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The premise here is wrong. These guys aren't looking for better ways to deescalate - they're itching to kill. Never forget the UPS shootout last December where

The premise here is wrong. These guys aren't looking for better ways to deescalate - they're itching to kill. Never forget the UPS shootout last December where 19 cops opened fired, killing the hostage and a bystander, taking cover behind the cars of families.

runawaybottle 6y ago
It’s more in response to the litany of cases where cops reacted by shooting. It sounds like a ridiculous idea for sure, but where are we exactly with full body armor and bullet proof visors (full body suit is even better than just a frontal bulletproof shield)? If we’re already there with the tech, then we can disarm them of guns and basically remove a scenario where a cop can kill. We would need alternative weapons like high powered tasers.
- icelancer 6y ago
  >> We would need alternative weapons like high powered tasers. These are exceptionally unreliable weapons. There's no real way to bulletproof a cop. Armor piercing .223 can go through pretty much any reasonable body armor / shields you would wear into a situation like this and is readily available to fire out of AR-15s and the like.
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    Thanks, I was probing to see where we were at with the tech. Would it ever be possible?
    - icelancer 6y ago
      It's definitely possible for the value of "can it actually be done regardless of obstructions," super thick steel plating and such will get it done. But the officer will be basically immobile. Kinetic weapons are tough to defeat using countermeasures, perhaps obviously so. I like your line of thinking though. Too many people just complain about the status quo and relying on government action rather than potentially solving it another way. It's just that in this case, physics is a real bitch.
    - michaelt 6y ago
      Weapon technology and armour technology tend to advance in lockstep. The British invent the tank in WW1, the Germans develop a gun powerful enough to penetrate its armour. Tank armour gets thicker, guns get wheels. Tank armour gets thicker and slanted, you get the bazooka. Tanks get slat armour and explosive reactive armour, you get tandem-charge weapons. And so on. I don't think there'll ever come a day when armoured troops can walk into gunfire like a firefighter can enter a burning building.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  FWIW, it's worth remembering that weapons like tasers are 'less-lethal', not 'non-lethal'. Tasers, rubber bullets etc can all kill people, so it's still dangerous to hand one to a cop that has an itchy trigger finger. The number of deaths cops have caused using less-lethal weapons is certainly not enormous but it's more than zero. Ultimately it's going to be necessary to just chase down and eliminate the root causes of excessive use of force. Even if you completely disarm the police, they can and will kill people through other means, like giving them a "rough ride" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_ride_(police_brutality) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_ride_(police_brutality)] in a police cruiser or choking them [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner].
- qball 6y ago
  >It sounds like a ridiculous idea for sure, but where are we exactly with full body armor and bullet proof visors (full body suit is even better than just a frontal bulletproof shield)? That's usually what SWAT (and the comparable paramilitary "police" forces of other nations; most places call them 'gendarmes') are wearing. That armor (ostensibly a Level IV ballistic vest) will not protect against multiple hits, but it will protect against most rifle fire (including what's supposed to be armor-piercing). The helmets are not as resistant, though, and areas not actually covered by armor are naturally not protected at all. The reason that normal beat cops don't wear this is twofold: the first is that this armor is extremely heavy (and isn't guaranteed to protect, and being hit will still