Why do the police have tanks?

[elsullo]

I am sure that the dopers will be heartbroken, but I'm a gonna quit this stupid debate. Either you have seen the damage that drugs do or you have not. Or you are a doper, and can't see much of anything.

I am finding myself becoming bitter, angry, and venomous in this thread. I would rather not contribute any more of that to this board. I have real life stories that can make grown men cry, but I tend to leave damage behind me when I do that. So, enough of this thread for me......................elsullo

 

[dmancornell]

Sorry dman, I don't know anything about Portugal except that the nation is about to default on its economic debts and collapse the entire world economy. Good times! Must be because they legalized drugs, no? Interesting how you use me not researching for evidence to prove you wrong as your evidence that you must be right. Sorry, you are not the boss of me; do your own research. Portugal has long been the drug cartels' transhipment favorite for supplying the European supply networks. I guess all of that cartel cash was not spread around Portugal after they paid for the legalization? Go on, tell us what a peaceful paradise Portugal is with legal drugs---and put up a pretty cartoon picture illustrating the depth of your understanding and deep contribution to the debate? Why don't you GO THERE and tell us how great legal drugs are (but hire a bodyguard for the visit)?.......................elsullo

Your ignorance is astounding. Portugal is not defaulting on its debts because of "drugs", it is defaulting because Portugal is a socialist welfare state with no means to fund its profligacy. Drugs has nothing to do with it. And why should it? Abolishing drug laws *decreases* government expenditure, not the other way around.

Here's some evidence, from such pro-drug outlets as Scientific American and the Cato Institute:

<broken link removed>
Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies | Glenn Greenwald | Cato Institute: White Paper

No spike in users, no spike in crime, nothing.

I have real life stories that can make grown men cry, but I tend to leave damage behind me when I do that

You're a loser who blames his failures on drugs instead of yourself? Please do tell, I need some lulz.

 

[One-Eyed Ross]

Elsullo, with respect to vices, you are using a "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" argument. You can't satisfy Koch's postulate with reference to crime and drug use. Not all criminals use drugs and not all drug users are criminals. False argument.

VICE should not be CRIMINAL. It's already against the law to rob someone else. Making more laws over the years certainly hasn't stopped crime, nor stopped drug use, now, has it?

 

[JungleBoy]

Go ahead an run Elsullo.

Why can't violent crime be punished just because it's violent crime, and not because someone took a hit of acid before hand? We should punish peoples violent actions not items and the innocent because of the creation of black markets by your beloved government.

Here is the real question.

If you are so afraid of violence from people who use drugs why do you support violence to rid society of drugs?
Is violence what you have a problem with, or is it the inanimate drugs, or you just like the use of force on groups of people you dislike?

 

[Redcap]

No, svxr8dr, Stephan Tyler would strongly disagree with you. So would Pig Pen, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and many, many others---all of the same age as Tyler, but dead from their harmless drugs. Tyler suffered a LOT from his "harmless vices" and somehow learned to quit and live to say so. Like me. I think he has a book out, probably very informative about harmless vice harm. And forty years later he is bound to have a different style of music.

Redcap, I agree with you about your stupidity. Perhaps a reasoned debate with serious comment would be more useful. If it don't hurt your head, dude?

Sorry dman, I don't know anything about Portugal except that the nation is about to default on its economic debts and collapse the entire world economy. Good times! Must be because they legalized drugs, no? Interesting how you use me not researching for evidence to prove you wrong as your evidence that you must be right. Sorry, you are not the boss of me; do your own research. Portugal has long been the drug cartels' transhipment favorite for supplying the European supply networks. I guess all of that cartel cash was not spread around Portugal after they paid for the legalization? Go on, tell us what a peaceful paradise Portugal is with legal drugs---and put up a pretty cartoon picture illustrating the depth of your understanding and deep contribution to the debate? Why don't you GO THERE and tell us how great legal drugs are (but hire a bodyguard for the visit)?.......................elsullo

You are right, I'm not a particularly smart man...nor do I claim to be. You, on the other hand, think you know something...and yet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot if instructions were printed on the heel. I'd gladly engage in a reasoned debate, however your side seems to just be sensationalized, mindless 2nd-hand drivel that you continually regurgitate.

 

[PaulZ]

List of problems facing this country:

1. The federal government
...
...
...
...
...
999. Drug gangs that would disappear as soon as the federal government ends its destructive drug war

Courage eh? It takes no courage to no-knock raid an unarmed homeowner in the dead of night and shoot his pets and terrorize his children. SWAT cops with real moral courage would to quit their useless, unconstitutional, tax-eating "jobs" (workfare disgused as a career).

