SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Techdirt reports
Two law enforcement agencies will be returning their Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) [vehicles] to Uncle Sam, with the announcements arriving almost simultaneously.
Davis, Calif., city officials have directed the police department to return a surplus U.S. military armored vehicle to the federal government after residents, citing images seen during protests in Ferguson, Mo., expressed fears of militarization.
The Davis Police Department now has 60 days to get rid of a $689,000 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicle, which police acquired through a U.S. Defense Department program, and must consider other rescue vehicle options.
[...]
Over in San Jose, CA, it's a completely different story. Rather than having an MRAP pried from law enforcement's clutches by city reps, the San Jose Police Department gave it up voluntarily to protect its relationship with the people it serves.
San Jose police spokeswoman Sgt. Heather Randol told KCBS the decision was made based on concerns for potential damage to the department's image and community relationships.
"We want to keep their trust. We don't want them to feel we are going off on another path with our police department," she said. "We want them to feel comfortable about the tools that we use."
(Score: 1) by SacredSalt on Thursday September 04 2014, @01:05PM
You mean people refusing to do their jobs like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccjMjqXEMxw [youtube.com] Where the police are reduced to running a catch and release program (much as they are in St. Louis City, and that fault lies with the judges), and the residents are trapped making repeated calls without any results to show for it! It would be equally easy to find examples from: Detroit, Gary (Indiana) or even Chicago ... (You likely also find similar problems in Oakland, but I haven't been there so I can only go by the stories I read in the paper, and I discount a lot of news from the media with good reason) I picked this example from Baltimore because its one of the cities I have also lived in, and seen the same things happen in. The areas around where the Ferguson riot occurred are indeed ringed by section 8, and subsidized housing. People drove in from surrounding neighborhoods, such as Dellwood, that are also filled with this same subsidized housing to loot and cause problems.
Baltimore and East St. Louis are what happens when police surrender to the problems I talked about rather pointedly in my prior post. St. Louis County Police, and thus far Ferguson police have not surrendered to this ... yet ... hence the extreme nature of the stop snitching program, and confinement of the drug markets to non-open air (largely) in Ferguson. To understand this, you need to understand many of the people that moved into Ferguson came from parts of St. Louis City where they understand reporting problems just means the person is back on the street the next day, the next week, and retaliation is quite a real factor by that persons associates if they do not get out for some reason. Which is why it took a commitment to increased police presence (by the way, St Louis County is back to supplementing the Ferguson police to honor this commitment) to make a few people feel safe enough to be willing to come forward as witnesses to the attack on the officer. The other "witness" spinning the far fetched tale of a police gunning down a person in cold blood on the street was a co-conspirator in the robbery of the store, and has convictions for false police reports among other things.
Of course the federal government will still continue its witch hunt for awhile longer, as will the county prosecutors office -- even though no charges are pending. I played in a band with a St. Louis City Police in the late 90's. In 1999 he had the misfortune of facing similar events. He was Asian, but that that didn't matter. Asian = White according to the newspapers and the NAACP, Al Sharpton, and Farrakhan are concerned. (Black racial agitators achieved the distinction or rather lack of distinction of the media ignoring actual race and going with White long before the Zimmerman case) The headline in the paper read "WHITE COP SHOOTS BLACK MAN FOR DRINKING BEER ON PORCH!" -- followed by the typical example of throwing years old photographs up, and beating the war drums by the press. This resulted in White people being drug from their cars in Tower Grove Park, but the media was clearly disappointed it wasn't able to generate the full scale riot it wanted. Not for lack of trying though.
Unfortunately, the headlines bore no resemblance to reality (just like this case). The police involved had spotted Mr. Ruffin (whom he had arrested before, and knew his local thugs well) and knew he was in front of a known drug house run by the Gangster Disciples (of which he was a member). He was drinking in public (which is no more than a ticket offense in St. Louis) and when the police called him out on it, all of the people left the porch of the house in different directions -- but they went after Mr. Ruffin as he was the only one they could visibly see was committing a crime at the time. The police officer chased him down a couple blocks, Ruffin ran into an alley, reached into his baggy pants, looked startled, and then took a lunge at the police officer. The officer fired a single shot, and over the next couple minutes Mr. Ruffin died.
The state investigated, the city police investigated, the FBI investigated -- he was cleared by all of them, but it was nearly a full year before Min was cleared on all of this because they couldn't find a weapon on Mr. Ruffin. This was not a trigger happy cop, he is the community liaison officer for Soulard now and has been decorated more than a dozen times for his ability to talk down people rather than resort to violence. If Min went for his gun, he had a genuine fear. This kind of thing can be destroying to a police. At a minimum, they go through the torture of dealing with having to take a life. Its torture to deal with, and they are enforced idle the entire time this is going on. I have seen up close, and personal what happens to police in cases like this. You can always tell a case like this is coming when they break out the old photographs and try to paint the child (even if they are well into their adult years they will be referred to as child) as a saint, and the story is so completely outrageous as to defy belief.
There is a world of difference between cities like San Jose (where Whites and Asians makeup 74.8% of the population, and Blacks paltry 3% of the population), and Davis (less than 2% and declining Black population -- also a majority White & Asian city) and Ferguson (70% Black, 27% White -- and the municipalities around it have similar if not Blacker demographics). Davis and San Jose are unlikely to find a genuine need for an armored vehicle any time soon. People in cities like San Jose, and Davis likely imagine that everyone behaves similar to how they do when dealing with things like: not dumping your trash in public lots, not robbing stores, not knifing people, not shooting people, not being a prostitute, not failing to pay your traffic tickets, not assaulting a police officers, not rioting because of imagined slights ... For an education in such matters I suggest a trip to your nearest majority-minority city that contains a large Black population (as you might find a majority Asian community that is law abiding, as Asians tend to be for the most part). Perhaps Oakland, where they are celebrating being dropped to only the fourth most dangerous city would be enough of an education without having to actually move to Detroit, St Louis, Chicago, or Baltimore. http://www.thebolditalic.com/articles/4361-oakland-is-no-longer-2nd-most-dangerous-city-in-america [thebolditalic.com]
You folks that think an armored vehicle isn't needed have never considered things like: Your ambulance isn't armored -- what happens when first responders have to go through an active war zone to transport you out, but can't because the risks are too grave. If all it takes is a person getting shot for assaulting a police to set off a full scale race riot in the Black community -- what happens if the help you need is on the other side of that riot while you are having a heart attack or get injured from the rioters and police and paramedics can't get to you because they don't have one?