This is seriously troubling
 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/nicolasmedin...e-a#.hrNgNgygV


1. Resisting arrest is whatever the cops want it to be
2. Having to defend yourself against a felony would be an expensive nightmare
3. Conviction on a felony opens up a whole other realm of nightmares for the rest of your life (Obtaining a Job, Guns, Voting)

Don't tell that to the "Libertarians" on here who suddenly morph into big government shills whenever cops are involved.

First the NYPD cops with machine guns who are assigned to counter-terrorism/protest handling, as if those two are comparable, now this. This is going to get ugly.

This is outrageous. I can't believe they want harsher penalties for people who assault police officers. If I am at a rally or protest, I should be allowed to assault a police officer without fear of being charged with a felony. :zz:

Nowhere in the article did it say anything about the definition of resisting arrest being changed. Nice way to totally mischaracterize the facts. If you are at a protest and you lay down and let your body go limp, that is not resisting arrest. If you strike an officer, that is resisting arrest. I don't think there is too much confusion there.

I am not a person who think cops can do no wrong. If there is misconduct on the part of a policeman, he needs to be held accountable. I think police should actually be held to an even higher standard than civilians. That being said, I'm not going to second-guess every split second decision a police officer makes. I will give them the benefit of the doubt on a close call. But there are plenty of times where there is misconduct where it is not a close call. In those cases, I will be the first person to call for the officer to be fired and maybe even charged with a crime if applicable.

I just love it when you rail against a point that wasn't made. If you assaulted a police officer you would be charged with ASSAULT Rupe. ASSUALT <> Resisting Arrest. Ateam NAILED IT. Resisting arrest is basically anything the cops want it to be. You mouth off to them and they rough you up well you were resisting arrest. Why were they trying to arrest you in the first place? Try the catch all "impeding pedestrian traffic" which again is anything they want it to be.

http://www.thefutureorganization.com...inking-cap.gif

I will quote from the article. It says, "Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and top union official Pat Lynch called for harsher penalties for people who resist arrest and assault cops at public assemblies."

My take on the article was obviously different from your take. I don't think there is any confusion about what the definition is of "resisting arrest". When you are placed under arrest, if you put up a physical fight, that is "resisting arrest". It would probably be "assaulting a police officer" too. I don't know for sure. I'm not a lawyer.

Anyway, I don't think they're looking to charge people with any type of "resisting arrest", let alone "felony resisting arrest", for simple civil disobedience. What they want to address is the people who were physically fighting with the officers when they were being arrested. There was way too much of that going on during the recent protests.

With regard to people blocking traffic (whether pedestrian traffic or automobile traffic), there is no excuse for that. I would love to see how sympathetic you would be if you were stuck in your car, not moving for 2 hours, because some idiots were laying in the street, protesting. In that situation I bet you would be the first person to want those people arrested. When the police order people to disperse, they need to disperse. If they want to file a complaint later on, that is their right. As big of jerks as cops can be sometimes, I will still follow their order, if they give me an order. I may question it, but if they get belligerent, I'm going to comply. If I don't like it, I will complain later. How can we have a civil society if people think they can just ignore police orders? In a civilized society, we have to respect the authority of the police. If they misbehave, we can file a complaint, we can contact our city leaders, etc. But in the heat of a civil disturbance, we need to comply with police orders, unless we want to live in anarchy.

BUT THEY CAN IF THE LAW IS CHANGED.

And then you have to DEFEND yourself against a FELONY which if convicted of will change your life forever in a negative way. If Obama proposed such a law you would be the first one POUNDING the TABLE screaming about loss of civil rights and us as a country moving closer to a Police state.

That is not true. The law will not change the definition of resisting arrest. You are acting like this law will make it easier for the police to charge people with resisting arrest and that police will now be able to charge people with resisting arrest for almost anything. This law will not make it any easier for the police to charge a person with resisting arrest. The only thing this law will do is increase the penalty for resisting arrest.

This article doesn't go into too much detail, so I don't know what the exact criteria will be in deciding whether a person will be charged with a felony rather than a misdemeanor. But common sense tells me that there will be specific guidelines. In the end, it will be up to the DA to decide on each individual case. They're not going to be charging people with a felony who did nothing. That's not what the law is going to allow and that's not what the DA would do.

For someone not knowing the criteria you have no problem stating in certainty what the DA will do. :zz: The fact is this CAN BE ABUSED and you can't tell me that at some point it won't be in at least 1 case. Your whole entire argument is based upon what a reasonable person SHOULD do. Note to Rupe there are unreasonable people out there who think nothing of convicting someone of a felony if it will enhance their future.

