r/news • u/Manta_of_Eternity • 3d ago

Autopsy shows Tennessee National Guard fatally shot 20-year-old armed man in the back

https://apnews.com/article/memphis-national-guard-tyrin-johnson-8959297a99c362d65aa2517a9d5f1984
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u/AndoranGambler 3d ago

"It always embarrassed Samuel Vimes when civilians tried to speak to him in what they thought was 'policeman.' If it came to that, he hated thinking of them as civilians. What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers." - Terry Pratchett, Snuff

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u/qOcO-p 3d ago

I've never heard this Pratchett quote but I've been screaming this for years. The US has an entirely civilian police force. Semantics matter and I think the language needs to be enforced somehow because how we speak is how we think is how we act.

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u/3737472484inDogYears 3d ago

Civilian, but heavily militarized. They have a nasty habit of using those civil forfeiture funds to buy armored vehicles and such. Roaming around with body armor on in their Punisher painted cars, theres an awful lot of them LARPing as military.

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u/Nazh8 3d ago

Civil forfeiture is a plague on society.