"Pedro Offers You His Protection": The Preston PD Gets a Combat Vehicle

Dude, really? Chief Geddes poses with his department's new MRAP.

 

Preston, Idaho is a town of roughly 5,000 people that earned brief notoriety a decade ago as the setting for the whimsical film “Napoleon Dynamite.” It is blessedly devoid of violent crime, and has no need for its six-officer police department. 

Yet Chief Ken Geddes believes that Preston’s superficial placidity disguises the potential for apocalyptic violence. At least that’s what he’s saying to pre-empt potential criticism of his decision to acquire a combat-grade armored vehicle from the Department of Homeland Security.

The Preston Police Department is one of two in Idaho to receive a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle (MRAP) through the Pentagon’s Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO). Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security purchased more than 2,700 of the combat vehicles – which were developed for use in Iraq and Afghanistan – for distribution to local police departments and sheriff’s offices across the country. Most of them have very few, if any, miles on their odometers, and were scheduled to be cut up for scrap. 

Through the LESO program, law enforcement agencies can receive MRAPs free of charge (apart from the initial expense to the taxpayers incurred in manufacturing them). Hundreds of police chiefs and sheriffs across the country have eagerly applied for the vehicles, urgently insisting that they meet previously unknown needs that didn’t become apparent until the Pentagon made the war-fighting vehicles available.

When I asked Chief Geddes why a police department in a town the size of Preston needs a military assault vehicle, his immediate response – expressed in a tone of theatrical indignation -- was to invoke the Sandy Hook massacre.

Mean streets: Kipland Dynamite (l.), fictional Preston crime lord.

“There isn’t much violent crime in Preston – but how much does it take?” Chief Geddes responded. “There wasn’t much crime in that little Connecticut town [Newton] before Sandy Hook – but it would have been nice if they would have had an MRAP on the day of the school shooting.” 

He also took issue with the assumption that because Preston is small and relatively tranquil, his department doesn’t need to expand its paramilitary capacity: “Boise has a much larger population, and much larger police force, and much greater capacity than we do – but are we to believe that the people in Boise are more valuable than the people in Preston?” This assessment of relative value omits rational calculations of risk. It also assumes that enhancing police capacity conduces to public safety, which is at very best a thoroughly questionable assumption.

Although the advertised law enforcement purpose served by MRAPs and other armored vehicles is force protection, Chief Geddes suggests that the vehicle could also be used to evacuate citizens who are threatened by an active shooter. That claim is robustly implausible: There isn’t a recorded instance in which a SWAT team responding to an active shooter made anything other than “officer safety” is chief operational priority, and Preston isn’t likely to set a precedent – assuming that such a situation were ever to arise in that bucolic southeastern Idaho town. 

Chief Geddes points out that his department and the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office (which is headquartered in Preston) are receiving training and assistance from “a military agency” regarding the operation and maintenance of the MRAP. This blending of functions and equipment summons concerns about law enforcement militarization that the Chief quickly and impatiently dismisses. 

“I’m not at all concerned about it,” Chief Geddes insisted. “We’re not looking in that direction in any way. But I have to say that in the event of a Hurricane Katrina-style disaster – an earthquake, or a flood, or another large emergency – we’d welcome their assistance.”

Public concerns about the militarization of domestic law enforcement occur because the public “lags” behind their protectors in perceiving dangers and needs, according to Geddes. The general population simply doesn’t have the preternatural sense of incipient danger Chief Geddes acquired through years of patrolling the inhospitable streets of Preston and the danger-laden back roads of Franklin County as a sheriff’s deputy. 

“Law enforcement may know things you don’t know,” he told me. “All you think about is sunshine and happiness, but police can’t go in with their eyes shut.” Although Geddes maintains that he’s received no negative feedback from the public in Preston, he readily deploys the familiar “uniforms that guard” trope in dealing with potential critics: “People who resist this trend, who say that we shouldn’t be getting equipment like this, live under the protection of what the protest.” 

From Chief Geddes’ perspective, it’s unlikely that police can ever be too powerful, because their conspicuous presence is the only thing that prevents violent chaos from descending on society.

“How many people are saved because of law enforcement – because of crimes that weren’t committed, or violations that didn’t occur?” he asks. “How many people are alive because we patrol the streets and highways? How many people would have committed crimes if we weren’t there? Sometimes they didn’t do anything because they saw the force [that the police represent].”

Chief Geddes, who intended that those questions be taken as rhetorical in nature, is apparently unaware that they were answered more than four decades ago. In 1972, with financial backing and technical assistance provided by the Police Foundation, the Kansas City Police conducted a year-long study to measure the deterrent effect of police patrol. That survey concluded that police patrols had no documented impact on the crime rate. 

Police patrols over plentiful opportunity for pro-active intervention to obtain revenue, or enforce regulations that do nothing to protect persons and property. This means that they are worse than useless from the perspective of those who value individual liberty more than state-imposed conformity. It’s reasonable to say that Chief Geddes resides in the other camp.