It must be nice living in Rupert's fantasy world where cops aren't rapidly devolving into an unaccountable paramilitary force and Tiger Woods is still a threat to win majors.

This is to protect the kids. What if that group of liberal protestors aren't vaccinated?

Then what?

Save us GUBMINT!

Just saw this:eek:


http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/...ist/ar-AA91vgE

In an ideal world, we wouldn't need police. There would be no murder, no robberies, no assaults, no riots, etc. Unfortunately that is not the world we live in. There is a serious amount of crime, including violent crime in this country. We need the police. They aren't perfect but they do alot more good than bad. You are the one living in the fantasy world if you think the police are more of a threat to you than all the criminals.

With regards to Tiger, I still think there is an excellent chance he will win majors again. I'm not saying it's a sure thing. Some guys never recover after going into slumps. Daviid Duval never recovered. He was #2 in the world and he can hardly make a cut nowadays. There are plenty of good players that that has happened to. But there are also plenty of good players who went into bad slumps for several years and ended up coming back as good as ever. There is no way to tell for sure. But if there is anyone who I would think could come back, it would be Tiger.

If I was on the jury the second cop would be guilty just for having that haircut

More straw-man arguments against things nobody said.

Don't talk to me like I'm five years old. Obviously we need the police and there are more good cops than bad ones. But the bad ones are doing more and more damage as time goes on because they are almost never held accountable when they harm and kill innocent people. Not to mention the increased firepower they're getting from all of our surplus Iraq/Afghanistan military toys. It's a very bad combination.

It sounds like you live in a bubble where you never have any interactions with hostile police, which is great, but for the rest of us out here, news like the story Jim posted is troubling as hell.

Scary. To read things like this, you would think crime is higher than ever, when it is actually the opposite. The first thing that leapt to my mind was the pic of the cop spraying sitting, orderly protesters in the façe with pepper spray.
And sure....have cops investigate cops instead of indies..its worked great up til now.:zz:

:tro:

Your exact quote was that "cops are rapidly devolving into an unaccountable paramilitary force". I think that is absurd. From the events we have had lately, I think it shows that the police need to be heavily armed and need to use more force, not less force. You saw the rioters burn down half of Ferguson. The police used way too much restraint there and they used way too much restraint here in Los Angeles. There weren't any buildings burned down here in Los Angeles but you had a small group of protesters running into traffic and shutting down freeways and inconveniencing a lot of people. Those protesters need to be arrested. They have the right to have a bonehead opinion but they have no right to inconvenience the rest of us (who also have an opinion on the case).

There are always going to be some bad cops. That is expected. There are bad doctors, bad lawyers, bad firemen, etc. That is reality. But just because there are some bad cops that hardly makes them "an unaccountable paramilitary force". Do you have any evidence that the police are using more force than they used to or that there is more police misconduct now than there was 20 years ago?

By the way, just because Al Sharpton says a cop acted improperly, doesn't make it so. Was there "no accountability in Ferguson"? Maybe according to you and Al Sharpton. But the vast amount of people in this country who heard the facts of the case thought there was total transparency and accountability. There was a full investigation and the vast majority of people including the DA, the FBI, and the grand jury found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Officer Wilson. I don't know if that case is one of your examples of police acting out of control. It it is, then your definition is different than the vast majorities of Americans. That doesn't mean that you are necessarily wrong and everybody else is right, but it means that there are different opinions out there and most people would disagree with your characterization of the police being out of control. You are certainly entitled to your opinion but you shouldn't expect me to agree with you.

Ah yes, Al Sharpton. No argument with a right-wing airhead is complete without a mention of their boogeyman shoehorned into it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25BBGnd-JkE

Look at that. That was the 2nd night of protests and an American police force's response to (at that point) peaceful protesters. If you don't think that's a paramilitary force and a terrifying look into what the future of American policing could look like, I don't know what to say. They were firing tear gas canisters at people standing in their own back yards for God's sake. How can you possibly defend this?

Damn near every single police shooting in 2014 in America was deemed justified. SWAT teams used to be deployed a few thousand times a year, now they're used a thousand times a week, often for low-level crimes. Countless people have been brutalized, traumatized and killed by cops with zero accountability and they're only getting more heavily armed and aggressive despite crime being at record lows. You have a lot of nerve saying the police need to be using more force, not less, but again, that's what happens when you live a completely insulated life from any kind of interaction with the increasingly militarized police in this country. You get to sit in your bubble and use every possible explanation for why the cops are always right and the people whose lives they ruin are always the bad guys. It's ignorant, juvenile and pathetic.

