Militarizing The Police – Part 1

Has everybody gone bonkers?

Okay, that was rude. Anyone who visits my website and reads my blogs is obviously the textbook definition of completely sane, as well as being beautiful, intelligent, and beyond reproach.

But the other day, the picture you see here was posted on Facebook, aptly titled along the lines of:  “Can you believe this? Why do they need this in Doraville, GA?”

Okay . . . I completely agree with that sentiment. Doraville, GA is a sleepy town with less than 8,500 people. Why do they need a military tank?

But let me be candid:  What really prompts me to throw in my three cents here is some lady who commented on the Facebook posting. I won’t name this person, because I don’t want to hurt her feelings or tarnish her reputation, even though it’s patently obvious she’s too stupid to boil water. But what she said was mind-boggling, idiotic, horrifying, and at the same time revealing of a mentality that seems to be metastasizing. Paraphrasing . . .

“Of course, they need this. What if it was your daughter who was kidnapped, and being held hostage. They could use it to save her!”

Where do we begin?

Right off, let me point out that armored vehicles like this only protect the people inside them, the law enforcement officials charged with leading an assault against well-armed adversaries, be they bank robbers, terrorists, kidnappers, or rampaging postal clerks.

They do not protect hostages!

Next let me invoke my credentials as a novelist, using a degree of creative license and just a bare minimum of imagination, to explain to this mentally challenged lady what I would have a kidnapper character of my creation do if the police showed up in this tank. I can’t claim much originality, since this is usually how this sort of scene plays out in real life.

Right off, my psychopathic antagonist would give them notice: “Listen, you short bus meter maids. You’ve got one minute to turn that 8 ton hunk of steel around and beat a retreat, or I put a bullet in the girl’s pretty head!”

Then, if whoever was in charge of the operation didn’t get the message, instead deciding  to proceed with their fool’s errand, my character would do what any demented kidnapping psychotic would do. As the tank approached the house, he would have one final going away fling by raping the girl, capping off a quick but satisfying skrog by capping her (i.e. refer to bullet allusion above), then blowing his own brains out, because even though he’s crazy, he’s got pride, thus has no intention of being captured and humiliated by a bunch of hayseed sheriffs in some backwater county in Texas or Missouri or Georgia.

So, lady who sees all the potential merits in having gear designed for use by our military on the battlefield in the hands of knucklehead local bumpkin Andy Griffith police, whaddya think? How did that work out?

What is going on in America?

What logic prompts this kind of overkill?

What possible constructive purpose is there to the federal government giving __ handing over free of charge! __ $500,000,000 worth of heavy-duty military battlefield equipment to local law enforcement agencies, as it did in FY 2011?

First of all, the escalation of weaponry, that is, getting bigger and badder machine guns, flame throwers, grenades, tanks and assault vehicles, just ends up piling up more dead bodies, in increasingly smaller chunks of human remains.

Second, what happened to American ingenuity? You remember that, I’m sure. It’s using the grey matter crammed into our skulls to figure out ways of solving problems. In the hostage situation above, for example, crisis management teams have psychologists and negotiators. They have marksmen or stealth experts who can climb through heating ducts, and who knows, maybe ways of making themselves invisible. What we have there is mind power at work, as opposed to fire power. Which again alludes to the simple fact, generally heavy artillery is not the best way of extricating a frail young creature from a hostage situation __ at least in one piece and still breathing.

So what is all of this stuff for? Why do small towns now have vehicles that was designed for use in Afghanistan, not the corn belt or even the most violent urban areas of America? Why is the Department of Defense giving this stuff to local police units?

I think I know. But before I get into it __ that will be in Part 3 __ I would love to hear your comments. Please stick to the topic. I don’t want any 2nd Amendment raving or political rants from either end of the spectrum. Please just explain . . .

Why are the local police being militarized in America?