YOU Sir are a brilliant man! Wish you could see one of those rigs after a "action" or cluster .... . Tear gas shells and a hundred donut boxes. Some 80 year old in a trailer, drunk and suicidal and these Azzclowns running around in Camo paint
BTW; Drugs are a public health problem. If there were no money in it there would be no drug dealers. Fund treatment for the stupid and quit making war on our own citizens.
Another P. S.; Biker house in neighborhood = no burglars.

 

[Siglvr]

Sorry to see you leave the thread Elsullo. I like your contributions to the board. For myself, in my free time I am a rock climber. About 80 percent of the climbers I know smoke pot. If I want to get out and get a belay, I'm often with one of these (fine) folks. They are all honest, law abiding and honorable folks although I happen to know that a couple have voted for Obama (I joke make, anyway, they are from all walks of life, Lawyers, teachers, doctors, computer programers, engineers...and again, all honest and honorable people. Fun loving, generous, intelligent, very skilled at climbing and caring, personable folks. You would not be able to pick them out of a crowd even if you live with them, unless you smelled the strange smoke from under the door of course

In my mind - if one of them were to be rounded up and locked up, it would be a stupid decision on societies part and a travesty of justice. All they want to do is to be left alone. They don't hurt anyone, and in fact, some of them are convinced that smoking pot isn't unhealthy if you could imagine that. I'm sitting here having with an after work (and legal) glass of red wine with my dinner. I don't smoke that crap, but when I look at the stats on drinking vs smoking pot, and I see all of the lives torn apart by alcohol but not by pot, I get their point. Yet what I am doing is legal, even though my typing suffers from it.

My point is this, lets lock folks up for real crimes, not for lifestyle choices I (or you) don't approve of. The cost just to keep a person in jail runs like $80,000 a year. This doesn't include all the other costs to society. If a meth head robs a bank, then send him to jail for bank robbery. Plenty of laws to do this. I knew lots of guys in the army doing meth and all kinds of drugs, they were all honest and good folks, and in fact some of them were top performers and 100% stract troops. That doesn't mean that meth or heroin users don't get treatment. In fact, if you look at "California's recidivism rate, you will see that the 70% of folks released in that state rotate back into jail and they do so as there is no treatment, per see, just jail. The cost for this too is huge. So Ca. turns around and just lets some of these cheesedicks back out on the street to prey on innocent folks. They need treatment, and repeat offenders should be locked up, but no one should be locked up for a lifestyle choice that hurts no others. No one.

The cost of not doing this, and locking folks up for (poor) lifestyle choices, is unbelievably huge to all of us on many levels.

Warm regards to all

 

[ZigZagZeke]

B.S.

You sir are either a liar or just ignorant

1. Mr Guerena had been arrested in January 2009 after being involved in a traffic stop with two other individuals where a gun and a small amount or marijuana were found, however he was not charged.
SWAT team fired 71 shots in raid
<broken link removed>
2. Do you mean other family members...yes he knew them. He also came up drug free in the autopsy.
3. The video shows you are again lying:
Video Timeline
:06 siren on
:13 siren off
:20 officer gives signal he will knock
:27 officer moves to door and knocks
:33 door breached
:37 officers enter doorway
:41 shots fired
:48 shots end
<broken link removed>
4.Correct they knocked and "breeched" all in 6 seconds
5. Proof of said dialogue? Guerena was awakened about 9:30 AM by his wife who heard noises outside their house, later identified as flash/bang grenades deployed by police in the back yard as a diversion.
WebCite query result
6. The video just proves you are straight up lying - "The raid video released by the sheriff's department shows that only 23 seconds elapsed between the bang of the diversionary devices and the start of the gunfire. "
WebCite query result
7. He sure did, defending his own home and family from a dead sleep after working all night at a mine against forces unknown to a situation that seemed extremely similar to:
Guerena's widow states that she had no knowledge that the man she saw pointing a gun at her through the window was a police officer, and thought that he was part of a home invasion group. She has stated that two members of her sister-in-law's family were killed previously in a home invasion.
Tucson SWAT Team Defends Shooting Iraq Marine Veteran 60 Times - ABC News
8. And then had his name and charachter dragged thru the mud and villified. Accused of being a drudg dealer, accused of firing first, lie after lie after lie. Yet you think it was a good shoot?!?!? That's the attitide that makes me sick. I wont even get into the level of professionalism displayed during that so called breech. How exactly was the public served by executing this search warrant in this fashion rather than a simple traffic stop on the way home from work?