That video proves a lot. Talk about being an airhead. You truly are if you think that video proves anything. There is absolutely zero context. We have no idea what occurred before that. Why would you believe the protest was peaceful? After the grand jury decision, CNN was saying the protest was peaceful as buildings were being burned down. You may think throwing rocks, bottles, and molotov cocktails is peaceful. That's not my definition of peaceful.

You say that nearly every single police shooting in 2014 was deemed justified. I have some shocking news for you. Practically every one of them was justified. I'm sure there were a few that weren't and those cops were prosecuted when there was evidence. I hate to break this news to you but there has to be evidence to prosecute. Cops are entitled due process just like everyone else. We don't lock cops up just because mindless left-wing airheads like you and Al Sharpton say that a crime was committed. You guys want due process for your criminal idols but not for the police. I want due process for everyone.

By no means do I favor the use of heavily armed police (whether local or federal) for trivial and non-violent offenses. If you remember, I was outraged when some heavily armed government agency raided that animal rescue place (I think it was in Ohio) because they were fostering a baby deer.

I have no idea where you come up with the characterization of "zero accountability". There is always accountability. The definition of accountability is having to answer for your actions. The police always have to answer for their actions. If there is an officer involved shooting, there is always accountability. There is always an investigation, many times by outside agencies. There was accountability with regards to the case in Ferguson. The officer had to answer for his actions. Just because he wasn't convicted of anything, that doesn't mean there was no accountability. We only convict people based on evidence, not on your opinion, Al Sharpton's opinion, or the lynch mobs' opinion.

I think you must be the one living in the bubble. The vast majority of Americans don't have interactions with "hostile police" all the time as you do. The vast majority of Americans have an overall positive opinion of the police. You are acting like I am in the minority, when in fact most people would agree with me. I live in a big city and I occasionally have interactions with the police. Some of them are jerks, but there are jerks in every occupation. The percentage may be slightly higher in law enforcement, but what can you do? What is the solution? The system isn't perfect. By the way, ever since I left the bloods, the police have stopped harassing me.

I will use your words and say that it is ignorant, juvenile, and pathetic for you to think the police are always wrong and are always the bad guy. You may not have said that, but you accused me of saying that the police are always right and are never the bad guy (even though I never said that).

By the way, I'd like to see your source that documents SWAT teams now being used a thousand times a week instead of a few thousand times a year.

With regard to your characterization that crime is at record lows, what bubble are you living in? In Los Angeles, violent crime was up 14% last year.

"By far, the most dramatic rise was in aggravated assaults — serious attacks that typically involve a weapon or serious injury — which rose 24.2% compared with 2013."

How big of an airhead would a guy have to be to be more concerned with a few cases of police misconduct than with the tens of thousands of violent assaults and murders that occurred last year across this country?

http://www.latimes.com/local/crime/l...231-story.html

I know the context because I was watching it live you fuc king buffoon. I wasn't sitting in my ivory tower waiting for Fox News to tell me why it's ok to blame poor/black people for the latest issue. There were 20-30 people in the street chanting and that was the police's response. Yay America.

This is why I don't venture into these threads often, because it raises my blood pressure to actually interact with someone as dangerously ignorant and out-of-touch as Rupert. But I'm glad you like the police in America looking like Mubarak's army in Egypt in that video. It should tell everyone never to take any of your libertarian "get big gubmint out of my life" bullshit seriously ever again. Because the militarization of the police is the biggest government overreach there could be and while it was happening you stood there waving your pom pom's for it.

What planet do you live on and what are you smoking? If I lived out on some farm in South Dakota then I could be accused of being out of touch. I live in a big city and I go out into the city every day. How would you know any more about what's going on in America than me? In addition, I am highly educated. I have a BA in Political Science from UCLA and I have a MA in Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine. What are your credentials, aside from having a PhD in Narcissism?

You are one of these typical liberals who thinks he knows more than anybody. It is so funny listening to guys like you who think that anyone who has a different opinion from yours is "ignorant".

By the way, I never claimed to be a libertarian but I do have libertarian views on some issues. With regard to the police, they are a "necessary evil" in a civilized society. And unfortunately we need more of them, not less. I hope we get to the point where there is so little crime that we need less of them. When that time comes, I will be the first person to demand that police departments stop hiring. But I highly doubt that will ever happen.

