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> really, in almost all cases in the US, "assault officers", and we should separate the two concepts, stop hiring new assault officers, and start hiring a new c

> really, in almost all cases in the US, "assault officers", and we should separate the two concepts, stop hiring new assault officers, and start hiring a new class of less-armed police officers The reason that cops are so nasty in the us is because there are so many guns. It's a different environment than other Western countries, and calls for different police tactics. Unless guns are removed from the equation somebody is going to die. Either use a heavy handed police force, and civilians will die, or use a police force with a lighter touch and police will die.

derefr 9y ago
Or, 1. use expendable police materiel to scout out the situation of a dispatch in advance of sending in any actual police bodies (e.g. police drones with fancy optics.) 2. send people in heavily armored rather than heavily armed. If you can make your SWAT team immune to bullets (such as by, say, encasing them in an Armoured Personnel Carrier), then they're not going to be feeling threatened and shooting anyone. #1 is pretty universally useful. You can figure out who has guns and who doesn't. #2 is more situational, because our best solution for heavy armor right now—APCs—have no good way of entering your tenth-floor apartment. This is why I'm constantly checking up on the progress of military robots and powered armor: the more invincible you can make something, the less it needs to actually kill anybody to do its job. The ideal here is a combination of robot-police and human-in-exosuit police that don't even need guns, because nothing they are sent to deal with is ever really that dangerous to them.
- topmonk 9y ago
  Here is a video of a cop getting shot while trying to apprehend a man on a motorcycle (maybe NSFW): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXqoYMOkuYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXqoYMOkuYc The motorcyclist has a gun in his pocket, and shoots the cop without warning. How will your proposed solutions are going to do anything in that situation? Sorry to rant, but this attitude of an amateur thinking they know better than all the professionals who have been doing their job for many years, and can propose quick fixes that will solve everything, is ridiculous.
  - derefr 9y ago
    Just because an approach isn't applicable in literally 100% of situations doesn't mean it isn't applicable in most everyday situations.
    - topmonk 9y ago
      And it may have unforeseen consequences or it may take away funds for something else equally or more important, etc., etc.
  - spaceseaman 9y ago
    I have a real hard time caring about cops' fears in such a scenario. Innocent until proven guilty is a time-honored maxim of the U.S. justice system, and a cop deciding to kill you completely invalidates that. Is being a cop scary? Hell yeah and I feel bad for those folks, but if you don't want to constantly be in fear of your life, get another job. Put cops who murder innocent civilians in jail. End of story. This shouldn't even be a debate in the U.S. EDIT: Since I had the goal posts moved on me, I want to make it explicitly clear that a cop should be allowed to kill in self-defense, just like any other lawful citizen.
    - topmonk 9y ago
      > Innocent until proven guilty is a time-honored maxim of the U.S. justice system, and a cop deciding to kill you completely invalidates that. Consider two civilians. If A shoots at B, and B shot back and killed A, should B go to jail for murder? Now just because B happens to be a cop, does he lose all his rights?
      - spaceseaman 9y ago
        > does he lose all his rights? You've just created a pure strawman. Cops should never lose their rights! I am not making such an argument, and I don't see how you got there from my points. I would never argue such a claim. The cases I'm talking about are not self-defense. They are like the story above. If A murders B, and A is a cop, then A should go to jail regardless of the fear A had in that situation. But this is not what happens in the United States. Cops don't go to jail for shooting perfectly innocent people because the cop can claim they were afraid for their life and thought that B had a gun. If I'm a civilian, that defense doesn't fly. But if you're a cop, then it does work. That is a flaw in our justice system that needs to be corrected because a perfectly innocent man can be killed by the state and no repercussions are felt. The state should never be able to kill an innocent man. If they are shooting at you, they aren't innocent. But if you think they have a gun (especially in an open-carry state like Kansas or Texas) then they are innocent and should not be killed. EDIT: I am saddened by the downvotes. Does the state have the right to kill innocent people if those people own a gun? Doesn't the second amendment protect against this? I simply do not see the legitimate argument for allowing such behavior. This just seems like rabid tribalism for police.
