Both RT and Reason have reported on a story that apparently got its roots over at Infowars, regarding the Department of Homeland Security purchasing paper targets for law enforcement officials to practice gunning down ordinary citizens. This has been picked up by other blogs, with predictable hyperbole:
This puzzle isn’t difficult to assemble, folks. We’ve got the U.S. government already on record purchasing 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition to be used domestically, inside the united states. The government is also purchasing thousands of full-auto assault rifles, calling them “personal defense weapons.”
On top of that, there are hundreds of thousands of multi-body coffins being stored right now at FEMA camp facilities, and there’s also strong evidence that FEMA camps are being activated with core staff coming on line.
And then we’ve also got the feds saying they want Americans to turn in all their guns and completely disarm themselves so that only the government has guns.
Um… how much evidence do you need, folks? I’m just wondering how so many Americans can still be living in a state of total denial about all this. It is abundantly clear that the current occupying government of America — which is an illegitimate occupying force of anti-constitution traitors and criminals — literally has a plan to mass murder tens of millions of Americans by either gunning them down in the streets, or rounding them up and stuffing them info FEMA coffins (or mass graves).
Well, let’s examine another likely explanation for this phenomena, shall we?
According to a link provided by the Reason blog post, Law Enforcement Targets, Inc. has received $5,471,126 in federal money, with $3,124,271 of that coming from the DoD, and $1,913,489 coming from the Department of Homeland Security. Interestingly, however, all $5,471,126 of this has been spent by… Minnesota.
Law Enforcement Targets, Inc. is… surprise! A company in… Minnesota.
The head of the DHS in Minnesota is Kris Eide, an interview with her regarding expenditures here. For those unaware, the Department of Homeland Security generally does not purchase items directly, for itself. The department provides grant services for first responder organizations. So this isn’t a case of “The Department of Homeland Security is buying these targets”… it is instead a case of “Some law enforcement agency purchased these using grant funds provided by the Department of Homeland Security”. As Ms. Eide mentions in her interview, it’s not her job to assess the applicability of the expenditures, beyond their qualifying status. So if a head of a local police department is allowed to charge $100,000 worth of expenditures under the category, “training aids”, the local police department can buy anything they determine is a “training aide” and the DHS foots the bill, up to $100k. This is an approach that gets props from the folks at Reason, generally, yes? Local control over expenditures. Block grants are preferable to assigned expenditures, since those local folk generally know what they need better than some faceless government bureaucrat somewhere in Washington, yes? Law Enforcement Targets, Inc. appears to be a privately held company.
Would anyone care to hazard a guess what degree of separation exists between those people who are the owners of this for-profit institution and the person(s) in charge of procurement for the law enforcement agencies that purchased these targets?
I’m shocked shocked to find that there might be crony-capitalism and corruption happening with funds given as block grants!Report
Why can’t they print out targets on their existing ink and laser jet printers, using those government office supplies they’ve already billed us for?Report
Why not use their 3-D printers?Report
Because targets normally used in training police officers generally aren’t printed on 8.5″ x 11″ paper.Report
That’s why we need to start hiring tiny, tiny policemen.Report
Well, that raises the question about domestic security expenditures in Lilliput. Does anyone have those numbers?Report
I hear their expenditures are very small.Report
When calculating per capita expenditures, does one have to factor in the size of the heads in question?Report
Only if you’re buying hats.Report
I hear their official in charge of helmet procurement is in cahoots with the head of a thimble concern.Report
Well, their government does do a lot of outsourcing. It’s kind of a libertarian dream, a very small government.Report
Though they were forced to rethink their open-borders immigration policy with Brobdingnag.Report
Yes, that turned out to be a huuuuge problem.Report
The thinking behind it wasn’t particularly swift.Report
Awesome. There’s a line that will travel well.Report
Popped straight out of me gulliver.Report
Well, the LAPD could apparently use some practice shooting at billboard sized truck pictures, perhaps with shoot/don’t shoot exercises featuring blue Toyotas and black Hondas (good guys) versus gray Nissans (bad guys).
Perhaps 8 1/2 x 11 targets would further refine their skills so they could hit an occupant in a parked truck with more than 2 percent of their shots.
Stevie Wonder would do better than that, and perhaps would’ve said, “Hold on. I’ll have to trust you about the truck being gray and the occupant being a big heavy-set black guy, but to my highly trained ears he sure sounds like two Hispanic women.”Report
Hold on, I thought guns were good.Report
So is money, but not in the hands of the goverment.Report
A plus.Report
If you go to Law Enforcement Targets, Inc.’s Facebook page, you’ll see a rather predictable set of products marketed to a rather predictable set of purchasers.Report
Law Enforcement Targets, Inc.
Yeah, Chris Dorner shopped there.
Too soon?Report
Oh, that shouldn’t be funny.Report
That’s funny. I had just been working on a post that argued that the people already in power might one day seize the power they already hold, if they could only figure out a way to get around all of the armed pregnant women.Report
Now you know the real reason progressives are pro-choice.Report
He-said she-said journalism tends to leave out context and at its worst jump to conclusions based on that limited information. For instance, beyond the companies that produce these targets, what do people who’ve conducted research on law enforcement training have to say about what targets are used in training?
One explanation for why some law enforcement training shifted towards this model of real faces is combating implicit bias (here from about 1:11:09 to 1:16:11, sorry couldn’t find a transcript). In summary, adjusting to using faces aims to get police officers to focus on the situation, focus on the threat (the gun), and not necessarily the face (or age) of the person. Dr. Keesee also mentions the Denver Police Department putting police badges around necks of targets, rotating those targets with police badges amongst those used for training. Underscoring the idea that their aim in training as to get the officer to focus on the threat.
It would take more work to put the various elements of the story into context, what the benefits and costs of training this way, how solid is the research on one model over another, is “hesitation” as its being used in this context a term of art requiring further explanation, and so forth. But sensationalism is far easier than high quality journalism (not a dig at the OP, more the RT and Reason pieces).Report
Yes, this.
I can posit all sorts of actual reasonable uses of these targets, as well.
I’ll also note that although Law Enforcement Targets, Inc. has several million dollars in contracts, they provide all sorts of stuff via their web site, including such items as range trauma bags – which would qualify as a training aide, so the probability that the DHS bought three million dollars worth of targets is … well, let’s say “low”.
Whatever happened to investigative journalism?Report
Whatever happened to investigative journalism?
That’s a good question, Patrick. I’ve given the issue a lot of thought, and my best theory to date is hey, LOOK! A Kardashian! Report
I’m thinking these guys in Minn. need to practice their target shooting outside, shivering in knee-deep snow.
Otherwise, the legitimacy of the training exercise is called into question.Report
Real men shoot bows.
At watermelons.
With exploding arrows.Report
I’ve always thought that would be more fun from a hang glider.Report
I saw this a few days ago and I was indeed surprised. I’m not linking this to all the various other “goings on” like was quoted above, but really, training targets like this is a bit too much.
As mentioned above, you’ve got LAPD cops firing at truck, etc. which demonstrates that additional rigorous training is indeed necessary, but it it really necessary to train on targets that represent, what .01% of the probably threats in a cop/leo’s career?
What if the TSA or Federal Marshals trained with frangible bullets on targets that looked Muslim. Outrage there much, ya think?Report