September 2, 2008
Creeping Totalitarianism Department
Richland County Kill Zone
Just when I think police militarization couldn't possibly get more disturbing, Radley Balko and Pete Guither find this:
The Richland County (S.C.) Sheriff's Department has acquired an armored personnel carrier complete with a turret-mounted .50-caliber belt-fed machine gun for its Special Response Team.
Sheriff Leon Lott told the Columbia State newspaper that he hoped the vehicle, named "The Peacemaker," would let the bad guys know that his officers are serious.
Pete found this picture of the "Special" Response Team:
The armored vehicle may look scary, but it's not the real problem. In the event of a really ugly barricade situation, there's arguably a legitimate need for a bulletproof way to transport people. For example, you could use it to send paramedics to rescue someone wounded and trapped in the kill zone.
But that gun...it's a full-size machine gun. Someone gets shot with that, and parts go flying. Parts like arms and heads.
Police and other people who normally shoot in self defense are usually worried about overpenetration. They like to shoot bullets designed to stop fast when they hit a human body or the walls of a house. The last thing they want is to shoot at an offender only to have the bullet keep traveling and hurt an innocent person.
That's not how a .50 cal machine gun works. Open up on a house and bullets will go through sheetrock and bricks and bathtubs and cinderblocks and come flying out the other side with plenty of energy to kill the people in the house next door. Accidentally raise the barrel above the horizon and a deadly spray of bullets could travel for miles.
It's a sin to use a weapon like that in an American city. It's a weapon of war.
According to Sheriff Lott's bio, he came up through the department's narcotics division (no surprise to those of us familiar with the drug warrior mentality), is active in D.A.R.E., and was awarded the "Strom Thurmond Award of Excellence in Law Enforcement" and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Officers' Association's "Toughest Cop" award.
His biography lists no military experience.
Of course, if he had military experience, maybe he'd be even more out of control. Why drive the armored transport to the scene of the incident? Richland county is fairly compact. Just put an M198 Howitzer in the parking lot of every Sheriff's office, and deputies could spend their patrols calling in fire missions on crack dens and meth labs:
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