Walton County Sheriff’s Office Mike Adkinson states that their department just got a mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle (MRAP) for “an insurance policy,” in order to keep deputies safe in dangerous situations – citing examples past violence in the country.
However one journalist, Justin King, calls out Adkinson’s claims of violence as over exaggerated, instead stating that the county is virtually crime free.
Walton County Sheriff’s Officer Mike Adkinson denied that the purchase of the vehicle was an attempt to militarize the police department, adding that he wouldn’t let public opinion get in the way of the “safety” of his colleagues.
“This is not the federal government intruding on your civil liberties,” wrote Adkinson in a Facebook post. “Would you really want them sent into harm’s way without the best protection available, simply because the military originally purchased this vehicle?”
This didn’t stop residents expressing their anger at the decision to buy the vehicle, with one commenting that the purchase represented “an offensive intimidation method used to controll [sic] and strike fear.”
Another respondent agreed, remarking, “This doesn’t make the officers safer. All studies show that the more militarized a department becomes, the more often officers get hurt. This is Walton County, Florida, not Iraq, not Afghanistan.”
As Justin King points out, despite Adkinson’s effort to justify the purchase by pointing to examples where cops have had to deal with suspects barricaded inside their homes, Walton is such a peaceful and virtually crime free neighborhood that it was used to represent an idyllic American town in the 1998 movie The Truman Show.
“Walton County is a part of Florida that is so crime free you can leave your doors unlocked. When Hollywood location scouts were looking for a community so perfect that it appeared to be fake, they came to Walton County. The Truman Show, staring Jim Carey, was filmed on location in a small Walton County community,” writes King, accusing the Sheriff’s department of abandoning common sense by purchasing the vehicle and pointing out that it is only likely to spur additional violence.
“This vehicle is an implement of war. It has no place in this county. The decision to bring this to a small community will only increase violence against citizens by creating a combat mindset in deputies. This violence will be returned, and deputies will face violence on a level not seen before in Walton County,” writes King.
Give psychopaths military weapons designed to murder large numbers of people and they will use it every opportunity they can make up.
The traitor accepting the weapons of mass destruction and the scumbag criminal giving away taxpayer paid for equipment should be in jail. Everything is mismanaged by the drooling traitors running the pentagon.
The entire future of the mankind is being sucked down a pentagon shaped black hole in DC.
GETTING READY FOR AN UPRISING OF THE PEOPLE
Why don’t they put that vehicle at the Southern border where it would really be useful?
I agree WHY do these Law Officers need this type of vehicle? MAYBE it is because of all the Muslims that here in the States now?
What a total crock of c**p. The militarization of law enforcement has got to stop before the entire nation is just one great big police state.
THIS IS BULL$#%&!@*
Thats a BAD n very stupid comment Mr. Douglas Roseberry Its the crazy American children going in schools n malls doing mass killings not the Muslins
another dictator move by obama to get his personal gestapo
Police State
No law enforcement agency needs armored vehicles!