Framingham Police Department: Paramilitarization

Cops in America are heavily armed and trained to be bullies. Among the most highly trained, and therefore most domineering and violent, are the members of urban SWAT teams, who go beyond everyday bullying and instead are trained to think of themselves as paramilitary strike forces who are occupying hostile territory, and engaged in a war of classic counter-insurgency.
SWAT used to mean Special Weapons Attack Team until political correctness revised it to mean Special Weapons And Tactics.
Some police forces will use SWAT responsibly for very serious criminals known to be armed and dangerous. It appears that the Framingham police will use SWAT teams against small time drug dealers. If the potential offender merely has a criminal record, that's good enough for a midnight SWAT raid . Our police chief has caught militarization fever, a disease that too many of his fellow police chiefs have also come down with. It is disease that will soon spread further.
The Framingham SWAT team was established in 2001 and had 19 volunteers. Deputy Chief Graig Davis is in charge. Lt. Ronald Brandolini was the officer in charge on January 5, 2011.
The SWAT team travels with one or two paramedics. This is a sure fire sign that they intend to harm someone, but always accidentally, I'm sure.
If you have a desire or fantasy to kill other human beings, then, perhaps being a member of the Framingham police SWAT team might be a perfect opportunity to satisfy your bloodlust.
To get some sense of what SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) is about, just look at the monthly covers of SWAT Magazine . It's basically about killing people. Anyone who subscribes to it is by trade a professional killer and assasin and may have serious issues with the human race. This magazine is not for weekend warrior squirrel hunters. After examining a few front covers, ask yourself the question: Is this the life I long to live?
SWAT Magazine firearms acronyms .

It's time for Framingham residents to take up arms against those who are excessively well armed. There is no rational reason for the Framingham police to possess so many automatic weapons except to use them against the populace.

Bullies and those with various inferiority complexes have long been attracted to police, or other kinds of governmental work; but today, it seems that cruelty - as a personality trait - is a requirement for police work. To have civilian police departments now using heavy military equipment, automatic weapons, and the tactics, training, and even uniforms of the military, means but one thing: our governmental establishments are setting themselves against us -- the people.
SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams were virtually unknown in the '50s and early '60s; but today, SWAT teams have become so prevalent, they're even used in routine warrant service in drug cases, and other nonviolent crimes, in spite of the fact, that para-military actions often trigger violence instead of defusing it.
In order to justify the use of deadly force, all the officer has to say is "I thought he had a weapon that he was pointing at me". If the officer is the only survivor of the two man encounter, who will counter his argument? The dead civilian will become collateral damage. Dead men tell no tales.
A police officer is given the right to use deadly force if he believes the other person MAY have a weapon that MIGHT harm him. Over time, we have taken note that such weapons have included cameras, flashlights and wallets.
Soldiers are trained to kill without hesitation and adopt a macabre sense of humor as part of that transformation. Images of skulls and cutesy slogans about killing are often seen on t-shirts and bumper stickers.

Airborne: Death from Above.
Marine Sharpshooter: One Shot. One Kill.
Army Rangers: If we weren't supposed to kill people, God wouldn't let us be so good at it.
Special Forces - Mess with the Best, Die like the Rest.
Join the Army: Travel to exotic distant lands. Meet exciting, unusual people. And kill them.

Cops, though, aren't trigger pullers by mission. Desensitizing them to violence probably isn't a good idea.
The problem with this mingling of domestic policing with military operations is that the two institutions have starkly different missions. The military's job is to annihilate a foreign enemy. Cops are charged with keeping the peace, and with protecting the constitutional rights of American citizens and residents. It's dangerous to conflate the two.
One just wonders whether one of them could go nuts on us, like in Afghanistan.

Up to now, the fact that the police still have visible names and numbers on their uniforms act as a restraint on the brutality, since they can be singled out and punished, however mildly, for excesses. The real danger comes when even those identifiers are covered up, because then there will be little restraint. This may well happen since some of the more aggressive police have already been identified for shaming and police chiefs may say they need the anonymity to 'protect' their people from retribution.
The Department of Homeland Security has played a significant role in spreading the para-militaristic perversion of police training.
Hundreds of billions have been spent to militarize our nation against a terrorism threat that barely exists
Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the US has spent about $635bn to militarize the country's local police forces

Meanwhile, in Europe, according to Germany's Der Spiegel, German police shot only 85 bullets in all of 2011, a stark reminder that not every country is as gun-crazy as the U.S. of A. As Boing Boing translates, most of those shots weren't even aimed anyone: "49 warning shots, 36 shots on suspects. 15 persons were injured, 6 were killed."
Technically, about 9,000 more shots were fired at sick and dangerous animals. (Germany, why do you kill your animals?) But since we couldn't watch the end of Old Yeller, we'll look the other way on those humanitarian shootings.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., where the population is little less than four times the size of Germany's, well, we can get to 85 in just one sitting, thank you very much. 84 shots fired at one murder suspect in Harlem, another 90 shot at one fleeing unarmed man in Los Angeles. And that was just April. So we bring you Germany's shot total in case you forgot about America shoots itself in the foot with its manic love of guns.