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Ah. Tienanmen Square has arrived in America. I’ve been expecting it.
Because surely those protesters were in need of “rescue” from the armed thugs. What? Cops?
Fuck. Me.
As a Brit I’m not even used to seeing police with guns never mind a tank. When that was going to the city budget appropriations board what possible reason could they have had for needing something like that?
Technically speaking I think that would be an armoured personnel carrier rather than a tank.
Whatever the definition, I’m sure they need protection from all that reprehensible and potentially lethal ‘sitting down peacefully’ that the protestors have been getting up to
Cops are such fucking cowards.
The moment ANY protester throws old fruit at a fully armored cop the protester is “violent.” The cops beat and mace unarmed and undangerous people who are doing nothing; and they act like heroes.
The wrong people are getting beaten at these protests. I feel like the cops will learn what a “violent protest” actually is if they keep up with their aggressiveness.
It’s a ‘police’ M577 (M113) APC, pretty thin skinned (aluminum). Will stop small-arms fire, but not medium or heavy caliber weapons.
Balko calls this “Militarizing Mayberry”. Never seen anything like this in Houston, though I am sure they might have such vehicles in reserve.
For a long contrast between how brutal riot police mishandled a non-event at UC Davis, and how the Houston Police Department used appropriate levels of force to deal with a genuine serious event in an Occupy Houston direct action, please read the comments a couple of posts down.
Does any Occupy movement use a lot of weapons?
Occupy Houston has a complete weapons ban. People with weapons are forced to leave and cannot return for a whole day. This has happened only once.
The only exception is when Quanell X and the New Black Panther Party show up. He’s only shown up once back in late October. Quanell always travels with a long gun armed security detail.
Be interesting to see what would happen if Quanell and posse showed up if there were an eviction at Tranquility. I think he wouldn’t show. He knows we’d sell him out in a heartbeat. We are bigger than he is. I think the last thing we’d need is gunfire anyway.
It’s not even armed… It’s more like a very heavily armoured truck. Like those operated by swat teams and the like.
This kind of thing mainly exists in cases of seiges (See Waco), infact they probably just sent it out because they had it available and there are so few crazy sieges.
Cholten 99 – We have armoured fire engines, ambulances but they belong to the military branches. In cases of sieges and the like they can be requisitioned for use (the ambulance can park up close and the occupants can be regarded as safe to work on their patients. Fires in such incidents can be reduced)as they have personnel trained for such situations (to work under fire).
Think of it as a riot van which are similarly heavily armoured and meant to carry cops to and from riots under missile fire. It’s just that americans tend to have guns while our great equaliser is a half-brick in a sock so need something heavier. I predict this was designed to say solve a siege where someone is packing some sort of rifle or assault weapon (Since Florida to my knowledge allows ownership of them).
Oh and police show up to protests dressed like they are ready for a riot in case a riots break out. It’s very very hard to control a riot once it gets out of hand (A great example is the british riots which seem to be only nominally about the economy and a lot more about robbing JJB sports. Once they spread there was nothing the cops could do but watch idiots damage businesses.). It’s better to have this kind of stuff on hand rather than not lest you have a riot that simply gets out of hand.
Think of it as the reason why an ambulance is present at sporting events. It’s not that you are hoping someone gets hurt but that if someone gets hurt you can respond quicker.
Or indeed why riot cops are present at football matches… The spectre of football riots teaches us that being prepared rather than being sorry is better.
“When that was going to the city budget appropriations board what possible reason could they have had for needing something like that?”
A lot of this kind of military hardware was purchased with Homeland Security funds following 9/11. The funds were made available to municipalities and they bought all kinds of crazy stuff they’d always wanted.
There is something about the word ‘RESCUE’ on the side of that machine that just REALLY rubs me the wrong way… Black is white, war is peace, and here comes the cops in their ‘RESCUE’ tank! Don’t worry, they are here to help!