re: #266 Aunty Entity Dragon

Yes. I have been a critic of police malfeasance for years. However, anarchy sucks. Like, really really sucks.

Police are a necessary part of modern society. We can and we must do a better job of making the police actually serve the public interest. As things look right now to me as an outsider watching unvarnished opinions from police officers at a police-only chat area, it increasingly looks like many officers see themselves as actual combat troops occupying a war zone, and they acquire “tacti-cool” black uniforms, helmets and military weaponry (including M113 APC’s with .50 cal M2 machineguns and cast off MRAP vehicles from Afghanistan) which strongly reinforces their separation from the very population they are supposed to be a part of.

This must end. The police are part of us and they work for us. We are not a defeated people that needs to be subjugated and disciplined. Good cops know that.

Police departments are getting MRAPs because those have already been built and thus offer low acquisition costs for a proven design. The M113 I’ll agree is over the top, but I see that less as militarism and more as an agency which overindulged its gear geeks. Doing that at taxpayer expense isn’t cool.

The M2HB may be non-problematic, but that depends on where it is within the US. Along the Mexican border, I’m actually supportive of a major agency having an MG or two to be used for counter-ambush in case things with one of the cartels get really nasty.