Quote:
Originally Posted by Excalibur
Ask the suicide bombers. A lot of them most likely had wives and kids as well.
Just because a criminal had raised a family doesn't excuse or change the effect of what was done, a crime. You know who else had family? The people that died in the explosion, the people who were maimed by the bomb.
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I don't think he's saying it excuses what was done; only that it makes the guy's motives more esoteric. Seriously, why would you ever think Funkychinaman wanted to
excuse these guys?
Quote:
Originally Posted by commando552
I see no problem with police wearing camouflage, as there are instances where they will be operating in wide open rural areas (in the case of non metro police departments anyway) where it is beneficial not to be seen by the bad guys. A couple of years ago in England there was a big man hunt for a guy who had shot three people including a police officer, and armed officers were called in from a load of different police forces to help with the search, including me. I didn't feel particularly stealthy creeping along in green woodland wearing all black with a black/white chequered band around my baseball cap. I would have given anything to be allowed to wear my old DPMs that day.
To be fair though, I don't know what advantage anyone is getting out of wearing UCP, that seems a bit show-off-ish. Part of it might be the fact that by and large tactical equipment is more readily available in military patterns though. Also about the UMPs, it's not like they carry those around every day is it? This was an exceptional situation that led to them being more heavily armed than they would normally be, which is fair enough.
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I dunno, the assortment of camo patterns I am seeing don't really seem appropriate for the terrain. When I lived in NC, our local SERT tactical team wore woodland camo BDUs, but only while serving warrants outside of town (i.e. when busting weed and meth dealers operating in houses deep within the woods). What we have in the case of Boston are guys wearing camo patterns appropriate for woodland terrain even though they are chasing suspects in an urban area. It seems unnecessary, and comes across as an attempt to look more badass than they are.
Not sure it demonstrates that our police forces are becoming "militarized", though. SWAT teams have always shared equipment and weapons with SOF (since that's what most of them were before they re-joined the civilian world). Until SWAT teams start using integrated network ops to gather intel on suspects (infringing on electronic privacy), and then start raiding said suspects' homes with shoot-to-kill orders, I don't see any reason to be concerned about their (slightly gratuitous) use of military camouflage uniforms. "Militarization" is just not a word I use so lightly.