Comments on: Police and civil disorder roundup

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 22 Aug 2014 00:44:18 +0000

Re Sunil Dutta: if you don’t want to be beaten or get shot, don’t “dis” a member of America’s largest street gang, the LAPD.

By: gitarcarver

gitarcarver — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 03:31:48 +0000

The New York Times has an interactive map that shows the amount of military equipment states and local municipalities have gotten. That amounts of equipment is staggering.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/15/us/surplus-military-equipment-map.html?_r=1

Secondly, in Ferguson what we have seen are police pointing weapons at civilians in violation of the first rule of gun safety that if you point a weapon at something, you need to be ready to destroy and kill it. Are the police in Ferguson really saying they are willing to kill and destroy all the people that are there?

Lastly. I defy anyone to travel down the street toward the police with an M4, AR-15 or handgun raised and pointed at a line of police. Don’t lower the weapon and keep going toward the police. After you find yourself lying in a pool of your own blood, maybe you will wonder why pointing a weapon at the police will get you shot, but the police pointing a weapon at you is acceptable in this day and age.

By: Becky

Becky — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 20:47:51 +0000

The initial incident, a single cop in a cop car stopping a young man on the
street, was not a militarized police action. The policeman who is the focus was not using military equipment. The timeline is important.

By: Juliette Whiskey

Juliette Whiskey — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 12:40:58 +0000

I think you misread Dr. Hanson. What he is saying, it seems to me, is that a primary cause of the current lawlessness in Ferguson is not militarization of the police per se, but a culture in which the government decides which laws it chooses to enforce and which it chooses to ignore. In other words, if the government has no respect for the law, nor will citizens. Of course, the overall policing culture in the US seems to me as a non-American to have degenerated to the point where the police themselves don’t seem to have much respect for the law, judging by their treatment of their fellow citizens.