turn you into a casualty), and the second is that officers wearing heavy armor everywhere will lead to citizens asking more questions about what they need to be protecting themselves from. A "cop" who is in reality a paramilitary soldier with assault rifle at the ready [bonus points if it's fully-automatic; police ultimately don't need to provide that kind of suppressing fire] is not "serving and protecting", they're "seeking and destroying". Of course, the way you minimize suspects shooting it out with the cops is by not making non-violent offenses life-destroying ones (i.e. criminal justice reform) and following the other Peelian principles, but that would require intelligence, moderation, and persistence from the public (as well as the police, of course), which is understandably yet unfortunately rare.
- donw 6y ago
  > We would need alternative weapons like high powered tasers. This sort of idea usually comes from folks that don't have much, if any, experience in combat -- or with violence at all, for that matter. There's a reason that anesthesiologists are some of the most highly-paid (and highly-stressed!) medical professionals. Namely, that due to some rather sensible quirks of evolution and biology, it is absurdly difficult to, in any reliable way, rapidly yet temporarily incapacitate a human being without outright killing them. Tasers are fantastically unreliable, typically only provide one or two "shots", and can not be reloaded in the field. If you are up against multiple assailants, a Taser is absolutely useless. Also keep in mind that the sort of situations that police have to deal with evolve very, very rapidly. Seriously, watch some of the police body-cam videos on YouTube -- you can go from "routine traffic stop" to "armed combat with a numerically superior force" in a fraction of a second. Fixing this would require doing some things that are politically very unpalatable, sadly. The big one would be to focus on rehabilitation and prisoner care over punishment. Suspects would be a lot less likely to fight back against police if (a) they felt that the justice system would treat them fairly; (b) the conditions inside of jail were safe and sanitary; and (c) conviction didn't absolutely screw your chances of future employment. We'd also actually be better off if police only carried firearms (no tasers, OC spray, batons, etc.) The more weapons you give a person, the more likely they are to use any of them -- e.g., an officer with both a Taser and a pistol is more likely to use both than an officer with only a pistol. Ending the War on Drugs is also a good idea. Finally: eliminate civil forfeiture, and pass a law mandating that all monetary punishment (from speeding tickets to fines levied against corporations by the EPA) be passed back to the taxpayer as a refund. Remove the revenue incentives for police departments to behave badly.
soganess 6y ago
The premise is not wrong. If you believe that the police force attracts certain kinds of unsavory individuals, then remove what makes said unsavories interested. If police officers don't need to carry firearms as SOP because they are generally quite safe from gunfire then the individuals who join just to fire a gun (or what have you) will go elsewhere.
- augustt 6y ago
  I agree, fewer of them should have guns. What I meant is that cops don't seem to genuinely want to take steps so that they "fear for their lives" less often. So it's the wrong approach to think that they wouldn't be so trigger happy if they just had the right protective gear.
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    I was just listening to some random Eddie Griffin interview about policing that resonated with me. He basically said, like a lot of difficult things in life, you need to rotate in and out of it. The reason so many cops are trigger happy, or fearful, or prejudiced, is because they are overexposed to the job. They need to be on rotation, a few months on the street, a few months back at the desk (something lighter). Right now a lot of them are in messy codebase, fixing showstopper bugs 24/7. They are basically burnt and their perspective is no longer balanced.

