POLICE MILITARIZING

Editor, The Record;

This is a small thing to be thankful for, but our Canadian police
forces do have the wisdom to take the military weapons off tactical
armoured vehicles (TAV) before using them in police work.

This is not true in the USA, where even some small town sheriffs
boast armoured vehicles topped with Browning M-2 machine guns. That
is exactly the same weapon that blasted German and Japanese fighters
out of the sky in World War II. It is as useful in a police operation
as a chain saw would be in a watch repair shop.

Nevertheless, using military equipment for police work is dangerous,
destructive and wrong. Once it starts, where will it stop?

How soon will a police department somewhere try to keep the military
arms attached to a TAV?

I'll bet on two years, maximum.

Any takers?

Police militarization is usually justified by claiming, as Jason
Raaflaub did, that it makes police work safer. If that is true, then
the Mexican police must be the safest in the world. After all, they
work with not only military equipment, but also the army itself.

I invite Constable Raaflaub to join the police force in Ciudad Juarez
for a short time; then he will see how much safer a fully militarized
police force is.

For the sake of his friends and family, however, he should make sure
that it is indeed a short time.

But the main point is this: If investigating a cannabis farm is
dangerous for our police, we cannot blame someone who gives them or
does not give them a TAV. The simple and only reason why some
cannabis farms are dangerous is because they are illegal.

No one needs a TAV to inspect a brewery or a chicken grow-op! Beer
and poultry are legal, and so the brewers and growers cooperate with
the law so that they don't lose permission to operate.

If cannabis farms were legal, the farmers would behave the same way.

Therefore, the only people to blame for the dangers of so-called
"marijuana grow ops" are ourselves, the voters. Cannabis prohibition
is the only thing that makes these farms dangerous for police, and we
are the ones who continue to elect politicians who leave this
prohibition in place.

It is our failure to change that puts Jason Raaflaub and his fellow
officers in danger.

Steve Finlay,

volunteer, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Burnaby