[LATIMES] At the end of the 1960s, the Los Angeles Police Department decided it needed a better way to handle situations, such as confrontations with barricaded gunmen or hostage takers, that presented a high risk of deadly violence. So it created Special Weapons and Tactics units, known thereafter as SWAT.
In the decades since, these units have spread nationwide, contributing to a startling militarization of local police agencies. The American Civil Liberties Union now raises troubling questions about the blurred lines that come with arming and training domestic law enforcement officers as though they are an extension of the U.S. military.
In a report released this week, the ACLU analyzed more than 800 incident reports from 20 police agencies in 2011-12 and found that eight of 10 SWAT deployments were not to confront barricaded suspects or to negotiate the release of hostages but rather to serve search warrants, primarily in drug cases. Two-thirds of the deployments involved breaking down doors, and many included tossing flash-bang grenades and rousting occupants at gunpoint.
The ACLU study looked at a tiny fraction of police agencies, so its conclusions should be treated with caution. Still, the routine use of SWAT units to serve warrants has been documented elsewhere and constitutes a worrisome example of mission creep: If police departments have the units, they tend to use them, even in scenarios for which they were not initially envisioned. Militarized teams were deployed about 3,000 times a year in the 1980s; by the mid-2000s, annual deployments reached 45,000.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/26/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Yes. Next question.
I've always subscribed to the notion of: If the job's too difficult or unsafe, why don't you look for a different job?
Posted by: ed in texas ||
06/26/2014 7:36 Comments ||
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#2
Put them under the 'militarized' state office of the National Guard. Once the chiefs and sheriffs lose control, they'll also lose interest.
#3
During the horror at the University of Texas it was 2 cops climbing the tower has soon as they could get there. Whitman would have killed another 90 people with todays get to get started, call the swat team to get ready lets plan. Some times, you gotta get your damn gun and climb the tower and kill the SOB. When the time comes you need a damn cop doing his job, if it's more than that you call the National Guard.
[DAWN] THE nation had not quite recovered from the shock of the deadly Death Eater assault targeting Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... airport earlier this month when a fresh incident, this time in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. , has raised concerns about aviation security in Pakistain. On Tuesday night a PIA aircraft flying into Peshawar from Riyadh was shot at, resulting in the death of a passenger and injuries to two crew members. The aircraft apparently came under fire as it approached to land, being only a few hundred feet from the ground. The Peshawar airport, like many other public aviation facilities in Pakistain's cities, is located in a densely populated area. As cities in Pakistain tend to grow in a haphazard manner, it is not unusual for residential colonies and encroachments to sprout up uncomfortably close to airports. Shots and rockets have been fired at aircraft and at the Peshawar airport facilities in the past as well, while the airport was stormed by Death Eaters in December 2012. The reasonable expectation would have been that after the Karachi airport debacle, security at aviation facilities across the country would have been beefed up. But despite claims by the Civil Aviation Authority and other state actors, as the Peshawar incident shows, the required groundwork to make Pakistain's airports safer has not been done.
Incidents such as the Karachi and Peshawar episodes make headlines across the world and unless there is a drastic overhaul of aviation security procedures in Pakistain, we may see our links with the outside world dwindle even further, as foreign airlines start pulling out. Already, decades of violence and instability have caused several major foreign carriers to abandon the Pak market. If the current state of official apathy continues, the carriers that remain — mostly Gulf-based airlines — may also abandon ship. Business may be fairly good in Pakistain, but if foreign carriers feel the risks are too high, they will be under no compulsion to stay. For the safety of aircraft and airports in Pakistain, several steps need to be taken. Patrolling in and around airports must be increased. Intelligence-gathering must also be beefed up in neighbourhoods adjacent to airports while staff working in aviation facilities should undergo background checks. It is the habit of the authorities to appear to strengthen airport security by adding more and more muscle to mainly the points of the public's entry and exit. Clearly, that does not deter those determined to wreak havoc.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/26/2014 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] THE difference between governmental action and inaction can sometimes be difficult to discern — but often it is blindingly and shockingly obvious. Hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people from North Wazoo have poured out of the region and the federal government and the politicianship would like the country to believe they are doing all that they can to ease the humanitarian crisis; but the facts, visible plainly to all, suggest that is clearly not the case. When politicians and the administration are in a purposeful mode and go into overdrive, doing absolutely everything they can within their powers to address a particular issue, there is one immutable aspect of whatever they do: publicity. But the handling of the IDP crisis has been left to junior ministers, committees and the like. No senior politician, other than the PTI's Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who isn't your heaviest-duty thinker, maybe not even among the top five... , has even seen fit to visit the areas where the state is ostensibly doing all it can to ease the plight of the IDPs.
