You might be branded a racist.
I need to clear this up before I go apeshit crazy.
A Sheriff in Bossier Parrish, LA has decided that the citizenry, and not the police/Nat’l Guard, will be the ones to provide the bulk of the security during an emergency. His name is Sheriff Larry Deen. He has enlisted former keepers of the peace and military folks known to him to recruit folks known to them as volunteers for what amounts to a Civil Defense Organization.
The cost are minimal. The people are all local. Think of it as a neighborhood watch within a county instead of a neighborhood.
However, he screwed up one thing in a big way. He named it “Operation Exodus”.
This, of course, perked up the ears of the media folks. The first guy to write about it, from what I can tell, was a jackass from Shreveport named Drew Pierson, who, using his immense knowledge of the two Testaments of the Bible, immediately decided that the Good Sheriff Deen was focusing on preparing a paramilitary force to prepare for a Revelations style Apocalypse.
This story was then picked up by the goobers at TPM, and shortly thereafter found by MSNBC half-wit, Rachel Maddow, who aired a segment on it last night.
The focus was on 195 white southern males out of the total of 200 volunteers, the Bible, the shotguns the Sheriff says he’ll issue if the SHTF, a video of the project’s hand-to-hand training class, and that women who volunteer will only be working in “support roles”.
As you can probably guess, neither TPM and Maddow could be bothered to talk to the Sheriff or anyone involved in the and took all their facts from Pierson’s report.
They completely forgot to mention, because it was convenient, that Bossier County went through a natural disasternot too long ago where strangers were making an “Exodus” of sorts through their county. You’ll remember it as Hurricane Katrina. They don’t remember it unless they can whine about Republicans and the people who work for them.
Personally, if Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor offered what the Good Sheriff Deen is offering his residents, I’d take the opportunity in a heartbeat. Even if he named it “Operation Exodus”.
I have taken advantage of the Peace Officer Safety Act of 2004, and have signed up with a local PD to shoot handgun quals at their range so I can be certified to carry concealed anywhere in the US.
The second year I was there, I talked with the command officer in charge, and he asked me if I would like to belong to a Local Security Posse he was going to form, since there was some Federal money to do that sort of thing. I said I was interested, but nothing ever happened.
The next year I went back for quals, I asked him, and he said that the Chief had nixed the idea after talking to the City Attorney, who cited some of the above concerns.