Congress under pressure from left and right to 'demilitarize' police

Groups on the left and right are uniting behind calls to end what they say is the rise of a "militarized" police force in the United States. They say the controversial police tactics seen this week in Ferguson, Mo., are not isolated to the St. Louis County Police Department and warn the rise of heavily armed law enforcement agencies has become an imminent threat to civil liberties.

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Congress under pressure from left and right to 'demilitarize' police | TheHill

Finally. Something liberals, libertarians, and conservatives can all agree on.

Finally. Let us all hope something substantive comes from Congress. The Tea Party could well squeeze Boehner's cajones and once again prevent Congress from doing anything at all. We will have to see.

Over a year ago we were talking about the militarization of America on another thread. Not only are police over equipped but far too many government entities have their own law enforcement components. Texas even has a law enforcement component for the state dental board of examiners, dental cops.

1. When you have budget restraints, and all law enforcement agencies, departments, etc. do, everyone and everything is going to have to be justified. If you have a personnel who do nothing but train and sit on their asses, if you have MRAPs and APCs and tanks, and offense equipment you are going to have to use them or they are going to get cut from the budget. It doesn't matter if you get tanks and helicopters for free, they must be maintained. People must be assigned to them for training and for maintenance. Same with SWAT and the like. So you have SWAT teams serving routine warrants and tanks showing up during community unrest.

2. Also, if you train for a specific job and for various equipment, you want to put it use. Somehow cops used to be able to talk a lot of people down from agitated positions, not always, but probably more than now. Now we have cops tasing people at the first provocation. One reason that happens is because they've been trained on the function and use of tasers and every cop has one. One wonders how much time is spend on the ethics of using tasers.

Is anyone surprised that cops trained to use offensive, military, equipment and tactics want to put all that training and equipment to use?

3. There is a public presence now that is everywhere. Football season is coming soon. When you watch college games watch the cops behind the coaches when the coaches are interviewed on the field. Most of the times the cops are all stern faced and vigilant, right behind the coach as if to protect the coach from news media or maybe a streaker. It happens even at half time.

OK, I get it, fans can become fanatical. It is a rare occurrence that the coach is threatened. It isn't a rare occurrence that the officials are threatened after a game and most of the time the officials have no police protection, certainly no immediate on field "protection" that the coaches have.

Probably one of the most family and most fun sporting events I enjoy is Cactus League baseball every spring. It's great. During play they have cops on field facing the scanning the fans the entire game.

Are cops bad people? I am not saying that. I am saying that cops have been sent the wrong message. We don't want a police state. We don't want cops with tanks. We don't want cops throwing female university professors face first into street as happened at Arizona State University because the lady asked the cop why he wanted to see her ID. Law enforcement needs to hear a new message.

It's up to the local police force to "demilitarize" or not. Does Congress make it easier by providing cheap/free equipment? Yes, but this responsibility is primarily local.

I want to know when the public will pressure Congress to be competent.

Good to see, but I doubt it will change. The militarization started because of the drug war, and many have been objecting to that for decades.

If people want to demilitarize the police, that is fine but then they also need to make it easier to mobilize the national guard then. The drug cartels and gangs have weaponry far superior to any "normal" police force.

TheNextEra said:

If people want to demilitarize the police, that is fine but then they also need to make it easier to mobilize the national guard then. The drug cartels and gangs have weaponry far superior to any "normal" police force.

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Embrace your inner fears and the propaganda that sustain them. eace

Henry David said:

Embrace your inner fears and the propaganda that sustain them. eace

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No fears, fact. If you think gangs and the likes aren't packing heavier than the normal police, you are living in fantasy land. If people don't want the police to be militarized, that's fine but then there NEEDS to be a military used against these thugs when the police aren't equiped enough to handle them.

TheNextEra said:

No fears, fact. If you think gangs and the likes aren't packing heavier than the normal police, you are living in fantasy land. If people don't want the police to be militarized, that's fine but then there NEEDS to be a military used against these thugs when the police aren't equiped enough to handle them.

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Fact?

Have you seen the military equipment being used in Ferguson MO?

My small home town police have a brand spanking new MRAP, and the armory has a handful of automatic weapons, AR-15 type.

What examples might you offer of drug gangs having superior fire power to the police?

TeleKat said:

Congress under pressure from left and right to 'demilitarize' police | TheHill

Finally. Something liberals, libertarians, and conservatives can all agree on.

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Actually, this Libertarian would prefer that her local police force (which my taxes pay for) decide what's right for our town, not the idiots in DC. I'm also not a big fan of these kinds of things. After Sandy Hook it was all about making gun laws stricter, and so on.

Henry David said:

Fact?

Have you seen the military equipment being used in Ferguson MO?

My small home town police have a brand spanking new MRAP, and the armory has a handful of automatic weapons, AR-15 type.

What examples might you offer of drug gangs having superior fire power to the police?

