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 Alfndrate wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So when people say that DHS is not a law enforcement agency, are they saying that:

-Customs and Border Protection
-Imigration and Customs Enforcement
-United States Secret Service
-US Coast Guard

These are not law enfocement agencies?

(I left out the TSA on purpose )

I believe in my last post I said people were getting their panties twisted over the United States Secret Service*, the Coast Guard*, and the TSA. Immigration and Border Patrol could totally have need for these types of vehicles... Except maybe for customs... Granted when I went through customs after our cruise it was just a bunch of people you looked like slightly friendlier TSA agents making sure that I wasn't smuggling cocaine in my rectum or exoctic fruits. They weren't really clear on that one :-\.

* - Admittedly, I'm unsure of what the secret service does beyond protecting the President, other government leaders, and visiting world leaders, and I'm not sure what these vehicles need to be doing on boats.

NONE of thse groups should have armored vehicles. If you need major combat units you call the Army. (ok I'll give onthe SS unit specifically protecting El Presidente)
1. Thats pure bureaucratic duplication. Stick to your damn job and quit trying to expand your little government empire.
2. The last time your nattering nabobs got a hold of a tank dozens of people died. You have no business with tanks. It screams NKVD and the paramilitarization of our police.
3. As the immortal bard once said: "soldiers deserve soldiers sir." Let the guys who know what they are doing handle tank combat thank you very much.

Whats next, the TSA getting hold of some surplus B-52s? Just in case...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:

* - Admittedly, I'm unsure of what the secret service does beyond protecting the President, other government leaders, and visiting world leaders.

The protection gig is about half their job. The other half is basically policing our financial system. So there is a lot of police work with counterfitting and fraud going on.

Had a patient once who made quite a few threads against Obama to our police (even the VA has law enforcement functions) and they had to forward them to the Secret Service. I was actually quite surprised when we had agents in our hospital within 30 minutes. I learned that night that we have our own secret service office in Oklahoma City due to having a branch of the Kansas City Federal Reserve in OKC.

Ayah their big function outside of protection is counterfeiting and similar crimes.

I don't really get why "armor" immediately equals "military" exactly.

Our cops wear BPVs. That's militarization of the police. Our cops have guns. That's militarization of the police if we believe you.

The equipment you are using does not make you military or not military. Your command structure makes you military or not military.

If I suggested that we put bulletproof armor on a police car, you would not bat an eye, but because the vehicle is purpose built with armor, that's magically overreach?

E: Oh wait, I just remembered why. It's because you don't like obama.

 sebster wrote:

 dogma wrote:
Evidently the figure of 2717 vehicles does not necessarily reflect the number in use by DHS.

From what I can tell in January 2011 Navistar Defense was awarded a contract by U.S. Marine Corps System Command to upgrade 2,717 MRAPs. The video in Frazzled's link was posted in May 2012, somehow this is news worthy of March 2013.

Ah right, there we go. Nothing to see here people. Just the same grape vine nonsense as the omg DHS buys a billion bullets, government takeover is coming!

Um... a billion bullet is a gak-ton dude... I'm not arguing that they don't need it...it's just wasteful and the priorites seems whacked.

As to the MRAPS... *shrugs* seems like someone had money that they need to spend otherwise, they'd lose it. Again... seems wasteful/priorites seems whacked.

 Rented Tritium wrote:
I don't really get why "armor" immediately equals "military" exactly.

Our cops wear BPVs. That's militarization of the police. Our cops have guns. That's militarization of the police if we believe you.

The equipment you are using does not make you military or not military. Your command structure makes you military or not military.

If I suggested that we put bulletproof armor on a police car, you would not bat an eye, but because the vehicle is purpose built with armor, that's magically overreach?

E: Oh wait, I just remembered why. It's because you don't like obama.