- icelancer 9y ago
  >>2. send people in heavily armored rather than heavily armed. If you can make your SWAT team immune to bullets (such as by, say, encasing them in an Armoured Personnel Carrier), then they're not going to be feeling threatened and shooting anyone. It's way easier to figure out ways to pierce armor than it is to develop it. Green-tipped ammunition is more than good enough to pierce all common and easily-worn body armor today. Besides, if you send people in heavily armored, they are going to feel threatened by nature and will be more trigger happy.
riffraff 9y ago
Do you have numbers on the amount of cops killed during house inspections in the us and other countries? Do different us states invoke SWAT teams with different rates, so it's known how many policeman are hurt?
chrischen 9y ago
Thing is police are people too and afraid to get shot/die. Unless you can remove the guns from criminals, the cops will need guns.
- topmonk 9y ago
  Yea, that's what I mean by "remove guns from the equation", ie. repeal the second amendment.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    I'm just the messenger here, but the canned counter argument is that criminals don't obey gun laws and won't be much deterred by an arms ban.
    - ClassyJacket 9y ago
      This is the worst argument against anything, because it only logically follows that criminals won't care about ANY laws and therefore everything should be legal. It doesn't matter whether they care about the law or not, it's about making it harder for them to get a gun regardless, and being able to confiscate them if we catch them. It worked in Australia.
      - Turing_Machine 9y ago
        "It worked in Australia." And it didn't work in Mexico, Honduras, or Nicaragua, all of which have more in common with the United States than Australia does, and all of which have a) strict gun control laws and b) breathtakingly high murder rates.
        yongjik 9y ago
        > And it didn't work in Mexico, Honduras, or Nicaragua, all of which have more in common with the United States than Australia does ... ...The things some people say to justify guns...
sean_anandale 9y ago
That's not true. Guns are expensive. By far most of the guns are owned by people for whom they are a relatively expensive hobby, and the more guns you own the less likely you are to commit a crime. Note that concealed weapons licensees have a lower rate of crime than police officers.
- mastax 9y ago
  Guns are an expensive hobby. You'll want to have several different nice guns, and lots of ammo, and some targets, and a safe, and time at the range. It's easy to spend thousands a year. If you just want a gun for self defense or murder, they are cheap. Buy a Hi-Point or a Ruger LCP for $175 and a box of 50 9mm and now you can kill more people than you'd ever have a reason to.
emilfihlman 9y ago
This is just fearmongering and falsehood. Guns are not the issue. The issue is badly trained people and the idiotic mentality.
droopybuns 9y ago
You might find this an interesting read: http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-28/fact-check-gun-homicides-and-suicides-john-howard-port-arthur/7254880?pfmredir=sm http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-28/fact-check-gun-homi...
- hexane360 9y ago
  What exactly are you using that article to argue? "Whether you can say we're 20 per cent better off, 80 per cent better off, is subject to debate... But the bottom line is, if [the reforms] had the effect of reducing the number of guns that are available to Australians, it is strongly correlated with the gun homicide and suicide deaths on the wane." "Data from the Australian Institute of Criminology shows the rate of homicide victims dying from a gunshot wound has dropped since the reforms came into force, but not consistently in every year." "ABS data indicates the rate of assault by firearm causing death has also declined since the reforms, but not in every year." The only credible argument against gun reform that article gives is that correlation doesn't imply causation, which is of course true. However, that's not an argument against the common sense position that gun reform decreases gun deaths, but an argument against this specific type of study (which OP didn't mention at all).

