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Wednesday, June 8, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
The myth of
militarization
Dramatic video of civil
unrest incidents in the past
few years or police tacti-
cal team deployments have
once again raised the ugly,
and ill-informed, boogey-
man specter of the “milita-
rized police.”
Critics cite the use of
armored rescue vehicles —
which they almost inevita-
bly and absurdly describe
as tanks, the acquisition of
military surplus items such
as grenade launchers, or
MRAP vehicles (an armored
anti-mine personnel carrier),
or the individual weapons
carried by police on their
person.
Critics often cite the de-
ployment of this equipment
for “escalating” situations,
and then bestow upon us all
their judgment and exper-
tise in handling large-scale
civil unrest, or high-risk
incidents. Unfortunately,
they usually don’t have any
expertise at all, and do a
very bad job of explaining
how the presence of res-
cue vehicles or body armor
causes people to burn down
buildings or loot businesses.
These same critics often
mix their complaints about
such equipment with a dose
of conspiracy theory — no-
tions that the police are
conspiring with various
federal agencies, even the
U.S. Army, to impose mar-
tial law. Generally, they ask
their fellow citizens to be-
lieve that the cops are out to
round up their grandmoth-
ers, steal their food cache,
confiscate their weapons,
and put everyone in intern-
ment camps.
Sprinkle in some para-
noia, issues with authority,
and an abject failure to un-
derstand even basic civics,
the law as it relates to crowd
control and most certainly
the realities of modern po-
licing, and you have a per-
fect concoction of bunk.
Armored rescue vehicles
aren’t tanks. They don’t
have cannons or machine
guns. They simply are not a
weapons system of any kind.
They are equipped with ar-
mored portholes, and an ar-
mored turret, which can be
occupied by officers carry-
ing weapons. They CAN be
outfitted with gas rams, used
to inject gas into the walls of
a barricaded house (usually
too expensive an item for
all but the largest tactical
teams), but they are decid-
edly not up-gunned tanks.
They are essentially large
armored cars, not much dif-
ferent than those used by
banks, to safely transport
money, and their purpose is
to protect officers, and civil-
ians, from gunfire or other
life-threatening hazards in
critical-incident scenarios.
Armored rescue vehicles
are an important piece in the
suite of capabilities avail-
able to police, so that they
might safely conduct busi-
ness, and they have proven
themselves out numerous
times.
In Tyler, Texas, for ex-
ample, when a subject fired
35 rounds from an AK-47 at
the cops, or in Wisconsin,
when a barricaded subject
was sniping at officers from
his well-fortified house, or
in Colorado, when Aurora
police were able to res-
cue 108 motorists strand-
ed in 20 inches of snow
and arctic conditions, or
in Bakersfield, California,
when a subject opened fire
in a neighborhood and BPD
was able to safely evacuate
60 innocents from the line
of fire.
I could go on citing these
examples all day, but the
point is that in modern polic-
ing, which many folks know
precious little about even
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intermittent radio service,
or contacting a seven-foot,
350-pound parolee on the
fringes of a meth psychosis,
at 3 a.m. in an alley, alone.
Police work is a far more
difficult and demanding
job than most folks realize
— because they are com-
fortable at home and they
don’t have to think about it
much, except when the lat-
est round of use-of-force
hyperbole hits the news.
The cops aren’t asking for
our sympathy. They know
the risks; they know the job.
But one thing we can do for
them — for all of us — is to
stop with the paranoia and
conspiracy nonsense. It isn’t
true at all and it isn’t help-
ing anyone.
I want my cops out of
their cars, confronting
criminals, and I want them
to have the best possible
equipment and training to
do the job with, so that the
good guys and gals behind
the badge get to go home at
the end of each and every
shift. They matter more to
me than some guy breaking
into houses, smoking meth,
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hood, beating his wife, or
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as they shout to the world
how cops should be doing
their jobs, armored rescue
vehicles are as important as
good judgment, good train-
ing, less-lethal technologies,
good radios, and individual
body armor.
The critics cite “grenade
launchers” in the inventory
of police tactical teams,
and the hand-wringing,
eyebrow-shaving, and para-
noia needles swing wildly
into the red. The perception
these critics would like to
leave with you is that police
departments are stockpil-
ing anti-personnel grenades.
Nope. Grenade launchers,
of various kinds, have long
existed in police inventories,
and they are used exclusive-
ly to fire tear-gas canisters,
less-lethal baton rounds,
pepper balls, or beanbags
— to disperse large, unruly
crowds, like those who keep
burning down family busi-
nesses and looting Auto
Zones during “legitimate
peaceful protests.”
There is no such thing
as routine in police work,
despite the regrettable and
common media use of that
term, and that is particu-
larly true if you are the one
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