Small town sheriff buys tank: "the United States of America has become a war zone"

boing
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To be fair, it’s really hard to get a hold of RPGs and .50 machine guns. It’s also really hard to hide them. And most damning of all, it’d be suicide to use them.

Most criminal firearm use is not directed at the police, but at civilians. Most criminals are out to exploit weakness, not to wage war on the strong. They want to extract the greatest possible value out of people for the least possible amount of hassle. Killing cops is entirely antithetical to criminal enterprise.

You can rob, grift, cheat, and steal from the unwashed, ignorant masses and the police will do the bare minimum about it, especially if no one actually ends up hurt. But nothing gets the attention of the police like a cop killer. They will hunt you down out of principle. They will pull out all the stops. They do not let it slide, ever.

They turn a blind eye to lots of petty crime that isn’t “worth the effort” of stopping (or often even possible to stop), but when you threaten them and theirs, when you challenge their authority, when you mess with their bread and butter, expect the hammer to come down hard and fast.

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You make a good point, but I would also say it’s more possible now than ever to choose one’s inputs to filter out the obvious crap, now that there are so many more information sources than four big networks and a daily paper or two (a big change since McLuhan’s time).

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Shouldn’t he get a ticket for driving without his seatbelt?

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I have a theory that Americans are so violence crazy because they haven’t seen actual warfare on their home soil since the end of The Civil War.

We’ve been involved in many wars since, but always at a distance, always “Over There”, out of sight, out of mind. The trend reversed a little when we started to televise warfare with Vietnam, but these days we’re back to turning a blind eye on things, without the reality of war intruding on our placid domestic lives.

We talk about the wars, but we don’t look at them. We don’t witness the death and destruction. We can’t imagine our own cities overrun, our own homes bombed, our own families living as refugees.

It is beyond our power to understand anymore. We don’t “get” it, because we haven’t lived it for a century and a half. In all that time, mainland America has been untouched by war. We’ve suffered the exhaustion of industry and resources and manpower and lives that come with fighting overseas, but we’ve forgotten the suffering of war in our own backyards.

Meanwhile, war has been everywhere else within living memory. Our counterparts in Europe know it intimately, and the region has been shaped by it throughout the 20th century. They didn’t just lose resources and people in some vague unknown place beyond the sea, their very hometowns were ravaged and warped, boundaries were shifted or outright trampled, and cultures and identities forcibly riven and torn apart.

I fear we may some day be rudely awakened from our complacency. The US is currently insulated from outside threats by its unique geography - protected by two oceans, bordered by non-threatening entities, and so vast as to make the thought of outside occupation a logistical nightmare - but who knows what the future may hold?

What will we do when war ceases being something remote and indistinct? How will we respond when we can no longer romanticize or ignore it, but are instead made to live through its horrors? How far will the pendulum swing in the opposite direction? How much will our love for violence turn to hate and scorn when we’re finally the ones on the receiving end?

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One other thing.

It’s friggen 2014 now, people - can we please not embed auto-playing video, thanks? :wink:

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You know where this is going:

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It at least makes a certain amount of sense there…

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“And then …”

TANK GIRL!!! SQUEEEE

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We just have better ability to take a role in crafting our personal virtual realities now vs. then.

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First time I’ve commented here but the MRAP picture caught my eye.

This is from the original article -

*In the northern Indiana town of Walkerton, population 2,247, the police department doesn’t have an MRAP, but it has obtained numerous military surplus items. That includes laptops in the police cars, cameras, clothing and office
items. It also includes two Humvees, four M16 rifles and holographic sights for the rifles.

The police department in Mooreland, population 367, has a hazardous material analyzer, originally worth $75,000, according to government records — and a soft-serve ice cream machine.Mooreland Police Department marshal Jeff Murray said suspicious powders have been mailed to police in the county, and, "If we were able to use it once —
for what we got it for — it was worth it."The ice cream machine is for community policing. It’s an ironic, if rare, counterpoint to critics who say military equipment pulls police away from a community policing mindset.*

I don’t know if I would use Humvees as a preferred patrol vehicle but for a rural department with a tight budget, yeah these are probably a good deal. Same thing with the MRAP probably not the thing to be patrolling the roads with but if you need to take down a Meth Lab or something where there is a high possibility of gunfire, well if i was a cop I would be glad to have one. The other stuff sounds like items that would be in common use between the military and police departments and that stuff can be pricey. Except the ice cream machine. I am damned outraged about the ice cream machine.

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Well gosh, let’s be fair - they had a murder in that county! Why, their general crime rate is more than a quarter that of the US average! Why, things are obviously out of control, there!
No, not buying it?

"Gayer, who is among the state’s most prolific applicants for military surplus items, "

Ok, he’s a collector.

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Make ice cream not war!

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I agree, Glitch, but how long before it does escalate and they do start targeting the cops? Wasn’t it cops that were targeted in Las Vegas? Granted, that was a couple of nuts, but still, I think its only a matter of time and escalation.

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Yeah, it’s an interesting contradiction that the US, not having been involved in a war (as a country) within living memory, has romanticized and sanitized it, while American perceptions of out-of-control crime rates are entirely a media creation rather than a reflection of reality. You’d think that actual law enforcement officers would be responding to the reality rather than the media creation, but apparently not…

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I can ALMOST see the point of a SWAT team for a large city like LA. But now pretty much every department with a dozen people and every Sheriff’s office pushes for a SWAT budget. Why? Their reasoning is they MIGHT need it, or maybe once a year they bust up a meth lab. Personally I think it’s the simple fact that boys like their toys. Fuck, I can’t blame them. If I could get someone to buy me a full auto MP5 or M4 and ammo for it, I’d go for it.

But the simple fact is a majority if them do not need anywhere close to this level of fire power. An MRAP is complete over kill. Also keep in mind that $5000 bargain is still going to cost a lot to insure and maintain. It’s like if someone gave me a Lamborghini. I’d never use it, I couldn’t afford to take it out on the street. The Army has a whole logistic system of trained mechanics to keep MRAPs and the like running. With out that maintenance you have an pricy flower pot.

As other pointed out, our crime stats are down. If you were able to blot out a few small areas it would be almost non-existent. To call America a war zone is fucking absurd.

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Maybe he was referring to the Culture War, which does very much seem to be in full swing.

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You’d think that actual law enforcement officers would be responding to
the reality rather than the media creation, but apparently not…

There’s a bit of a feedback loop involved, I think. The cops of today were raised on 20 years of COPS and other media representations (Robocop, Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, the news). A certain amount of that is destined to unconsciously bleed into the way they see themselves and how they perform their job - even affecting what they think their job is. And then that gets played over again for the next generation, making things even more militaristic …

What I’m saying is that every second show on TV should be an episode of The Andy Griffith Show. That would surely solve America’s problems. :wink:

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Yah, good point.

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Kill. Autoplay. Now!

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Oh geez – that’s the town where I grew up!

We used to joke that if you wanted to pull a bank job, 7am was the perfect time because all available officers would be having breakfast at Sambo’s. That, and whenever someone got caught speeding, it was usually 2-3 cars that would show up to help.

Honestly the most challenging part of law-enforcement’s job in places like Franklin is boredom. Not much more exciting than Mayberry. Let’s hope they don’t hurt themselves with their new (compensating for something?) toy.

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