“Your Son Is Deceased” is a February 2, 2015 New Yorker article about two police officers shooting a somewhat unbalanced young man at his parents’ house. They then surrounded the empty house with military hardware:
There were more than forty police vehicles on his street. Officers wearing camouflage fatigues and bulletproof vests had circled his home, a sand-colored two-story house with a pitched tile roof. Two officers were driving a remote-controlled robot, used for discharging bombs, back and forth on the corner.
In addition to paying for this army of police power, the taxpayers of Albuquerque also had to pay the family $6 million after they sued the city for the wrongly death of Christopher Torres (KRQE story).
I don’t envy the police. They are the ones who have to interface with the dregs of society day after day. After a while, they become jaded and their attitude is that if it is a choice between them going home to their family at the end of the day, or you, they will choose themselves every time.
The police had a warrant for Torres’s arrest due to a road rage incident. So they already believed him to be a violent person. Then when they attempted to arrest him, he resisted arrest. All of this is not in doubt. The officers believed that Torres was going for one of their guns, supposedly. Being shot by your own weapon is a policeman’s worst nightmare. Would you like to be the one whose job description includes fighting with alleged criminals who are resisting arrest?
Although Torres was mentally ill, he was under treatment and he was apparently well enough to hold down a job and to drive an automobile. When the police came for him, he should have allowed himself to be arrested pursuant to the lawful arrest warrant that the officers were acting on. He would have been arrested, his parents would have bailed him out in a few hours, the road rage charge would have been settled with probation and that would have been that. So he was the chief author of his own death.
The reason for the ridiculous show of force afterward is that the police have an unwritten rule that shooting which involve the police are much more important than shootings involving anyone else. When the two police officers were shot in NY, 40 police officers didn’t turn out for their funerals, it was more like 40 thousand, from all over the country. In this case, since a police officer had killed someone, it was in the interest of the police to make it appear as if they had killed some dangerous terrorist and that there were more terrorists still on the loose, so that the shooting would appear to be justified. Remember in a case of an unjustified shooting, a police officer can himself end up in jail. Policemen who have shot others are not popular among the prison population.
Americans (and we inherited this from Britain) tend to see policemen as their friends and they are somewhat shocked when they find out that is not quite true. People from 3rd worldish type places understand that the police have their own interests, which differ from those of the public that they are supposed to “serve”. Most human institutions, even those set up on the most humanitarian or charitable lines (e.g. the Catholic Church, universities, etc.) end up serving their own interests ahead of the interests of society as a whole. This is only natural.
But, to bring this full circle, the American police usually don’t go around randomly shooting civilians. They shoot people who they perceive have put them in danger and usually such people have acted in a way that they should not have acted. You don’t deserve to die just because you wave around a toy gun or resist arrest, but it’s still a stupid thing to do.
All the military hardware has been War on Terror/Gulf War surplus
equipment some coming back form Iraq that
has been given to police departments.
Militarization has occurred also because War on Drugs is also
a profit center for police with seizure of property until you prove
you are not guilty.
As this is close to the border, there is even more money given to
them to stop people coming from south of the border.
all this is boondoggle for DOD and Homeland contractors.
Elites are also preparing for the future with this militarization
and also privatization of prisons.
>Elites are also preparing for the future with this militarization
and also privatization of prisons.
Our elites can’t see past next new cycle or at best the next election. This is all being driven by money and greed for power and toys by the police – the rest of what you wrote is right. I wish there was some grand conspiracy – this would at least mean that someone was actually in charge and had some vision for our future, however grim. But there’s no vision, just greed and the will to power.
“some grand conspiracy”
It doesn’t need to be grand conspiracy but it is straight timeline
whether you look from 70s onward or 500 years.
After Civil Rights Laws were passed. Conservatives and Corporations got
together to change laws and fight back liberal groups.
It was corporations wanting kill labor rights that were created after 1930s.
It is slow and steady climb back.
Now if you look at 500 year span. You can see Corporation’s rise and State melding together. All that is about to happen to US fight happen to the rest of the world
and brown people. Before Jews were killed in Europe, Brown and Black people were slaughter in several continents in 100s of millions.
Corporations were created to get wealth of India while there are First 30 Year War in
Europe between catholics and protestants that is how merchant class came to take over and that is what is called renaissance.
The rest of the world is taxed without representation. The very principal that Americans keep crying about here in the US. The constitution is a corporate charter first and foremost. US being a democracy is biggest joke of them all.
It may be just a function of exponential growth but it also White Man’s Burden.
Whose first principal is teaching brown people to be civilized.
This is all embedded in the genes of people. Prior to 1945, only people who were considered White were Anglo-Saxon. Now it is rich 1% who perpetuate the dominative narrative.
So all this a Evolutionary Design not some cheap Conspiracy.
Humans are the dumbest animal that Evolution will ever create.
Humans will have destroyed the very climate needed for Civilization in less than
10,000-20,000 years.
“Americans (and we inherited this from Britain) tend to see policemen as their friends ”
The police force was created to protect Property. Things got complicated
with Emancipation and Civil Rights.
When British created Indian Police it was to protect them
from the populace (heathens). So even today Indian Police just protects the Politicians
using those same racist British Laws from 1800s.
Now so Educated Indians were admiring US Police and I commented that Indians
better start paying their taxes if you want militarized force in their cities.
Now Indian Elites are basically creating separate Islands of infrastructures (suburbs, roads, malls, electricity) and even private security.
They are learning from the best.
As the poor people percentage rises in US same thing will happen here too.
I happened to consult in Albuquerque for a number of years. I stayed at a small place with a breakfast buffet the police liked, and overheard their conversations quite a few times. They never talked business. Rather the subject was invariably *how to game the retirement system*.