I have to question what country you live in if you think the big problem is the police, rather than the criminals. Anyone listening to you would think you live in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

With regard to Mubarak's army in Egypt, who would you rather have in power in Egypt, Mubarak or the Muslim Brotherhood? I would take Mubarak every day of the week.

Your arguments are so childish saying that I wait for Fox News to tell me what the problem is. First of all, it isn't true that I make my opinions based on any specific news source. I use 30 different news sources and still always form my own conclusions. Second of all, I could make the same accusation to you. I could say that you wait for MSNBC to tell you that the police are to blame for all the problems. Does that sound like an intelligent comment? No. So why do you constantly make comments like this? Anyone who has the opposite viewpoint of you is "ignorant" and gets all their info from Fox News. You won't be winning any debate contests any time soon. In a debate you should always focus on the facts. But if the facts don't support your case, you can always tell people how much smarter and how much more well informed you are than they are. That wins a lot of points. :zz:

These are the facts Rupe

http://justice.gawker.com/nypd-has-a...nto-1684017767

They are setting the table that any Civil disobedience in the future will be met with the potential to charge someone with a felony. Meanwhile the middle class is getting pushed more and more and if at some point in the future they wish to speak out and protest well guess what they do it at the risk of being charged with a felony if a cop with a hard on tells you to leave and you do not. If this doesn't scare the **** out of you, then you are living in LALA land.. Sounds like an Oligarchy to me Rupe. But wait DA's and Cops won't do that because well it is the right thing to do. The current law works just fine.

That has to be one of the worst ideas ever.....
and heres something i just thought of. If you look at the fairly recent scotus ruling on king vs maryland, many jurisdictions enter your info into a database if youre arrested for a felony. So, not only does this stiffen a penalty for something that should remain a misdemeanor, it also potentially would grant search powers on these people.
one shkuld be very wary when any agency wishes to attack our rights to protest and peacefully assemble.

By the way, I remember exactly what was going on in Ferguson back in August. I remember reading the ridiculous arguments about how the riots were being caused by the police because the police were being too aggressive. That turned out to be total nonsense. When the police listened to these ridiculous critiques and backed off the next few nights, the violence got worse. A high percentage of these so-called protesters are just opportunists. They push the envelope and hope the police won't do anything. They are hoping a riot will start so they can start looting. We've seen this type of thing plenty of times before. It's happened in Los Angeles on several occasions.

I think there should be a zero tolerance policy on civil unrest. Anybody who gets violent including throwing objects and/or breaking things should be arrested immediately. I'm fine with peaceful protests but once they cross the line they need to be arrested. I feel bad for all the people whose businesses got burned down. It would never happen if we supported the police and let them do their jobs. They get criticized by the left so much that sometimes they are afraid to do their jobs.

And for the 10th time, I don't think the police are perfect. When there is obvious misconduct or even obvious incompetence, I am the first person to want the officers to be held accountable. There was a case recently where the police were searching a neighborhood for a suspect and they were going through people's backyards throughout the neighborhood. They went into one guy's yard and when they saw a dog (who belonged to the homeowner) they shot and killed it. I was outraged by this. I didn't defend the cop. Quite to the contrary, I thought there needed to be consequences. You don't go into a guy's yard without a warrant and kill his dog. There wasn't even any reason to believe that the suspect was hiding in this particular yard. It was just one out of fifty houses in that neighborhood where they were searching. I thought this was certainly an abuse of power by the police. By all accounts, the dog was friendly too.

:tro:

Yep, already overweaponed, and get so much benefit of the doubt in these situations. They want to self police, for good reason. Why theyre determined to protect the very ones making it difficult for the good cops is beyond me.
youd think crime and violent crime was increasing, not decreasing. 10 times the former amount of swat raids, and mostly for drug raids. And people getting shot by trigger happy cops who just happen to be in the hoke when they come charging in unannounced in the middle of the night.
We should all be wary when suggestio s like this are made in regards to people protesting.

And how often do cops say tell it to the judge? Theyll slap everything chargewise they can, and then you spend months or years fighting it.

I read your article. I'm not in favor of anyone being charged with even misdemeanor resisting arrest if they aren't truly resisting. And some cops do lie. We all know that. There have been plenty of cases where police roughed someone up because they claimed they were resisting. Then it turns out someone filmed the whole thing on their phone and it turns out the cop was lying. If I was a juror in a resisting arrest case with no video, I wouldn't necessarily believe the cop.

