Tuesday, September 27, 2011

You want an example of 'militarization of law enforcement',

how about 'Heavy machine guns in NYPD helicopters'?
The NYPD began fitting police helicopters with heavy machine guns to shoot down terrorist airplanes about five years ago, after intelligence surfaced that al-Qaida was considering the use of crop dusters and other small craft for attacks, a senior city law enforcement official said Monday.

But while police officers have been trained to use helicopter-mounted .50-caliber machine guns against light planes, there was no intention to take down commercial passenger jets with such weaponry, said the official, who asked not to be identified.
I will refrain from comment, and let Weerd take it from here.

Hey, it was only a matter of time; after all, we've had a friggin' sheriff's office with a APC with a mounted M2 for a couple of years now.

3 comments:

Sigivald said...

Every other source I can find says they have a few semi-auto .50s in door mounts.

I think that this link's description (notice no links from it to a primary source, a recording, or a transcript) is the result of someone confusing "semi-automatic" with "machinegun".

(And perhaps the NYPD being somewhat delusional about what an M-82 can do against even a light aircraft in motion.)

Firehand said...

You could be right. If so, it makes this even more idiotic: someone in a chopper trying to hit a small aircraft using a semi-auto rifle?

ASM826 said...

And even if they hit it, where is going to go? It isn't going to disappear like it was hit with phasers. So it doesn't hit the Empire State Building, so what? If it rolls over and dives into a neighborhood and detonates, is that better?

And who in command of this mess? Who orders them to take the shot? If you need this, it's not like you can have a committee meeting, is it?