[Azure]

Originally Posted by Zulu29

Well I'd love for you to be right but unfortunately you're wrong. Small town, rural settings can prove quite challenging and dangerous for "small town cops". Ill reference Mayerthorpe, Spiritwood Saskatchewan, Hay river NWT, and Kimmirut Nunavut as Canadian examples where "small town cops" were out gunned and lacking the equipment to deal with the situation at hand. It's unfortunate, but typically law enforcement reacts to the situation at hand and when people start shooting cops regularly you can bet your ass they are gonna get bigger guns and better equipment to deal with that threat.

It's unfortunate but until that "wild Wild West" mentality of certain segments of society are gone, you're gonna have this situation.

There is a difference between cops having assault rifles, which they should, and cops having this.



I found the article.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012.../all/?pid=1301

In 2011 alone, more than 700,000 items were transferred to police departments for a total value of $500 million. This year, as of May 15, police departments already acquired almost $400 million worth of stuff. Last year’s record would have certainly been shattered if the Arizona Republic hadn’t revealed in early May that a local police department used the program to stockpile equipment – and then sold the gear to others, something that is strictly forbidden. Three weeks after the revelation, the Pentagon decided to partly suspend distribution of surplus material until all agencies could put together an up-to-date inventory of all the stuff they got through the years. A second effort, which gives federal grants to police departments to purchase equipment, is still ongoing, however. According to the Center for Investigative Reporting, since 9/11, the grants have totaled $34 billion.

Which means billions of dollars’ worth of military gear are in the hands of small-town cops who neither need the equipment nor are properly trained to use it, critics charge. At best, it’s a waste of resources (since the gear still has to be maintained). At worst, it could cost lives.

“There’s been an unmistakable trend toward more and more militarization of American law enforcement,” Norm Stamper, former Chief of the Seattle Police Department and author of Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing, told Danger Room. During his tenure in Seattle, he clamped down on the WTO protests in 1999, the infamous “Battle in Seattle.” It’s a response he now calls “disastrous.”

According to Stamper, having small local police departments go around with tanks and military gear has “a chilling effect on any effort to strengthen the relationship” between the community and the cops. And that’s not the only danger. “There’s no justification for them having that kind of equipment, for one obvious reason, and that is if they have it, they will find a way to use it. And if they use it they will misuse it altogether too many times,” said Stamper. What happened a year ago in Arizona, when marine veteran Jose Guerena was shot down during a drug raid that found no drugs in his house, could very well be an example of that misuse.

There are various examples in the article of small town police departments obtaining equipment that they don't need in the least bit.