[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Sign-in]  [Mail]  [Setup]  [Help] 

Status: Not Logged In; Sign In

Texas Man Arrested for Threatening NYC's Mamdani

Man puts down ABC's The View on air

Strong 7.8 quake hits Russia's Kamchatka

My Answer To a Liberal Professor. We both See Collapse But..

Cash Jordan: “Set Them Free”... Mob STORMS ICE HQ, Gets CRUSHED By ‘Deportation Battalion’’

Call The Exterminator: Signs Demanding Violence Against Republicans Posted In DC

Crazy Conspiracy Theorist Asks Questions About Vaccines

New owner of CBS coordinated with former Israeli military chief to counter the country's critics,

BEST VIDEO - Questions Concerning Charlie Kirk,

Douglas Macgregor - IT'S BEGUN - The People Are Rising Up!

Marine Sniper: They're Lying About Charlie Kirk's Death and They Know It!

Mike Johnson Holds 'Private Meeting' With Jewish Leaders, Pledges to Screen Out Anti-Israel GOP Candidates

Jimmy Kimmel’s career over after ‘disgusting’ lies about Charlie Kirk shooter [Plus America's Homosexual-In-Chief checks-In, Clot-Shots, Iryna Zarutska and More!]

1200 Electric School Busses pulled from service due to fires.

Is the Deep State Covering Up Charlie Kirk’s Murder? The FBI’s Bizarre Inconsistencies Exposed

Local Governments Can Be Ignorant Pissers!!

Cash Jordan: Gangs PLUNDER LA Mall... as California’s “NO JAILS” Strategy IMPLODES

Margin Debt Tops Historic $1 Trillion, Your House Will Be Taken Blindly Warns Dohmen

Tucker Carlson LIVE: America After Charlie Kirk

Charlie Kirk allegedly recently refused $150 million from Israel to take more pro Israel stances

"NATO just declared War on Russia!"Co; Douglas Macgregor

If You're Trying To Lose Weight But Gaining Belly Fat, Watch Insulin

Arabica Coffee Prices Soar As Analyst Warns of "Weather Disasters" Risk Denting Global Production

Candace Owens: : I Know What Happened at the Hamptons (Ackman confronted Charlie Kirk)

Illegal Alien Drunk Driver Mows Down, Kills 16-Year-Old Girl Who Rejected His Lewd Advances

STOP Drinking These 5 Coffees – They’re Quietly DESTROYING Your Gut & Hormones

This Works Better Than Ozempic for Belly Fat

Cinnamon reduces fat

How long do health influencers live? Episode 1 of 3.

'Armed Queers' Marxist Revolutionaries Under Investigation For Possible Foreknowledge Of Kirk's Assassination Plot


Dead Constitution
See other Dead Constitution Articles

Title: More Militarized Than the Military
Source: http://reason.com/blog/2010/05/14/more-militarized-than-the-
URL Source: http://reason.com/blog/2010/05/14/more-militarized-than-the-mili
Published: May 18, 2010
Author: Radley Balko
Post Date: 2010-05-18 17:13:23 by freepatriot32
Ping List: *Jack-Booted Thugs*     Subscribe to *Jack-Booted Thugs*
Keywords: war on drugs, jackbooted thugs, military, libertarians
Views: 1817
Comments: 6

A reader who asks his name not be used writes about the drug raid video from Columbia, Missouri:

I am a US Army officer, currently serving in Afghanistan. My first thought on reading this story is this: Most American police SWAT teams probably have fewer restrictions on conducting forced entry raids than do US forces in Afghanistan.

For our troops over here to conduct any kind of forced entry, day or night, they have to meet one of two conditions: have a bad guy (or guys) inside actively shooting at them; or obtain permission from a 2-star general, who must be convinced by available intelligence (evidence) that the person or persons they're after is present at the location, and that it's too dangerous to try less coercive methods. The general can be pretty tough to convince, too. (I'm a staff liason, and one of my jobs is to present these briefings to obtain the required permission.)

Generally, our troops, including the special ops guys, use what we call "cordon and knock": they set up a perimeter around the target location to keep people from moving in or out,and then announce their presence and give the target an opportunity to surrender. In the majority of cases, even if the perimeter is established at night, the call out or knock on the gate doesn't happen until after the sun comes up.