derefr 9y ago

Or, 1. use expendable police materiel to scout out the situation of a dispatch in advance of sending in any actual police bodies (e.g. police drones with fancy optics.) 2. send people in heavily armored rather than heavily armed. If you can make your SWAT team immune to bullets (such as by, say, encasing them in an Armoured Personnel Carrier), then they're not going to be feeling threatened and shooting anyone. #1 is pretty universally useful. You can figure out who has guns and who doesn't. #2 is more situational, because our best solution for heavy armor right now—APCs—have no good way of entering your tenth-floor apartment. This is why I'm constantly checking up on the progress of military robots and powered armor: the more invincible you can make something, the less it needs to actually kill anybody to do its job. The ideal here is a combination of robot-police and human-in-exosuit police that don't even need guns, because nothing they are sent to deal with is ever really that dangerous to them.

topmonk 9y ago
Here is a video of a cop getting shot while trying to apprehend a man on a motorcycle (maybe NSFW): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXqoYMOkuYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXqoYMOkuYc The motorcyclist has a gun in his pocket, and shoots the cop without warning. How will your proposed solutions are going to do anything in that situation? Sorry to rant, but this attitude of an amateur thinking they know better than all the professionals who have been doing their job for many years, and can propose quick fixes that will solve everything, is ridiculous.
- derefr 9y ago
  Just because an approach isn't applicable in literally 100% of situations doesn't mean it isn't applicable in most everyday situations.
  - topmonk 9y ago
    And it may have unforeseen consequences or it may take away funds for something else equally or more important, etc., etc.
- spaceseaman 9y ago
  I have a real hard time caring about cops' fears in such a scenario. Innocent until proven guilty is a time-honored maxim of the U.S. justice system, and a cop deciding to kill you completely invalidates that. Is being a cop scary? Hell yeah and I feel bad for those folks, but if you don't want to constantly be in fear of your life, get another job. Put cops who murder innocent civilians in jail. End of story. This shouldn't even be a debate in the U.S. EDIT: Since I had the goal posts moved on me, I want to make it explicitly clear that a cop should be allowed to kill in self-defense, just like any other lawful citizen.
  - topmonk 9y ago
    > Innocent until proven guilty is a time-honored maxim of the U.S. justice system, and a cop deciding to kill you completely invalidates that. Consider two civilians. If A shoots at B, and B shot back and killed A, should B go to jail for murder? Now just because B happens to be a cop, does he lose all his rights?
    - spaceseaman 9y ago
      > does he lose all his rights? You've just created a pure strawman. Cops should never lose their rights! I am not making such an argument, and I don't see how you got there from my points. I would never argue such a claim. The cases I'm talking about are not self-defense. They are like the story above. If A murders B, and A is a cop, then A should go to jail regardless of the fear A had in that situation. But this is not what happens in the United States. Cops don't go to jail for shooting perfectly innocent people because the cop can claim they were afraid for their life and thought that B had a gun. If I'm a civilian, that defense doesn't fly. But if you're a cop, then it does work. That is a flaw in our justice system that needs to be corrected because a perfectly innocent man can be killed by the state and no repercussions are felt. The state should never be able to kill an innocent man. If they are shooting at you, they aren't innocent. But if you think they have a gun (especially in an open-carry state like Kansas or Texas) then they are innocent and should not be killed. EDIT: I am saddened by the downvotes. Does the state have the right to kill innocent people if those people own a gun? Doesn't the second amendment protect against this? I simply do not see the legitimate argument for allowing such behavior. This just seems like rabid tribalism for police.
icelancer 9y ago
>>2. send people in heavily armored rather than heavily armed. If you can make your SWAT team immune to bullets (such as by, say, encasing them in an Armoured Personnel Carrier), then they're not going to be feeling threatened and shooting anyone. It's way easier to figure out ways to pierce armor than it is to develop it. Green-tipped ammunition is more than good enough to pierce all common and easily-worn body armor today. Besides, if you send people in heavily armored, they are going to feel threatened by nature and will be more trigger happy.

riffraff 9y ago

Do you have numbers on the amount of cops killed during house inspections in the us and other countries? Do different us states invoke SWAT teams with different rates, so it's known how many policeman are hurt?

chrischen 9y ago

Thing is police are people too and afraid to get shot/die. Unless you can remove the guns from criminals, the cops will need guns.

topmonk 9y ago
Yea, that's what I mean by "remove guns from the equation", ie. repeal the second amendment.
- weberc2 9y ago
  I'm just the messenger here, but the canned counter argument is that criminals don't obey gun laws and won't be much deterred by an arms ban.
  - ClassyJacket 9y ago
    This is the worst argument against anything, because it only logically follows that criminals won't care about ANY laws and therefore everything should be legal. It doesn't matter whether they care about the law or not, it's about making it harder for them to get a gun regardless, and being able to confiscate them if we catch them. It worked in Australia.
    - Turing_Machine 9y ago
      "It worked in Australia." And it didn't work in Mexico, Honduras, or Nicaragua, all of which have more in common with the United States than Australia does, and all of which have a) strict gun control laws and b) breathtakingly high murder rates.
      - yongjik 9y ago
        > And it didn't work in Mexico, Honduras, or Nicaragua, all of which have more in common with the United States than Australia does ... ...The things some people say to justify guns...

sean_anandale 9y ago

That's not true. Guns are expensive. By far most of the guns are owned by people for whom they are a relatively expensive hobby, and the more guns you own the less likely you are to commit a crime. Note that concealed weapons licensees have a lower rate of crime than police officers.

mastax 9y ago
Guns are an expensive hobby. You'll want to have several different nice guns, and lots of ammo, and some targets, and a safe, and time at the range. It's easy to spend thousands a year. If you just want a gun for self defense or murder, they are cheap. Buy a Hi-Point or a Ruger LCP for $175 and a box of 50 9mm and now you can kill more people than you'd ever have a reason to.

emilfihlman 9y ago

This is just fearmongering and falsehood. Guns are not the issue. The issue is badly trained people and the idiotic mentality.

droopybuns 9y ago

You might find this an interesting read: http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-28/fact-check-gun-homicides-and-suicides-john-howard-port-arthur/7254880?pfmredir=sm http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-28/fact-check-gun-homi...

hexane360 9y ago
What exactly are you using that article to argue? "Whether you can say we're 20 per cent better off, 80 per cent better off, is subject to debate... But the bottom line is, if [the reforms] had the effect of reducing the number of guns that are available to Australians, it is strongly correlated with the gun homicide and suicide deaths on the wane." "Data from the Australian Institute of Criminology shows the rate of homicide victims dying from a gunshot wound has dropped since the reforms came into force, but not consistently in every year." "ABS data indicates the rate of assault by firearm causing death has also declined since the reforms, but not in every year." The only credible argument against gun reform that article gives is that correlation doesn't imply causation, which is of course true. However, that's not an argument against the common sense position that gun reform decreases gun deaths, but an argument against this specific type of study (which OP didn't mention at all).