Our buddies in Europe think we look like a bunch of damn fools. Or more precisely like a bunch of jackasses.
Ordinarily I'd be quick to dismiss some of the observations and leave it to our rather conservative society being compared to more social leaning ones...but in this case, they're on to something.
Believe it or not, they're as surprised and shocked as I am at the widespread use of MRAPs on American streets. The idea that our police is as militarized as it is, is shocking to people that come from what we could consider nanny states and socialist societies! That should shock every American to its core.
Militarized police are the realm of Fascist or Communist societies. That's what you would expect to see in the old USSR or Nazi Germany...yet we've adopted it without a public outcry.
Additionally they also make note that many law enforcement officers were seen sporting Combat Rifles (real combat rifles, not the AR's that hang out in my safe) and Submachine guns. Question. How often do they qualify? Are they competent? Do they get the required training? Can they even hit what they're aiming for? Are they trained to know the terminal ballistics of those weapons and when they're safe to use/or when it might be better to use a sidearm due to the area that the fight is taking place in?
Average cops using high speed weapons will eventually lead to unnecessary bloodshed in an urban area.
Last, the lockdown of Boston was essentially Martial Law without declaration. I wish there was a person that defied the instruction and was arrested so that I could see the test case for this. Was it legal? Was an instruction by public officials the same as an order to the public? Do they have that power? We don't know, no one is asking but again, we're seeing the Imperial Mayor and Imperial Governor taking place without debate or controversy.
Enough of my words. Go to THINK DEFENCE to see exactly what the Europeans are saying about us.
Sol, you often confuse me on this issue. You are a "gun rights" person, you want your ability to carry fire arms to be protected. Not just hand guns, but sub-machine gun / carbine / rifle type long arms in .223 / 5.56mm / 6.5mm / 6.8mm whatever.....
ReplyDeleteSo if the citizenry can legally arm itself with such weaponry, how can the police and other LE agencies not become "more militarized" ? If you can have a legally obtained M4 or something similar, with ammo than can shoot right through a standard police car, plus legally obtained body armour, then don't the police need to be able to "match" or indeed "out gun" the threat and have armoured vehicles to protect themselves (and the innocent citizenry).
I am not a U.S. Citizen, so I am NOT debating the rights and wrongs of your "gun culture" - I am just asking how you think it fits in with why your police and other LE agences feel they have to be more militaristic ?
its nuanced i guess. consider the fact that so called "assault weapons" are rarely...I mean RARELY used in crimes. additionally their use against police is even more LIMITED. meanwhile in our society with the so called explosion in gun ownership (i might add mostly by females) you see overall crime going down...especially violent crime.
Deleteso the police actually don't need assault rifles for use on daily patrol. so why do they need them? for special purpose units...but then again, if we applied the same standards today that were used in the 70's or early 80's when they became widespread, you would see that they wouldn't be used often at all. as a matter of fact the actual use of these SWAT teams would occur MAYBE once or twice a month in a major city and once or twice a year in rural areas...but instead you're seeing them used more and more for lower level crimes against people that would pose no risk to armed police much less a full fledged SWAT team.
if i only saw Boston SWAT or FBI HRT for incidents like this one then i would be their number one supporter for such teams. but instead i saw one used against a former Marine who was gunned down in his house in Arizona in front of his wife and child...and they had the wrong house.
Sol there was only two in history Fascist countries with militarized police, Carabinieri from cradle of fascist movment, Italy. And Guardia Civil from Spain. This kind of police force still serve in both countries also in France, Portugal and Netherlands.
ReplyDeleteyou wouldn't consider Nazi Germany to have been a fascist society? As far as militarized police i don't think you can point to a modern democracy that doesn't have at least an arm of their police force that isn't militarized. that at least a portion is going to be militarized is a given. that you see it in every state of our country is to be expected. remember Texas is as big as Western Europe by itself. so that is'nt really the debate. the debate is how large do you allow the militarization to get. i think its going to even street cop level and that's where i'm alarmed. that SWAT teams exist doesn't upset me, its just how far itsgone that's causing the heartburn.
DeleteDon't mistake nazism with fascist Sol, I know that German Nazi come from Italian Fascist but they are not the same.
DeleteI'm from Europe Sol, and frankly I don't understand yanks in many cases. You want both a great freedom with your many rights to do anything, anytime and absolute personal, legal ect. security. You can't have both, or you will recive high level protect in exchange for loss of some freedoms or you will have those freedoms and ... well not that good security.
But I agree with you that militarization of whole police force is bad thing. When the do that they create just another army, and US has an army already. Indeed SWAT team is one thing, patrol car with fully armed commando style officers is massive overkill. This is not Thunderdome, well not yet.
Greece circa 1970's was a military dictatorship, while on a visit eons ago I saw Jeeps with mounted machine guns patrolling the streets of Athens, not Submachine guns, not assault rifles but Big .50 caliber BMG's and .30 caliber mediums.
DeleteThe Civil Police carried M-3 grease guns.
Cheers Sol, not sure I would classify it as laughing at you guys but there are many issues that seem rather incredible; non encrypted radios, MRAP style vehicles on the streets, the military style and the alphabet soup of agencies.
