Our Militarized Society

[Griff]

Exactly.

[infinite monkey]

Meh. Looting and setting fire to things. That'll help.

[sexobon]

It's a tradition.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Tips For Being An Unarmed Black Teen
•Shy away from dangerous, heavily policed areas.
•Avoid swaggering or any other confident behavior that suggests you are not completely subjugated.
•Be sure not to pick up any object that could be perceived by a police officer as a firearm, such as a cell phone, a food item, or nothing.
•Explain in clear and logical terms that you do not enjoy being shot, and would prefer that it not happen.
•Don’t let society stereotype you as a petty criminal. Remember that you can be seen as so much more, from an armed robbery suspect, to a rape suspect, to a murder suspect.
•Try to see it from a police officer’s point of view: You may be unarmed, but you’re also black.
•Avoid wearing clothing associated with the gang lifestyle, such as shirts and pants.
•Revel in the fact that by simply existing, you exert a threatening presence over the nation’s police force.
•Be as polite and straightforward as possible when police officers are kicking the shit out of you.

link

[glatt]

Amazing how when the State Police took over from the local cops and showed up dressed like this:


the reaction from the crowds was like this:

[Spexxvet]

Officer Friendly
He’s just a good guy with a gun


https://medium.com/the-nib/officer-f...y-28e8d9399bbb

[xoxoxoBruce]

Oh yes! Tom Tomorrow's Officer Friendly nails it, Spex.

[DanaC]

Oh man! I am loving that comic strip. I followed the link and haven't been able to break away for half an hour :P

[xoxoxoBruce]

Tom Tomorrow is a classic. One of those cartoonists who can plow away the bullshit and cut straight to the heart of the matter. Of course if one were of a conservative bent, one might not find it quite as entertaining.

[Undertoad]

Really good Ross Douthat column in the NYT yesterday

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/op...e-suburbs.html

Last week, The New Republic’s Alec MacGillis ran the numbers for Missouri and found that the state’s Department of Public Safety received about $69 million from the Department of Homeland Security in the past five years alone. Which helps explain why the streets of a St. Louis suburb flooded so quickly with cops in gas masks and camouflage, driving armored cars and brandishing rifles like an occupying army. It’s our antiterror policies made manifest, our tax dollars at work.

And it’s a path to potential disaster, for cops and citizens alike. The “S” in SWAT was there for a reason: Militarized tactics that are potentially useful in specialized circumstances — like firefights with suicidal terrorist groups — can be counterproductive when employed for crowd-control purposes by rank-and-file cops. (The only recent calm on Ferguson’s streets came after state cops started walking through the crowds in blue uniforms, behaving like police instead of storm troopers.)

To many critics of police militarization, of course, the helmets and heavy weaponry are just symptoms. The disease is the entire range of aggressive police tactics (from no-knock raids to stop-and-frisk), the racial disparities they help perpetuate and our society’s drug laws and extraordinary incarceration rate.

[Big Sarge]

years ago, i was a ballistic breecher on my tac team for the drug task force. we only geared up for felony warrants where the suspect was likely armed. we rode in an old donated bread truck.

police are going way to far with these armored vehicles and other surplus equipment. the main thing is most of them don't have a clue to how to use it.

btw, i support the officer. he had this 300 lb kid pounding him and when he tried to take him into custody the guy charged him. fits totally within the accepted use of force continuum.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yeah, the kid was big... don't let him take control, big. I'm sure the cop went from wary to scared to panic very quickly. It's a shame it ended like that, but I can think of a couple equally bad endings. From that point on it's like the contrived script from a Bollywood movie.

The witnesses said, boy=good, cop=bad. No surprise there. I can see them all wearing warn-a-brother shirts, locked arm in arm, high kicking in unison like the Rockettes. This is the reaction to years of cops covering up mistakes/misbehavior by cops, truth be damned. First allowing, then (probably as part of rationalizing to others & themselves) condoning, finally approving, cops bullying citizens.

I've seen it to many times. I can understand a cop thrown into a situation where things could go bad in a hurry, so he/she must be large and in charge quickly. No, we will not discuss it, you will do what I say. That said, I've seen some sadistic fuckers who have no business wearing a badge, abusing scared and bewildered people, for no discernible reason other than breaking the boredom, or perversion.

It's part of the polarization of America. Aiding the divide and conquer strategy to retain control of the minions, by the oligarchs. Strategy, is giving them too much credit, though. They do guide and nudge, but the path to division is human nature. There must be an Us and Them, otherwise I wouldn't know who to watch out for, and more importantly I wouldn't have anyone to blame when I fuck up.

[DanaC]

The autopsy would seem to suggest that the witnesses who say he had his arms up in surrender were right. The bullet wounds (all six of them) suggest that he had his hands raised into the air and was at some distance away when he was shot.

[xoxoxoBruce]

A view from the black side.

[DanaC]

What a well written article. Made me want to cry.