War Gear Flows to Police Departments

[mystery-ak]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-police-departments.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=WUS_WGF_20140609&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1388552400000&bicmet=1420088400000&_r=2

War Gear Flows to Police Departments
By MATT APUZZOJUNE 8, 2014

NEENAH, Wis. — Inside the municipal garage of this small lakefront city, parked next to the hefty orange snowplow, sits an even larger truck, this one painted in desert khaki. Weighing 30 tons and built to withstand land mines, the armored combat vehicle is one of hundreds showing up across the country, in police departments big and small.

The 9-foot-tall armored truck was intended for an overseas battlefield. But as President Obama ushers in the end of what he called America’s “long season of war,” the former tools of combat — M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers and more — are ending up in local police departments, often with little public notice.

During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.

The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units. Police SWAT teams are now deployed tens of thousands of times each year, increasingly for routine jobs. Masked, heavily armed police officers in Louisiana raided a nightclub in 2006 as part of a liquor inspection. In Florida in 2010, officers in SWAT gear and with guns drawn carried out raids on barbershops that mostly led only to charges of “barbering without a license.”

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[Chieftain]

yah...who needs a bulldozer when you have one of these??  You can plow right through the average wood frame home with one of these babies...when your suspect won't run, this makes damn sure he won't hide either.

Mixed feelings on these things.  On one hand law enforcement all over the country has become an armed wing of Homeland Security, and on the gripping hand we saw in Vegas what a couple of meth heads can do with the weapons they probably traded drugs for.

The potential for misuse is large.....

[EC]

Agreed with both points. Town clowns really shouldn't have military grade firepower to play with, but at the same time policing has become a LOT more dangerous when things do go down the crapper.

The solution is simple. Go back to the original ethos of SWAT. A dedicated team who do nothing but train and deal with the high risk cases on a call in basis. Sure, you are paying a team to practice 90% of the time, and their pay has to come from somewhere, but it'll probably be made up for by the distinct reduction in civil suits and liability claims run up by untrained idiots waving unfamiliar weapons around and pretending to be Rambo.

You could even set it up along the lines of the Highway Patrol. Central dispatch in each state, with teams scattered evenly, close to where they are statistically more likely to be needed.