The Police & The Army
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The Police & The Army

Writer & Thinker
See interview of Kumar  Govindan
Over the past days we have seen the effects of some staggering, bewildering, heavy-handedness of America’s Police, in Ferguson, Missouri, spinning-off from the shooting & killing of an unarmed black teenager. The reconstruction of events leading to the killing is diametrically opposite – The Police saying they were provoked into self-defense, while others hold the contrary view saying it was ‘plain black’ cold-blooded murder. Now, there is talk of the Police wearing cameras – to record live action, but firstly to act as a deterrent (Big Brother is watching!).

While this is happening, we peer into the Army binoculars and in distant Iraq, see a hooded British-origin English accented ISIS terrorist behead a harmless American Journalist. Previously, America had begun striking the ISISI with air-power and behold the consequences, from the Terrorist perspective!

Many of us remember seeing the Hollywood blockbuster movie series Rambo, where in one, the superhero & decorated Army veteran returns from blood-chilling action in Vietnam to visit the Family of a colleague killed-in-action, to share some grief, shed a tear, in ‘peaceful Ferguson-like neighborhoods & surroundings'. The blood bath that followed hyper-active policing by the County Police Chief was there for all to see – awesome entertainment, with guns blazing, helicopters shot down, dog-hunting, car chases and Petrol bunks set ablaze!

Move over, look into the microscope-of-things and you see a Sherlock Holmes or a Hercule Poirot use mind-power, with big-bang devastating effect, to read & thread together all kinds of things from the simplest of behavior or appearance - that you & I miss by a mile, to solve heinous crime & horrific murder. The Police are ever thankful to them and just like the Indian Bollywood movies, appear most often in “The End”, to make the arrests and march off the guilty!

I think America has too much of guns, which it allows ordinary folk to keep and to counter them the Police are in turn equipped with greater weapons – or simply, to better utilize what the Leviathan Army could not fully consume. Therein the dividing line between the Police & the Army has vanished and perhaps every Police Officer is his own one-man-Army?

What do we do? The solution is that everyday police work should be of the Sherlock Holmes kind, armed mostly with brains (maybe a magnifying glass & minimum weaponry):  detective, crime & murder busting, information gathering, monitoring, asking questions-finding answers in a subtle manner, reporting on the unusual, ever watchful etc., backed up by a Home Guard / Commando Force, which should be omni-present in every Town / City but called to action only in the rarest of circumstances. 

The Police can be a very efficient force to reckon-with, within a Country, leaving the borders to be guarded by an arms crazy Army – and rightfully so!

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