Police/Security personnel: specific threat bulletin

[AccuTron]

Many of you are in police/security/military work, or know someone who is.  It seems to me that the following true incident should be distributed through law enforcement bulletins.  I'm also curious what type of this training already exists.

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I was speaking with a man who spoke English.  He had spent time socially visiting specific tribal reservation areas within the U.S.A.  He relayed the following incident.

 

He was with at least three locals, and it sounds like raucous partying might have been involved, at some outdoor location.  A law enforcement vehicle arrived with two officers.

 

The group of perhaps four men were placed with their hands on a pickup truck.  There was apparently nothing further to report from the now non-incident, and the officers left the scene.

 

With the officers gone, the locals were now all speaking English, with the English speaker present.  They were recounting their version of the incident.

 

While with hands on the truck, perhaps at whisper level, they were speaking in their native language.  They were checking locations of known handguns, including a .38 in a boot, and were assigning their targets.

 

I have nothing further to report.  I have no idea if those officers knew what was happening.  

It seems to me that any officer any place should know the local language for weapons.

-end-

[AustinJames]

Some clarification is needed before more can be known of this incident.  When you say 'locals,' to whom do you refer?  U.S. citizens, native americans, or something else?  When you say "they were checking locations of known handguns," what do you mean by that?  Were the 'locals' asking each other, in their native language, about the guns they might be carrying on their own person?  Also, do you know what language, besides English, was spoken?

 

Once the details are sorted out, I'm interested to know what information in this story is important to you.  Are you implying that the locals were planning on shooting the cops, and the cops got wise and retreated?  I'm confused as to why this is significant.

[dsayers]

Many of you are in police/security/military work

 

These words are not interchangeable. Security personnel voluntarily provide services to people who delegate power they actually have.

 

Some people talk about how police work is dangerous, which I think is what the point of what you're saying is. However, most of the danger police are actually in, they create. Not to mention they tend to create more danger to others, who have far less recourse, then they themselves could be described as being in.

 

Unless the party mentioned was so loud as to disturb others nearby, there was no initiation of the use of force (ITUOF). Even if that was the case, loud noise can be dealt with by way of verbal negotiation. I get by your use of the phrase "four men were placed with their hands on a pickup truck" that the police ITUOF. For people who are believed to have immunity to consequences and no moral code by which to be held to ITUOF, there is no way of knowing what, if anything, will limit their aggression. These people did not deploy the guns they were speaking of, so we can only assume they were plotting how to best survive if in fact the aggression approached lethal levels.

 

I'm not sure what the source or point of the story was, but I hope this adds some clarity.

[AccuTron]

Details of the case aren't known, don't matter, it's a generalized issue.  Nothing much happened.  

 

The locals were Native American, on reservation land.  Tribe known but not mentioned since it would be unfair.  My conversational impression was that if violence started, it was going to be from the natives.  We can only guess at reasons.

 

The only point is that the natives were able to tell each other where the guns were (in a boot, under the seat, etc.), and plan who was to shoot who.  The officers were not speakers of that language, and thus unable to understand their danger.  While learning a vastly different language is not called for, several words could be vital.  For example: thirty-eight, forty-four, pistol, knife, etc.  Someone might say "thirty eight" in Spanish or German, and an officer might guess.  But tribal languages are completely unintelligible to outsiders.  Just enough training that the officers' ears perk up if they hear certain syllable combinations.  

 

What police/security/military have in common is that they are the professions that may be in a dangerous situation around people who speak a language they don't understand.

[dsayers]

My conversational impression was that if violence started, it was going to be from the natives.

 

On what basis? My analysis was that violence had already started. Do you find fault with this interpretation? I think proceeding as if it wasn't made is counterproductive.

 

What police/security/military have in common is that they are the professions that may be in a dangerous situation around people who speak a language they don't understand.

 

As I'm patrolling an empty building at the request of the owner of that building, if I happen upon an intruder, I'm in a dangerous situation regardless of what language they're speaking. So is the person who broke in. They chose that risk when they decided to break into somebody else's property.

 

Compare this to police and military who are the ones doing the breaking in. The danger they're in is the danger they created by aggressing against innocent people. Unless you can make a moral connection between being found to have been responsible for a noise disturbance and having your freedom of movement arrested. Or do you not realize that these people are trained to take over any situation they enter into for the express purpose of minimizing the risk of the danger they're creating? That's why those people were given orders with what to do with their own bodies that led to them having hands on a pickup truck.

 

If you want to warn police/military against the dangers of aggressing against people, talk them out of their violence. The language barrier is a straw man.

[fractional slacker]

Gun thugs are useless and have no place in a free society. Why do we care if a slave owner can't understand what language the slaves speak?

[cobra2411]

I know a guy who told me a wild story about this thing that would do crazy things and another guy has it... blah blah blah... OP, your post sounds like tin-foil hat fear mongering non-sense. Can you clarify what concept you're trying to expand on? 

 

If it's the use of a "secret" language to coordinate an attack on your attackers, I'd be worried that they would get trigger happy the minute they heard you talking in code. As far as "locals" initiating violence, as dsayer's already said, the police initiated, therefor anything else is simply defensive. Of course the state will likely disagree on that point. 

[AccuTron]

You guys are blowing this all out of proportion.  Fear mongering nonsense, to report an incident?  I was reporting a conversation.  The speaker gave only minimal information, and I gathered from his wording the officers weren't doing anything provocative.  Nobody initiated anything, and I didn't say they did.  The only hard info is that the locals, or pick your word, were talking about targeting which officers with which weapons, and I think most people would consider that provocative.  I didn't  reference any larger issue, since I had no further info.  I just said that dangerous words were not detected by the officers.  That's it.  No different than educating that a particular set of chemical vats with labels are dangerous if you know the chemical names.  Gotta know the names to know the danger.  Especially as I've never heard of such training.  

 

My ONLY point...and it's really simple, so calm down... is that any officer often on calls with another language should learn the words for weapons.  Seems obvious.  That's it.  No larger issues, NONE.  

 

Just advice, like learn how to handle a spin on ice, or floss enough.  Floss means floss, not the food issues of the world.  Handling a spin is not about world car usage.

[dsayers]

If you're not interested in being accurate when trying to communicate with others, that's your prerogative. It doesn't mean they're uncalm for clarifying.

 

Even your use of the word "officer" frames the conversation whether you realize it or not.

[Tyler Durden]

AccuTron, let me try to explain this in another way:

 

4 people were having fun and as far as we know were not disturbing anyone

 

2 other people who carried weapons came by and without provocation forced the 4 people into a position where they could not easily defend themselves

 

while in this vulnerable position the 4 people used their own language to communicate with each other about weapons

 

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What I am wondering, and I think the others are too, is:

 

1. why don't you criticize the actions of the 2 aggressors?

2. why are you giving advise on how to aggress more successfully?