I am entirely certain you cannot disentangle the two motives.
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Which ones are the crazy people again?
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Point taken.
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A friend regularly peruses the DODâs reutilization website (and the private sites, as well) for a variety of items, and he has never failed to amaze me with some of his better purchases. Lately, he picked up a military 5K diesel-powered generator for ~$500. It had a whopping 2.5 hours on the run clock and looks to be practically brand-new (his estimate of what they went for when purchased by the military is anywhere from $3K to $5K a piece).
There are many other factors going in to why a local PD might not want to reutilize such equipment (no trained mechanics, price of parts, whatever), but there are a wide variety of excellent deals to be had from what used to be called the DRMO. So this Homeland Security (fuck me I hate the use of âHomelandâ, probably most of all since it came from Our Lady of Perpetual Dickheadedness, GWB) stuff about buying new things for ungodly amounts is a rather blatant misuse of funds, IMO.
It goes without saying that Concord has zero need for a freakin Bearcat. The Hamptons? West Palm and Bal Harbour? Certainly! We gots rich folks to protect from the Hoi Polloi, ya know?
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They sure caught those guys leaving Mooninites under the bridges, though!
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I used to live near a town in NJ that had a tank. They got it back in the 1970s, when there was a lot of Puerto Rican politican activism about independence, and the local police chief, who was named Joe McCarthy and tried to live up to his namesake, convinced the town council that they should be worried about the Puerto Rican communities along the shore getting uppity and rioting and attacking the local Navy base, which might not be able to defend itself so itâd need help from the town to keep the rioters from getting the nuclear weapons. (Yes, really, and they bought the tank, but fortunately didnât use it for anything except a few parades.) If theyâd wanted military equipment for a good reason, some kind of amphibious assault vehicle might have been useful for hauling cars out of the local swamps or something, but no, small tank of some kind.
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Donât be so pessimitic. A large heavily armored vehicle could have allowed the police to mow through innocent civillians congregating in the area, trying to run away, or lying injured on their way to the attack site.
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âSmall-town?â Ouch. I think they prefer âcapital city.â I, of course, think the BearCat is ridiculous, but itâs not fair to pretend that Concord is some insignificant backwoods village. As teenagers growing up in Concord we would frequently complain about the size of the police force, and would always come up against the (at least somewhat rational) response of âState Prison, State Hospital, State Offices, State House.â Not to mention the enormous Concord Hospital system, Franklin Pierce Law, the Tech, and other institutions not reflected in the census size. Plus, weâve gotta protect those fledgling plutocrats at St. Paulâs on race weekendsâŚ
Just playing devilâs advocate here; carry on.
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Oh I forgot.
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who is pretending that Concord insignificant? it is small, and back woods, and half the country thinks the revolution started there.
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Thatâs just crazy pants. 2nd Amendment, 4 lyfffffffff!!!1!!!11!!1
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Well, for one, itâs a city, not a town. And without bickering too much over the exact definition of âback woods,â I donât think it means âsitting at the intersection of two interstates.â I mean, we have a planetarium.
And Iâm pretty sure half the nation canât distinguish Vermont from New Hampshire, so Iâll give them a pass on confusing the two Concords. At least as long as they arenât pronouncing it âcon chord.â
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Better make sure they donât have an Omnicorp rep on the city council; they have apparently mistaken Concord for Detroit. âYou need a few ED-209s!!â
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No you are doing something right: Justifying your purchase. Just beware when they invest in coffinsâŚ
Iâm pretty sure @AcerPlatanoides was referring to Concord, MA (not Concord, VT), from âthe Battle of Lexington and Concordâ fame.
I agree that Cory shouldnât have used the words âsmall-townâ or âtankâ in the headline, but Iâm pretty sure he was purposefully constructing a hyperbole. I donât believe that anyone is intentionally putting down Concord.
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For example: September 10, 2001, not one police department in America had nuclear weapons. And we all know what happened next.
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I hold Cory to the standards of a professional fiction writer, which is very convenient, once reality enters the debate. Creative license? Well DUH.
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Ah, my bad on ambiguity. I got the Concord reference, was just trying to say something about the general national confusion surrounding New England geography. And Iâm not concerned with defending Concord (I personally love small towns) but rather Iâm trying to make the point that though the whole BearCat thing is crazy, its not as crazy as if some tiny âbackwoods townâ was buying one.
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You mean ignore the hyperbole so we can bash law enforcement? Not to disagree with the Colonel, regarding the militarization of law enforcement, but Iâm pretty sick of the anti-police rhetoric here.
Believe me, I donât particularly love the police, after all, I grew up in inner-city Chicago, but you sure as hell donât want to be without them. And the job itself can destroy the people doing it. Look up police suicide statistics. Or go spend a day at 26th & California, in the courthouse, not the jail. The people cops have to deal with day in, and day out would wear anybody down.
Are there bad cops? Yes. Is the justice system screwed up? Hell yes! But police serve a necessary purpose in society, and police are human beings, who are just as flawed as you are.
There needs to be more oversight for police departments. More training, and better educated people going into the police academy.
This bill in NH is a step in the right direction.
If say, Willits, CA, a very small middle of the woods town of 5,000, wanted to buy one, I might support that. 1/8th the size, much higher crime rate, and surrounded by federal land where armed growers patrol the hills on ATVs.
In fact, if any town with a serious meth problem wanted to invest in an armored car, because they regularly had to face unpredictable criminals armed with heavy weapons, itâs an argument that would not merit the mockery that the Concord PD deserves for this absurdity of claiming that hippies armed with ideas merit such spending.
http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Willits-California.html
http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Concord-New-Hampshire.html
