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I do not consider bloused trousers and helmets or riding around in surplus armor or utilizing small team tactics to engage and apprehend criminal offenders to be Militarization.
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Forged, it isn’t the bloused trousers, helmets, or riding around in surplus armor to apprehend criminal offenders that particularly concerns me. Heck, I’ve had my patrol car including windows and overhead light bar shot at and damaged on multiple occasions. Once I even had my patrol car firebombed, all right here in the good old USA.
In certain areas, I much appreciated being able to “gear up.”
It is the utilization of small team military tactics to apprehend presumed “criminal offenders” that most concerns me. Particularly so when those offenders are so liberally defined to mean just about anyone but them (LEO) and with little regard towards the principles under which this nation was founded, our Bill of Rights, and the US Constitution. And quite frankly, those types of violations are happening far too frequently in our country under the guise of “how dangerous it is out there this day and age” type claims.
Back in the seventies and eighties it was not unusual for us to take fire directed at us particularly in our marked patrol cars while driving randomly down highways and interstates.
During that same period, as an officer on duty I was involved in no less than six shootings, I was shot twice, and I had no less than a half dozen other occasions where suspects attempted to stab and/or slice me with all manner of pointy and/or edged weapons.
You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not impressed about how dangerous it is to be a cop “this day and age.”
And now you other folks just stop fighting over my affection. The Oracle loves all his minions equally!