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>>If instead you mean police should respond swiftly but not bring out the SWAT teams without more verification, then that could pose a (different kind of) safet
by patmcc 9y ago
>>If instead you mean police should respond swiftly but not bring out the SWAT teams without more verification, then that could pose a (different kind of) safety issue for responders and potential hostages.
I think you're getting close to someone people don't like to talk about; we (as a society) seem to value the lives of police officers far higher than we value the lives of innocent "civilians". This seems entirely backwards to me - I'd strongly prefer that police officers effectively never fire first. Let the SWAT teams be very highly armoured and lightly (or non-lethally) armed.
- mobilefriendly 9y agoYou have it backwards. SWAT police move aggressively, at great personal risk, in order to save civilian lives. The idea is that there is a hostage situation and hostages are being actively killed.
- patmcc 9y agoHow often is that idea close to reality, and how often is it a fake call, a no-knock warrant, or some other bs? And are they actually taking great personal risk? Police killed a bit under 1000 people in the US in 2016 and had around 150 officers die (with lots of this vehicle related). Seems like it's riskier for people interacting with cops than the cops themselves.
- dvtv75 9y agoWikipedia sugggests that the bulk of SWAT deployments are to serve search warrants. This suggests to me that they're not acting at "great personal risk, in order to save civilian lives," and instead that they're acting as a deadly threat for compliance.