In an op-ed column he wrote for the Preston Citizen newspaper, Chief Geddes admonished the public to be “thankful” for Pentagon’s generosity in providing the MRAP to his department: “I appreciate our government and our military for the security they give us and for their help to increase our strength here in our schools and home.” 

The problem, of course, is that once police are given access to exotic instruments of repression, they will find a reason to use them. This is illustrated by the ease and haste with which the Taser – introduced as a substitute for firearms in situations involving deadly force – has become an implement of pain compliance used to administer summary punishment upon Mundanes who discomfit their uniformed overlords in any way. 

An even better illustration of this dreadful trend is the promiscuous use of SWAT teams: When introduced in the late 1960s, SWAT units were described as special-purpose teams to be deployed only in extraordinary circumstances, such as armed robberies and hostage situations. Now, however, there are, on average, approximately 220 SWAT-style raids each day. Won’t the acquisition of military-grade hardware to police departments simply exacerbate this tendency?

“That is a valid concern,” admitted Nampa Police Lt. Tim Randall, who represents the department’s Office of Professional Standards, when I posed that question to him. He also acknowledged that the department had received a great deal of public comment “concerning the possibility of police militarization, which we can certainly understand.” 

Nampa, a city of about 70,000 people, has a crime rate slightly above the state average, but well below the national average. Why would its police department (which last year acquired two military-issue Humvees from the National Guard) need an armored combat vehicle designed to protect soldiers from land mines and sniper fire?

 

“Well, first of all, it’s free,” observed Lt. Randall. “It’s also the case that even a small agency like the Nampa PD has a big need for armored protection.” Employing the same Department of Homeland Security boilerplate language retailed in press releases from other departments around the country, the Nampa PD insists that the need for the MRAP is underscored by “a rise in mass shootings and incidents of terrorism” nation-wide.” 

That rationale is rooted in a lie: Mass shootings have not been increasing, and domestic terrorism – a category that doesn’t include the FBI’s Homeland Security Theater operations – is all but non-existent.

Although Lt. Randall emphasizes that he doesn’t anticipate that the Nampa Tactical Response Team would “drive up to a house” in an MRAP on a routine warrant enforcement call, he reported that the vehicle had already been used twice in the first two weeks after the department obtained it. The first was a response to a carjacking at knife-point, the other a call involving a suicidal man. Like Chief Geddes, Lt. Randall also believes that the MRAP is valuable as a “psychological deterrent” to public disorder. 

The obvious question is: Whom, exactly, does the Nampa PD seek to “deter”? I think the answer was embedded in Lt. Randall’s explanation of the department’s “need” for the vehicle: “Here in Idaho, practically everybody around here has a gun, and when we go on a call it is useful to have a vehicle that will enhance the safety of the responding officers.” He also pointed out that after the Pentagon-provided MRAP arrived, the department took its aging armored vehicle to its gun range and discovered that “rifle fire would just go right through it. We had it for years, and didn’t know that it offered no protection against ballistic arms fire.”

 

Bannock County, Idaho SWAT team's Bearcat Vehicle.

This belated discovery would be considered alarming if we ignore the fact that this was the first time gunfire had ever been directed at the vehicle. So far, the Nampa TRT has suffered only one fatality – Corporal Jed Webb, who died of a heart attack earlier this year at age 51. 

It has been more than eighty years since a Nampa police officer died in the line of duty. Yet the people running that department appear to be convinced that their safety depends on their ability to “deter” the gun-owning public. 

The Pentagon has a stock of about 20,000 MRAPs, most of which will eventually find their way into local police arsenals, along with Predator-style drones and other military hardware field-tested overseas. Although an MRAP has no discernible practical value as a tool for protection of life and property, it is tremendously useful as a prop in the ongoing campaign to indoctrinate police regarding the unacceptable danger to “officer safety” posed by an armed public -- and the need for conspicuous displays of potential force to deter potential threats.

 

Leach (r.): Police need "overwhelming" force capacity. 

“General Colin Powell's Doctrine of the U.S. Armed Forces is that the United States should be the `meanest dog in town' to frighten a potential enemy,” wrote career law enforcement officer --and SWAT instructor -- Edward Leach in the October 2001 issue of Police Chief magazine. “When force is used, it should be with `overwhelming strength and no half-way measures.' In law enforcement, these principles are routinely applied in both field and tactical operations. ... Law enforcement [application] of the Powell Doctrine is clear: have overwhelming and superior resources available, primarily as a deterrent, but use them decisively when needed.”

Leach, who until a year ago was Undersheriff of Idaho’s Kootenai County, unabashedly depicted police as a military occupation force. He doubtless understands the message being sent when police in a town the size of Preston acquire a combat-grade armored vehicle. So should we. 

