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The most interesting opinion about this subject I've read comes from a comment, in the popehat blog, by an experienced military: There is plenty of reason to
by pizza234 9y ago
The most interesting opinion about this subject I've read comes from a comment, in the popehat blog, by an experienced military:
There is plenty of reason to restrict the use of SWAT teams, but not to abolish
them. They are needed now and then, when there is an actual hostage situation or
an armed gang that tries to shoot it's way out. They should never be used for
routine search or arrest warrants. That not only endangers the possibly innocent
target of the raid, but it undermines the team's training – they become used to
tearing up houses where no one is resisting. There's a dashboard video of the
Jose Guerena raid. My drill instructor would have said they looked "like a monkey
fucking a football" – and I was in the Air Force, ground tactics weren't even on
the curriculum. I've seen considerably more forceful comments from Army and
Marine Corps infantrymen who actually have had to break into a house against
armed defenders. They milled around, exposed themselves to possible fire through
the open door, and got into each others line of fire. They did NOT identify
themselves as police that I can hear on the audio track, so Guerena was justified
in hunkering down in a defensive position with a rifle. If Guerena (a former
Marine) hadn't been far more professional than any of the cops and not fired
without identifying his targets, several cops would have been down.
Then there are the SWAT members that "accidentally" (that is, negligently) fired
a round and killed an unresisting, unarmed suspect because they tripped or
bumped their elbow – an accident that can only happen if you are in violation of
the two most important rules of gun safety: don't put your finger on the trigger
until you have decided to shoot, and don't point the muzzle near anything that
you do not intend to shoot. We know they were running around with their finger
on the trigger – in a situation where there was clearly no need for shooting –
because modern firearms in good working order just don't fire unless the trigger
is pulled. The military just doesn't tolerate that. If a non-police civilian in
my state had done this, he could have been sentenced to life for manslaughter.
But if you are a cop, you can recklessly kill someone and the prosecutor will
throw the case…
- kiallmacinnes 9y agoThis comment makes a lot of sense to me. SWAT / Armed police aren't inherently a bad thing. There are cases where they are needed, we're just overusing and undertraining officers. I'm Irish, so while we do have some branches of the police who are armed, most are not. I wonder how the armed Irish Gardi would stack up training wise against armed American cops (ignoring the fact that every state / city would be different..). Would our limiting of arms to a smaller group result in better training and responses? Or are they just as likely to mis-fire and fail to identify themselves?
- emacsgifs 9y agoHere's that quoted section without weird formatting: > There is plenty of reason to restrict the use of SWAT teams, but not to abolish them. They are needed now and then, when there is an actual hostage situation or an armed gang that tries to shoot it's way out. They should never be used for routine search or arrest warrants. That not only endangers the possibly innocent target of the raid, but it undermines the team's training – they become used to tearing up houses where no one is resisting. There's a dashboard video of the Jose Guerena raid. My drill instructor would have said they looked "like a monkey fucking a football" – and I was in the Air Force, ground tactics weren't even on the curriculum. I've seen considerably more forceful comments from Army and Marine Corps infantrymen who actually have had to break into a house against armed defenders. They milled around, exposed themselves to possible fire through the open door, and got into each others line of fire. They did NOT identify themselves as police that I can hear on the audio track, so Guerena was justified in hunkering down in a defensive position with a rifle. If Guerena (a former Marine) hadn't been far more professional than any of the cops and not fired without identifying his targets, several cops would have been down. Then there are the SWAT members that "accidentally" (that is, negligently) fired a round and killed an unresisting, unarmed suspect because they tripped or bumped their elbow – an accident that can only happen if you are in violation of the two most important rules of gun safety: don't put your finger on the trigger until you have decided to shoot, and don't point the muzzle near anything that you do not intend to shoot. We know they were running around with their finger on the trigger – in a situation where there was clearly no need for shooting – because modern firearms in good working order just don't fire unless the trigger is pulled. The military just doesn't tolerate that. If a non-police civilian in my state had done this, he could have been sentenced to life for manslaughter. But if you are a cop, you can recklessly kill someone and the prosecutor will throw the case…
- pizza234 9y agoWhat's rendered weird specifically, on your system? I'm always very puzzled when I have to do HN quoting/bullet points, so I thought 80-columns code would fit well (evidently, it doesn't). I also wonder why HN doesn't improve formatting, which has at least a couple of very common problems (the mentioned code and bullet points rendering).