import but she did anyways??   ....and enforcing that law is somehow wrong to you??


----------



## Scoobie Newbie

You don't call out SWAT type pers to take a vehicle unless you need to.  They would have done their research.  Wake the fuck up Bruce.


----------



## Humphrey Bogart

Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> Umm,....WTF was that??   Do you know this woman??  is she reputable??    Is she a drug importer??
> 
> Oh,...you can't answer even ONE of those questions.   Well I guess you did read it on the internet so it must be true.............



Ever heard of Journalistic Impropriety?  We get it Bruce, your involved in LE and we know which side of the fence you're on but at least try and look like you are being a little bit objective.



			
				Jim Seggie said:
			
		

> To a small extent the police are militarized already. The RCMP has its own Depot, and most major police forces have their own academy.
> 
> As for being armed with armoured vehicles and automatic weapons, it makes sense but are only required in the most dire of situations.



I agree Jim, Police do need special tools in the tool box when "Shit Hits the Fan" but the use of these tools should only be used in the most extreme of circumstances.  Unfortunately, too often this doesn't seem to be the case.  Also, does every force actually require these tools or should they be held in special hands, this is why we have different levels of policing i.e. municipal, provincial and national.

To give you an example:

If New Glasgow Police requires an ERT or the use of an armoured vehicle, they can call in the RCMP.  No need for a small town force to have that capability but of course they wouldn't want the RCMP to come in and step on their trunks as that might hurt someones ego.


----------



## OldSolduer

Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> Wait,...the vehicle is illegal to import but she did anyways??   ....and enforcing that law is somehow wrong to you??



I don't think its a matter of enforcing the law. I think its the over the top use of tactical teams etc that irk people.


----------



## Humphrey Bogart

Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> You don't call out SWAT type pers to take a vehicle unless you need to.  They would have done their research.  Wake the frig up Bruce.



LOL!!  QFTT 

This isn't about enforcing laws Bruce, this is about appropriate use of force.


----------



## Fishbone Jones

:Tin-Foil-Hat: I tell ya, it's Obama's fault. He's turning Homeland Security into a para military organization. So he can use them when he becomes dictator. Blame it all on Obama. :Tin-Foil-Hat:


----------



## Humphrey Bogart

recceguy said:
			
		

> :Tin-Foil-Hat: I tell ya, it's Obama's fault. He's turning Homeland Security into a para military organization. So he can use them when he becomes dictator. Blame it all on Obama. :Tin-Foil-Hat:


----------



## cupper

Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> Wait,...the vehicle is illegal to import but she did anyways??   ....and enforcing that law is somehow wrong to you??



No. There is a question about whether the vehicle is legit or not. If the vehicle is 25 years or older, does not need to meet emission or safety standards. But there is a question as to the legitimacy of the VIN number according to court documents. Some importers change VIN numbers to make vehicles appear to fall in the 25 year loophole.

But when you send enough Homeland Security agents to have people classify it as a raid, maybe you need to rethink the optics. They don't go into detail as to exact numbers of DHS agents or if there was a Tac team there, so I'm not judging one way or the other.

But this is the type of mission creep that has people asking if there is a problem.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

RoyalDrew said:
			
		

> If New Glasgow Police requires an ERT or the use of an armoured vehicle, they can call in the RCMP.  No need for a small town force to have that capability but of course they wouldn't want the RCMP to come in and step on their trunks as that might hurt someones ego.



Now you guys are mind fuckin' readers.......I'm done with this thread.

This may surprise you but in the trade I work we step into each others 'territory' all the time if it means solving a crisis sooner/faster.    Are you telling me you would send back equipment that might keep your soldiers safer because internet trolls might poo-poo it??


----------



## RCDtpr

I honestly can't believe the nonsense I've read in this thread...from members of the CF no less.

Whine whine whine the police have mean looking things...this may come as a shock to you guys, but a lot of people in this country aren't very nice.  Shocking I know.

It's like I said before..better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.  Does anyone remember the Hollywood bank shootout in the 90's?  LAPD wasn't equipped with long guns and it wasn't until people died due their to inability to respond to the threat, that rifles became the norm in cruisers.  Why wait until worst case scenario to THEN get prepared?  The CF did that quite a bit in Afghanistan and how many lives were lost?  Guys died in Iltis' so they were replaced with G Wagons....more guys died and those weren't deemed safe enough so only armoured vehicles could leave the wire.

And Royaldrew...frankly your comment about small towns not needing it and should call in different "tiers" of policing...well obviously you don't know how the real world works.  When a call for help goes out they don't magically teleport to where the issue is.  What if that APC is several hours away?  Then what?  I remember several times overseas when we needed QRF  and it wasn't available right away....not a fun situation to be in.

Either way this whole argument is pointless....police beefing up isn't going anywhere and that makes me happy.  I'd much rather a service be overprepared and maybe stop something before it gets out of control then learning the hard way which so many people on this board (and the CF in general) seem to insist on.


----------



## cupper

recceguy said:
			
		

> :Tin-Foil-Hat: I tell ya, it's Obama's fault. He's turning Homeland Security into a para military organization. So he can use them when he becomes dictator. Blame it all on Obama. :Tin-Foil-Hat:



Nope, this one falls squarely on the God that all Conservatives pray to, Ronald Reagan, and his War on Drugs.

