And you know, Andy Griffith and even Barney Fife and most non-fictional cops in non-fictional small towns that don’t have adversarial relationships with their citizens don’t have that problem, even though they did have to put the town drunk in the jail overnight on occasion; he’d let himself out in the morning when he sobered up.
It’s not like meth hasn’t made that worse, but speed was around in the 60s, Kerouac et. al were taking amphetamines when they were legalish in the 50s, and there weren’t constant gunfights in the streets from them.
After driving a van for many years, including in residential parts of San Francisco, I’d say good luck finding a parking place for your tank. But the street legal versions of tanks that UK residents can by almost certainly have to be de-militarized, just like in the US, because they wouldn’t want a bunch of Irish Republican Army tanks driving down the street with real cannons on them.
I’ve been to Concord NH. It’s a small city, as opposed to whichever of the three Effinghams it was my sister lived in, which was a small town. My current town has a population of about 75,000, and I wouldn’t trust any of the younger police officers I’ve met with a tank (way too much testosterone.) I’ve met small-town cops and big-city cops who were calm rational folks, and I’ve met others who were violent bullies, and you know which ones are going to want the keys to the tank.
Or a pope-mobile. I think that would be fun enough (and expensive enough) that the cops would be happy for a while before needing to amp up again, without terrorizing civilians.
Perhaps more relevant to the debate whether or not we think it’s a tank is how the police themselves see this. Check out the atmosphere of the average promotional videos for various police departments. Marching into houses with M4s and military gear? Yeaaaaaaaahhhh…
This is an offensive weapon in the hands of a police department. They are not facing roadside bombs here. It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money.
