We’ve cited the phrase before in relation to the use of shiny new technology by law enforcement, whether or not the technology is truly appropriate: To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Well, thanks to a well-developed military hardware industry and free-flowing Homeland Security grants for up-armoring your local constabulary, we have this:
A summer morning’s peace ended jarringly Monday morning when more than a dozen police cruisers, an armored vehicle and the big box truck that houses Vermont’s equivalent of a SWAT team set up shop in Washington to take what proved to be one unarmed man into custody.
(Times Argus; story behind a paywall as of this writing. I’ll update w/link if ti becomes available without paying.)
And no, we’re not talking Washington, D.C. We’re talking Washington, Vermont, sleepy little village, population 1,047. In response to an uncertain situation that might possibly have led to violence, the cops rolled out the heavy artillery and all the troops, shattering the atmosphere of a quiet rural community.
The whole mess started Saturday night when Sara Perreault was taken to a hospital for treatment of injuries allegedly inflicted by her husband Albert. a 68-year-old retired granite worker Police were on the scene from Saturday night until Monday morning, when they brought in their heavy gear.
During that time, numerous attempts were made to reach Perreault by phone. At one point, police tried a loudspeaker. According to the T-A, “police learned that Perreault had allegedly threatened himself and police.” Perreault was known to be an avid hunter and had guns in the house. A neighbor said that the couple had “a combustible relationship,” and it wasn’t the first time police had responded to their home.
Unable to know what to make of their inability to contact Perreault – first by phone and later with a public address system outside his residence – police blocked off the half-mile stretch of Route 110 just south of the village for nearly an hour Monday.
Part of that response, presumably, was the State Police’s new Lenco BearCat G3 armored truck, acquired last November. Price tag: $255,398. About 190K was covered by a Homeland Security grant (Your Tax Dollars At Work) and the rest came from drug-forfeiture funds. This is the same Lenco I wrote about in February, when they were trying to sell a BearCat to Keene, NH, and its sales guy, Jim Massery, said this:
When a Lenco Bearcat shows up at a crime scene where a suicidal killer is holding hostages, it doesn’t show up with a cannon. It shows up with a negotiator.
Yeah, right. And as I said at the time,
How about, “When a Lenco Bearcat shows up at a crime scene, the suicidal killer will fly into a panic and start shooting”?
In the Perreault case, police had a guy holed up in his house with guns, possibly with violent intent, and he wouldn’t answer the phone. A police response was appropriate.
But is there really no option between a cruiser with a loudspeaker and a small invasion of a country town? Can we expect more of this inappropriate militarization of what might well be routine situations?
We’ve given the police a hammer, and they saw Alfred Perreault and the village of Washington as nails. Your neighborhood may be next.
a portion of which is available online via Vermont Today (without paywall), here.
the drones. Their coming, to a local airfield near you.
Sad, that we’ve come to this. Most sophisticated, freedom loving, give me your tired masses, liberty, blah blah blah, land in all the world. And we can’t figure out equitable taxation, healthcare, nor education funding (both lower, middle, and higher) – but we can park armored vehicles full of riot gear wearing police on a retired workers front lawn… and then lock up a stunning amount of our citizens (most of which are non violent offenders, with darker skin than the majority of politicians)…
A number of fake bomb threats to VT schools is beginning to cost towns and cities a bundle due to the required official roll-out of personnel and armaments each time.I think the Times-Argus had an article early this spring about the rising costs to budgets and taxpayers.