Compare and contrast the scenes and reports of the swelling number of IDPs appearing helpless and un-helped with the officials' claims. Remember also the reason why these Pak citizens have fled their homes: it is the enormous price the state and the nation have asked of them in order to take on Death Eaters threatening the safety and security of Pakistain. Given the level of sacrifice that has been asked of them, it is surely not too much to hope the state took more seriously its responsibilities towards the NWA IDPs — especially since the state has gained significant experience in recent years in dealing with Fata IDPs displaced by military operations. Moreover, it has been known for years that some kind of military operation in North Waziristan would likely be required at some stage — so theoretically the IDP management in the present instance should have been the best managed and most thoroughly planned of all. Instead, it appears to be one of the more miserable and haphazard IDP management programmes in memory.
Unhappily, the growing IDP crisis is having a double negative effect. The unfolding humanitarian tragedy is eclipsing the reason there are IDPs fleeing North Waziristan in the first place: the military operation. How do the goals of a military operation square with the resentment and unhappiness that the IDP crisis is sure to further stoke among the people of Fata? At great cost to state and society, some bully boy strongholds in NWA may be about to be overrun, but what is the long-term possibility of success against militancy if the sympathy of the locals ebbs and possibly even switches to the bully boys' side? Surely, whether from the point of view of morality or state responsibility or even just operational common sense, the North Waziristan IDPs need to be looked after and looked after well.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/26/2014 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] A GROWING proportion of economic activities in Pakistain are now taking place in what is called the informal sector. This has three major consequences that possibly present a threat to the future viability of the state.
The biggest consequence is how much of this activity is able to escape the state's revenue machinery. With a declining ability to capture economic output in the revenue apparatus of the state, there is a diminishing pay-off for the state in the economy's growth.
This is no minor issue. With amongst the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios in the world, the state in Pakistain is already critically dependent on subsidised foreign inflows in order to be able to pay its own bills. With all of the growth that the country has experienced since 1990, when its first opening up to the outside world began, the proportion of taxes collected has failed to keep pace. Simply extrapolating this trend into the future shows quite clearly that a point will arrive when subsidised foreign inflows could become larger than the total quantity of revenue collected from taxing domestic activities. Of course we are far from that point at this stage, but give it another decade or two more and we'll see how the totals tally up.
Beyond revenue, we can see an increasing quantity of wealth now accumulating outside the formal economy. Consider some other important ratios where Pakistain lags tremendously: total cash in circulation to bank deposits, for instance, where out ratio is amongst the largest in the world. This shows that increasingly money prefers to remain outside the formal depository and payments system of the country. As capital accumulates in the grooves of the informal economy, it restricts the balance sheet of the formal economy and remains inaccessible for investment purposes, at least investment in fixed capital. Consider that total mortgage lending in Pakistain is somewhere around Rs70 billion, probably less than the value of the housing stock in one elite neighbourhood in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... , meaning much of our property market, even though it is the preferred asset for collateral when taking a bank loan, remains off the balance sheet of the formal economy.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/26/2014 00:00 ||
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Once the ISIS force surrounded the embassy, we would face a similar situation to that of the French forces in Dien Bien Phu, a French-held fortress in Northwest Vietnam in 1954. French forces retreated into the fort when the Vietnamese communists engaged in a concerted offensive. No one could get out of the fort and the ring of defenses around it made reinforcement or evacuation from air or ground impossible. The Vietnamese leaders made a strategic decision to target Dien Bien Phu as the best avenue to accomplish a strategic goal "-- get the French out of Vietnam. The U.S. Embassy with thousands of people in Baghdad could create a similar strategic target for ISIS.
