4 ms·
Man carrying umbrella, not rifle, was on his usual route
- dmix 14y agoIt's a shame the phrase "police state" has been so abused. But this is quite an adequate moment for its usage.
- ihsw 14y agoCitizens still have rights to protect themselves so we're not a police state yet, however we are driving down that road at 90MPH though.
- rayiner 14y agoWhat exactly is "police state" about this situation? Police reacted on a tip and it turned out the tipster made a mistake. I didn't get the memo that we're now calling "police state" every time the police actually do their jobs.
- joe_the_user 14y agoThe job of the police would seem to me to be "exercising appropriate discretion" rather than sending an army to any place where there's vague implication something bad might happen.
- rayiner 14y agoIt wasn't "any place" it was a school, and it wasn't a "vague implication" but a rather specific report (guy, black mask, gun) (the fact that a report is wrong does not mean it is vague). That seems to warrant a pretty serious reaction. Indeed, there was a report of a gunman in my law school a few years ago. The place was locked down, SWAT came, there was a helicopter, the works: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Gunman-Seen-at-Northwesterns-Chicago-Campus-82798722.html http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Gunman-Seen-at-Northwes.... It's standard operating procedure when dealing with sensitive areas with lots of people.
- anigbrowl 14y agothere's vague implication something bad might happen Vague implementation: 'people get mugged down that street, I wouldn't got here after dark.' That's a far cry from 'there's a man walking around with a ski mask and an assault rifle.' Sure, it was a false positive, but that's a pretty specific claim, don't you think?
- FireBeyond 14y agoRight, as someone in Emergency Services (not Law Enforcement, and not particularly fond thereof) in Olympia, Washington, the article is a little biased: the tipster was a teenager who 'insistently and repeatedly' stated that he could specifically identify an AK-47 assault rifle when a police chopper was overhead, the man, 'in his theatrical nature', started 'aiming and pointing his umbrella at the helicopter' (as confirmed by video from the chopper) the schools -chose- to go on lockdown at the suggestion, not requirement of officers one of the schools (that my partner's daughter attends, so if anything, I'm biased towards caution) chose to go on lockdown despite being a nearly three mile walk through medium density neighborhood, and the area already being cordoned off (so of debatable necessity). "city-wide" - a very small city (population 46,000), and an area of perhaps 1 sq mi was actually cordoned off... "multi-disciplinary" - 12 units were involved, including Olympia PD and Thurston County Sheriff. Helicopter, not helicopters... There are valid fears of a police state, but when you are asking the person calling 911, "are you sure he's carrying a weapon, not a cane or similar?" and the caller says "I know guns, and he has an AK-47 with him", and the person in question pretends to take potshots at police helicopter (in the singular), there's probably bound to be something of a response.
- tikhonj 14y agoNo. Had the kid been "disappeared" and all news suppressed, "police state" would be adequate. For this? Perhaps it's plain incompetence. Maybe just an overreaction over flawed intel. Certainly nothing sinister.
- cookingrobot 14y agoIt's not even overreaction - it seems like proper reaction to flawed intel. It's like if someone falsely pulls a fire alarm, and the firetrucks speed over to check it out.
- kmfrk 14y agoText-only Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://freedom-or-safety.com/blog/citywide-multi-jurisictional-manhunt-swat-teams-helicopters-schools-closed-over-man-with-umbrella/&hl=en&client=opera&hs=zEX&channel=suggest&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://....
- MiguelHudnandez 14y agoWhile the article at freedom-or-safety.com is down, here's an alternate article: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/mar/20/umbrella-mistaken-assault-rifle-sparks-manhunt-oly/ http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/mar/20/umbrella-mistak...
- lambdasquirrel 14y agosometimes I wonder if this sort of policing is like an allergy, an immune system gone overactive.
- smokeyj 14y agoMore like a metastasizing cancer.
- dromidas 14y agoI'm glad we're able to pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide them with "trainin" as quoted in the article.
- nazgulnarsil 14y agoThe narrower your parameters for health, the more responses you see.
- teeja 14y agoAnyone else got the feeling that the US still hasn't gotten over a serious case of the jitters yet?
- e40 14y agoYou can partially blame the 24/7 news cycle for this. It overstates risks and uses fear to drive viewership.
- jeremysmyth 14y agoOnly partially? I thought that the culture of fear created by sensationalist news was precisely the reason the US has a violent crime rate that's two orders of magnitude above any other functioning democracy.
- anigbrowl 14y agoFalse headline. They weren't hunting for a man with an umbrella, they were hunting for a man with a gun, who turned out to only have an umbrella. Here's the much more comprehensive reporton which it is based: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/03/20/2521320/man-mistaken-for-wielding-gun.html http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/03/20/2521320/man-mistake... Strangely, although some sentences are lifted word-for-word, there's no link to or credit of the original article, which a) amounts to mild plagiarism and b) prevents many readers from getting valuable context (such as the explanation of a 'partial lockdown' being that schools merely locked their outer doors until they received an all-clear from the police). to provide only half the facts while omitting any link to the source borders on dishonesty.