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Hey Henry :2wave:

I think when Era says "normal police" he is talking about ordinary, pistol-wielding police officers. Not the militarized thugs we see in Ferguson.

tres borrachos said:

Actually, this Libertarian would prefer that her local police force (which my taxes pay for) decide what's right for our town, not the idiots in DC. I'm also not a big fan of these kinds of things. After Sandy Hook it was all about making gun laws stricter, and so on.

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Hey tres :2wave:

Local police departments would not have the funds to become a small army if they weren't receiving funds and equipment from the federal government. Ferguson only has the equipment they have because the Pentagon gave it to them.

Demilitarizing the police would really only entail repealing DoD program 1033, which would have to be done at a federal level.

TeleKat said:

Hey tres :2wave:

Local police departments would not have the funds to become a small army if they weren't receiving funds and equipment from the federal government. Ferguson only has the equipment they have because the Pentagon gave it to them.

Demilitarizing the police would really only entail repealing DoD program 1033, which would have to be done at a federal level.

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Hi Kitty :2wave:

Ferguson only needs the equipment because of what's going on there. I would rather my PD have access to that if something similar happened in my town. I believe that some people are truly dangerous. I want to be protected from them. Can't get behind this....and I think Congressman Johnson needs to worry more about Guam capsizing than what's good for Main Street in my town.

tres borrachos said:

Hi Kitty :2wave:

Ferguson only needs the equipment because of what's going on there. I would rather my PD have access to that if something similar happened in my town. I believe that some people are truly dangerous. I want to be protected from them. Can't get behind this....and I think Congressman Johnson needs to worry more about Guam capsizing than what's good for Main Street in my town.

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Well, Ferguson had this equipment long before the riots. It's not like they were sent the equipment specifically to deal with this one situation in particular. They've had it, they've used it before, and they shouldn't have it to begin with IMO.

Besides, the equipment they brandished was excessive...even for the situation at hand. The Ferguson police showing up in military gear only added fuel to the fire. Intentionally targeting reporters and shutting down their equipment? More fuel to the fire.

We need our peace officers back, and we should have a national guard unit on standby for the situation regular officers can't handle. There should be legitimate and probable cause for having to deploy the national guard (we don't need another Kent State incident) and even the national guard units should not be obsessively armed. If you need to deploy an army, deploy the army.

Okay, I guess we'll disagree on this.

I'll wait until Congress puts out something that isn't a knee jerk reaction to a big story.

Demilitarize the police, that is just pandering to the minority vote. With the silliness going on in Ferguson, some of you want less police power. Have you noticed that there are riots and the National Guard had to be called. Maybe some of you want dead cops in the street and a repeal of the 3rd amendment so you will be safe. I am sorry but weakening the police will just allow the criminal element in our society to thrive. Only people who would support that are, people pandering to the minority vote and the George Zimmerman School of Public Safety.

voyager1 said:

Demilitarize the police, that is just pandering to the minority vote. With the silliness going on in Ferguson, some of you want less police power. Have you noticed that there are riots and the National Guard had to be called. Maybe some of you want dead cops in the street and a repeal of the 3rd amendment so you will be safe. I am sorry but weakening the police will just allow the criminal element in our society to thrive. Only people who would support that are, people pandering to the minority vote and the George Zimmerman School of Public Safety.

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I don't think people are objecting to the power the police have, the authority they have, we are objecting to the EQUIPMENT they have, specifically, the military equipment they have that is designed for a war zone.

Equipment, and to a large degree, the tactics they employ nationwide. Such as "No Knock" raids, flash-bang devices and tactics that most of the time wound or kill innocents including children.

No longer Peace Officers, today's cops are more like soldiers on a search and destroy mission.

Henry David said:

I don't think people are objecting to the power the police have, the authority they have, we are objecting to the EQUIPMENT they have, specifically, the military equipment they have that is designed for a war zone.

Equipment, and to a large degree, the tactics they employ nationwide. Such as "No Knock" raids, flash-bang devices and tactics that most of the time wound or kill innocents including children.

No longer Peace Officers, today's cops are more like soldiers on a search and destroy mission.

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Yeah well, when Ferguson looks looks like Fallujah, there is a problem. Maybe a conversation on what the Police does is a worthy topic, but when you got people acting like animals in the streets in an American city, to me it just seems like pandering to the minority vote when tacking that on to the unrest in Ferguson.

voyager1 said:

Yeah well, when Ferguson looks looks like Fallujah, there is a problem. Maybe a conversation on what the Police does is a worthy topic, but when you got people acting like animals in the streets in an American city, to me it just seems like pandering to the minority vote when tacking that on to the unrest in Ferguson.

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Frequently people act like animals. Some of those people are wearing police uniforms and others are not. Man's inhumanity to man is a well known dynamic. The rule of law is supposed to compensate for that dark side.