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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: 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.