Oh, and all of the bad guys we're going after are closely tied to killing and maiming people.

What might be amazing to American cops is that the vast majority of our targets surrender when called out.

I don't have a clear picture of the resources available to most police departments, but even so, I don't see any reason why they can't use similar methods.

I've heard similar accounts from other members of the military. A couple of years ago after I'd given a speech on this issue, a retired military officer and former instructor at West Point specifically asked me to stop using the term "militarization," because he thought comparing SWAT teams to the military reflected poorly on the military.

Back in 2007 I wrote a bit more on this:

There's a telling scene related to all of this in Evan Wright's terrific book Generation Kill. Wright was embedded with an elite U.S. Marine unit in Iraq. Throughout his time with the unit, Wright documents the extraordinary precautions the unit takes to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties, and the real heartbreak the soldiers feel when they do inadvertently kill a civilian. About 3/4 through the book, Wright explains how the full-time Marines were getting increasingly irritated with a reserve unit traveling with them. The reserve unit was mostly made up people who in their civilians lives were law enforcement, "from LAPD cops to DEA agents to air marshalls," and were acting like idiot renegades. Wright quotes a gunnery sargeant who traveled with the reserve unit:

"Some of the cops in Delta started doing this cowboy stuff. They put cattle horns on their Humvees. They'd roll into these hamlets, doing shows of force—kicking down doors, doing sweeps—just for the fuck of it. There was this little clique of them. Their ringleader was this beat cop...He's like five feet tall, talks like Joe Friday and everybody calls him 'Napoleon.'"

The unit ends up firebombing a village of Iraqis who'd been helping the Marines with intelligence about insurgents and Iraqi troops. Yes, it's just an anecdote. But it's a telling one. It suggests that to say some of our domestic police units are getting increasing militaristic probably does a disservice to the military. Subscribe to *Jack-Booted Thugs*

Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread  


TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest

#1. To: All, *libertarians*, *LEAP*, *Shooters* (#0)

ping

Want to look at a new way to make some moola?click here and enter code 4d6a55744e5451354e7a673d-2

freepatriot32  posted on  2010-05-18   17:14:53 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: freepatriot32 (#0)

A most interesting and informative report - thanks much.

Lod  posted on  2010-05-18   17:21:49 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: freepatriot32 (#0)

The military is not as nice as he states. Nevertheless, if the military thinks the police are even worse then they are, than we are in sad shape.

DWornock  posted on  2010-05-18   18:04:44 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: freepatriot32 (#0)

deleted

The relationship between morality and liberty is a directly proportional one.

"You've got to put right and wrong above legal and illegal. Because when tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty; and it is not rebellion at all, it is submission to the higher law that our government is in rebellion to. We're not the rebels, they're the rebels."

Eric Stratton  posted on  2010-05-18   21:43:50 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: DWornock (#3)

deleted

The relationship between morality and liberty is a directly proportional one.

"You've got to put right and wrong above legal and illegal. Because when tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty; and it is not rebellion at all, it is submission to the higher law that our government is in rebellion to. We're not the rebels, they're the rebels."

Eric Stratton  posted on  2010-05-18   21:44:20 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#6. To: freepatriot32 (#0)

Wright explains how the full-time Marines were getting increasingly irritated with a reserve unit traveling with them. The reserve unit was mostly made up people who in their civilians lives were law enforcement, "from LAPD cops to DEA agents to air marshalls," and were acting like idiot renegades.

"Reserve" means that they've already been through as full-time FedGov mercenary's for most of them. Perhaps it was disturbing to the young full-time Marines because they were seeing themselves as the assholes they're going to be in 15 years??

_________________________________________________________________________
Obama is the miscegenated bastard of a white communist whore. True story.

“The best and first guarantor of our neutrality and our independent existence is the defensive will of the people…and the proverbial marksmanship of the Swiss shooter. Each soldier a good marksman! Each shot a hit!”
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941

X-15  posted on  2010-05-19   17:38:15 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest


[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Sign-in]  [Mail]  [Setup]  [Help]