Let us define the Militia as all citizens between the ages of 17 and 55.  In other words 'The Citizenry'.

Let us organize every neighborhood so that they would be responsible for the civil defense of said neighborhood.  This would mainly involve patrolling that neighborhood and watching out for suspicious activity.  After all, who would know better what is suspicious or not than those who live in that neighborhood.

The citizenry would have no arrest powers, only the power to possibly detain until authorities got there.  This would deter vigilantism-.

This arrangement would free up valuable police and NG units to guard other sites of importance.

If EVERY neighborhood in the country organized in this manner, the terrorists would have an awful difficult time finding a place to base and finding targets of opportunity.  Every time they turned around, there would be the nosey citizenry on patrol.

This would go a ways in deterring a police state in that the whole of the citizenry would be involved and not just the police and the NG.  

My question is, would you rather have the citizenry on patrol, or would you rather have Tom Ridge's boys kicking in doors at their whim?

Flame Away.

?

No flame here, this would of course need to be co-ordinated with local PD so that no "misunderstandings" occured. I think that the reason most of the flame wars about this happen is because of the term "Militia", and disagreements as to the part We, The People, would play. This is a small but good use of us, in the proactive sense as a visible deterrent. There are other valid uses as have been covered in other posts.

Don Out

Absolutely, coordination between local LEO and the 'neighborhood watch' would have to be implemented.

I think that this concept is not so popular here because it is not real 'sexy'.  No guns have been mentioned and it would be relatively boring to patrol your neighborhood.

I guess this idea is not action packed enough for folks on the boards.

...I would go on armed patrol,but I got nobody to come with me.I don't think I'll get "good" looks from the residents.They are typical suburbanites.I'm sure in some places in the US armed patrollers would be waved at,and given cookies annd stuff.Not where I am....

But then again, 99% of my military service was boring and repetitive (CQ duty, yada yada)

So how comes no one is on this thread?  How come no one is ready to patrol their neighborhoods.  Unarmed if necessary and/or advisable. How come we don't have anyone organizing thier neighborhoods at this very moment?

Cuz no one, even those here, are willing to do much of anything.