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[RedKing]

http://news.yahoo.com/cops-ready-war-094500010.html

Yay. Well, people wanted to be "safe", and now they are. And if that ex-military cop has a bit of a jumpy trigger finger thanks to years of dodging insurgents and IEDs....well, you should have hit the ground a few seconds faster. We'll send our condolences to your next of kin. Or just say that you were attempting to attack the police. Either/or.

[Nadaka]

http://news.yahoo.com/cops-ready-war-094500010.html

Well, I dunno what to think of it. I side of my brain says they might use that stuff againest the Occupy protesters, another says they are just wasting money.

China showed how effective armored vehicles can be in dispersing peaceful civil protests back in 1989.

I am becoming increasing disillusioned, and I see no future worth having. American liberty, freedom, prosperity and hope are ending. And it is happening by our own hand and not that of a foreign power.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

http://news.yahoo.com/cops-ready-war-094500010.html

And we were having such a good run with this whole democracy thing, too. Oh well, time for a police state.

[Nadaka]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/more-predator-drones-fly-us-mexico-border/2011/12/01/gIQANSZz8O_story.html?hpid=z4

In his trips to testify on Capitol Hill, Michael Kostelnik, the retired U.S. Air Force general and former test pilot who runs the Office of Air and Marine for the Border Protection service, said that he’s never been challenged in Congress about the appropriate use of domestic drones. “Instead the question is: Why can’t we have more of them in my district?” Kostelnik said.

[ChairmanPoo]

It has long been like that. It's just that with the current crisis the canvas is fraying and the springs inside the mattress are more evident.

[Aqizzar]

The images unfold to the pulsing, ominous soundtrack of a popular videogame, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Though resembling soldiers in a far-flung war zone, the stars of this video are Massachusetts State Police troopers.

...

“As criminal organizations are increasingly armed with military-style weapons, law enforcement operations require the same level of field-tested and combat-proven protection used by soldiers and Marines in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other high-risk locations,” boasts an Oshkosh Corp. brochure at a recent police seminar, where the company pitched its “tactical protector vehicle.”

...

“We have a lot of people here, like most departments, who are ex-military,” Ramsey says. “Some people are very much into guns and so forth. So it wasn’t hard to find volunteers.”

This reminds me very much of the before-and-after interviews with the Guerena shooting.  It's a string of fallacies running through law enforcement that are ultimately just whitewashing a basic change in thinking.  You can make all the claims you want about how better armed criminals required better armed law enforcement (i.e. the "having more guns keeps you from being shot" fallacy).  Or that for no really good reason the United States as a whole (including Fargo) are suddenly under a vastly greater physical threat than fifteen years ago (even though a dozen times as many people die of traffic accidents each year than all deaths-by-terrorism in the nation's history, or that illegal immigration has practically stopped as the economy went down, or any number of other reasons you care to point to), and that it's the responsibility of local police to form the first and last line of defense against such a threat, whatever nebulous entity it may be.

But it all comes back to what one of the guys who was later part of the Guerena raid said.  Police departments are full of, increasingly so apparently, guys who just like playing with guns and being The Hero.  There's no shortage of cops who itch at the chance to crack open the SWAT cabinet and go Dirty Harry on a noise ordinance, and want to be extra ready when they are.  It's not so a much a burgeoning police state or anything (at least in my estimation), so much as a fundamentally eroding sense of professionalism in law enforcement.  Protecting the peace is incidental to some control freak working out his need to feel powerful, as a 9-5 job.

[GlyphGryph]

From what I understand, a lot of these purchases are the officers getting together and asking "What can we buy with this homeland defense cash that is REALLY REALLY COOL, before they take it back because we aren't spending it fast enough.

Oh, I know! A TANK!"

[Truean]

The images unfold to the pulsing, ominous soundtrack of a popular videogame, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Though resembling soldiers in a far-flung war zone, the stars of this video are Massachusetts State Police troopers.

...

“As criminal organizations are increasingly armed with military-style weapons, law enforcement operations require the same level of field-tested and combat-proven protection used by soldiers and Marines in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other high-risk locations,” boasts an Oshkosh Corp. brochure at a recent police seminar, where the company pitched its “tactical protector vehicle.”

...

“We have a lot of people here, like most departments, who are ex-military,” Ramsey says. “Some people are very much into guns and so forth. So it wasn’t hard to find volunteers.”

This reminds me very much of the before-and-after interviews with the Guerena shooting.  It's a string of fallacies running through law enforcement that are ultimately just whitewashing a basic change in thinking.  You can make all the claims you want about how better armed criminals required better armed law enforcement (i.e. the "having more guns keeps you from being shot" fallacy).  Or that for no really good reason the United States as a whole (including Fargo) are suddenly under a vastly greater physical threat than fifteen years ago (even though a dozen times as many people die of traffic accidents each year than all deaths-by-terrorism in the nation's history, or that illegal immigration has practically stopped as the economy went down, or any number of other reasons you care to point to), and that it's the responsibility of local police to form the first and last line of defense against such a threat, whatever nebulous entity it may be.

But it all comes back to what one of the guys who was later part of the Guerena raid said.  Police departments are full of, increasingly so apparently, guys who just like playing with guns and being The Hero.  There's no shortage of cops who itch at the chance to crack open the SWAT cabinet and go Dirty Harry on a noise ordinance, and want to be extra ready when they are.  It's not so a much a burgeoning police state or anything (at least in my estimation), so much as a fundamentally eroding sense of professionalism in law enforcement.  Protecting the peace is incidental to some control freak working out his need to feel powerful, as a 9-5 job.

Know anyone with that mindset around me who wants to be on a jury?

Honestly yes, in many ways. Some officers are alright, but I seem to get the ones who are jerks. It amazes me how much credit people give the police in juries.

[Dsarker]

It doesn't amaze me, because dammit, they should be trustworthy! What amazes me is when they aren't.

[ChairmanPoo]

... why do you have the Elder Sign as an avatar?

[Dsarker]

You must be one of the Old Ones! Ha, you'll never get me now!

[Impending Doom]

http://news.yahoo.com/cops-ready-war-094500010.html

Yay. Well, people wanted to be "safe", and now they are. And if that ex-military cop has a bit of a jumpy trigger finger thanks to years of dodging insurgents and IEDs....well, you should have hit the ground a few seconds faster. We'll send our condolences to your next of kin. Or just say that you were attempting to attack the police. Either/or.

You should probably be praying that there's more than one of those ex-mil guys on that line. Because I garuntee you that, in reality, they're going to have a lot better restraint with that trigger than the sea of Harry Callahan wannabes around them.

[ChairmanPoo]

Or not.

[Chaoswizkid]

... why do you have the Elder Sign as an avatar?

I want to know why it's a parody of the NERV logo, which is coincidentally vaguely related to this thread...

[Dsarker]

The parody of the Nerv one is for another fictional organisation, Sonne (which is Nerv in a game I'm running, Neon Caballus Evangelion), which is the MLP version of Nerv. The motto is 'Celestia's in her heaven, all's right with the world'.

How is it related, by the way?