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July 5, 2014, 08:13 AM | #126 |
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In most police departments, the officers provide their own equipment with a few exceptions. The uniform, belt, sometimes the personal firearm, etc are bought by the officer. An automatic AR15 rifle is most, if not all, of the time purchased by the department. Obviously the car is not supplied by the officer although in some Southern states they let the officer take it home and use it as their personal vehicle. The reason for that is then it gives the appearance of more police on duty and the vehicles last longer when the officer has it all the time as their own POV.
The reason behind the officer providing for his own equipment is because the equipment then lasts longer when its officer owned. The department will usually provide a stipend to the officer which will reimburse them for at least some of the equipment. If the department owned all of the equipment then it wouldnt last as long. The equipment would then be used and abused. Costs would soar. The typical officer spends thousands of dollars buying their own equipment. That is an off topic part of this thread but I wanted to set the record straight on that issue for those concerned. |
July 5, 2014, 09:11 AM | #127 | |
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Are fully automatic AR15 rifles being purchased by some officers themselves?
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July 5, 2014, 10:07 AM | #128 |
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Probably not but I left a little wiggle room in the event I was wrong. There are quite a few people out there with automatic rifles who managed to get all the paperwork through the powers that be. I think its possible although improbable that officers may own their own automatic weapons.
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July 5, 2014, 11:15 AM | #129 |
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Anyone know off-hand how many tens of thousands of dollars a transferrable select-fire AR rifle runs these days? I will say definitively, with no evidence to support it, that there are no police running their own transferrable AR's in the line of duty. Maybe if one's also an SOT (I assume police can also be SOT's), or something, they might be rocking a post-sample of theirs.
TCB
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July 5, 2014, 11:26 AM | #130 | |
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No knock raids would be fine if there were a publicly-accountable independent body charged with ensuring they could not be abused by discouraging their use as much as possible. That would relegate this tactic to situations where it is truly the only acceptable option for the specific circumstance. Sadly, we see too often that when we establish "special bodies" for determining when a controversial act is acceptable, they find common motive with those they regulate and turn into a mere rubber stamp. TCB
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July 5, 2014, 12:43 PM | #131 |
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The Militarization or Police ... A Good Thing
In a word NO! that is not a good or necessary thing.
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July 5, 2014, 01:10 PM | #132 |
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It isn't a good thing, but it's necessary.
Police are being ambushed by nutjobs with high-capacity semi-autos and body armor, public ranges are full of sniper wannabees, and AR15 and AK variants sell like hotcakes, with a public that is hooked on mind- and mood-altering drugs, violent entertainment, and anti-establishment mindset. They are reactive, not proactive. Overused, yes, but try getting a kid with a Corvette to drive the Geo Metro to the grocery store. |
July 6, 2014, 10:23 AM | #133 | |
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I do agree a full-auto P90 would probably be more tempting to use as a matter of course compared with a Remington 870 and sidearm. At least in my town, it would appear the check-out procedures for the MGs are onerous enough that I've never actually seen any of our fleet of FNH wonders. TCB
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July 6, 2014, 11:38 AM | #134 | |
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There have been incidents, but they're somewhat isolated. That said, given the somewhat recent proliferation of so-called assault weapons in the civilian market, it can happen.
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July 6, 2014, 12:37 PM | #135 |
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To be honest, the same could be said for this whole notion of police needing to be equipped in expectation of encountering more than a couple isolated shooters at any incident response (major justification for things like armored vehicles and automatic weapons is they allow police to withstand multiple independent threats on-scene if needed, though these almost never bear out outside of full-blown organized terrorist attacks --for which our military's infrequent involvement would be wholly justified)
TCB
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July 6, 2014, 12:53 PM | #136 | |
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Please elaborate with reports. Maybe the SWAT teams need Bradley Fighting Vehicles then? |
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July 6, 2014, 10:42 PM | #137 |
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Sadly, I'm sure some unit somewhere does already . A cursory Google search brings up "only" 6-wheeled Soviet-looking APVS, no Bradley's, though.
TCB
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July 7, 2014, 08:29 AM | #138 | |
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Of course, that does no good at all when it's the People's Liberation Army of Hackensack. |
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July 7, 2014, 09:42 AM | #139 | |
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July 7, 2014, 11:17 AM | #140 | |
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I am thinking this would require training and many other things that are probably not doable. Can you imagine the political outcry were they to even start. There is a wisdom in the military not operating on domestic soil. As to the original OP, this is troubling in some regards for reasons already discussed. I am also thinking there are probably some areas where these vehicals are easier to justify such as very high crime areas, maybe some other areas for different reasons. The departments and elected persons in these departments who make these decisions still have to answer to the voter.
