From the S.A. Express - article by Zeke MacCormack
Arrest of San Marcos cops called rarity
SAN MARCOS — The spectacle of police here arresting two of their own has generated kudos from a watchdog group, surprise from residents and disgust from Police Chief Howard Williams.
The cases of Cpl. John A. Palermo, accused of assaulting a pedestrian who happened to walk by a traffic stop, and Patrolman David K. Amerson, charged with prescription fraud, mark the first times in Williams' 10-year tenure as chief that he's jailed a member of his 97-officer force.
...... Palermo assaulted a college student - a girl! - by knocking her down and handcuffing her. Pictures show severe facial bruising and broken teeth.
The Wall St. Journal on Saturday ran a long article on the miltarization of police forces in the U.S. Cops across the country regularly use SWAT teams to kick in doors, throw flash bang grenades, and so on, to make drug busts. There's a place for that when you're dealing with hard core, violent criminals, but not for 90% of the arrests. It' like the Waco debacle where BATF assaulted David Koresh's compound, leading to the deaths of agents and about 80 civilians, including young children. The sheriff said if they had talked to him he would have told them they could bust Koresh when he came in for his weekly pizza.
The WSJ article is behind a pay wall, but there are plenty of other articles available online. Radley Balko's new book “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces.” To read an exceprt "Why did you shoot me: I was reading a book," click here.
After 911, Americans have just rolled over and given away most of the civil liberties the Founding Fathers fought for.
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I've been thinking more about Chris Kyle, the Navy Seal sniper who wrote American Sniper about his experiences in Iraq. He survived IED explosions, dozens of battles where he and his brothers were way outnumbered, getting shot, having a concrete wall that was hit by an RPG fall on his legs. He did four tours almost back to back. When he was home, his training required him to free fall from 30,000 feet in HALO jumps, not to mention the "routine" SEAL training, like night dives to plant dummy mines on the bottom of ships. All that, and he comes home and is murdered by a crazy vet he's trying to help. There's an excellent book, On Killing: the Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, by Dave Grossman. A shocking number of soldiers in WWII wouldn't fire their weapons or would shoot over the heads of the enemy. There is a basic aversion to killing another human being, and the military had to rework its training programs, e.g., by using pop up targets that look like enemy soldiers. The kill rate went way up in Vietnam, and now that the military is all volunteer, it's the best it's ever been. Anyway, Grossman says that in the military there is a very small percentage who are natural killers, most of them in the commando and elite units. Thank God we have men like that who will do what has to be done. Some of the pansy types who get their news from MSNBC wring their hands, that men like Chris Kyle are brutes. Well, when the shit hits the fan, would you rather be with Kyle, or Chris Myers, Rachel Maddow or Chris "I get a tingle up my leg for Obama"?
A final thought: if some overweight cop wants to play SEAL or Delta Force, he should join up and go through the training and culling process.
I will defer to you and talk radio when it comes to contrasting "pansy types" and so called real men like Kyle.
ReplyDeleteIf you would like to take a serious, harder look at who Kyle was and what he stood for, there is an excellent piece in The New Yorker Magazine. Here is an excerpt:
Kyle seemed to consider himself a cross between a lawman and an executioner. His platoon had spray-painted the image of the Punisher—a Marvel Comics character who wages “a one-man war upon crime”—on their flak jackets and helmets. Kyle made a point of ignoring the military dress code, cutting the sleeves off shirts and wearing baseball caps instead of a helmet. (“Ninety per cent of being cool is looking cool,” he wrote.) Like many soldiers, Kyle was deeply religious and saw the Iraq War through that prism. He tattooed one of his arms with a red crusader’s cross, wanting “everyone to know I was a Christian.” When he learned that insurgents had placed a bounty on his head and had named him al-Shaitan Ramadi—the Devil of Ramadi—he felt “proud.” He “hated the damn savages” he was fighting. In his book, he recounts telling an Army colonel, “I don’t shoot people with Korans. I’d like to, but I don’t.”
How anyone can take the position the Chris Kyle and his kind are necessary and good for America boggles my mind.
ReplyDeleteKyle was openly hostile towards Muslims. He tattooed a Crusaders Cross on his arm and then ripped off the sleeves of his uniform to flaunt it. He was a icon of a segment of American society that view the war in Iraq as Christianity vs. Islam. He openly expressed a desire to kill Muslims and he followed through. The Iraq war was a disaster and America left Iraq in ruins. Today it is a war torn bloody mess and the average Iraqi is far worse off.
People like Kyle enrage Muslims and do nothing but put this country in more danger. Kyle was a disaster for the American homeland and we will be paying the price for years to come.