"In Wake of Clashes, Calls to Demilitarize Police" (Page 2)

It's pretty department specific and largely depends on how motivated the firearms instructors are.....at least at smaller departments.  Our guys have an opportunity to shoot monthly, and MUST qualify at least quarterly with their sidearms.  For rifles and shotguns it's a twice per year qualification due to range space (you can't shoot a rifle at just any range).

Truly, time isn't a big issue.....money is.

Sorry I'm jumping in a little late on this one.

There are really a couple different aspects when it comes to the "militarization" of the police.  I'm a big proponent of police officers being able to respond to the threats that are out there.  As was mentioned the Hollywood shooting and general active shooter type scenarios do require an increase in firepower.
I have a lot of friends who are police officers and they have every right to be able to come home safely to their families.

The part that I do have issues with is where we have virtually every department of the government building a paramilitary wing;  DOE, IRS, BLM, Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, etc.  If any of these entities have an issue that requires the police to be involved then they need to involve the local police, FBI, or ATF not build their own freaking law enforcement teams.

I don't get into the conspiracy theories that it's all a big ploy to oppress the people, it's simply a symptom of our governments dysfunction.  These departmental leaders cannot figure out how to work together, so they just do it on their own.  I've seen this in my line of work in large companies.  There's a central IT department for the entire company and each department gets allocated an "expense" for the services.  There's always a handful of departments who think they can do a better job themselves and refuse to pay the services and ultimately build their own half baked IT department.  We call them "empire builders" because they're too arrogant to work with others and want full control.  Then you take executive management who doesn't have the balls to make people conform which enables hundreds of little dysfunctional empires to form within a large company.  It's dangerous, inefficient, and most importantly stupid.
Our government is a perfect example of hundreds of little empires with their own military/law enforcement branches because they simply can't/wont work together and our leaders are too incompetent to make them.

OK, that list made me laugh.

I can see LB lobbying hard for the torpedoes.  I mean, what if the guy jumps in the river and tries to swim away.  

Just maybe it's not the regular people buying military class weapons, but the criminals that obtain them illegally that drives the police to be militarized.  I really don't think the Police fear the regular lawful gun owners.  Just saying.

Nope, not one bit.

Dude - if I could get my hands on a torpedo I could change triathlon swims forever.

If you know of any buyers for 2400.00 let me know.

I think that's a legitimate concern.

I'm a huge advocate for individual rights and civil liberties, but it's really not practical to ask a police officer to determine the make/model and lethality of a weapon being pointed at them within a fraction of a second.

I am with you in spirit, but I would never second guess a police officer who shoots at an armed person, no matter what kind of weapon they have.

Hopefully you have heard that 679 Police Officers were killed in the line of duty over those same 5 years.  You have probably also heard that the Police have had MILLIONS of contacts with violent people over those same 5 years and almost all of them did not end in death.  Numbers...... they don't count much in this discussion. 

Also.....I don't wave any kind of gun around anywhere in today's world.....but that's just me.

Read more about the situation.  This one does not look good for law enforcement.  At least upon initial reading of many of the reports.

I'm was generalizing because I haven't read any of the reports on that particular case.  However, I do still give the benefit of the doubt to the police when the guy has a "gun" of any type.

I know there was a recent one here in Omaha where a COPS crew member was caught in the crossfire.  The bad guy had an airsoft gun, but based on the pictures of the gun, it looked exactly like a real gun.

He got the gun at the Wal-Mart.  Normally I too give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt.  In this case, based on all of the reports I'm reading (which granted could easily be slanted) sounds as if they made a HUGE mistake.  

I hadn't heard about the story mentioned above so I just read a few articles on it.  Honestly, I feel it's more of a freaked out citizen being the problem than it was the police.  If the police are told a dude is waving a gun around and pointing it at people and just loaded it, the police are going to come in very charged up with an "active shooter" type mentality.

Then the poor kid with the BB gun who gets startled by the police reacts instinctively (or whatever) and the charged up police assuming the worse react.

I agree that it's a terrible mistake, but I feel there's about 10% fault with the police and about 90% fault with the prejudiced individual who called 911 in the first place because he saw a black kid carrying a "gun".  Ironically, it would have been perfectly legal for him to carrying a fully loaded assault rifle because the state allows open carry.

It's a tragedy for sure.  I'm always thankful there are men and women willing to run into a situation where the best information they have is that there is a man with a gun shooting people, or getting ready to shoot people.  It's been my experience that you meet most of the people being critical of how the Police handle these types of situations running in the opposite direction.  I feel bad for the kid and his family.  I feel bad for the Officers who had to respond.  I feel bad for the prosecutors who now have to deal with this.  What a mess.

Understatement of the day/week/month/year.

Not related to your post Crowny but saw this on the news.

http://www.vice.com/read/a-court-ruled-that-a-swat-raid-on-a-barbershop-was-totally-ridiculous-922 

I am fan of LEO's but wtf were they thinking?

It must be something about hair that drives people crazy.   They keep looting the same beauty shop here in the Michael Brown protest saga.......people just can't have nice hair. LOL