My small town is gearing up as well ... http://waterford.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/waterfor...
My town of 2,000+ people now has a humvee... for a police department that has 3 officers.
The Criminalization of Everyday Life
141–150 of 347 posts
Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
The funny thing is that we're probably just a few decades away from doing that , too.
well, as long as your thermonuclear nuke's seismic wave signature looks like tremor(s) of an earthquake, planting/burying it near continental plate dividers deep in the ocean should do the trick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale#Example...
Oh yes, we will surely get there eventually. But it probably won't be the giant sky-laser in Alaska that does it. Honestly I don't even understand how people came up with that one. I mean, what is the link between "sky-laser" and "earthquakes", other than "God is mad because we're shining the laser in His eye".
Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life
#143I can't say I'm exactly surprised. If you ran a police department, you're not about to turn down a free tank -- I mean, how cool is that, toys for the boys?!?! What's bothersome is that a police department is allowed to do this. That DoD rules don't prohibit selling/giving military equipment to police departments. That state legislatures don't prohibit it. A police department, like any organization, is always going t…
Whats wrong with a police department having a tank? I'd say it's a waste of money, but if it's completely free there's no downside.
It's not completely free. They need to pay to store it, insure it, run it. They need to have staff (diverted from their other tasks) to maintain it and operate it and bureaucrat it.
There's a hit to their public image too. When your home or car is burgled you don't want to see a tank.
And, as toomuchtodo hints at, heavily arming a police force leads to those guns being used. Ignoring "bad guys" for a moment, shooting innocent dogs of innocent people is probably a bad thing. Shooting innocent bystanders is probably a bad thing.
http://www.popehat.com/2013/12/05/nypd-baby-you-know-we-love...
Obvious Popehat bias, but still, it's pretty alarming.
Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life
#144I have felt we have too many laws and over zealous cops for
some time now. I guess I'm old--I was born in 1972, but
I can assure you; things were not like it has been
in the last twenty years. I started noticing a change in the late 80's and it's(a over regulated society, cops who
abuse the system) just gotten worse. If Jesus Christ reappeared he would most likely be arrested for indecency.
Ticketed for fishing without license. Arrested for loitering. Arrested for holding an event without a permit.
Ticketed for sleeping in someone manger, without written consent. It's really not funny when you get an expensive
ticket for no reason. I have thought about this and a solution; tie all fines to income, and require all Cruisers to be wired with 24/7 cams. This is a good website, but I
sometimes wonder if I just blowing smoke, and racking up
clicks for a already Rich Dude? Some of these topics are
so important they deserve their own webpage?
Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
quote more Foucault's Discipline & Punishment Foucault's style is (possibly deliberately) obtuse, and his knowledge of history dubious at best, per Keith Windschuttle's book The Killing of History : http://www.amazon.com/The-Killing-History-Theorists-Murderin... . It's the question of why we all let this happen without any resistance Because it's easy, because most of the time it doesn't affect us, and because it's h…
That critique of Foucault is much too cheap. To any halfway competent theory hacker, it will sound like "But Python uses significant whitespace, and Guido van Rossum's knowledge of language design is dubious at best." It's hard to base a serious discussion on that type of argument. To me, one of the major takeaways from Foucault is his renouncement of the "repression hypothesis". In a nutshell, he proposes to underst…
Foucault is SmallTalk.
Tangentially inspirational, but mostly useless in modern practice.
Deleuze's postscript... "metastable states coexisting in one and the same, like a universal system of deformation."
That's your counter-argument?
Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life
#146Americans really should learn more about the Soviet KGB and its predecessor, the NKVD, and how they ran a campaign of terror against citizens who did little more than have a different opinion of how the country should be run. Because now that America no longer compares itself to the Soviet Union, this is the kind of police state that is being constructed in the USA. Meanwhile, in Russia, the place where the Soviet sy…
>In Russia people have more personal freedoms with respect to the state than they do in the USA. How it is possible for someone to reach such a stupendous level of confusion boggles the mind. Even if the Russian propaganda minister were to make such a declaration he surely isn't deluded enough to believe it to be true.
Well, I speak Russian fluently (and therefore can follow the Russian media/Internet) and I have visited the country 3 times. In addition I have visited another ex-Soviet country, Ukraine, over a dozen times. You really have to go to these places to understand them, and preferably have some level of competence in the language so that you can speak to a variety of people, not just some egotistic activist that gets his jollies out of manipulating foreign media.
Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life
#147I wish people would move beyond 1984 and quote more Foucault's Discipline & Punishment [1]. There is a much deeper-rooted problem in society than mass surveillance or militarization of police. It's the question of why we all let this happen without any resistance. We accept and welcome our controllers. Foucault wrote about the effects of prisoner mindset in society in the 1960-70s. Our subjugation and tolerance to au…
quote more Foucault's Discipline & Punishment Foucault's style is (possibly deliberately) obtuse, and his knowledge of history dubious at best, per Keith Windschuttle's book The Killing of History : http://www.amazon.com/The-Killing-History-Theorists-Murderin... . It's the question of why we all let this happen without any resistance Because it's easy, because most of the time it doesn't affect us, and because it's h…
>Foucault's style is (possibly deliberately) obtuse, and his knowledge of history dubious at best, per Keith Windschuttle's book The Killing of History
That critique is not even worthy of an answer -- it's basically a conservative "oh, all these new fangled lefty theorists have ruined our field" cry.
Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life
#148If every police station in the country is equipped with military-grade weapons and vehicles, what happens in the event of despotic leadership? Suppose someone rises to power with little regard for legislative oversight and activates the sleeping military at home. It might start with a real (or faked) terror event coordinated across several major cities. It wouldn't take much at all, 5-10 cities, and suddenly: 1. Inte…
What is the difference between using militarized police and actual military? If in the hands of a despot one is a problem, then so is the other. So I don't see how weaponizing the police changes this equation.
(Some other commenters suggest the police is more loyal to the local citizenry, in which case weaponizing the police could be seen as providing a counterbalancing armed force that could defend against a military assault on the populace)
Personally, I'm not concerned about either scenario.
Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whats wrong with a police department having a tank? I'd say it's a waste of money, but if it's completely free there's no downside.
It's not completely free. They need to pay to store it, insure it, run it. They need to have staff (diverted from their other tasks) to maintain it and operate it and bureaucrat it. There's a hit to their public image too. When your home or car is burgled you don't want to see a tank. And, as toomuchtodo hints at, heavily arming a police force leads to those guns being used. Ignoring "bad guys" for a moment, shooting…
Shooting dogs of guilty people is a bad thing, too.
Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps I'm naive, but I never understood why a despotic US President would need all of these weapons and vehicles. I mean, they're a nice convenience, but they're complete unnecessary for a takeover. My thought would be that you just need the presidency and maybe six high ranking military officers. You then declare a presidential address where you announce that you're declaring yourself dictator for life. If anyone…
Sounds like a B-movie plot. The problem is, the newly-appointed tyrant would need everyone in the military to play along with the blackmail. All it would take is a few rogue Air Force pilots to shoot down that ICBM.
How on earth is an Air Force pilot going to shoot down an ICBM? A Minuteman III can reach speeds of 15,000mph.