VIDEO BONUS

In this scene from “Napoleon Dynamite,” a pair of gang-bangers in Preston act as private peace officers, peacefully intervening to protect property against aggressive violence – and they didn’t need an MRAP to do so: 

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"Escalation of Force": We're All Iraqis Now

“The wicked flee where none gives pursuit,” the Book of Proverbs instructs us. In similar fashion, an imperial elite that cultivates hostility on a global scale lives under the perpetual and well-deserved expectation of retaliation – which is why it perceives everybody as a potential threat. This is why a confused young mother who makes a traffic error in Washington, D.C. faces summary execution – and the killers will be lauded for their supposed “heroism.”

During the U.S. occupation of Iraq, soldiers  manning traffic checkpoints in Baghdad operated under rules of engagement permitting them to shoot any vehicle whose driver didn’t immediately comply with orders. The predictable result was that scores or hundreds of innocent people – including women, children, Iraqi police officers, and at least one intelligence officer from an allied country – were gunned down by over-anxious soldiers at traffic checkpoints.

As with so many other facets of the world-historic crime called “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” the routine slaughter of innocent Iraqis at traffic checkpoints was documented in war logs made public by the heroic whistleblower then known as Private Bradley Manning.

In antiseptic language typical of bureaucratized killing operations, those episodes were called “escalation of force” incidents. An entry for October 26, 2005 describes how “a civilian vehicle approached and ignored shouts[,] vehicle horn[,] and flashed lights. Unit fired one shotgun round as a warning shot. Vehicle ignored warning and continued. Unit fired 13-15 rounds of 7.62 into the vehicle killing 2 children and wounding one child and one female. 2 civ KIA [civilians killed in action], 2 civ WIA [civilians wounded in action]….”

“I’m sure that these soldiers were doing a good job,” insisted an anonymous official with US Central Command following the massacre of ten Iraqis whose van was shelled at a checkpoint near Najaf. “It’s very tragic, but they acted in an appropriate way.” This was “appropriate” because the lives of U.S. soldiers were of immeasurably greater worth than those of the Iraqis whom they were there to “liberate.” Besides, it was irresponsible of Iraqis not to understand, and accommodate, the security concerns of the valiant foreigners who had invaded their country.   

“It may be argued that drivers should be more careful to obey troops’ orders, but in the dark civilians can be as jumpy as soldiers,” observed a report in the Guardian of London. “Unlike troops they have no training or prior experience. They may not be sure who the people with flashing lights are on the road ahead.” (Emphasis added.) 

It is entirely possible that after Miriam Carey drove her car into a barricade outside the White House that she didn’t immediately identify the armed men who surrounded her as police officers. It is quite likely – and entirely understandable – that her first impulse was to panic and flee. Her reaction was in some ways similar to that of Iraqi civilians who hadn’t been told that anything other than immediate, unquestioning submission to orders issued by foreign occupiers would provoke a fatal response.

 

 In Iraq, the official doctrine of “force protection” dictated lethal pre-emption of any potential threat. An enhanced version of that doctrine is in effect in the Imperial Capital, which is inhabited by people whose unfathomable corruption is matched by an immeasurably vast sense of entitlement – and coupled with a vague but insistent sense that at some point their crimes will provoke retaliation. Since such people are unburdened by conscience, they see nothing amiss in authorizing summary execution of anybody who might pose some unspecified potential threat to their physical safety. 

This mindset has become ubiquitous as police checkpoints have proliferated throughout the Soyuz.

 Police in Brunswick County, North Carolina “started unloading” in “super trigger-happy fashion” after an officer rammed his car into a vehicle whose driver was trying to elude a warrantless DWI checkpoint last June. Jared Cleerdin, who was in a car with his wife and young daughter, told a local TV station that all of the officers were “just blasting this car to pieces. It was absolutely terrifying.” 

The police directed their gunfire into oncoming traffic, heedless of the possibility that they may kill or injure innocent Mundanes. Cleerdin and his wife found themselves “inches from death,” and their experience was hardly unique.

The actions of the police were “way beyond reckless,” Cleerdin testified. “I couldn’t believe it…. It looked like every officer there did not follow protocol in any way, shape, or form.” 

 WECT TV6-WECT.com:News, weather

Antonine Graham, who was driving the Lincoln Navigator on that evening, had several narcotics-related offenses on his record and was allegedly carrying marijuana and paraphernalia when he encountered the checkpoint. He and his passenger, Jerry Melvin, were both shot multiple times after a cop rammed their car to force it to stop. For seeking to avoid the warrantless checkpoint, Graham was charged with ten counts of assault with a deadly weapon on a government official and several other offenses.  Because he was in a vehicle driven by Graham, Melvin was initially charged with conspiracy to commit assault with a deadly weapon. 

Despite the fact that the behavior of the officers enforcing the checkpoint needlessly endangered innocent people, the Brunswick County district attorney’s office ruled that the shooting rampage was “justified.”

How could it be otherwise? To those who presume to rule us, and their costumed enforcers, we’re all Iraqis now.

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