An article in today's The Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/how-the-war-on-terror-militarized-the-police/248047/) spotlights a problem that a reader right here in McHenry County identified a while back.
The deputies are becoming armed soldiers, no longer only on a peacetime mission. Are there machine guns and other fully-automatic rifles available to law enforcement in McHenry County?
We already know about MARV. (Is MARV driven "legally" on public roads? Are there license plates on MARV (now?)? Last year there weren't. I don't think MARV is street-legal. Is it hauled on a trailer, when needed somewhere? Is it really ever needed?
When S.W.A.T. teams go out on the prowl in full "battle" uniform and approach a house with drawn weapons, it ought to be pretty serious stuff; right? How about when they are "after" an employed single mom who didn't pay a couple of hundred dollars in court fines? Is this the proper use of S.W.A.T.?
As one deputy said to me, "I could have served that warrant by myself."
Does it take a multi-jurisdictional team of six S.W.A.T. deputies and officers to swoop down on a resident who could have been sent a letter for 44¢ to remind her of her unpaid fines?
And when you see pumped-up deputies with their shaved heads and their muscle t-shirts, biceps bulging from their work-outs at Cardinal Gym, what's the feeling you get? Are you glad that these guys are out serving and protecting you, or do you start thinking "bully"?
McHenry County is not Fallujah. And we don't want it to become Fallujah. I want our deputies properly armed (and fully trained and emotionally stable), but I don't want to see them strutting around like they own the place. They just work here, like the rest of us.
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Just curious...after being served, does she get a bill for the SWAT team costs along with her court costs?
The key phrase in all of this is "properly trained and emotionally stable"...with or without carbines, I want the department to meet that imperative from top to bottom. Anyone with access to a weapon, or authority to send someone out with a weapon, needs to meet that criteria!
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