But it's not just him... I'm not a huge Obama guy either, granted I'm far more for him than I am for the alternative we could have gotten, it just seems odd (to me) that these different agencies have needs for these vehicles, when there doesn't seem to be much need for them beyond 1 or 2 of the child agencies, and as it has been pointed out for me, those vehicles are crap for such things.

 Frazzled wrote:


Because thats the Army. Thats their job. Not the airport security rent a cops.

ICE shouldn't have them either. If we need armored vehicles on the border, we need they Army there, who's job is...protect the borders of the United States.

IMO, we have a very good case for putting the army/marines out on the southern border. If you view the mass influx of illegal immigrants coming to the US, and the number of those who were hardened criminals BEFORE they broke the law and entered the US illegally, as an invasion rather than simply the inability to use civilians to properly secure our borders.... Remember how back in the day, like in history class, if a Frenchman illegally entered Spain, or England or Germany, he was treated as a spy, and as a spy his act was potentially treated as an act of war..

This all tin foil hat stuff of course, but if we were REALLY serious about stopping immigrants from entering illegally, and also stopping or stemming the drug cartels, we'd use actual military force, not some dude in a pair of aviators and brown suit labeled Border Patrol.


Thing still remains, those of us who have used that hunk of steel called an MRAP can attest to it not being the greatest thing out there for hardly any tasks, especially ones that are obviously within the various LE agencies area of control.

Agreed

Well the DHS has over 200,000 staff. If half of them are armed and use 10 rounds a week each on average for training, they will use up 50,000,000 a year.

The 1,000,000,000 is a contract running for 10 years, so perhaps half of the quantity is for training and the other half is for operational readiness.

It doesn't seem excessive, really, worked out like that. Have I done my sums right?

1BN/50mm=20 years worth. However the actual contract was misread. The real amount is about 400mm rounds over five years, which is realistic and in line with the meat of your argument.

CptJake wrote:
Absolutely NOT poppycock. For LE missions involving SWAT/SRT type forces the Feds rarely start with jurisdiction, and therefore to get them and their assets generally takes more time than the state/local LE that has jurisdiction and assets within that jurisdiction.

Jurisdiction is a paper sign off. It's just not even a factor compared to the deployment of hardware like an MRAP and the personel that would be needed in any situation justifying the deployment of an MRAP.


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 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

 sebster wrote:
Seriously, does anyone have a non-crazy link for this story? Is it going to be like that OMG DHS buying one billion bullets thing again?

I got you mate.

http://killerapps.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/03/04/yes_dhs_really_does_have_mraps

It even has a video!

Yeah, which is for the purchase of one MRAP. Which the video says is intended to cover multiple states (New Mexico and somewhere else).

And then the text says there's "As one would expect, tales of DHS buying 2,700 MRAPs from the Army have inflamed the government conspiracy corners of the blogosphere." ie the idea of 2,700 MRAPs is conspiracy stuff, with no actual content behind it.

I mean, we have evidence of one MRAP in use across border states for immigration, and commentary that implies that such vehicles are few and far between. And then we have the crazy blogosphere talking about some ridiculous number of MRAPs. And Fraz posting the crazy latter claim, in the belief that insane nonsense stories must be true if they talk about government spending lots of money.

So, like I said, nothing to see here, it's just crazy uncle email spam, move on everyone.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:
Um... a billion bullet is a gak-ton dude... I'm not arguing that they don't need it...it's just wasteful and the priorites seems whacked.

As Killkrazy and Fraz explained, the contract was both misread and misrepresented. The number of bullets contracted over the period of time given is exactly what you'd expect from an organisation with a lot of agents who need to maintain firearms proficiency.

As to the MRAPS... *shrugs* seems like someone had money that they need to spend otherwise, they'd lose it. Again... seems wasteful/priorites seems whacked.

No, there isn't 2700 of the things being bought. That's just a crazy ass claim floating across the paranoid parts of the blogosphere.

And 'use it or lose it' budgeting, or lapsing budgets is way overstated in government. In most places you'll see carry forward set ups that mitigate that problem.

In fact, in my experience I've seen lapsing budgets used way more in the private sector.

 sebster wrote:

CptJake wrote:
Absolutely NOT poppycock. For LE missions involving SWAT/SRT type forces the Feds rarely start with jurisdiction, and therefore to get them and their assets generally takes more time than the state/local LE that has jurisdiction and assets within that jurisdiction.

Jurisdiction is a paper sign off. It's just not even a factor compared to the deployment of hardware like an MRAP and the personel that would be needed in any situation justifying the deployment of an MRAP.
.

Your world is a LOT different from reality. Jusisdiction handovers are not usually fast because local/state don't jsut sign it away for gaks and giggles. Again, in almost every case, state and local will have the needed assets way faster than federal LE. At least in the real world.

CptJake wrote:

 sebster wrote:

CptJake wrote:
Absolutely NOT poppycock. For LE missions involving SWAT/SRT type forces the Feds rarely start with jurisdiction, and therefore to get them and their assets generally takes more time than the state/local LE that has jurisdiction and assets within that jurisdiction.

Jurisdiction is a paper sign off. It's just not even a factor compared to the deployment of hardware like an MRAP and the personel that would be needed in any situation justifying the deployment of an MRAP.
.

Your world is a LOT different from reality. Jusisdiction handovers are not usually fast because local/state don't jsut sign it away for gaks and giggles. Again, in almost every case, state and local will have the needed assets way faster than federal LE. At least in the real world.

Really? Because I work in the real world and these things are generally handled IN ADVANCE with a memorandum of understanding.

 Rented Tritium wrote:

CptJake wrote:

 sebster wrote:

CptJake wrote:
Absolutely NOT poppycock. For LE missions involving SWAT/SRT type forces the Feds rarely start with jurisdiction, and therefore to get them and their assets generally takes more time than the state/local LE that has jurisdiction and assets within that jurisdiction.

Jurisdiction is a paper sign off. It's just not even a factor compared to the deployment of hardware like an MRAP and the personel that would be needed in any situation justifying the deployment of an MRAP.
.

Your world is a LOT different from reality. Jusisdiction handovers are not usually fast because local/state don't jsut sign it away for gaks and giggles. Again, in almost every case, state and local will have the needed assets way faster than federal LE. At least in the real world.

Really? Because I work in the real world and these things are generally handled IN ADVANCE with a memorandum of understanding.

Heck,

I was a volunteer with a hick rural volunteer fire department, and even we managed to come up with mutual aid agreements to handle going into other departments jurisdictions.

 d-usa wrote:

Heck,

I was a volunteer with a hick rural volunteer fire department, and even we managed to come up with mutual aid agreements to handle going into other departments jurisdictions.

I think that planning for potential issues ahead of time for "routine" things is fairly normal, however most folks have been talking more about the ZOMG catastrophic everyone panic emergency!!!! type situations... Or really, anything we don't really plan for.

 Frazzled wrote:
Whats next, the TSA getting hold of some surplus B-52s? Just in case...

Dear God no! I had enough trouble getting them to track down paperwork

 Alfndrate wrote:
* - Admittedly, I'm unsure of what the secret service does beyond protecting the President, other government leaders, and visiting world leaders, and I'm not sure what these vehicles need to be doing on boats.

Don't they have jurisdiction for protecting foreign Embassies on US soil (as in the grounds outside the buildings/gates etc.)?

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Whats next, the TSA getting hold of some surplus B-52s? Just in case...

Dear God no! I had enough trouble getting them to track down paperwork

 Alfndrate wrote:
* - Admittedly, I'm unsure of what the secret service does beyond protecting the President, other government leaders, and visiting world leaders, and I'm not sure what these vehicles need to be doing on boats.

Don't they have jurisdiction for protecting foreign Embassies on US soil (as in the grounds outside the buildings/gates etc.)?

They do indeed protect embassies, but again, not sure why they need them, nor why they need to be shipped from overseas to stateside and then back overseas to other countries... Don't they know that the USPS raised their shipping rates, and won't be doing Saturday deliveries anymore?!

 Alfndrate wrote:
They do indeed protect embassies, but again, not sure why they need them, nor why they need to be shipped from overseas to stateside and then back overseas to other countries... Don't they know that the USPS raised their shipping rates, and won't be doing Saturday deliveries anymore?!

And with the sequester there might not be the money to punch air holes in their crates

 Alfndrate wrote:


They do indeed protect embassies, but again, not sure why they need them, nor why they need to be shipped from overseas to stateside and then back overseas to other countries... Don't they know that the USPS raised their shipping rates, and won't be doing Saturday deliveries anymore?!

No, they protect FOREIGN embassies on US soil, not the other way round (well, it may be... but we also use Marines for that)

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:


They do indeed protect embassies, but again, not sure why they need them, nor why they need to be shipped from overseas to stateside and then back overseas to other countries... Don't they know that the USPS raised their shipping rates, and won't be doing Saturday deliveries anymore?!

No, they protect FOREIGN embassies on US soil, not the other way round (well, it may be... but we also use Marines for that)

My bad, I misread that

Though I thought I had it covered the dignitaries when I said world leaders :-\

Meh, it's all good Alf, we all misread stuff from time to time

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

Heck,

I was a volunteer with a hick rural volunteer fire department, and even we managed to come up with mutual aid agreements to handle going into other departments jurisdictions.

I think that planning for potential issues ahead of time for "routine" things is fairly normal, however most folks have been talking more about the ZOMG catastrophic everyone panic emergency!!!! type situations... Or really, anything we don't really plan for.

There's no such thing as "routine" in police work. It's a nonsense phrase. Calls are calls. A mutual aid agreement or an MoU are functional either way. You might even have a line in there like "in the event of an incident involving the following... the highest ranking sworn officer on duty may request... blah blah" to account for anything really insane.

 Rented Tritium wrote:

CptJake wrote:

 sebster wrote:

CptJake wrote:
Absolutely NOT poppycock. For LE missions involving SWAT/SRT type forces the Feds rarely start with jurisdiction, and therefore to get them and their assets generally takes more time than the state/local LE that has jurisdiction and assets within that jurisdiction.

Jurisdiction is a paper sign off. It's just not even a factor compared to the deployment of hardware like an MRAP and the personel that would be needed in any situation justifying the deployment of an MRAP.
.

Your world is a LOT different from reality. Jusisdiction handovers are not usually fast because local/state don't jsut sign it away for gaks and giggles. Again, in almost every case, state and local will have the needed assets way faster than federal LE. At least in the real world.

Really? Because I work in the real world and these things are generally handled IN ADVANCE with a memorandum of understanding.

Really. Because again, Fed use of these types of assets is RARE. States and local county/municipalities have SWAT/SRT type units and gear and use them regularly (and even they will argue over who gets to do what in some instances where jurisdiction/needed capability are in question, the recent dust up in CA being a good example). So for them to call in the Feds, or the Feds to tell them 'Stop, we are gonna fight you for jurisdiction so we can use our toys' is not a common event.

CptJake wrote:
Your world is a LOT different from reality. Jusisdiction handovers are not usually fast because local/state don't jsut sign it away for gaks and giggles. Again, in almost every case, state and local will have the needed assets way faster than federal LE. At least in the real world.

In the real world... where I work in state government department, in a federalised system with clear jurisdictional seperation between local, state and federal authorities... yeah, in this real world these things exist as paper sign offs, frequently sorted out with, as Rented Tritium said, memorandums of understanding already in place. Or when a new and unforeseen situation does arrive, with an agreement in principle taken at the time. Not saying it's not an issue, but compared to the time required to move heavy machinery across straight, it's frankly laughable that you'd think jurisdictional disputes are the bigger issue.

I think it is interesting how this shows the average guy, really without thinking about it, instinctively trusts the military more than police. I'm not sure that's smart. I'm active duty, but the military isn't necessarily a loyal organization-- they are sworn to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic (well the officers are so sworn, anyway, not enlisted men) yet they have no problem vaporizing US citizens not engaged in combat, who haven't even been charged with a crime much less given due process. I get irritated by police also, but this instinctive trust of the military, especially senior officers, is naieve.

The military live on fenced-in bases and usually only appear in public on splendid ceremonial occasions, marching up and down in smart uniforms, with a band playing rousing patriotic music.

The police drive around town hassling you for speeding fines and blocking the seats in donut shops.

 Silverthorne wrote:
I think it is interesting how this shows the average guy, really without thinking about it, instinctively trusts the military more than police. I'm not sure that's smart. I'm active duty, but the military isn't necessarily a loyal organization-- they are sworn to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic (well the officers are so sworn, anyway, not enlisted men) yet they have no problem vaporizing US citizens not engaged in combat, who haven't even been charged with a crime much less given due process. I get irritated by police also, but this instinctive trust of the military, especially senior officers, is naieve.

I dunno what oath you took mate but I took this one per federal statute in 10 U.S.C. § 502:

Enlistment Oath.— Each person enlisting in an armed force shall take the following oath:
"I, XXXXXXXXXX, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

I've also participated in plenty of barracks jawing sessions across these United States, and I'd say it's the rare man who'd support the government over the citizenry.

That said I'd agree with Killkrazy's assessment that it's who you see as much as anything else.

 Silverthorne wrote:
I think it is interesting how this shows the average guy, really without thinking about it, instinctively trusts the military more than police. I'm not sure that's smart. I'm active duty, but the military isn't necessarily a loyal organization-- they are sworn to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic (well the officers are so sworn, anyway, not enlisted men) yet they have no problem vaporizing US citizens not engaged in combat, who haven't even been charged with a crime much less given due process. I get irritated by police also, but this instinctive trust of the military, especially senior officers, is naieve.

I'm calling BS on your claim of enlistment, if your that ignorant of the oath you took, twice before heading to boot.

I never claimed to be enlisted, so call BS as much as you want.

Well, that only leaves on option, if it's at all factual. If so, then I would strongly advise learning a little bit more about the enlisted corp before trying to speak from a position of authority on military knowledge. Your assertation that the military as a whole would have no problem turning our weapons on the citizens we defend with our lives for no reason other then orders reflects no actual knowledge of who those of us in uniform actually are.

I quoted the federal statute on the oath of enlistment. There are no further questions on that point. Silver you're wrong, shall we move on?

I think you might be focusing on the wrong part there... My point was about officers, who take the oath of office, seemingly completely disregarding it. The fact that enlisted men don't is pretty irrelevant since there are no enlisted drone pilots in the USAF that I know of, although there are a few in the Navy (which doesn't operate predators). I appreciate the laserlike focus that you are able to direct at anything other than the point of what I am saying, but it is pedantic and useless in this instance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 djones520 wrote:
Well, that only leaves on option, if it's at all factual. If so, then I would strongly advise learning a little bit more about the enlisted corp before trying to speak from a position of authority on military knowledge. Your assertation that the military as a whole would have no problem turning our weapons on the citizens we defend with our lives for no reason other then orders reflects no actual knowledge of who those of us in uniform actually are.

Did I assert that? Just like I asserted I took the oath of enlistment? Work on the reading skills sometime. Also, I can seemingly recall this one time, many years ago where the military as a whole did actually turn their weapons on the citizens that had previously defended. You may have read about it too-- it was the bloodiest war in American history.

Seriously, read what I wrote, I was very specifically referencing a drone strike on US citizens that have not been tried in a court of law and are not actively engaged in combat. Are you denying this happened? Or just insulting me for some other random reason? Unbelievable.