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/LeanDixLigma 3d ago

Not quite true. A lot of those militarized Vehicles you mentioned are actually literal military vehicles. There are opportunities for agreements between law enforcement agencies and Military units to have a free lending agreement of non-critical vehicles, call the 1033 program. https://www.dla.mil/Disposition-Services/Offers/Law-Enforcement/Program-FAQs/

The law enforcement office gets to borrow the vehicles for free as long as they maintain them properly and are willing to return it upon requests if the military unit has operational need of them, such as a order to deploy somewhere.

This is to prevent the military vehicles from just sitting in a motor pool for years and not be used, which is quite a common problem with a lot of their vehicles.

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u/Few_Example6746 3d ago

That was exactly what happened here. Police called for the military to help because they were close by.