Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
If you do the right thing for the wrong reasons, do you get partial credit?
Headline: President Obama isn’t going to let local police use tanks anymore, because Black Lives Matter.
First, what authority does the President have to tell local police what they can and cannot use? Isn’t this a Congressional decision, or a state legislative decision, or a city council decision? Where does Article I say anything about local cops?
Second, why did the federal government give local police military equipment like that in the first place, if they aren’t capable of using it wisely? What else aren’t they capable of using wisely, that we should take back? Assault rifles? Grant money?
Third, why are we taking away tanks when nobody has ever been injured by a tank? Why not take away Glocks since that’s what racissss cops use to actually do the killing? Oh wait, reading further, riot shields will require special dispensation. For a Defensive tool.
It’s as if he expects voters to read the headlines and begin to cheer, without reading any further.
Joe Doakes
to be fair, expecting that behavior has never let him down before.
Sounds like a solution in search of a problem.
I expect to see ads showing the riots in Ferguson and Baltimore juxtaposed with captions about how the administration’s response was to make it more difficult for local police to have access to helmets, batons and riot shields.
Maybe a nice little photo of some of the equipment used to capture the Boston Bomber that can no longer be transferred to local police.
Finished with footage of the three envoys sent by the White House to Michael Brown’s funeral and a photo of the funeral of a recently slain police officer with an empty chair signifying the damn that the administration doesn’t give.
And in another generation they won’t even have to worry about anyone being able to read the headlines.
As much as it has pained me, I have had to agree with President Obama’s actions. The federal government should have never made available to local police forces items like bayonets, grenade launchers, tracked armored vehicles. My criticism is that he has not gone quite far enough. They should not supply or make available wheeled armored vehicles, or many other items, which while appropriate for a military, are wholly inappropriate for a civil police force.
And as Joe has stated, the President really has no say in local policing. At least under my reading of the Constitution.
I can see a few armored vehicles for riot control, but when I see some of the towns that have gotten them, I’ve just got to scratch my head. There simply isn’t the critical mass needed to even maintain them in a lot of small towns that have them. If you don’t run an engine for a while, good luck getting it going when you need it–just ask the guy who failed to winterize his lawnmower/boat/rototiller/etc..
Bayonets and grenade launchers perplex me, though, since they really don’t have anything to do with sound police tactics, and can lead to some incredible PTSD among those who use them. Who was the rocket scientist that thought this was a good idea?
Now the question; what is the cost of keeping the equipment, and did Obama have the right to make this action? My guess on the latter is “dubious.”
Whenever Obama says that he’s implementing a policy that means that people will start doing something “smarter,” it’s an almost certain bet that the results will be the opposite. I suspect that the same will prove true in this case.
I only hope that it doesn’t take a police officer being injured or killed because the Obama administration has decided to deliberately make it more difficult for their department to get things like helmets, batons and riot shields.
Sorry y’all. I may not understand why he did it, but I approve of Barry’s de-militarization order.
I also aver, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t.
“Maybe a nice little photo of some of the equipment used to capture the Boston Bomber that can no longer be transferred to local police.”
Good idea Thorley. How about this one.
http://mrconservative.com/files/2014/02/2014.02.21-mrconservative-53076967a3edd.jpg
Nice to have when you’re doing forced house to house searches, for one guy mind you, in case some uppity homeowner asks for a warrant.
Well now that he is convicted and sentenced, could we ask why the boat was shot up, when Joker had no weapons with him? We will never know who fired the first shot, but reasonably certain that the rest joined in in sympathy. Not seeing a threat themselves, but hearing other gun shots, just joining in. Lucky they didn’t inflict any friendly fire incidents.
It’s worth noting that in general, you don’t want to have police officers carrying automatic weapons–using it properly requires quite a different skill set than a service pistol or shotgun. Even a lot of soldiers keep their M-16s on semi-auto, to the point that Afghans tracked U.S. troops by the number of single shots they heard.
It’s also worth noting that the weapons being carried are pretty much the same as they were in 1965, so it’s not like the Army and Marines can’t wear them out and melt them down.