Meanwhile, in Missouri...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Frogacuda

The military gear and training comes from a federal program that gives decommissioned military gear to local police on the condition that they train for it and actually use it. I don't know that there's a profit motive but the requirements to get this "free stuff" encourage misuse.

---

The profit would be freeing up money to be used elsewhere

Well, the crack epidemic destroyed lives and communities and street gangs were heavily involved. Not sure if people would have been cool with the police letting them all sort it out by themselves either.

But now they're using it for like weed growers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Diff-chan

Well, the crack epidemic destroyed lives and communities and street gangs were heavily involved. Not sure if people would have been cool with the police letting them all sort it out by themselves either.

---

The first truce between the Crips and Bloods was negotiated in order to get a better price on raw cocaine from Nicaragua (which was being imported here by Danilo Bandon, a CIA operative, by the way). So it's a little more complicated than that.

It was really more of a show of force. They declared a "war" on drugs and intended to treat it like a war. There was often very little detective work involved, a lot of innocent people got their houses smashed in. Sometimes they'd go after the entire wrong person because they had nothing more than "The dude with the bald head" to go on as a description and people didn't use their real names. The LAPD was little more than a racist mob for much of the 80s.

Wow, Bloods and Crips should be praised for that show of peace, so they could destroy the communities they lived in more effectively.

But Danilo Blandon can walk around free and Reagan gets remembered as a great president. Seems legit.

Meanwhile Pharma is handing out blues to anyone with so much as a backache and that's fine.

I didn't say that.

I just don't like how all the blame gets put on the first black guy in that chain. Like the Crips were growing coca plants in their bathtubs.

Crack had devastating effects on the community but nobody took it that didn't want it and claims that it escalated gang violence are dubious, especially in LA. I don't think driving tanks through the hood and running over people's houses was in any way a justifiable response. They didn't do that to white coke dealers.

I wonder what the cost justification is for using a armored vehical to take out a door on a house on a block worth less than the vehical.

The ACLU makes a mobile app called "Mobile Justice" that immediately uploads captured video to their servers, so that if your phone is taken, wiped, or destroyed, a record still exists.

It's available for both the iPhone and Android, and localized by state to be compliant with the law.

There is also a 'witness' mode built in, so if someone else is recording an incident nearby you can be notified and have the option of also starting up your camera.

Tell your black friends.

If you give a cop all these cool toys, and dress them up like a soldier they're going to want to act like a soldier, even if they're not trained like a soldier.