+10,000!

 

[ZigZagZeke]

No, svxr8dr, Stephan Tyler would strongly disagree with you. So would Pig Pen, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and many, many others---all of the same age as Tyler, but dead from their harmless drugs.

More like dead due to the covert operations of Nixon's plumber squad. Tyler didn't happen to be on Nixon's enemies list. The others were. Is it just a coincidence that three of the biggest names in rock - Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin - should all die within a year? All three of them were under surveillance and being tapped. At that time, Nixon was desperately afraid of not being re-elected. There was legislation ready for passage, where 18-year-olds were to get to vote. Hendrix, Morrison, and Janis could actually make a difference on an 18-year-old vote, and put Nixon out of the White House. It was that simple. So, they were to be followed and discredited. They started gathering stuff on them. Their excesses with sex, their excesses with drugs. Their income tax problems. Everything you could think of. They started building up folders on these people. It got so desperate that the word came down "These people are to be neutralized. They must go in the way they are expected to go." For example, Janis supposedly took vodka with orange juice loaded with poison. Hendrix supposedly choked on his own vomit in an ambulance on the way to a hospital. Now remember, these people are not idiots. They had dealt with drugs all their lives. The idea of Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix overdosing doesn't make sense. They were fixed. They didn't get Morrison. He faked his own death and escaped. If you were around during the Nixon years you know that this is not far fetched.

 

[Burt Gummer]

The police have had tanks for a long time. Hasn't anyone seen Die Hard?

 

[Trlsmn]

It's a Tankless job if you ask me.

 

[elsie]

It's a Tankless job if you ask me.

Evidently not true, since they've got Tanks. B-)


elsie

 

[Dieselfuel12v]

I like knowing our police force can protect us. Although, i'd like the opportunity to buy a tank (if I could afford it), in case the police do go haywire and we need to defend ourselves with their level of weaponry, just sayin.

 

[One-Eyed Ross]

Tanks for the memories...

 

[Redcap]

I like knowing our police force can protect us. Although, i'd like the opportunity to buy a tank (if I could afford it), in case the police do go haywire and we need to defend ourselves with their level of weaponry, just sayin.

All you need is a bulldozer and some concrete.

 

[Partsproduction]

The pot heads some of you guys describe sound like good productive citizens, funny thing that, every pot head I've known was a total dud. The only pot heads I've ever met who were productive human beings were former pot heads!

 

[HollisOR]

The pot heads some of you guys describe sound like good productive citizens, funny thing that, every pot head I've known was a total dud. The only pot heads I've ever met who were productive human beings were former pot heads!

Sort have been my experience too. I don't know any users now. The last group that I knew, where oxygen thieves, nice people except for being completely worthless, liars and thieves. The harder the drug they used the worse they where.

 

[spider]

Washington County SWAT has a sweet armored personel carrier, that has the driver sticking his head out in the middle, saw it crusing the country roads near my house following a heavy armored truck. I'm pretty sure theres civilians out there with tanks and they just want to match up, its like those wild.e. coyote cartoons, with the pistol, then keeps getting one upped.

 

[svxr8dr]

This article sums it up nicely
Cliff notes:
"The police did not want this case anywhere near a jury. And the attorneys for the police were wise indeed: the police made horrendous mistakes before, during, and after the raid, mistakes that caused the death of an innocent man."
PJ Media » Jose Guerena Vindicated: Widow Receives $3.4M Settlement from Arizona Police

Jose Guerena SWAT Raid Video From Helmet Cam - YouTube
Video Timeline
:06 siren on
:13 siren off
:20 officer gives signal he will knock
:27 officer moves to door and knocks
:33 door breached
:37 officers enter doorway
:41 shots fired
:48 shots end

 

[evltwn]

So...someone offers an opinion different from the majority and he's a troll? Really? All the gum flapping about THEM dissing US, and lo and behold, its more of a case of us (with one opinion) dissing another one of us (with a contrary opinion.) Some of you are so all about standing up for our rights against the "oppressors" and yet you turn on your own when he dares speak against something you hold dear. We get enough of that crap from the present administration without us turning on ourselves. Keep it up, elsullo....it's driving the bubblegummers a little crazy!