The Captain’s Journal » Arkansas Town Unleashes SWAT To Patrol Streets
Statistics isn’t a good enough reason to stop citizens on the streets. As best as I know, Arkansas is a so-called stop and identify state, but only for loitering. Additionally, even in stop and identify states, the stop has to be a valid “Terry stop.” It cannot be because you just want to, or because crime is high in a given area.
But beyond the unconstitutionality of this approach, it is one more step in the militarization of police tactics in the United States. And don’t expect the courts to stop this kind of thing – they agree with the police and almost always side with them. They are, after all, both part of the “criminal justice system.”
I asked my former Marine son to survey this picture and tell me what he thought.
His response:
Fat ass Johnny-Soldier-Boy wannbe, who has no business walking around the streets like that. He should consider himself to be a peace officer, and if he wants to do CQB or room clearing, he should sign up, get the training, fly across the pond and do it for real. Pitiful. Just pitiful.
Pitiful indeed. If the crime is so high that patrols are needed, then the Governor of the state should call out the National Guard. Otherwise, the police should simply do their jobs.
It’s for your own safety, so shut up, he explained.
He doesn’t seem to know proper rifle handling.
What is that? A class I vest? Headshots and nutshots for the Gestapo hotshots.
In early ’76 I had just finished college in Conway, Arkansas. Nice town, good people, I had quite a few friends there. One morning I, my wife, and our kid were eating at a local establishment. At the next table a group of Faulkner County deputies were eating, and one of the lawdogs was telling of a traffic stop he’d made the night before. As he explained it, the old guy he’d stopped was extremely slow in responding to his commands. His words, and they made a great impression on me, were, “I thought that I was finally going to get to shoot someone, but the old bitch with him explained that the guy was deaf.” One of the older deputies responded, “Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance eventually.”
We finished our meal before the cops, because we ate like humans instead of pigs. On my way out I stopped to thank the officers. I explained that I was trying to decide whether to accept a job offer that had been made, and hearing them talk about their opinion of the citizens had convinced me that we couldn’t move out of their baliwick fast enough.
But this Paragould situation is just something coming soon to a town near you. Maybe even sooner than you know.
Old people always say it, but this isn’t the country that I grew up in. I’m glad to be as old as I am; I wouldn’t want to be a young person, faced with living under a police state for the next sixty or seventy years. There is a vast difference between a Peace Officer and a Law Enforcement Officer. One can be your friend. The other is not going to be.
Keeper. And the subject of an upcoming post.
Nice li’l town, that Conway, AR – a few years back, I spent about a month there one week (to sort-of paraphrase a W.C.Fields remark – about Phila., PA, I b’lieve) –
I don’t know exactly where Paragould is in AR, or the exact dimensions of their alleged “crime problem” – but I can make a pretty good guess as to them soon being host to a lawsuit or two regarding “improper law-enforcement”, or some such…also, it’s now joined the gradually-growing list of Places I’ve Never Been And Never Intend To Go.
Another “nice place to be from – as far from as possible”…
Right across the Mississippi from Memphis…. and infected with Memphis attitudes.
Keep in mind the point I’ve repeatedly made about how to arm yourself if firearms and ammunition are hard to come by. Looks like some place in Shithole, Arkansas might just be leaving automatic weapons lying around, free for the taking.