#2
The General has it exactly right. Balad air base is currently under attack. This article needs to be run tomorrow for a full day's worth of comment.
#5
I'd said long ago that the nature of the Radical Islamist threat was such that the US may have to conquer the world irregardless of whether Washington + mainstream America likes it or not, wants it or not, because the enemy is going to come after you no matter the merits or how many concessions the US makes.
History says this idea of unilaterally leaving the battlefield to the enemy has never worked, + only serves to inspire the enemy to demand or take more.
E.G. America = Amerika is under threat because zealous ideologues would rather protect Failed-n-Still-Failing Socialism at any price than protect the borders + other.
#7
I kept stabbing the Tomorrow button, but it didn't seem to do anything. Is it a toggle? It doesn't highlight...
A number of bugs crept into the system when Fred made the changeover, KBK. I'll forward your comment to him for fixing. But you can also manually change the date, I think. Try that next time, if the button still hasn't been fixed.
#8
The U.S. Embassy with thousands of people in Baghdad could create a similar strategic target [Dien Bien Phu] for ISIS. Also the Communists believed that you should get close enough to your enemy to grab their belts to minimize the effects of air support. If they get that close, we have a problem.
#9
The same thing is true of Afghanistan, just delayed 3 years.
Joe is right.
Last week end our war movie club watched Battle of Algiers. In almost his first sentence Col Mathieu says there are 400,000 people out there. (in Algiers) They are not all our enemies. He was wrong. Look at history and the wars that effectively change things are wars in which they are all treated as enemies and the culture is broken. Germany, Japan, the American South, all were utterly and thoroughly defeated so that the culture could be rebuilt. We will need to do the same in the Middle East, at least to one country. Our effort in Iraq did not even come close.
Posted by: Vespasian Oppressor of the Visigoths8235 ||
06/26/2014 14:17 Comments ||
Top||
#10
Benghazi II
There are a number of Iraqi heroes. An elected female member of their parliament, with the army retreating, acquired a bazooka and took out 3 ISIL jihadists before she was killed by an ISIL sniper.
[TabletMag] Many post-Orientalists, in the tradition of Edward Saďd, have predicted the outbreak of democracy any decade now, from the 1990s to the "Arab Spring." Thus, while Yasser Arafat's "no" at Camp David shocked Bill Clinton, Dennis Ross, and a public fed on the idea of a win-win peace process, those familiar with the values of Arafat's primary honor-group predicted that rejection. If "that which has been taken by force must be regained by force," then nothing Arafat "got" in negotiations could possibly wash away the shame of a cowardly stroke of the pen that legitimized Dar al Harb in the midst of Dar al Islam. As a result, while Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak (and, reportedly, some younger Palestinian negotiators) mourned, Arafat returned to the Middle East a hero.
"
We know Operation Zero Footprint was the covert transfer of weapons from the U.S to the Libyan "rebels". We also know the operation avoided the concerns with congressional funding, and potential for public scrutiny, through financing by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
We also know that officials within the government of Qatar served as the intermediaries for the actual transfer of the weapons, thereby removing the footprint of the U.S. intervention.
We know the entire operation was coordinated and controlled by the State Department and CIA. We also know (from the Senate Foreign Relations Benghazi hearings) that "Zero Footprint" was unknown to the 2011 Pentagon and/or DoD commanders who would have been tasked with any military response to the 9/11/12 attack �-- namely AFRICOM General Carter Ham.