Anyway, you raised a good point in one of your other posts with regard to assaulting an officer versus resisting arrest. If the police are trying to arrest someone and he punches them, I don't why they couldn't just charge the person with assault on a police officer. If they can, then there may not be a need for the resisting arrest charge to be a felony (especially if assaulting a police officer is a felony. I'm not sure if it is).

I read your article and then did a little more research. It doesn't sound like there is a difference between assaulting a police officer and assaulting a civilian. Either can be misdemeanors or felonies, depending on the extent of the injury and whether or not a weapon was used. So I guess that means if an officer is trying to arrest you and you punch him, it will probably only be a misdemeanor if he is not really hurt. If you punched him in the face and it only left a small bruise, it would probably only be a misdemeanor. I think that is the reason that Chief Bratton wants to make resisting arrest a felony in certain situations. I think there are probably too many guys punching officers and getting off with a slap on the wrist.

I think if you punch an officer in the face, it probably should be a felony, regardless of whether the officer has any broken bones from the assault.

Anyway, if it was up to me to decide whether to pass this new law, I would need more information. I would need to know why Bratton feels that they need this law (I suspect it is for the reason I just mentioned), and I would would want to know what criteria would be used to determine whether a felony charge would be filed. If the reason given was the reason I stated and if the criteria was that the only people who could be charged with a felony are people who physically assault (punch) a police officer, then I would probably be fine with the new law. If there was no real criteria to decide what would be a felony, then I would be against it. But I would be shocked if the new law wasn't very specific and and didn't require a true assault to be filed as a felony.

If an officer is trying to arrest me and I punch him in the face, don't you think that should be a felony, regardless of whether the officer sustains any real injuries?

Again, complete and total fantasyland. You really need to stop speculating on things you know absolutely nothing about.

Bratton is trying to satisfy his incredibly sensitive union heads and rank-and-file, who went on an embarrassing petulance tour when our mayor didn't sufficiently kiss their asses after two cops were killed. That's all this is. More buttressing of the cops' rights to whatever they want and report only to themselves.

Too many people are assaulting cops and getting away with it! Yeah, the cops are the victims, not the perpetrators of too much unpunished violence. That's rich.

Oh yeah, I'm sure in an age of cops shooting people and performing banned chokeholds and getting away with it, that the issue is really people punching cops and getting away with it. No way is it cops asking for even more power to go along with fulfilling their wannabe military fantasies.
Our crime rates are the lowest they've been in 40 years. Its been trending down for years.
But to hear you and the cops, you'd think it was the opposite. Christ, we already have a huge prison population and you want to add to it?!

This is completely untrue. They went on their petulance tour because the mayor told his son, "“With Dante, very early on, we said, ‘Look, if a police officer stops you, do everything he tells you to do. Don’t move suddenly. Don’t reach for your cellphone...because we knew, sadly, there’s a greater chance it might be misinterpreted if it was a young man of color.”

Yes, they got mad because the mayor said publicly he told his son if the cops stop him to do everything they tell him to.

They just seized the opportunity to use the funerals as a chance to continue their tantrum, rather than honoring two of their own who died on the job. Horrible, horrible, horrible behavior.

And I don't even like de Blasio! Ugh. This is what the police reduce me to- supporting a politician I dislike. Heckofajob there, NYPD.

I was hit once by a NYPD police car (I was rollerblading in the bike lane on 6th Avenue, exactly where I was supposed to be and cars are not supposed to be). The officers got out and tried to get me to blame the man driving a van making a turn on the other side of me. Three guesses as to what race the poor schlub driving the van was not.

No, I actually don't make this stuff up as the article below proves. Do you even read the papers or watch any news? Maybe you have become the new Riot and are only getting your news from the Daily Kos. I can guarantee you the push for this new law is a direct result of all the recent assaults in New York on officers. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/15/ny...idge.html?_r=0

As I said in my previous post with the link to a New York times article about the recent assaults on police in New York, the push for this new law is obviously a direct result of these recent assaults.