Obama is just reaping the benefits of the forward thinking Great Communicator.

In fact, Obama probably is sitting back and saying "this one's for the Gipper". ;D


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

cupper said:
			
		

> But when you send enough Homeland Security agents to have people classify it as a raid, maybe you need to rethink the optics. They don't go into detail as to exact numbers of DHS agents or if there was a Tac team there, so I'm not judging one way or the other.



ONE person [ the 'victim'] I might add.........at least in those articles.


----------



## Scoobie Newbie

Good.  

RCDcpl we aren't talking war here.  We are talking using the wrong piece of equipment for the job.



			
				Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> Now you guys are mind fuckin' readers.......I'm done with this thread.
> 
> This may surprise you but in the trade I work we step into each others 'territory' all the time if it means solving a crisis sooner/faster.    Are you telling me you would send back equipment that might keep your soldiers safer because internet trolls might poo-poo it??


----------



## cupper

;D


----------



## Humphrey Bogart

RCDcpl said:
			
		

> I honestly can't believe the nonsense I've read in this thread...from members of the CF no less.
> 
> Whine whine whine the police have mean looking things...this may come as a shock to you guys, but a lot of people in this country aren't very nice.  Shocking I know.



You're right that some people (i.e. a small portion, not a lot of people as you seem to suggest) aren't very nice but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be dealt with in a professional manner befitting of a society that governs itself with the highest values for rights and freedoms.



> It's like I said before..better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.  Does anyone remember the Hollywood bank shootout in the 90's?  LAPD wasn't equipped with long guns and it wasn't until people died due their to inability to respond to the threat, that rifles became the norm in cruisers.


  Actually nobody died other than the two perpetrators and they would have died sooner had any of the dozens of officers been able to hit the broad side of a barn given the hundreds of rounds they fired... perhaps it's better we don't arm more officers given that some of them seem to know little about actual firearms?    



> Why wait until worst case scenario to THEN get prepared?  The CF did that quite a bit in Afghanistan and how many lives were lost?  Guys died in Iltis' so they were replaced with G Wagons....more guys died and those weren't deemed safe enough so only armoured vehicles could leave the wire.


  Way to judge mission success based on body count but i digress.... comparing the work of the police to fighting in a war 
is a stretch and honestly, seeing that you are a police officer I find that a tad alarming.  I don't want police coming through my door with a "close with and destroy the enemy" mindset.



> And Royaldrew...frankly your comment about small towns not needing it and should call in different "tiers" of policing...well obviously you don't know how the real world works.  When a call for help goes out they don't magically teleport to where the issue is.  What if that APC is several hours away?  Then what?  I remember several times overseas when we needed QRF  and it wasn't available right away....not a fun situation to be in.
> 
> Either way this whole argument is pointless....police beefing up isn't going anywhere and that makes me happy.  I'd much rather a service be overprepared and maybe stop something before it gets out of control then learning the hard way which so many people on this board (and the CF in general) seem to insist on.


  Ever heard of the Mission Task Verb CONTAIN?   Who says you need to go in right away?  Maybe rather than rushing in guns blazing you can actually use your head and assess the situation.   Time spent on recce is never wasted.


----------



## J.J

RCDcpl said:
			
		

> I honestly can't believe the nonsense I've read in this thread...from members of the CF no less.
> 
> Whine whine whine the police have mean looking things...this may come as a shock to you guys, but a lot of people in this country aren't very nice.  Shocking I know.
> 
> It's like I said before..better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.  Does anyone remember the Hollywood bank shootout in the 90's?  LAPD wasn't equipped with long guns and it wasn't until people died due their to inability to respond to the threat, that rifles became the norm in cruisers.  Why wait until worst case scenario to THEN get prepared?  The CF did that quite a bit in Afghanistan and how many lives were lost?  Guys died in Iltis' so they were replaced with G Wagons....more guys died and those weren't deemed safe enough so only armoured vehicles could leave the wire.
> 
> And Royaldrew...frankly your comment about small towns not needing it and should call in different "tiers" of policing...well obviously you don't know how the real world works.  When a call for help goes out they don't magically teleport to where the issue is.  What if that APC is several hours away?  Then what?  I remember several times overseas when we needed QRF  and it wasn't available right away....not a fun situation to be in.
> 
> Either way this whole argument is pointless....police beefing up isn't going anywhere and that makes me happy.  I'd much rather a service be overprepared and maybe stop something before it gets out of control then learning the hard way which so many people on this board (and the CF in general) seem to insist on.



This site has lost contributing members because of the some of the commentary towards law enforcement. If I started posting articles and third hand knowledge about how an infantry battalion should operate and how a section should be equipped because I spoke to my uncles neighbor who used to be in the infantry I would in very short order told to STFU and stay in my lanes. I chuckle at the irony and the public wonders why there is an us against them attitude. 
I'm not saying the public doesn't have the right to question where their tax dollars are going, but you can't have Sheriff Taylor in Mayberry,that's not realistic in today's environment. 
And yes we are  biased because of our job, because we see more and know more than the average citizen or journalist.


