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from the good-thing-no-one-was-jaywalking dept.
According to reporting in AlterNet, the Denver Channel, Westword, and others:
A standoff between SWAT team members and an armed shoplifting suspect who barricaded himself in a Greenwood Village home ended, but now the home owner thinks police destroyed his house. Greenwood Village Police said the 19-hour standoff ended with no injured officers or citizens, but the home looks like a bomb went off.
There is a large hole in the front of the house, broken windows and glass are littered everywhere and shrapnel is stuck in the walls. Leo Lech said, "It looks like Osama Bin Laden's compound." Lech is no terrorist but an unlucky homeowner whose property was caught in the cross fire when the suspect broke into the home. A 9-year-old child who was in the home at the time was able to escape.
Greenwood Village Police say that the suspect had four active warrants out for narcotics and had a large amount of narcotics with him. The suspect tried to steal a car at the home and fired at police from the garage, Greenwood Village Police say. Negotiations with the suspect failed after police met two of the suspect's three demands, but the suspect severed communications with police. Police used explosives and a ramming device to gain entry into the home after negotiations failed.
"This is a complete atrocity," said Lech. "This is a paramilitary force used in a civilian environment ... for one gunman? To use this kind of power?" Lech said the Greenwood Village Police Department claimed it was not responsible and the city would not return his calls.
Additional sources:
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 10 2015, @08:17PM
You're getting carried away, probably because you don't understand the words you are using. The police are still a paramilitary force, even in the most militarized cities. They are not an infantry force. There isn't a police department in this country that could go up against an equal sized infantry force. It's one thing to terrorize an unarmed civilian population, it's quite another thing to face off against a well armed, well trained combat unit. The cops would fall apart for the very same reasons that punkass street thugs fall apart when facing the police force. Lack of training, lack of discipline, lack of firepower - they would be entirely out of their element.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday June 10 2015, @08:45PM
Seems to boil down to any infantry unit that a US Army infantry unit could defeat isn't an infantry unit.
Or rephrased you may even be correct, but you need a better argument than the above.
Was, say, the pre-invasion Iraqi army an infantry force by your definition? I'd say not. They may not have been an excellent one, but...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @09:22PM
Also throw in that police are currently better armed than the US Army were during that invasion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2015, @02:45AM
Superior training and discipline trumps superior equipment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @03:21PM
So let's fight well-trained soldiers with sticks and stones against untrained soldiers with tanks and machine guns. Surely the well-trained soldiers will win, right?
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Wednesday June 10 2015, @10:38PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 11 2015, @01:10AM
The Iraq army was indeed an army, composed of infantry, artillery, engineers, and much more. I watched that army in action against Iran's army in the early 80's. Until you have seen an army in action, you really don't know what an army is.
You might take note of the fact that a police force can and does lose control of it's city. When that happens, the governor usually sends in the National Guard to take control back. The NG is in fact an infantry force. Few people are stupid enough to challenge the Guard. Almost all rational people understand that the presence of NG is a game changer.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Thursday June 11 2015, @02:48AM
correction, there are infantry units in the National Guard, but the National Guard is far more than just infantry. the guard has spots for every MOS, even 19-series (SOF).
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 11 2015, @05:45PM
I stand corrected - I knew better, I simply wrote what I meant in a very sloppy manner. But, you do amplify my point - there is no comparison between a paramilitary and a military force.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 11 2015, @02:51AM
Really? When I was in high school we regularly played paint ball with one of our friend's older brother's National Guard unit. They had compressed air rifles and all the toys. We used slingshots because none of us could afford the real guns. We beat them every time with the exception of once--they were constant suckers for the old trick of a fishing line jiggling a bush to get them emptying their clips in the wrong direction. Maybe not all National Guard units are created equal, but surely a trained infantry force should do better than that against untrained high school kids with slingshots?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2015, @10:24AM
Problem is when your cops do that too.
Definitely not the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave. Too many cops are cowards - they are unwilling to put their life on the line or even a bit at risk to "serve and protect". That's why they use excessive force. It's a lot safer for you if you can just blow people and stuff away from a distance.
I'm a coward too, but I don't pretend to be a policeman.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 11 2015, @05:50PM
AC's response is on target. Infantry is generally trained to respond to threats with a high volume of fire. I don't really agree with that doctrine, but then, I'm not infantry. I'm just an ex-squid who only carried a rifle on several dozen occasions. When the shit really hit the fan, we got the hell out of the way and let the Marines take care of business.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 11 2015, @06:28PM
I was responding to the characterization of the National Guard as a "game changer." I've never heard the National Guard spoken of in such lofty terms. My whole life I've heard them disparaged as "weekend warriors," and my own narrow interaction with them leaned much more toward that than "game changers."
My response to the notion of any brand of US military being invincible is further complicated by my recollections of a different conflict in SE Asia a long time ago, long before this latest round of nonsense, in which an equally invincible US military was beaten by a bunch of guys who couldn't read and who didn't have shoes.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 11 2015, @08:02PM
LOL - I think you're attributing to much to my use of the term. ANY military force is a game changer in terms of domestic law enforcement. The terms "military" and "para-military" are quite revealing when you examine them.
The NG and the reserves are "weekend warriors", and they are deserving of some harassment and even ridicule from the full-time professional military. But, they remain a huge cut above a police force.
Invincible? Nooooo - not hardly. Professional or not, our military is put to political uses for which it is not suited. Korea was the first time that happened, Vietnam was worse, and more recent conflicts have been no better.
The purpose of a military is to break an enemy. The military is not a nation building tool. Our military's proper role in Afghanistan should have involved a short campaign of 6 to 18 months, and it should have been labeled a "punitive campaign". It should never have been referred to as a war. We should have kicked ass, taken prisoners, destroyed infrastructure, taken more prisoners, destroyed all means of waging war, and then GET THE HELL OUT. Nation building is not a proper role for a military force. Dumbass politicians can make believe that it is a proper role, but that doesn't make it so in real life.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday June 11 2015, @02:17AM
The Iraqi Army (during Saddam's era) was the largest infantry force in the world, as I remember.
It fell swiftly to the US because of US air and naval power, not because it was a crappy infantry force. The US also had better-equipped mechanized forces, operating in tandem with complete air superiority (Iraqi's military had crappy old Soviet tanks). The Iraqi infantry had no chance against all that.