If you want to know why the police in Ferguson, Missouri, have looked like an occupying force,
here is the answer:
Since 2006, the Pentagon has distributed 432 mine-resistant armored vehicles to local police departments. It has also doled out more than 400 other armored vehicles, 500 aircraft, and 93,000 machine guns assault rifles*.
As The New York Times reported in June, the Defense Department has been making use of unused military equipment by giving it to local precincts.
Some of it looks like this:
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| No, I'm not a meter maid |
In Ferguson, it looks like this:
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| Good afternoon, citizens |
.
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| Romeo was restless, he was ready to kill |
I remember what it felt like in the streets of Guatemala City back in 1979, when I was a pimply faced high school exchange student. A neighboring caudillo, Anastasio Somoza, was going down in Nicaragua. The caudillo in residence, Romeo Lucas Garcia, wasn't particularly interested in having a similar career path, so you saw rows of soldiers with machine guns lining the Avenida da la Reforma as we came into town, apparently to keep order. I don't have any pictures of the scene, because I was told in no uncertain terms by my host family that it would be a very bad idea to take any pictures of these gentlemen at work. You didn't want to mess with Romeo Lucas Garcia.
If you read the comments on conservative-leaning websites, you'll see that there's a vast difference of opinion among individuals on the Right concerning what's happening in Missouri right now, and what could happen elsewhere, maybe even here, at any time. I do understand that police officers have a difficult job to do, but I worry about their incentives. If you have all these nifty tools at your disposal, it's easy to imagine scenarios in which they might be used. We don't really know what happened in Ferguson initially, since you can read conflicting accounts, ranging from turning the young man who was killed into an Emmitt Till figure, to those who argue that he had murderous intent and was reaching for a police officer's gun. I wasn't there, and neither were you. What I can see, and what we all can see, is that there is a lot of military-grade firepower in the hands of local law enforcement, a trend that is now 20+ years in the making. We need to think about whether this trend is a good one. I believe in law and order, but if I had a choice, I'd prefer that we have a little less militarized law enforcement. You can't engage those you serve from an armored personnel carrier.
*
Reader Dave Thul notes that the article changed in the time between when I wrote this and now. "93,000 machine guns," which is how the article first appeared, is different than 93,000 "assault rifles." I'd be curious how "assault rifles" is defined. Having said that, I'd still sure like to know why St. Cloud has an armored personnel carrier.
4 comments:
Remember, America historically has a fear of a standing army, and that is why the army is under civilian control. Why not have the police under civilian control instead and stop giving them military grade weapons. I pray that this isn't another RNC 2008.
Did you alter the quote from the New York Times story, or did they make a change that you didn't notice?
You quote from the Times '93,000 machine guns', but the story you link to says '93,000 assault rifles'.
Please correct this.
Dave,
I assumed they changed it. I pulled the quote directly from the article as it appeared on Friday. I will make a note of it.
More or less, a machine gun is a fully automatic weapon capable of sustained fire, generally belt or magazine fed and mounted on a tripod because it would shatter your shoulder if you fired it without one. An assault rifle is fully automatic, but generally fires a smaller bullet at a lower velocity so as not to shatter the soldier's shoulder.
If our police forces get true machine guns, that means they're planning for trench warfare, which ought to trouble us a touch.
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