----------



## RCDtpr

RoyalDrew said:
			
		

> You're right that some people (i.e. a small portion, not a lot of people as you seem to suggest) aren't very nice but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be dealt with in a professional manner befitting of a society that governs itself with the highest values for rights and freedoms.
> Actually nobody died other than the two perpetrators and they would have died sooner had any of the dozens of officers been able to hit the broad side of a barn given the hundreds of rounds they fired... perhaps it's better we don't arm more officers given that some of them seem to know little about actual firearms?
> Way to judge mission success based on body count but i digress.... comparing the work of the police to fighting in a war
> is a stretch and honestly, seeing that you are a police officer I find that a tad alarming.  I don't want police coming through my door with a "close with and destroy the enemy" mindset.
> Ever heard of the Mission Task Verb CONTAIN?   Who says you need to go in right away?  Maybe rather than rushing in guns blazing you can actually use your head and assess the situation.   Time spent on recce is never wasted.



Well if, god forbid, I ever have to respond to a school shooting in progress (luckily they never happen).....I'll be sure to recce the crap out of it first.

Royal I pose this question to you, as I'm pretty sure you're an officer.  Let's put yourself in the same position that chief of police was in at one point.  Someone comes upto you and says hey Royal, I have this great piece of kit...you probably won't ever need it, but it could potentially save the life of an innocent person or one of your men.  It's normally ten dollars but I'll give it to you for 1.  Would you turn down said piece of kit?


----------



## RCDtpr

Sheep Dog AT said:
			
		

> Good.
> 
> RCDcpl we aren't talking war here.  We are talking using the wrong piece of equipment for the job.



You're familiar with how to do my job are you?  Good to know


----------



## Humphrey Bogart

WR said:
			
		

> This site has lost contributing members because of the some of the commentary towards law enforcement. If I started posting articles and third hand knowledge about how an infantry battalion should operate and how a section should be equipped because I spoke to my uncles neighbor who used to be in the infantry I would in very short order told to STFU and stay in my lanes. I chuckle at the irony and the public wonders why there is an us against them attitude.
> I'm not saying the public doesn't have the right to question where their tax dollars are going, but you can't have Sheriff Taylor in Mayberry,that's not realistic in today's environment.
> And yes we are  biased because of our job, because we see more and know more than the average citizen or journalist.



WR, nobody is blaming the average patrolman here for anything that is happening.  When I am speaking about LE I am talking about the institution itself, not the actual members.  I've already stated earlier that I respect police officers for what they do and have to deal with.  If I made any off the cuff remarks I apologize and would re-iterate it's not personal but used merely to emphasize a point.


----------



## RCDtpr

RCDcpl said:
			
		

> Well if, god forbid, I ever have to respond to a school shooting in progress (luckily they never happen).....I'll be sure to recce the crap out of it first.  This just goes to show you have zero clue what you're talking about and are out of your lane.  Police officers are taught from the academy and up these days that containment is a thing of the past.  We train IARD because there is a public expectation we act.  You may be content to stand outside a building and listen to innocent people get killed.....I'm not.
> 
> Royal I pose this question to you, as I'm pretty sure you're an officer.  Let's put yourself in the same position that chief of police was in at one point.  Someone comes upto you and says hey Royal, I have this great piece of kit...you probably won't ever need it, but it could potentially save the life of an innocent person or one of your men.  It's normally ten dollars but I'll give it to you for 1.  Would you turn down said piece of kit?


----------



## J.J

RoyalDrew said:
			
		

> Actually nobody died other than the two perpetrators and they would have died sooner had any of the dozens of officers been able to hit the broad side of a barn given the hundreds of rounds they fired... perhaps it's better we don't arm more officers given that some of them seem to know little about actual firearms?



I am lucky if I can fire more than 51 rds of ammunition a year, because of budgetary reasons,  but I can imagine the outcry about militarizing the police if more money was spent on ammo and range time. There are so many hours available in a year for training. So far this year I've had to take ethics and values training, hearing conservation, visible minority awareness, mental health crisis interaction, customer service and 1 hour of shooting. Doesn't sound to SWAT like to me....


----------



## RCDtpr

RoyalDrew said:
			
		

> WR, nobody is blaming the average patrolman here for anything that is happening.  When I am speaking about LE I am talking about the institution itself, not the actual members.  I've already stated earlier that I respect police officers for what they do and have to deal with.  If I made any off the cuff remarks I apologize and would re-iterate it's not personal but used merely to emphasize a point.
> 
> Dude, if you could be any more dramatic I'd give you an emmy award!




Will I'm done here...I'm not going to argue with you.

As for the Emmy award comment....go ask the guys who responded to sandy hook if they would like one....they earned it I guess.


----------



## Humphrey Bogart

RCDcpl said:
			
		

> Royal I pose this question to you, as I'm pretty sure you're an officer.  Let's put yourself in the same position that chief of police was in at one point.  Someone comes upto you and says hey Royal, I have this great piece of kit...you probably won't ever need it, but it could potentially save the life of an innocent person or one of your men.  It's normally ten dollars but I'll give it to you for 1.  Would you turn down said piece of kit?



Of course I would want it; however, I will go back to my earlier point which I think was lost in our slap fest....

cops are much like soldiers, we always think we need more resources to do the job at hand and we think the government is never giving us enough.   We also always think our individual situation is worse than anyone elses.   It's the #1 reason why we aren't allowed to make any REAL decisions or police ourselves.  We are almost always incapable of objective self-reflection.