runawaybottle 6y ago

It’s more in response to the litany of cases where cops reacted by shooting. It sounds like a ridiculous idea for sure, but where are we exactly with full body armor and bullet proof visors (full body suit is even better than just a frontal bulletproof shield)? If we’re already there with the tech, then we can disarm them of guns and basically remove a scenario where a cop can kill. We would need alternative weapons like high powered tasers.

icelancer 6y ago
>> We would need alternative weapons like high powered tasers. These are exceptionally unreliable weapons. There's no real way to bulletproof a cop. Armor piercing .223 can go through pretty much any reasonable body armor / shields you would wear into a situation like this and is readily available to fire out of AR-15s and the like.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Thanks, I was probing to see where we were at with the tech. Would it ever be possible?
  - icelancer 6y ago
    It's definitely possible for the value of "can it actually be done regardless of obstructions," super thick steel plating and such will get it done. But the officer will be basically immobile. Kinetic weapons are tough to defeat using countermeasures, perhaps obviously so. I like your line of thinking though. Too many people just complain about the status quo and relying on government action rather than potentially solving it another way. It's just that in this case, physics is a real bitch.
  - michaelt 6y ago
    Weapon technology and armour technology tend to advance in lockstep. The British invent the tank in WW1, the Germans develop a gun powerful enough to penetrate its armour. Tank armour gets thicker, guns get wheels. Tank armour gets thicker and slanted, you get the bazooka. Tanks get slat armour and explosive reactive armour, you get tandem-charge weapons. And so on. I don't think there'll ever come a day when armoured troops can walk into gunfire like a firefighter can enter a burning building.
kevingadd 6y ago
FWIW, it's worth remembering that weapons like tasers are 'less-lethal', not 'non-lethal'. Tasers, rubber bullets etc can all kill people, so it's still dangerous to hand one to a cop that has an itchy trigger finger. The number of deaths cops have caused using less-lethal weapons is certainly not enormous but it's more than zero. Ultimately it's going to be necessary to just chase down and eliminate the root causes of excessive use of force. Even if you completely disarm the police, they can and will kill people through other means, like giving them a "rough ride" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_ride_(police_brutality) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_ride_(police_brutality)] in a police cruiser or choking them [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner].
qball 6y ago
>It sounds like a ridiculous idea for sure, but where are we exactly with full body armor and bullet proof visors (full body suit is even better than just a frontal bulletproof shield)? That's usually what SWAT (and the comparable paramilitary "police" forces of other nations; most places call them 'gendarmes') are wearing. That armor (ostensibly a Level IV ballistic vest) will not protect against multiple hits, but it will protect against most rifle fire (including what's supposed to be armor-piercing). The helmets are not as resistant, though, and areas not actually covered by armor are naturally not protected at all. The reason that normal beat cops don't wear this is twofold: the first is that this armor is extremely heavy (and isn't guaranteed to protect, and being hit will still turn you into a casualty), and the second is that officers wearing heavy armor everywhere will lead to citizens asking more questions about what they need to be protecting themselves from. A "cop" who is in reality a paramilitary soldier with assault rifle at the ready [bonus points if it's fully-automatic; police ultimately don't need to provide that kind of suppressing fire] is not "serving and protecting", they're "seeking and destroying". Of course, the way you minimize suspects shooting it out with the cops is by not making non-violent offenses life-destroying ones (i.e. criminal justice reform) and following the other Peelian principles, but that would require intelligence, moderation, and persistence from the public (as well as the police, of course), which is understandably yet unfortunately rare.
donw 6y ago
> We would need alternative weapons like high powered tasers. This sort of idea usually comes from folks that don't have much, if any, experience in combat -- or with violence at all, for that matter. There's a reason that anesthesiologists are some of the most highly-paid (and highly-stressed!) medical professionals. Namely, that due to some rather sensible quirks of evolution and biology, it is absurdly difficult to, in any reliable way, rapidly yet temporarily incapacitate a human being without outright killing them. Tasers are fantastically unreliable, typically only provide one or two "shots", and can not be reloaded in the field. If you are up against multiple assailants, a Taser is absolutely useless. Also keep in mind that the sort of situations that police have to deal with evolve very, very rapidly. Seriously, watch some of the police body-cam videos on YouTube -- you can go from "routine traffic stop" to "armed combat with a numerically superior force" in a fraction of a second. Fixing this would require doing some things that are politically very unpalatable, sadly. The big one would be to focus on rehabilitation and prisoner care over punishment. Suspects would be a lot less likely to fight back against police if (a) they felt that the justice system would treat them fairly; (b) the conditions inside of jail were safe and sanitary; and (c) conviction didn't absolutely screw your chances of future employment. We'd also actually be better off if police only carried firearms (no tasers, OC spray, batons, etc.) The more weapons you give a person, the more likely they are to use any of them -- e.g., an officer with both a Taser and a pistol is more likely to use both than an officer with only a pistol. Ending the War on Drugs is also a good idea. Finally: eliminate civil forfeiture, and pass a law mandating that all monetary punishment (from speeding tickets to fines levied against corporations by the EPA) be passed back to the taxpayer as a refund. Remove the revenue incentives for police departments to behave badly.

soganess 6y ago

The premise is not wrong. If you believe that the police force attracts certain kinds of unsavory individuals, then remove what makes said unsavories interested. If police officers don't need to carry firearms as SOP because they are generally quite safe from gunfire then the individuals who join just to fire a gun (or what have you) will go elsewhere.

augustt 6y ago
I agree, fewer of them should have guns. What I meant is that cops don't seem to genuinely want to take steps so that they "fear for their lives" less often. So it's the wrong approach to think that they wouldn't be so trigger happy if they just had the right protective gear.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  I was just listening to some random Eddie Griffin interview about policing that resonated with me. He basically said, like a lot of difficult things in life, you need to rotate in and out of it. The reason so many cops are trigger happy, or fearful, or prejudiced, is because they are overexposed to the job. They need to be on rotation, a few months on the street, a few months back at the desk (something lighter). Right now a lot of them are in messy codebase, fixing showstopper bugs 24/7. They are basically burnt and their perspective is no longer balanced.