ReplyDeleteuh sorry TD, i guess my description was rather provocative but i'm a bit alarmed at what i've seen this week. the radio chatter is perhaps the scariest part of it all. when REAL DEAL TERRORIST strike its gonna be lights out unless our security agencies get their acts together.
Deletebut back to the issue at hand. i want to point out how everyone that we consider living in "nanny state" societies actually are one or two steps ahead of us when it comes to some pretty important areas. the protection of civil liberties MIGHT unfortunately be one of them.
It probably is a culture and past experience thing, don't forget Europe has rather a long and non too distinguished history of killing each on an industrial scale for centuries, even in recent living memory.
ReplyDeleteYou might perhaps see this as a reason for us lot having what you might call a more liberal approach, I think as a continent we have the T Shirt with a lot of this stuff.
With regards to recent terrorism, Spain and the UK have a particularly unpleasant history that I think everyone is now very happy to put away, at least the worst aspects of it.
In mainland Europe armed police are common and they do have Gendamrme style organisations but in the UK we have a very different approach, unarmed police (except for specialist units) for example.
The armed forces are involved less and less in domestic policing even at the more tactical end of the scale excepting bomb disposal which is the sole preserve of the joint services EOD organisation, the RAF, RN and Army each have their specialist role in civilian EOD.
Most police forces have their own equivalent of your SWAT teams and the Met Police have SO19, a specialist firearms team.
The point I am making is there are very thick and clear lines between the police and the armed forces in these matters which makes Boston even more surprising when you see lots of civilian personnel wearing green and camo.
The encrypted radio thing was a real eye opener and I can imagine the turf wars when you have dozens of agencies must be horrendous.
Do you think there has been an over reaction?
Many Americans are also concerned about the militarization of law enforcement. The weapons, the equipment, the armored vehicles, it is just so much overkill.
DeleteAnd I also worry that because the terrorists now have so much data to review (via You Tube, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) into how LE reacts to these situations, they are going to be planning on creating opportunities for over-reaction by law enforcement agencies.
If LE overreacts this blindly to a situation, how long before you get accidental shootings of civilians or blue or blue incidents.
In the states, we have this sick trend of 'Swatting' or calling in a false report of 'man with gun' or something to see if they can get a police SWAT team to respond to 9-11 (999 to you Brits).
How long until we see a terrorist cells do a 'swatting' of an entire Metro area to damage commerce and the credibility of law enforcement?
As glad as I am the alleged terrorist is apprehended, the means by how we go their have brought up some troubling issues that loom larger than the individual act of terror did.
Sol, one of the commenters at TD just posted this link
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/791469--when-scanners-fall-silent
Its on the issue of encrypted radio and scanners.
Is this another one of those very strange issues that the US/Canada and Europe see very differently. I can't recall a single civil liberties organisation making any noise about having access to police operational communications.
it makes sense for the police to have encrypted communications in my opinion. from a security and officer standpoint if for no other reason. quite honestly if i was to start a terror campaign in the US i would make sure to monitor police (if they were my target) so that i could get good targets AND so i could escape detection.
Deletethis in my opinion isn't a civil liberties subject. its just people being nosey.
I look at this and have a lot of questions about the difference between this Boston thing and the Dorner/LAPD situation.
ReplyDeleteIs the reaction by Boston based on lessons learned by the Dorner case or is it totally based on some loose game plan hatched in an exercise?
What about London or Madrid? Did the Madrid police go house to house?
I'm also interested in the scale of the house to house searches. Was this a neighborhood? Was this an entire city like Watertown? Was this the Boston Metropolitan Area?
That Boston, the epicenter of the American revolution, would be so easily culled into submitting to warrantless searches is astonishing. I guess as long as they bring milk, it's okay to barge into your house and trample on people's rights.
Europeans might live in what you call nanny states but unlike US that is new to terrorism Europe had a fair share of terrorism in the 60-70's but never acted in such fashion police did their work that didn't include Martial law,we see Americans as scared headless chicken willing to sacrifice anything for 'security' and here you are talking 2 turist visa terrorists not quite the pros you had to deal with in Europe (PLO,RAF,IRA,ETA,Red Brigades,17 November... etc all had state supported funding and training)
ReplyDeleteFreedom means being able to provide your own security and keeping that freedom from being taken by the Government means less government intrusions on those freedoms.
ReplyDeleteBoston's citizens en masse lost their fourth amendment rights, if an illegal operation, drug or situation was discovered while searching without a warrant and was pursued to an arrest and conviction means the Bostonian also lost his Fifth amendment rights.
If these can be taken with no declaration of martial law for one escaped 19 year old terrorist they can be taken at anytime with the public safety in mind and as an excuse.
The perp was questioned without miranda and the citizens were assumed guilty of harboring a fugitive without the ability to prove themselves innocent in a court of law.
Sure he was a terrorist bomber attempting to destroy the rights and freedoms of American's and in this case the terrorist succeeded entirely.
The US government is no longer your average American's friend and benefactor, they are the enemy and see us citizens as the same.
Sucks to be us.