This is why we have civilian oversight


----------



## Humphrey Bogart

WR said:
			
		

> I am lucky if I can fire more than 51 rds of ammunition a year, because of budgetary reasons,  but I can imagine the outcry about militarizing the police if more money was spent on ammo and range time. There are so many hours available in a year for training. So far this year I've had to take ethics and values training, hearing conservation, visible minority awareness, mental health crisis interaction, customer service and 1 hour of shooting. Doesn't sound to SWAT like to me....



Agreed but maybe it's time for a discussion on training, something your leadership should be having.  I think maybe we are muddying the waters a bit here at well because obviously Canada is different than the United States.


----------



## J.J

Our bosses would love to give us more training, I honestly believe that, but it comes down to budget and time. There is a significant amount of mandatory training we are obligated to complete yearly and very little is on the range or tactics. We are given directions by our political masters on what they want from us and marksmanship isn't high on the list. 
We like to think we are different from the US, but I disagree, we aren't, we are just 10-15 years behind them.


----------



## Humphrey Bogart

WR said:
			
		

> Our bosses would love to give us more training, I honestly believe that, but it comes down to budget and time. There is a significant amount of mandatory training we are obligated to complete yearly and very little is on the range or tactics. We are given directions by our political masters on what they want from us and marksmanship isn't high on the list.
> We like to think we are different from the US, but I disagree, we aren't, we are just 10-15 years behind them.



Sorry, this is what I meant WRT different.  Socially we follow in step with the US with trends usually occurring here a few years after they occur in the US.  Right now a serious political discussion is beginning to emerge in the US about this because people are quite frankly fed up with it.  It hasn't hit here yet because we haven't gone in that direction yet but will it is the question?

I view the Ferguson, MO shooting through the same lense as the Sammi Yatim shooting in Toronto.  Situations were somewhat similar but the responses were markedly different.  Our police did a far better job handling the fall out from the Yatim shooting, I just hope it stays that way.


----------



## Fishbone Jones

As with all LE threads around here, this one too, is circling the drain.

Let's move on or we'll cut this one off as so many before it.

---Staff---


----------



## cupper

My own opinion, I don't have an issue with Law Enforcement getting surplus equipment to fill perceived needs. A tactical response team should be well equipped for the situations that they would be called out for.

However, what is troubling to me is the "mission creep" that we have been seeing in recent years where it goes beyond the hostage taking, the barricaded gunman, the active shooter situation. When you are calling out the Tac Team for support in executing an arrest warrant for a non violent crime, or raiding a VFW charity poker night, or performing alcoholic beverage commission inspections, you have to question why.

They have a specific skill set that is used for specific situations. But not every problem is a nail and not every solution is a big hammer.

One example that comes to mind is a domestic violence call. Every cop I've talked to says these are the worst because of the unpredictability of of the people involved, and the possibility of the victim turning on you. (The only reason I thought of this was because the cops were banging on the door of the upstairs neighbors who were having a minor disagreement that they wanted to share with the whole apartment complex). You'd never think about sending a tac team to calm the situation. But we are heading towards that situation.

Fortunately (I believe) there is a difference in the way things go here in the US and back home in Canada. There is a different mindset about the rights people have and how those rights are exercised, and the responsibility that comes with it. Suspicion of the motives of Law Enforcement is much more prevalent here that it is back home, some of it justified, most of it not.


----------



## Scoobie Newbie

Sometimes it's about hearts and minds and sometimes the situation dictates brute force and ignorance. I'll say it again right tool for the right job.


----------



## Container

cupper said:
			
		

> My own opinion, I don't have an issue with Law Enforcement getting surplus equipment to fill perceived needs. A tactical response team should be well equipped for the situations that they would be called out for.
> 
> However, what is troubling to me is the "mission creep" that we have been seeing in recent years where it goes beyond the hostage taking, the barricaded gunman, the active shooter situation. When you are calling out the Tac Team for support in executing an arrest warrant for a non violent crime, or raiding a VFW charity poker night, or performing alcoholic beverage commission inspections, you have to question why.
> 
> They have a specific skill set that is used for specific situations. But not every problem is a nail and not every solution is a big hammer.
> 
> One example that comes to mind is a domestic violence call. Every cop I've talked to says these are the worst because of the unpredictability of of the people involved, and the possibility of the victim turning on you. (The only reason I thought of this was because the cops were banging on the door of the upstairs neighbors who were having a minor disagreement that they wanted to share with the whole apartment complex). You'd never think about sending a tac team to calm the situation. But we are heading towards that situation.
> 
> Fortunately (I believe) there is a difference in the way things go here in the US and back home in Canada. There is a different mindset about the rights people have and how those rights are exercised, and the responsibility that comes with it. Suspicion of the motives of Law Enforcement is much more prevalent here that it is back home, some of it justified, most of it not.



Actually WE are no where near that point. In fact despite the best efforts of the "tac guys" there are still teams in Canada, large divisional teams with less then a half dozen activations a year.

We are so far in the conservative direction of deployment that it's laughable.

The kit is shiny. Boys like toys. That's why they are required to justify the costs- to bean counters. 

In fact. The only reason justin bourque arrived alive to court was because of all that new shiny kit and the absolute professionalism of a very good friend of mine- the least "militarized" nicest operator on the planet.

They had options when arresting him on how to cover ground and make that arrest that would have played very differently without that kit.

Just reread your post cupper. I think we may be saying the same thing.


