Special

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

This is hilarious. During the Zimmerman trial, a cop called to testify wore her uniform with all her ribbons. Some sharp-eyed blogger recognized the ribbons and posted about it, resulting in this revelation.

She’s not authorized to wear those ribbons.

Why didn’t they come up with their own, or adopt those used by other law enforcement agencies like NYPD or LAPD? Is this a symptom of the over-militarization of police, along with armored vehicles and assault rifles?

Why does the police department NEED to award ribbons to cops? I don’t get any ribbons at my job. And yes, now I wonder if I should be getting ribbons. And medals. And special days of honor and parades. On a related note it always annoys me when a cop or fireman funeral is excuse to tie up traffic for miles around. And excuse to tie up resources, burn up gas sending cops/firemen from anywhere within a 1000 miles or more. What would be the cop response to a parade of garbage trucks for a funeral, tying up traffic, blocking intersections for a half day or more, etc? I’m guessing that then special permits would be needed and non-available.

Joe Doakes

I don’t mind the police funerals.

The militarization of the police, on the other hand, is a huge danger to our society. More later.

11 thoughts on “Special

  1. One of the problems with increasingly militarized police forces is the fragment chain of command/accountability. The unions routinely bypass the Police Chiefs (Chicago), city aldermen/councilmen develop “special relationships” with Dept heads and precinct commanders, and Mayors often act like they are the police chief and political machine operatives (non elected types)/ campaign funders always have their loyal aspirational followers on the force. None of this contributes to a real environment of military style discipline, indeed it provides fertile breeding ground for graft and corruption (see LAPD).

  2. Give them this much credit Joe: At least they didn’t spend millions of dollars with a study committee, a medal design search committee, a bid/bribe process to select a medal designer, a committee to approve the medal design, a bid/bribe process to select the maker and another committee to approve the inevitable cost overruns the medal maker will have. It appears that they told some staffer to run over to the Army/Navy Surplus store and grab whatever they had the most of.

  3. What seems clear is that the attacks of 9/11, and the federal DHS dollars that were directed to police forces in response to them, have encouraged local law enforcement to mimic paramilitary tactics similar those that were first used in the “war on drugs.”

    Both the “war on drugs” and the “war on terror” have given law enforcement across the country a reason to purchase the latest technology, equipment and tactical training for their local police departments.

    As

  4. Right, Emery, but this current was going on long before 9/11 – as Radley Balko points out.

    Under the Clinton Administration, the number of armed feds skyrocketed, and both the number and the aggressiveness of use of federal SWAT teams zoomed. Under Reagan and Bush I, there were very few federal SWAT teams – the FBI established its Hostage Rescue Team in 1983 in reaction to the wave of terror attacks at the time.

    Under Clinton? Practically every cabinet department sproinged a SWAT team. Agriculture? HUD? Labor? Bureau of Land Management? Fish and Wildlife Service? Dept of Interior? Check. Even Customs (they’re the ones that mounted a “get Bin Laden!”-style raid to capture Elian Gonzalez)? Even the Department of Education has one.

    And they ALL started under Clinton. .

    As to the locals? Someone I know who follows the issue says it started in the nineties, where a combination of Clinton-era paranoia over home-grown terror (exacerbated over Oklahoma City, WTC1 and Atlanta) and an influx of Gulf War veterans to police departments started the warrior cop tradition.

  5. It would be fair to say, this trend has continued and has expanded under both Republican (GW Bush) and Democratic (Obama) administrations.

  6. While, as Stolen Valor Scumbag and leftist tool, “TwoPutt” Tommy Johnson will attest, I abhor disrespect of military decorations and those that misrepresent or exaggerate their military record.

    That being said, I prefer coppers wearing ribbons on clean, pressed uniforms more than seeing those wearing military fatigues or worse, dressed like gangbangers.

    I say it’s time to bring back bowties and shiny lace up shoes.

  7. MBerg notes Radley Balko in his comment above and yesterday I read a Balko recap of the top dozen raids gone wrong.The start of police militarization was in the ’50’s Los Angeles to deal with perceived ‘ethnic’ problems. It sprung from then Chief Parker’s reorganization of the LAPD along the lines of the Military Police and grew into later Chief Darryl Parks creation of SWAT Teams.
    Yesterday I found one of my children balling her eyes out as she learned of a Facebook page devoted to tracking police shootings of dogs both when they are a potential threat to public safety (ie: loose pitbulls) to wrong door raids where Fido takes a bullet because the copper is distracted by the dog barking at strangers attempting to enter the house.
    And if you think dogs being shot during wrong door raids only happens elsewhere, well, educate yourself.
    http://reason.com/blog/2012/08/10/st-paul-cops-shoot-dog-in-wrong-door-rai

  8. To a certain extent, I think the ribbons are like participation trophies in youth sports.

  9. Mr D – You would really have to know what the ribbons noted (showing up for work on time for a year versus rescuing infants from an inferno), but I think you are right.
    After my Mom sold the house and moved to retirement valhalla, she sent me some of my Dad’s WWII items. He had numerous ribbons from the various campaigns his unit participated in as well as ribbons because he happened to serve at an airfield in a country that later gave ribbons to the Yanks that happened to serve their. He died before the concept of participation trophies became popular, but knowing him, he likely would have agreed with you on the participation trophy aspect of his ribbons.

  10. I remember when my uncle got his Vietnam ribbon in the mail.

    He’d earned it, as he sarcastically noted, underwater, off the Vietnamese coast, in a submarine.

    To his credit, the Peoples’ Navy never did attack the US.

  11. One of the dumber things the Sanford PD did in this mess was choose a WWII Liberation of Europe medal for the officer to wear, because according to their spokesman, “because there weren’t many veterans from that period still alive so they didn’t think people would notice.”

    The proliferation of Stolen Valor cases has pushed the issue to the front burner for a lot of veterans. I know guys that keep the list of US military medals and Order of Precedence on their smartphones so they can pull it up quickly when needed.

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