Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!military
From: jdnicoll@watyew.waterloo.edu (Brian or James)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Defense cuts
Message-ID: <13222@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 17 Jan 90 01:43:37 GMT
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From: jdnicoll@watyew.waterloo.edu (Brian or James)


 Another, perhaps more serious problem than Mr. Spencer's legal
difficulty with combining police organisations with military ones is
that the training that produces effective police forces may be incompatable
with the training needed to achieve military goals. I think this came up 
during the recent case in Ontario where the Tactical Rescue Units were 
involved in a fairly unproductive attempt to deal with a depressed and
potentially dangerous teenager who had threatened suicide. (The teenager
got wounded, I believe and a farmer got killed by the TRU.) The TRU are 
analogous to American SWAT teams. A point was made that the training the TRU
recieve is not appropriate to the problem they were handed. (At this point,   
I'd like to make it clear that this note shouldn't be taken as a judgement
on just -who- was at fault in the death.) It would be interesting to hear
from anyone who has served in both the military and the police. Are there 
contradictions between the needs of a police force and those of a military
one?
						James Nicoll

Ps: A Further disclaimer: Don't take my definition of the TRU as
canonical, as I working from my feeble memory.