----------



## Haggis

RoyalDrew said:
			
		

> If New Glasgow Police requires an ERT or the use of an armoured vehicle, they can call in the RCMP.  No need for a small town force to have that capability but of course they wouldn't want the RCMP to come in and step on their trunks as that might hurt someones ego.



Not really the best example, RoyalDrew.  New Glasgow Police are a regional police service, not restricted to simply "small town" policing.  A quick check of thier website sheds more light on thier AOR.

Also, remember that they were GIVEN an armoured vehicle by the MND.  Should/could they have refused it?  Sure!  Why would they?  My hometown police service (same approximate population as served by the NGRPS) would love to have and could use an armoured vehicle, but the don't have the budget to buy one or a benefactor to donate one.  The closest LEO armour for them is at least 90 minutes away.  If one were to become available for free, should they say "no, thanks" simply because of the optics?


----------



## Humphrey Bogart

Haggis said:
			
		

> Not really the best example, RoyalDrew.  New Glasgow Police are a regional police service, not restricted to simply "small town" policing.  A quick check of thier website sheds more light on thier AOR.
> 
> Also, remember that they were GIVEN an armoured vehicle by the MND.  Should/could they have refused it?  Sure!  Why would they?  My hometown police service (same approximate population as served by the NGRPS) would love to have and could use an armoured vehicle, but the don't have the budget to buy one or a benefactor to donate one.  The closest LEO armour for them is at least 90 minutes away.  If one were to become available for free, should they say "no, thanks" simply because of the optics?



I'm well aware of the size of New Glasgow and the outlying region, even if it is a regional force, the overall population of the regional municipality is still small in comparison to other cities in the Maritimes and you will also note, if you read this article: 
http://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/do-new-glasgow-cops-really-need-cougars-1.1182919 that the New Glasgow Police Service is the only one in Atlantic Canada with this type of vehicle.  You would think, given the size and level of crime in Halifax, perhaps they would be better served with it?  They didn't apply for it though because someone didn't think they needed it.

Also the idea that this vehicle is free is not accurate.  The members will require training to operate this vehicle, these vehicles are also maintenance intensive and are gas guzzlers.  The money they are using to maintain this capability could be better spent elsewhere.

Also, you again conveniently ignore the whole premise of my argument.  Of course, if I am a police officer/soldier/name any other government agency I am going to want the best kit and I am going to think I need/require the best kit.  It's this inability to look at something objectively from multiple angles that is the reason why cops and soldiers are not allowed to make REAL decisions.

There is a clear difference between WANTS and NEEDS.  You may want to have something that doesn't necessarily you actually need it.

We are increasingly straying off topic here though.  so time to put it back on track.

What we have been debating here isn't whether police should possess tactical units, advanced equipment, heavy weaponry, etc...

I think myself and everyone else can agree that police require a large toolbox to respond to a wide variety of potential calls, this is not the issue.  The issue at hand is are they using these tools properly?

I believe some of the assets are being misused and the rules governing the use of certain assets need to be better controlled and defined.  I.E. we need tighter control measures to govern their use.


----------



## RedcapCrusader

Anyone who says these things are unnecessary and excessive have never been shot at through a car door or window. Regardless of how infrequent those types of events occur, at least now they have something that can protect lives rather than a tin can that is easily turned into Swiss cheese. 

"I'd rather have it and not use it than need it and not have it."
The training, maintenance, and fuel costs for that vehicle is negligible compared to the costs of medical bills and funeral preparations.


----------



## Humphrey Bogart

RedcapCrusader said:
			
		

> Anyone who says these things are unnecessary and excessive have never been shot at through a car door or window. Regardless of how infrequent those types of events occur, at least now they have something that can protect lives rather than a tin can that is easily turned into Swiss cheese.
> 
> "I'd rather have it and not use it than need it and not have it."
> The training, maintenance, and fuel costs for that vehicle is negligible compared to the costs of medical bills and funeral preparations.



It's not about protection, it's about perception to the public... you don't use a hammer when you need a wrench.  Again your completely miss the point of this discussion.  It's not as if frontline cops will actually be using this stuff either, although according to some of you guys, they all should be, which is why we are having this discussion in the first place.

It's a dangerous job, we get it but it's also a volunteer job, nobody forced you to become a cop, if your frustrated with the parameters the government has set for you or you think it's too dangerous, get out, it's as simple as that.  Sometimes protection needs to be sacrificed in order to meet an objective.  We can't be wrapped in cotton wool at all times.


----------



## RedcapCrusader

RoyalDrew said:
			
		

> It's not about protection, it's about perception to the public... you don't use a hammer when you need a wrench.  Again your completely miss the point of this discussion.  It's not as if frontline cops will actually be using this stuff either, although according to some of you guys, they all should be, which is why we are having this discussion in the first place.
> 
> It's a dangerous job, we get it but it's also a volunteer job, nobody forced you to become a cop, if your frustrated with the parameters the government has set for you or you think it's too dangerous, get out, it's as simple as that.  Sometimes protection needs to be sacrificed in order to meet an objective.  We can't be wrapped in cotton wool at all times.



The public doesn't give a shit what police do, right or wrong, there are people out there that will cry and start an outrage. "It's not as if frontline cops will actually be using this stuff either" - how do you know? As a matter of fact in Cochrane, AB the RCMP received a weapons call out in a public park and rather than drive their crown vics over there, they drove their armoured response truck to put between the public using the park and the suspect. Luckily, the suspect fled rather than shoot. The officers driving were not specialty cops or ERT... they were regular GD officers.

I have no problem putting my life on the line to save others, danger is not something I'm concerned about. Danger toward me, as an LEO everyone hates me and danger is something I work with everyday, however there are some that are concerned. When there are tools and equipment that would be more effective and enhance protection of both the officers and the public (which these armoured vehicles accomplish), why not have them on hand?  

I'm not saying every officer needs to be driving one around for GD, that's not what anyone has been saying, but the public thinks that is what is going on. The public don't know better and are for the most part ignorant and don't care to learn or understand. If each agency has one sitting in the back lot ready for use, then the next time some idiot decides he's going to kill 4 cops (Moncton) they can greatly reduce the risk to life and safety.



> nobody forced you to become a cop, if your frustrated with the parameters the government has set for you or you think it's too dangerous, get out, it's as simple as that.  Sometimes protection needs to be sacrificed in order to meet an objective.



The government does say my agency can't buy an armoured vehicle. The government also doesn't stop violence from occurring. The government also doesn't say we should just drive or walk into gunfire with inadequate protection. By your statement I should just do my job without any protection whatsoever regardless of how available it is? The closest ERT and Armoured Vehicle from the location where I was attacked 3 years ago while investigating a noise complaint was over 3 hour drive, what about Moncton? New Glasgow? 

There is a reason for these things. Militarization is not one. 

Maybe the CAF needs to get rid of Gas Masks because the last real CBRN threat was Saddam and even he pussied out, it'll allow for more money to spend on things we actually need? Same logic right?


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

RoyalDrew said:
			
		

> I'm well aware of the size of New Glasgow and the outlying region, even if it is a regional force, the overall population of the regional municipality is still small in comparison to other cities in the Maritimes and you will also note, if you read this article:
> http://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/do-new-glasgow-cops-really-need-cougars-1.1182919 that the New Glasgow Police Service is the only one in Atlantic Canada with this type of vehicle.  You would think, given the size and level of crime in Halifax, perhaps they would be better served with it?  They didn't apply for it though because someone didn't think they needed it.



Mind reading again are we?,........fuck you're good.

Besides, I know of occasions where 'someones' in the military made  decisions that turned out to be really stupid because they were more concerned about 'optics'.   Shouldn't you go tilting at that windmill??
No,...wait......


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## Humphrey Bogart

RedcapCrusader said:
			
		

> The public doesn't give a crap what police do, right or wrong, there are people out there that will cry and start an outrage. "It's not as if frontline cops will actually be using this stuff either" - how do you know? As a matter of fact in Cochrane, AB the RCMP received a weapons call out in a public park and rather than drive their crown vics over there, they drove their armoured response truck to put between the public using the park and the suspect. Luckily, the suspect fled rather than shoot. The officers driving were not specialty cops or ERT... they were regular GD officers.
> 
> I have no problem putting my life on the line to save others, danger is not something I'm concerned about. Danger toward me, as an LEO everyone hates me and danger is something I work with everyday, however there are some that are concerned. When there are tools and equipment that would be more effective and enhance protection of both the officers and the public (which these armoured vehicles accomplish), why not have them on hand?
> 
> I'm not saying every officer needs to be driving one around for GD, that's not what anyone has been saying, but the public thinks that is what is going on. The public don't know better and are for the most part ignorant and don't care to learn or understand. If each agency has one sitting in the back lot ready for use, then the next time some idiot decides he's going to kill 4 cops (Moncton) they can greatly reduce the risk to life and safety.
> 
> The government does say my agency can't buy an armoured vehicle. The government also doesn't stop violence from occurring. The government also doesn't say we should just drive or walk into gunfire with inadequate protection. By your statement I should just do my job without any protection whatsoever regardless of how available it is? The closest ERT and Armoured Vehicle from the location where I was attacked 3 years ago while investigating a noise complaint was over 3 hour drive, what about Moncton? New Glasgow?
> 
> There is a reason for these things. Militarization is not one.
> 
> Maybe the CAF needs to get rid of Gas Masks because the last real CBRN threat was Saddam and even he pussied out, it'll allow for more money to spend on things we actually need? Same logic right?



Again, I am not questioning the need for special responses for special circumstances.  I've already stated that officers need tools in the tool kit to do their job; however, that doesn't give them Carte Blanche to misuse these tools, which is what this topic was originally about but has strayed because so many people here take everything so personally.  If you want to continue to take my comments in that direction that's your prerogative but we aren't really gaining anything from it.  

The issue here is the misuse of police resources and what exactly constitutes reasonable use of force.  Taking this back to Ferguson, MO.  Even the governor has come out and criticized the police as "too aggressive"

Here is a news article from two days ago, key points highlighted for you:

Courtesy of CNN - http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/17/politics/missouri-governor-nixon-ferguson/


> (CNN) – Gov. Jay Nixon is criticizing the “over-militarization” of the police response to protests that have been spurred by the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
> 
> Nixon appeared on most of the political talk shows on Sunday, calling the tactics of the St. Louis County Police “aggressive” and expressed relief that the Justice Department is conducting its own investigation into the young man’s death on August 9.
> 
> “There are times when force is necessary, but we really felt that push at that time was a little aggressive, obviously, and those images were not what we were trying to get to,” he said on ABC’s “This Week,” referring to the policing using heavily armored military vehicles.
> 
> “And in those situations where folks are rolling up heavily armored and they’re pointing guns at folks, that’s impossible to have a dialogue,” Nixon said.
> 
> The governor, however, offered praise for members of the community who have been protesting Brown’s killing during an encounter with police.
> 
> 
> Despite a shooting that left one person wounded and the arrest of seven people after a midnight curfew went into effect Saturday night, Nixon said the curfew was implemented peacefully and mostly without incident.
> 
> “Thousands of people spoke last night. Thousands of people marched and not a single gunshot fired by a member of law enforcement last night, and the members of community (were) tremendous helpful last night to get through what could have been a very difficult night,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
> 
> After days of heavily armed police patrolled the streets of Ferguson with a heavy hand and periodic use of force, Nixon ordered Missouri State Highway Patrol to take over the police response on Thursday.
> 
> The head of the Highway Patrol, Capt. Ronald Johnson, is African-American and from the area. He took a different approach than Ferguson policy and dramatically softened the aggressive stance.
> 
> Critical words about harsh tactics
> 
> Nixon is the latest politician to criticize police tactics that created a war zone atmosphere in Ferguson, a town of 22,000 near St. Louis.
> 
> Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill said Thursday the situation needs to be “demilitarized,” and on the same day, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who is considering a presidential run, released an opinion piece on Time’s website saying many police departments around the country are too militarized.
> 
> Democratic Rep. Lacy Clay, who represents Ferguson in Congress, said on “State of the Union” Sunday that “a militarized police force facing down innocent protesters with sniper rifles and machine guns is totally unacceptable in America.”
> 
> U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, also agreed that the reaction of police to protests was imbalanced.
> 
> “It appears that they may have reacted a little quickly on that force continuum when they decided to deal with … the protesters,” he said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
> 
> While Bernard Kerik, a former New York City Police commissioner, said the show of force was too excessive while protestors peacefully demonstrated, he said the police have a responsibility to protect personal property.
> 
> “You can’t let thugs take over the city. We saw that the other day. The police had to respond,” he said on CNN, referring to instances of looting.
> 
> On police militarization in general, Kerik said the increased militarization of the police started in the 1990s during the height of the war on drugs and continued after the 9/11 attacks and has continued because of mass shootings in schools and public places.
> 
> “It’s absolutely needed,” he said.
> 
> The legal process
> 
> Accounts of exactly what happened when Officer Darren Wilson confronted Brown on August 9 vary widely. Police said Brown struggled with the officer and reached for his weapon. Several witnesses said Brown raised his hands and was not attacking the officer.
> 
> Nixon also criticized the Police Department’s release of a convenience store surveillance video that shows a man fitting Brown’s description allegedly stealing a box of cigars just before Brown was killed.
> 
> Nixon said he was “unaware” the tape was going to be released and “we certainly were not happy.”
> 
> Nixon said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that the tape release is an attempt to “besmirch a victim” and “to tarnish him.”
> 
> “It appeared to, you know, cast dispersions on a young man that was gunned down in the street,” he added on “This Week.”
> 
> Nixon also raised doubts about the special prosecutor in charge of the case, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch, who has been asked by Ferguson community leaders, including Rep. Clay, to step aside because of what people say is his impartiality toward the police.
> 
> “He’s an experienced prosecutor. And this is his opportunity to step up,” Nixon said on CNN of McCulloch, who has been in the position since 1991. “It’s important we get this right. This is a big matter.”
> 
> McCollogh has defended the police response and slammed Nixon for sidelining the Police Department and putting the Highway Patrol in charge of security, calling the move “shameful,” according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
> 
> Offering little confidence to the local investigation, Nixon said he pleased that the Justice Department is conducting its own parallel inquiry, noting that the FBI is sending 40 investigators.
> 
> “That’s the kind of independent, external, national review and investigation of this that I think will assist everyone in making sure we get to justice,” he said.
> 
> Nixon’s criticism of the Police Department and shaky confidence of the local prosecutor Sunday comes as the Department of Justice announced a second, independent autopsy would be conducted on Brown’s body.
> 
> The healing process
> 
> As the people of Ferguson seek answers and demand a fair investigation, the factor of race has once again become part of a national discussion that cuts deeply.
> 
> “We all know there’s been a long history of challenges in these areas (of Missouri),” Nixon said. “And our hope is that, with the help of the people here, that we can be an example of getting justice and getting peace and using that to move forward.”
> 
> But Nixon admitted that it will be a challenge because of “deep, long-term wounds” that won’t be easy to heal.
> 
> Actor and activist Jesse Williams discussed a dark history that black Americans face.
> 
> “Police have been beating the hell out of black people for a very, very, very long time before the advent of the video camera and despite the advent of the video camera there are still a lot of incredible trend of police brutality and killing in the street and justice is never served,” said the “Grey’s Anatomy” actor and board member of the civil rights organization The Advancement Project.
> 
> On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, who was an instrumental figure in the civil rights movement, called on the police chief and Ferguson’s mayor to “literally apologize to the community.”
> 
> Michael Eric Dyson, professor at Georgetown University, said he wants more leadership from President Barack Obama, the country’s first black President who was a community organizer in predominately African-American neighborhoods of Chicago.
> 
> “This President knows better than most what happens in poor communities that have been antagonized historically by the hostile relationship between black people and the Police Department,” he said on CBS. “We need presidential leadership. He needs to step up to the plate and be responsible.”
> 
> The White House said the President was briefed on the situation in Ferguson again Sunday morning.
> 
> TM & © 2014 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.



