One wonders if the Brady Campaign would find this a great example about how there are no cultural or intolerance overtones in the gun debate. Quoting from the Oakland East Palo Alto officer:
Sounds like you had someone practicing their 2nd amendment rights last night! Should’ve pulled out the AR and prone them all out! And if one of them made a furtive movement… 2 weeks off!!!
The last thing being code for “shoot the bastard.” I don’t care what you think about open carry, this is not an appropriate response to citizens engaging in a perfectly lawful form of protest over California’s unreasonable and discretionary carry laws. Is an attitude like this, as the Brady’s say, “not hatred for people with guns?” Is this just concern “calling for a gun violence prevention safety net.”
I have no problem with an officer exercising reasonable care when approaching armed persons, but I’m fairly certain in most other states, officers are trained in how to do this without having to prone and threaten every armed person they come across. In most other states, this would, in fact, rise to the level of a civil rights lawsuit.
“Threaten?” That goes beyond “threaten” and into ‘cold blooded murder”. This is the exact danger of select militias that the founders were concerned about.
I believe that quote is attributed to an East Palo Alto officer, not an Oakland officer.
Screen shot of Facebook page (now that it is gone) at http://legalese77.blogspot.com/2010/02/douchebag-of-month.html
Melancton has it right. All the founder’s talk about standing armies and select militias predated modern professional police departments. If they could see them now in all their militarized glory, I think they’d throw them right in.
(Not to say we don’t need sheriff and police departments in some form, but my impression is militarization combined with careerism is driving out the Robert Peel’s rules of policing approach.)
And it seems the guy is a bit of a racist, with the colorful term he uses for the local inhabitants of high crime areas.