This is kinda interesting. Bush signed in a new law that's been percolating for a while allowing the armed forces to be used in more domestic uses. While many people are concerned about the ease of imposing martial law, others are seeing as a response to the slow response in Katrina, etc.
Here's one site with the details.

This modifies the The Insurrection Act which previously limited el jefe's power.

I dunno. Personally I'm not a fan. The military acting as a police force? They're soldiers, not cops. How well is our 'police force' working out in Iraq? I'm not dissing the people who are there- they're well trained soldiers. But the biggest weakness is just they are well trained soldiers. Not cops.

I started to read it, and got a headache by the second paragraph. Does it say in there who would be in charge of the military, the military or the civil authorities???

Hmm... interesting link. I also started to get a headache.

If I remember correctly, the U.S. Army was used during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to prevent looting and help restore law & order. There's no doubt in my mind that more than one looter was probably shot dead.

The military has been used for assistance with natural disasters for years. I, too, wonder who will be controlling said force in the scope of future disasters. Perhaps a unified command made up of civilian agency leaders and military agency leaders.

'Does it say in there who would be in charge of the military, the military or the civil authorities?'

Whichever would be the most idiotic, probably.

There is a real difference between soldier and cops: soldiers are taught to obey... period. Cops (we hope) can think. Which kind do you think we would need/want in a disaster and its aftermath?

Sue

Actually, soldiers are taught that obeying an illegal order is itself illegal, and they learn roughly were the line is. While the media likes to make a bigger stink out of the cases where people forget what they learned than might be needed, it is actually pretty damn rare for western infantrymen to do something like kill civilians without provocation.

It has to do with that thing called being a professional army.

Cops, no offense to anyone here, are statistically MUCH more likely to exceed thier authority. Look at it this way- excessive force and corruption investigations are pretty common in civilian law enforcement agencies, and are known to happen every day. We've got what, a million sworn LEOs in the US, including park wardens. (We'll leave the TSA out of this, both for numbers and rates of violation.)

We've got the better part of a million US and NATO troops in Afganistan and Iraq, and so long as it is only a small arms issue, attrocities against civilians happen at a much lower rate, say every week. And I don't mean someone shoving a civilian during crowd control or shooting a dog that is trying to attack him, I mean unwarrented killings of civilians. (Again, I don't include people who were in the middle or were hit by something that missed and continued down range, but I also don't count that for police.)

I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm also not saying that the military makes a good police force. But you seem to be impling that US troops wind up soldiers who obey blindly. And that's about as far from the truth as can be. A sane trooper's first instinct is to protect himself and his buddies, but after that they won't shoot unless provoked.

And anyone who is no longer in possession of his or her mental and ethical facalties should be off the line, and failure to do so by NCOs and officers should be and is investigated and punished, if for no other reason than someone who's no longer tightly wrapped is actually more dangerous to his unit than he is to civilians.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.
This is not a new problem.
It was observed in the 1700's that (and this is pre-police) if an Army Officer was ordered to fire into the mob by a Magistrate and refused to, he was liable to be shot for mutiny. If he obeyed the order, he would be hanged for murder.

Of course the flip side of the argument is that under some circumstances, LEO's will be quickly overwelmed and you need the Army to restore order.

Which kindasorta brings us back to my question: who would be giving the orders? If both civil and military authorities are told to stop people from going up "A" street let's say, they, based upon their prior training and experience, might take very different actions to prevent such passage.

I am not saying that something like Bruce Willis in "The Siege" would occur, and I doubt that something like the .30 machine gun nests of the first Watts Riot would occur, but different training is different training...

The Civil Power.
Under those circumstances the Army is acting to support the Civil Power and any member of the Military is subject to the full weight of law.
The Judicuary will strike down any legislative act that attempt's to suborne basic freedoms.
Besides, this is the US Army we are talking about. Not some third world "army".

My understanding was that some of the military was more of a problem than others during 1906 earthquake. It seems that one of the few people actually killed during the initial quake was SF's experienced Chief of Police. A recent book I read held that the General in charge of the Presidio took control and wanted to blow up buildings to create firebreaks. So he kept ordering the soldiers to blow up the buildings - with black powder instead of dynamite. This in turn created more fires than if the buildings were left alone. The author concluded that the naval forces who had a fireboat were responsible for saving the city.

"...the naval forces who had a fireboat were responsible for saving the city..."

My wife, who did a hitch in the Navy, says that she is not surprised...

I live in a community that has a military base, and work with a lot of people who retired or got out and stayed in the area when their hitch was up. When I posed a question to them along this idea, most said that if they were given the order to fire on American civilians they would shoot the officer who gave the order.

Now weather that would really happen I don’t know, and hope I never have to find out and I don’t know what scares me more, a combat vet trying to enforce some kind of civil order, or some poge trying to do the same thing. As for local LEO’s, well most of the ones I have had dealings with on accident and fire scenes make me nervous that they carry guns.

From http://www.usafa.af.mil/jscope/JSCOPE00/Pfaff/Pfaff00.html

"To underscore this point, as well as underscore the gap between how police and military consider the application of force, consider the following example that occurred during the riots in Los Angeles in 1992:

Police officers responded to a domestic dispute, accompanied by marines. They had just gone up to the door when two shotgun birdshot rounds were fired through the door, hitting the officers. One yelled `cover me!' to the marines, who then laid down a heavy base of fire . . . The police officer had not meant `shoot' when he yelled ‘cover me’ to the marines. [He] meant . . . point your weapons and be prepared to respond if necessary. However, the marines responded instantly in the precise way they had been trained, where ‘cover me’ means provide me with cover using firepower. . . . over two hundred bullets [were] fired into that house."

Joint operations invariably have little things like that. Its a matter of varying terminology. The cop didn't think, the Marines didn't think, and with two hundred rounds fired, I can only say that if no one was hurt, I'm very glad, but also very disappointed in the marksmanship of those riflemen.

I remember reading something about a British unit that got hammered in Korea becuase the Americans they were near didn't understand that when the Brits say the situation is "complicated", they mean "come save our butts!"

Marshal Law is MARSHAL ( Military ) LAW The Military will be in charge, The Civial authorties will have relinquished power.

I have no doubt...

As it happens the exact term used was "Getting a bit sticky."
When a British Army Officer starts to use those terms, along with "interesting" & "complicated," the exact American equivalent is " OH S....T, OH S.......T. WE ARE GONNA DIE!!!! "
That's the problem with us Brit's, we are much too fond of understatement. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />