Subway riders question NYPD’s ‘ridiculous’ show of force

[Echo In Light]

Some people in New York are wondering whether the presence of police officers toting machine guns through the city's subway tunnels is really a necessary response to the subway bombings in Moscow on Monday.

"I think it's ridiculous," Torey Deprisest, a tourist from Ohio, told the New York Post. "The attack happened in a different country and had nothing to do with Americans. I'd be nervous seeing cops with machine guns on the train. It makes people afraid when they don't need to be."

Queens resident Holly Celentang described the police response as excessive.

"It's Easter this week, and you have families with young kids on the subway, and I'm sure cops with machine guns would scare them," she said. "I feel there should have been a bit more of a thought process before they did this."

"By the time most people awoke to news of yesterday's twin terror blasts that killed dozens, the NYPD had flooded city subways with extra cops," the New York Daily News reports. "Officers with bomb-sniffing dogs swept train cars, and cops set up tables near turnstiles to do random bag checks."

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0330/riders-question-nypd-ridiculous-show-force/

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. They did that at the airports after 9/11. You get use to it

[Raineyb]

13. No you don't and you shouldn't.

The last thing you need in the confined area of a subway or subway station is a bunch of trigger happy morons who can't shoot straight shooting up the joint. It's bad enough taking the subway as it is.

[awoke_in_2003]

18. That is the

saddest thing I have ever heard. What have we come to that we "get used" to assault rifle-carrying cops?

[MrCoffee]

2. Torey Deprisest gets it

Making people afraid when they don't need to be is the whole raison d'etre.

[defendandprotect]

3. It's not guns that we need but intelligence . . .

and this isn't it!!

[Subdivisions]

4. Police state. n/t

[RKP5637]

5. One step closer each time... Quite sad... n/t

[Common Sense Party]

6. Machine guns don't scare kids, they scare adults. That said,

I don't know how some cop with an assault rifle would deter a suicide bomber, any more than a cop with a sidearm would. A bomber is going to walk right past the cop with a rifle, get on the train, and detonate his/her backpack full of explosives, and there's nothing the cop can do about it, and thus the machine gun doesn't help much.

[zipplewrath]

8. Not to mention no clear lines of fire

Firing any weapon in a crowded terminal or train would be problematic at best. Using an automatic weapon that can put out a few rounds every second would be pointless.

[Echo In Light]

10. Good way of walking the premise through!...esp considering social conditioning via symbolism

Tip-toe totalitarianism

[Xithras]

7. Last I checked, the U.S. isn't fighting Chechen seperatists.

I have no doubt that the Chechen leaders aren't fans of the U.S. either, but I really doubt they'll be attacking us.

[Mike K]

9. It's political showmanship.

Grandstanding. We see it from time to time on the six o'clock news, usually when the DEA is up for funding hearings, "Big Drug Bust," with the usual piles of drugs, money and guns carefully arranged on a table. It was also the reason for the raid on the Davidian premises in Waco, TX.

I don't know what the police commissioner is thinking but the idea of somebody opening up with a machine gun in a crowded subway station, with its tile walls and steel columns, is the essence of redundancy. What are they expecting -- a terrorist bayonet charge? I'm not suggesting it's intentional, but the most substantive effect I can think of is the redundant show of force is conditioning the public to a police state atmosphere.

I am highly suspicious of all such publicized demonstrations of militant police authority.

[Echo In Light]

11. Your last sentence sums up a great deal re my overall position re the US govt

[RKP5637]

12. Excellent points!!! n/t

[benEzra]

14. Yup. Security theater.

The primary mission is to "look badass" and reassure the sheep, and get a few reporters to wet their pants in print about said badassery.

This pic is from an earlier NYPD security theater deployment on Wall Street:



Look closely. That's an Aimpoint optic on that rifle, and it's on backwards. The rifle has never been fired in that configuration, is not sighted in, and the officer has so little experience with it that he doesn't know, and sufficient apathy that he didn't bothered to see if the optic worked at the beginning of his shift. I wonder if that magazine even has ammunition in it. But the mission isn't to shoot terrah-ists, it's to impress the media by looking Tough, and at that he succeeds.

[Echo In Light]

15. Bump

[Yeahyeah]

16. Bloomberg had Russian grandparents.Maybe he's got a Putin complex or something.

[Paladin]

17. If It Were An Armed Civilian In That Picture Instead Of A Cop.......

....our resident gun militants would be delirious with joy, rather than complaining.