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by emacsgifs
3099 days ago
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Here's that quoted section without weird formatting: > There is plenty of reason to restrict the use of SWAT teams, but not
to abolish them. They are needed now and then, when there is an actual
hostage situation or an armed gang that tries to shoot it's way
out. They should never be used for routine search or arrest
warrants. That not only endangers the possibly innocent target of the
raid, but it undermines the team's training – they become used to
tearing up houses where no one is resisting. There's a dashboard video
of the Jose Guerena raid. My drill instructor would have said they
looked "like a monkey fucking a football" – and I was in the Air
Force, ground tactics weren't even on the curriculum. I've seen
considerably more forceful comments from Army and Marine Corps
infantrymen who actually have had to break into a house against armed
defenders. They milled around, exposed themselves to possible fire
through the open door, and got into each others line of fire. They did
NOT identify themselves as police that I can hear on the audio track,
so Guerena was justified in hunkering down in a defensive position
with a rifle. If Guerena (a former Marine) hadn't been far more
professional than any of the cops and not fired without identifying
his targets, several cops would have been down. Then there are the SWAT members that "accidentally" (that is,
negligently) fired a round and killed an unresisting, unarmed suspect
because they tripped or bumped their elbow – an accident that can only
happen if you are in violation of the two most important rules of gun
safety: don't put your finger on the trigger until you have decided to
shoot, and don't point the muzzle near anything that you do not intend
to shoot. We know they were running around with their finger on the
trigger – in a situation where there was clearly no need for shooting
– because modern firearms in good working order just don't fire unless
the trigger is pulled. The military just doesn't tolerate that. If a
non-police civilian in my state had done this, he could have been
sentenced to life for manslaughter. But if you are a cop, you can
recklessly kill someone and the prosecutor will throw the case… |
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I'm always very puzzled when I have to do HN quoting/bullet points, so I thought 80-columns code would fit well (evidently, it doesn't).
I also wonder why HN doesn't improve formatting, which has at least a couple of very common problems (the mentioned code and bullet points rendering).