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July 7, 2014, 11:30 AM | #141 | |
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There is a niche for these events that is not as well filled by one weekend a month volunteers or full time soldiers 3 states away. |
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July 7, 2014, 12:36 PM | #142 | ||
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July 7, 2014, 03:48 PM | #143 | |||
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I will also admit that I may be wrong on this next point, but I have heard that most or all of the M16s surplused to law enforcement agencies have had the auto sears removed, in which case there is no practical difference between LE equipment and the rifles in your safe. Again, my complaint is that A. Many of the people complaining about law enforcement getting military surplus equipment are making their complaints solely based on cosmetic complaints rather than complaints about substance, and B. That's the same argument that the Brady Campaign, MAIG, and MDA are all making against the same guns. Quote:
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There are a lot of good reasons why restrictions on private ownership of item X should be loosened or eliminated, but "Barnbwt says he knows in his heart he won't do anything bad with it" is not one of them. As to your last point, many police agencies do in fact require officers to purchase their own firearms, and some agencies require them to purchase much more than that. What possible reason would there be for a community to pay to have a police department and not also pay for the equipment necessary to do that job? Maybe those physicists at CERN should have to buy their own particle accelerators as a condition of employment. Last edited by Madcap_Magician; July 7, 2014 at 04:04 PM. |
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July 7, 2014, 04:33 PM | #144 | ||
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July 7, 2014, 07:21 PM | #145 |
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What I am most concerned and upset about are the mistakes these guys make and the increasing number of innocents who are going to die because domestic Cops are being given increased firepower. You too could be driving down the street, delivering newspapers, only to have your vehicle shot up by trigger happy police. http://rt.com/usa/lapd-dorner-shooting-review-738/ It was lucky the women survived, but in the future, it could be 20 mm cannon rounds, RPG’s, grenades, etc, being launched by nervous Cops, and it is highly probably that with 100 cannon rounds through your truck, you won’t make it out alive. I think we have all read of the flash grenade thrown on top of an infant in the cradle. http://www.salon.com/2014/06/24/a_sw..._year_old_son/ These Cops were not even in the right house, and I have read a number of incidents, fatal to the innocent, where Cops have stormed into the wrong house, guns a blazing.
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July 7, 2014, 08:01 PM | #146 |
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The problem is not the firepower per se, it's the lack of accountability. The cops are given "qualified immunity" (almost untouchable, all they have to say is "officer safety" and they're dealt a get out of jail free card and are judgement proof.) The judges who rubberstamp the dubious warrants and the prosecutors who push for them have SOVEREIGN immunity. "It's good to be The King"
At some point it will be pitchforks time. Tough to determine when exactly that is, tho', and you kind of have to get it right because you have no such immunity. When we start seeing cops who throw grenades in cribs and then lie about it prosecuted and convicted, (or shooting up a pickup with 2 Asian ladies because they wanted to kill a big black man in a different color SUV, or entering a fenced backyard w/o a warrant and no probable cause then shooting the dog because it was big and scary, or plainclothes deputies dressed like gangsters in a Cadillac Escalade shooting a Baptist pastor when he flees after they try to carjack him) this nonsense will magically stop on its own.
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July 7, 2014, 08:55 PM | #147 | |
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You can prevent abuses through good screening and good training, but they'll still happen. Our system allows for oversight and for punishment when abuses take place. Is it 100%? No. But what's the alternative?
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July 7, 2014, 10:56 PM | #148 | |||||
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Limited immunity protection while engaged in enhanced enforcement procedures would curtail a lot of the needless behavior, at least the profit-seeking portions. "Wanna bring along the flash bangs?" "Nah, we don't know where everyone is in there well enough to chance it" "Are you sure this is the right address? We don't wanna pay for another door and dead dog..." TCB
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July 7, 2014, 11:00 PM | #149 | |
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July 8, 2014, 10:51 AM | #150 | |||||
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I don't really have a problem with your view except that fulfilling it is utterly implausible- regardless of the relative virtue of the argument, there is no conceivable circumstance in which LE toys are going to be taken away until the NFA is repealed. I can understand and am not unsympathetic to your view as regards the NFA. My opinion is that the NFA should be repealed, but I don't see any benefit to depriving those people and agencies who either can spend the time and money to comply with the NFA or who are not bound by parts of it just because I can't do the same. Outside the confines of the NFA, your argument gets even more specious. What does it matter if a large LE agency runs a civilian-sourced Bell Jetranger or MD500 as opposed to a federal government-surplused UH-1? They're all helicopters. None of them are armed. There is no practical difference in capability, other than the fact that the people riding in the Jetranger are less likely to get cold. Why does anyone care if a LE agency gets a surplused Bearcat? Someone, unsure if it was you, said it mattered because you "...can't destroy a building with an armored Crown Victoria." That's preposterous. You can destroy a building with civilian armored Brinks truck based on a Ford Econoline just as effectively as with a military 1152-series uparmored Humvee, and likely with equally detrimental results to both vehicles as well as the building. And again, so what? There aren't any legal restrictions on you owning any of that stuff- if you want a surplused UH-1 or Bearcat, you could probably get one if you had the moolah. Quote:
Again, I don't disagree with you in thinking the NFA should be repealed, but I also don't take it as a personal insult that it was enacted. By that logic, enacting a speed limit is also a blanket assumption of guilt before a crime has been committed. Quote:
Beyond that, federal funding for federal surplus equipment given to local agencies as a grant has little or nothing to do with local funding for department-issued sidearms. Quote:
I'd be interested in your thoughts on improving it. Last edited by Madcap_Magician; July 8, 2014 at 11:00 AM. |
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