Politicians are clearly taking note of this and so is the general population.  I like this article because it offers a balanced perspective.  I do believe police need the ability to respond to special situations but that ability needs to have strict control measures in place to ensure it isn't misused which in many cases it is being misused.  The police need to strike a balance between their right to protection and ensuring that they aren't infringing on civil rights of the General Population.



			
				Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> Mind reading again are we?,........frig you're good.
> 
> Besides, I know of occasions where 'someones' in the military made  decisions that turned out to be really stupid because they were more concerned about 'optics'.   Shouldn't you go tilting at that windmill??
> No,...wait......



Bruce If you want to have a debate on the military and optics start a new thread and be my guest.  I don't mind poking fires or getting slagged.  Debate on issues is healthy, it's how organizations clean out their dirty laundry.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

I don't.   I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer but I do know how to just watch, read, and listen..


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## Container

http://www.policeone.com/officer-survival/articles/7481992-Video-Mo-police-journalists-take-cover-from-hail-of-bullets/

Heres a video to watch with regards to how things are at night there. Someone explain where the "dialogue" is supposed to happen


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## Fishbone Jones

This thread is _not_ evolving. I'm tired of it gurgling and I'm about to jiggle the handle.

Last warning.

---Staff---


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## Retired AF Guy

RedcapCrusader said:
			
		

> Anyone who says these things are unnecessary and excessive have never been shot at through a car door or window. Regardless of how infrequent those types of events occur, at least now they have something that can protect lives rather than a tin can that is easily turned into Swiss cheese.
> 
> "I'd rather have it and not use it than need it and not have it."
> The training, maintenance, and fuel costs for that vehicle is negligible compared to the costs of medical bills and funeral preparations.



RedcapCrusader. This is not about the everyday threats that police officers may face in the line of duty. Its about the fact that police forces, especially tac teams, have acquired some very heavy duty military equipment and the fact the they are being deployed in a pretty heavy handed way. And this is not something new. I remember reading an article in the (now defunct) Saturday Night Magazine that covered this topic thirty odd years ago. 

Unfortunately, in my moves I lost the magazine, but I do remember one article about what happened here in Ontario when late at night a homeowner spotted some people skirting around his property. So, thinking it might be thieves he got his rifle and walked out on his porch. And then he died from a hail of bullets from an OPP tactical team!

No police officers were charged, and one of the subsequent corner's recommendations was that police tac teams in Ontario not be allowed to wear camouflage uniforms. And if what I've seen in the last few years here in Ontario, may be that corners reports should be dusted off because I seem to have seen a few Ontario tac teams running around in camo's.

Another point, is yes, there are a lot of bad people out there, but you can't plan for all scenario's. And having done up numerous int estimates in my career you plan for the most likely threat, not the worst case threat. Yes, you are going to have those situations where an APC would have been handy, but really what are the chances that you are actually going to need it! And think about how the money maintaining it could utilized for other resources.

A second point, a lot of this talk about police militarization refers to the U.S. And if you don't think the Americans don't have a problem go check out  Radley Balko  who keeps an eye on this kind of thing and scroll through his archives and come back to me and tell me if there isn't a problem in the U.S.

And unfortunately, as previous posters have said what happens in the States tend to migrate here to Canada.

My final point is that, again that its not so much the arming of police forces that's the problem, but the altitude of police officers and how they employ not just tac teams and, but in their everyday interaction with the public.

So, I think I've said as much as I can say, and I apologize for any mistakes, typo's, etc., it been a long day, I've run out of beer and its time for bed. I'll join the conversation tomorrow. 

A final, final word to Redcap, WR, etc., who have talked a lot about their jobs and the the threats they face, maybe they can explain to what happened to Stacey Bonds.


----------



## Bruce Monkhouse

Retired AF Guy said:
			
		

> A final, final word to Redcap, WR, etc., who have talked a lot about their jobs and the the threats they face, maybe they can explain to what happened to Stacey Bonds.



Yup, and the fact that you must pull up a story from 2010/2011 time frame shows exactly how full of shit your post is.


----------



## Fishbone Jones

Retired AF Guy,

That happened here locally and your 'facts' on the situation are more than a tad askew.

Anyway, this has, once again, devolved to the typical, and predictable, 'Us vs Them' attitudes, platitudes and outright horse shit.

Experts that can only get out of the easy chair for a beer, many who have never stared down a muzzle with a set of crazy eyes above it.

Individuals are being slagged for their choice of vocation and the group they belong to.

We've done this too many times around here. We've lost members, created bad feelings and left people shaking their heads in frustration.

I'm going inside with the other Mods to try find a solution.

In the mean time, if I see one more thread demeaning anyone for the job they do, especially the LE, I'm cutting off at the knees.

And if I can perceive even a smidgen of blame anywhere, that person can expect a lot of attention from the staff.

We're done here.

--Staff--


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## Bruce Monkhouse

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/09/29/museums_likelier_than_police_to_get_canadas_surplus_military_gear.html


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