You call this an age of cops shooting people and getting away with it because there are a handful of such cases. There are well over 10000x more violent crimes committed by criminals. You are obviously very easily manipulated by soundbites and propaganda. Do you have any idea how many violent crimes were committed in this country in 2013? There were over 1 million violent crimes committed. Should we celebrate this since there may have been 1.1 million violent crimes a few years ago? There were over 14,000 murders in 2013. How many unjustified police shootings were there? Maybe 20 people at the most? How does 20 people compare to 14,000 people? But you want to focus on the 20 people and say that the police are the problem. :zz:

With regard to adding to the prison population, the only thing I want to do is get violent people off the street. If there are only 500 violent people on the street, then I only want those 500 people in prison. But if there are 1 million violent people on the street then I'd want to see 1 million people in prison. You're not doing anyone a favor by letting violent criminals roam the street simply because the prisons are crowded.

Here are some of the stats:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...110-story.html

absolutely bad police are a problem. they make it tough for everyone. their fellow police, the citizens they encounter...
as for the militarization, i blame the governments for that. local, state and federal.
we aren't the enemy, our cities aren't war zones.

'easily manipulated'. don't even start with the personal bs. i have no issue with people disagreeing with me, and holding their own opinions...but keep it on subject.
my dad was a cop in d.c. 20 years. i know all about dealing with it, the psychological crap, the citizens who spit on cops and call them names. the cops taking it out on their families, the stress, etc. and then i was in the navy, similar stuff. and just like in the navy with a cross section of the populace, you have good cops and not so good, and some really bad ones that you wonder how the hell they got hired.
but it helps no one to have the rest of the dept. close ranks and defend the bad cops. all they do is make it harder on everyone.

I agree with you that there are some bad cops out there. I have no tolerance for the bad ones. But most of the cases lately have not involved bad cops, even though the race baiters and some in the media want to portray them that way. For example, there is no evidence that Officer Wilson was a bad cop. He had never done anything bad before and he did nothing wrong in the Ferguson case in most people's opinion. Yet he is portrayed as some kind of really bad cop.

With regard to the militarization of the police, it is necessary in this day and age. Here in Los Angeles back in the 1997, there was a bank robbery where the bank robbers got into a shootout with the police. The bank robbers were better armed than the police. They had body armor and high-powered assault weapons. The police's bullets weren't even hurting them. Eleven police officers were injured. I don't know if you remember this incident but most people in Los Angeles remember it vividly. This incident woke people up to the need for the police to be better armed. We can't have criminals better armed than the police. Here is some info on that case:

"Local patrol officers at the time were typically armed with their standard issue 9 mm or .38 Special pistols, with some having a 12-gauge shotgun available in their cars. Phillips and Mătăsăreanu (the bank robbers) carried illegally modified fully automatic Norinco Type 56 S-1s (an AK-47-style weapon), a Bushmaster XM15 Dissipator, and a HK-91 rifle with high capacity drum magazines and ammunition capable of penetrating vehicles and police Kevlar vests. The bank robbers wore body armor which successfully protected them from bullets and shotgun pellets fired by the responding patrolmen. A SWAT eventually arrived bearing sufficient firepower, and they commandeered an armored truck to evacuate the wounded. Several officers also appropriated AR-15 rifles from a nearby firearms dealer. The incident sparked debate on the need for patrol officers to upgrade their firepower in similar situations in the future.[4]

Due to the large number of injuries, rounds fired, weapons used, and overall length of the shootout, it is regarded as one of the longest and bloodiest events in American police history.[5] The two men had fired approximately 1,100 rounds, while approximately 650 rounds were fired by police.[2]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout

oh good god.
you reference one circumstance, from 1997, to say that cops need mraps and the like??
yeah, that happened which explains why the la school district needed rpg's...
and why even tho crime is down significantly swat raids needed to increase tenfold.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/edito...208-story.html

and absolutely read the scathing report from the aclu. also, take note in the article:

states have access to National Guard units they can deploy when circumstances call for a military response.



when police depts request these cool toys, there is a rule regarding keeping those neato things...they have to use them within a year to show that they do indeed need them.
yeah, so hurry and use them police, so you can justify them. that's what ferguson did--in response to protests. the rioting came after they showed up in full war gear.
in many of the cases hitting the news lately....things escalated between police and the public due to the actions of the police. they then use the escalation to excuse their response.
you had a 23 year old cop who ignored texas law and tazed an old man. thankfully he didn't shoot and kill the guy. but he did lose his job. that needs to happen elsewhere as well.


now, this is what i view as a great stance that all departments would do well to emulate:

http://gawker.com/police-chief-respe...sto-1675787560

Good police work here;)...that'll show em:p

Quite a haul:eek:


http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/...icle-1.2109644