It's an opinion piece, it's supposed to be biased.
Fair point. But that bias is not enough to sustain a cogent argument.
Y0u'll have noticed the litany of corrections that had to be appended to the article, of course.
I don't dispute that SWAT teams have been occasionally misused by certain agencies. For that matter, so have parking enforcement officers nationwide. However, the existence of SWAT--a life-saving organization, no matter what anyone says--does not, ipso facto, mean that the police have been militarized. I reject that notion unequivocally.
Yes, many of us have long guns of some kind. Lawmen have carried rifles and shotguns since before Wyatt Earp pinned on a star. We use body armor, and have for decades. Arguing about what either looks like is a meaningless effort. The police have guns, and we use the gun (or tool, or tactic) most appropriate to the instant problem assuming we have the luxury of having proper equipment and options. People outside law enforcement who argue against these things make as much sense as someone with no training in medicine telling me when I should use adenosine, diltiazem or amiodarone to control a tachycardia.
Quite frankly, outside of some high profile units like NYPD's Hercules teams, you rarely see these
militarized weapons more suited to the battlefield than policing American streets (as if Balko has seen or done either) deployed. High-risk car stop? Sure. Man with a gun call? Sure. Walking a beat along a retail strip in downtown Philadelphia? Fuck no.