However, it would be implausible to think that then Defense Secretary Bob Gates or Joint Chiefs Chair Admiral McMullen were completely unaware of the operation, this aspect remains murky."
#1
West is hot on the trail, but I believe there is more, much more.
Congressman [soon to depart the congress] Mike Rogers' wife, Kristi Clemens Rogers, was, until recently, the president and CEO of the U.S. branch of the British Aegis LLC a "security" defense contractor company, whom she helped to secure a $10 billion contract with the State Department. The company describes itself as "a leading private security company, provides government and corporate clients with a full spectrum of intelligence-led, culturally-sensitive security solutions to operational and development challenges around the world."
When I first learned of the Aegis connection, my horn went off. Aegis sets the world-wide industry standard on gun running and regime change. Appears to be tissue sticking to the bottom of a great many shoes.
#3
So lemme get this straight. We arm and train Islamic radicals to fight a war in Syria and then we act all surprised when they invade Iraq and thereby nullify a hard fought victory in Iraq. Thanks a lot, Baraq. Are you really going to claim you didn't know these people were al Qaeda all along? And thanks, Hillary. Maybe the one silver lining in this whole mess is that Hildebeast's chances in 2016 are toast.
#4
Hey, so the plan went wrong. Yes, the Islamic radicals are SOB's, but they're OUR SOB's... and those of our pals in the KSA. Besides, we don't like Baby Assad or Vlad, they are ruthlessly evil homophobes.
#5
Gee, it so good to know our leaders have trained and armed the very same people who are now intent on attacking the United States as soon as they consolidate their takeover of Iraq. If they did just one thing right in the last 5 years I might be able to believe they are just inept and near sighted. The insurgents are now in possession of all of Saddam's WMDs (mostly nerve gas) and say they have a nuke; doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy.
#6
Col. West is onto something--explains a lot and ties a lot of loose ends up.
So we armed Abu Khattala who ended up attacking our embassy and killing Ambo Stevens and three others. Recently, the Abu Khattala was snatched in Libya and is now on his way to Washington for trial. What do ya bet he hangs himself along the way or has an a fatal aneurism or heart attack? Why would he turn on the hands that feed him? Did he go rouge and not follow the script? Frog and scorpion story? What's that all about?
#2
JosephM, the following headlines are on Drudge Report now:
ICE official: Court hearings for new illegals 'years out'...
*Backlog of 360,000 cases...
GOP Chairman: Likely to never be removed...
#3
Hey, I'm not playing JV here. You fok with me and piss all over my amnesty bill, you get the bat up your arse. Some call me spiteful, but it's the way I roll. By the way, I learned about these poor kids same time you did.
#5
The President is a felon. He has the DHS participating in the human trafficking of minors.
The number of children traveling without parents has overwhelmed Border Patrol detention centers along the Texas border, prompting officials to ship them to converted warehouses and military bases as far away as California. The situation is so bad that there is fear we would have no place to put American citizen refugees if another Hurricane Katrina occurs. Some have even called this alien-children invasion Obama's Katrina.
This is no act of love, as children are transported by cartels and other human traffickers from Central America and then through 1,800 miles of difficult Mexican roads. They are subjected to the worst abuse along the way, then dumped across the border, where they huddle on warehouse floors in conditions ideal for the spread of infectious diseases.
#6
They are keeping media away from the kids. We need the state authorities to investigate the condition of these kids. I will contact Austin and ask the governor to do so.
#7
Does anyone really believe that Bummer didn't instigate this crisis? As Rahm Emmanuel said, "Don't let a crisis go to waste." Check Harry Reid and his Dream Act also. Better check the entire Democrat Party come to think of it--some Pubs too.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[DAWN] THE nation had not quite recovered from the shock of the deadly
[DAWN] A GROWING proportion of economic activities in Pakistain are now taking place in what is called the informal sector. This has three major consequences that possibly present a threat to the future viability of the state.
