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| Police to protect and serve, or police for the police state? |
Across the country, we hear stories of more and more communities making cuts to lessen their budget problems. One of the obvious cuts that we continue to hear about is to police departments as police and firefighters are getting laid off. With this said, there was a story that caught my eye this morning and I just have to ask, if police departments are broke, why are they ordering armored tanks?
Well, first of all, the police departments aren't paying for the tanks. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS!
Why would the federal government, with no Constitutional authority, buy tanks for police departments around the country? That's a question that needs to be answered? What are they expecting in the coming days, months, and years as gas and food prices rise?
The police say it's to protect officers from gun violence, even though there is less than 100 police officers a year killed on duty from gun fire. Hyde writes, "Roughly 50 police officers are killed every year, most in shootings, and many during arrests or ambushes."
"If somebody looks out and sees a Ford Crown Victoria sitting out there, they may not take you very seriously," Warren County, Va., Sheriff Daniel T. McEathron told a local newspaper in October, "but if they look out the window and see this thing sitting there, they're going to know you're serious."
The BearCat G3 claims the vast majority of armored personnel carrier sales to SWAT teams in the United States. Fashioned from a Ford F-550 commercial truck chassis, Massachusetts-based Lenco builds about 200 such vehicles in year, in grades from "VIP SUV" to combat-ready with gun turrets. The massive roller is actually a smaller version of the BEAR, or Ballistic Engineered Armored Response vehicle, which Lenco builds for armies and law enforcement agencies around the world.
Even if the federal government gives these things away for free like Halloween candy, there is still the costs of operating a 16,000 pound tank that probably gets three or four miles to the gallon. I thought these communities were broke, so they laid off some officers. Apparently not broke enough to operate a gas guzzling tank.
Guess where the funding really comes from for the tanks? It should be no surprise, the Department of Homeland Security. Once again, it looks like the terrorists are the American people and not the radical Islamists who brought down the World Trade Centers.
In the wake of Sept. 11, Congress and presidents Bush and Obama dramatically boosted Homeland Security spending; the Department of Homeland Security now hands out more than $3 billion a year in grants to boost anti-terrorism tools around the country. The Lenco BearCat — which start around $190,000, and can top $300,000 with options — can easily qualify as a necessary tool under several different grant programs, from disaster response to crime fighting.
Once again I ask, if the terrorists live in the Middle East, then why is the DHS boosting up your community police force to this level?
"It's all an illusion," said Jim Fisher, a former professor of criminal justice at Edinboro University and author of a book on SWAT teams. "The fact your police dept just bought an armored vehicle does not make you safer. It's going to make you poorer, becuase your taxes will go up to pay for training and maintenance." In light of today's budget-strapped environments, we too wonder whether the federal government should be paying for small counties and towns to have tanks to use against their citizens.
Oh, thanks Mr. Fisher. Once again, the illusion of safety surrounds the DHS. Naked Body Scanners didn't stop a gentleman from boarding a flight on JFK with three box cutters a couple weeks ago, nor did touching someone's junk. It creates the illusion of safety, and it's costing American taxpayers big money as this great Republic further goes into debt. I say if the LAPD wants a tank, then LAPD needs to buy their own tanks. Our government has no Constitutional authority to build up these police forces.
