University of Virginia Student Beaten, Arrested By ABC agnts

@wrabbit2000,

I'm not sure of the coverage these days, but when I was growing up, it was in a "dry" county in Virginia. Dry my ass - that just provided an income for bootleggers. There were 3 levels of law enforcement theoretically over "every square inch" of the state as you say, but in practice they were mighty thin. There was the federal level, which was VERY rarely seen. I know of one appearance by the FBI in the county, seeking information on a very fine young man at the local high school when I, purely by coincidence, was a student in that high school. "Revenooers" (IRS and ATF agents after alcohol taxes) had long since given up the county as a lost cause, which put a hurt on the bootleggers bringing in store brand whiskey when you could just walk down the road and get a jug of home made brand.

Then there was the state level. At that time, there was a State Trooper for every 20 miles of interstate, theoretically. Many of those were detailed to other tasks, such as drug enforcement, rather than highway patrolling. The nearest town (the county seat) had two - one a drug guy who worked all over the territory, and one patrolman who worked in another county, where they had highways for him to patrol. As far as I know, that was the only two state police in the entire county, and that only because they lived there, rather than worked there. Every 3 years, when the UMWA contracts came up for renegotiation and the Mine Wars would break out, scads of troopers were imported to attempt to keep the peace, meaning they were thinned out everywhere else in the state, being pulled from their normal posts and concentrated in the mine areas. We had, I think, 3 state game wardens, only one of whom was ever seen in the wild. I had one run in with him, but we both survived and no one had to be carried off, so it was all good.

That left the "locals" - townies in towns, sheriff's deputies outside the towns. There were more of them per square inch, but a lot more square inches than deputies. Out of all three levels of law enforcement, I saw them maybe twice a year on average, for around 30 to 45 seconds per sighting, in passing as they just drove through. The rest of the time we were pretty much on our own.

Now, things changed I think with the militarization and beefing up of the police forces under the Clinton and Obama administrations, but I still don't see them very often. I've been here for about 8 months now, and have seen ONE deputy, who drove up the holler, turned around in front of the house, and drove back out the way he came. I also had a run-in with the local SWAT team a few months ago, which was quite a shock since we never had one of those before and it was unexpected. I detailed that run-in in a thread over at TOS. It was a case of mistaken identity on both sides - they thought I was someone else when they tried to surround the house, and I had no idea they were cops of any sort when I saw men with guns sneaking around outside my house in the dark. It could have turned out a lot worse for one or the other of us, probably both. At one point everyone had guns pointed at everyone until we sorted out who was who, and more importantly who WASN'T who. You don't have to believe me - several TOSers didn't, but I was there, so I know what I know.

Manhandling a college boy is a different critter. I have no doubt the college boy got the wrong kind of mouthy and belligerent, and also have no doubt that the lawmen overreacted. I'd say that if the truth were known, both sides reacted to the event poorly, and no one even tried to de-escalate. Most college age kids don't know how to de-escalate, and most cops don't think they need to these days. That's pretty sad, but I blame it on the militarization of the police in America. Pumping up the ranks and then up-arming them means less training time per officer, and the results of that ought to be predictable. That right there is where I think the old style officer who could get a man in a car most of the time without damaging him went - into a lack of training, and lowering the bar on the selection process to increase the numbers in the ranks. The result is we get a lot more of the Barney Fife and Eric Cartman types out there who only have one speed - but they have more bulk, more numbers, and more bullets, and they think that automatically puts them in the right.

Most modern cops will say "we get plenty of training!" - but there is more concentration on hand to hand combat and a lot less on de-escalation that would obviate that need. Their trained reaction nowadays goes more along the lines of "why talk a man down if you can just beat him down?" That is to be expected, I suppose, in a modern day force that sees itself more as soldiers on the street than as cops on the beat. It was a bad, BAD idea to try to militarize the police. Cops are NOT soldiers. We have an army to fill that function, but fewer and fewer people to fill a real police function.