(January 5, 2018 at 6:07 pm)FFaith Wrote:(January 5, 2018 at 6:01 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: Militarization of the police What does that mean?
Giving the police military vehicles that were used in the recent wars would be an example of militarization of the police. There's a very good chance that Shell B was not talking about anything like that though, but I just thought it should be pointed out that there is a point where they have too much equipment, or as khemikal put it, the wrong equipment.
August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman kills his wife and mother and then takes a box of long guns to the top of the clock tower at University of Texas in Austin. He kills 16 more people before a cop with a gun ends his spree. He wounded a lot of people and shot people trying to rescue them from under his eagle eye. The police had to borrow armored cars from Wells Fargo to retrieve the injured students.
Having an armored car handy would have saved some of the wounded.
The US government could sell the obsolete APCs to some tin-pot dictator to help him keep the population under control, or they could donate them to cities so they could be used to save lives. After seeing armored cars at every major intersection in Lima, Peru, way back when I do have an opinion on that.
And let's talk "tactical gear", aka "I'm going home tonight" cop clothes. First, you may hear about cops "gearing up" when there's a hostage situation. They have to gear up because they don't wear that stuff all the time. My neighbor has had his in the truck for years and gets it out each year for inventory, then puts it away again.
"militarization" is a buzz word that very few people understand but many fling about.
