‘When I first started we really didn\u2019t have the violence that we see today,’ Sgt. Dan Downing of the Morgan County Sheriff\u2019s Department told Fox 59. ‘The weaponry is totally different now that it was in the beginning of my career, plus, you have a lot of people who are coming out of the military that have the ability and knowledge to build IEDs and to defeat law enforcement techniques.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Of course, he’s defending his department’s purchase of a mine-resistant armored vehicle. But, I’d like to see Sergeant Dan point to one incident of a veteran building an improvised explosive device to use against the police. In fact, I’d like to see him show me one veteran who learned to build an IED. It wasn’t part of my training. Now, folks might know how to defeat IEDs, or how to be blown up by one, but I haven’t heard of any US forces using their own IEDs against the enemies in Iraq or Afghanistan. Maybe I missed that news.<\/p>\n
‘We were actually approached when we\u2019d stop to get fuel by people wanting to know why we needed this\u2026what were we going to use it for? \u2018Are you coming to take our guns away?\u2019’ Downing said.<\/p>\n
‘To come and take away their firearms\u2026that absolutely is not the reason why we go this vehicle. We got this vehicle because of the need and because of increased violence that we have been facing over the last few years. I\u2019ll be the last person to come and take anybody\u2019s guns.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And then *yawn* Sergeant Dan uses that incident in the North Hollywood bank robbery nearly 20 years ago as an excuse for his department to buy the MRAP. I don’t remember, did those guys use an IED against the police? <\/p>\n
I’m all for the police protecting themselves, and I want them all to go home safely, but using returning war veterans as an excuse to arm themselves beyond their actual needs doesn’t make me feel good about what is shaping up to be a war against vets. It perpetuates the myth of the “crazy vets” and I think that I have a little bit of credibility of law abiding veterans in our dealings with the police. Millions of veterans didn’t even think about breaking the law yesterday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You guys keep telling me that most police officers are veterans, too, but I keep reading … Police and their irrational fear of veterans<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[227],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"MRAP](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/MRAP-in-a-ditch-300x225.jpg\")
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