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Sure, maybe there is limited use in some of this equipment. But my small city police department recently got a grant for 450 high powered assault rifles and arm

Sure, maybe there is limited use in some of this equipment. But my small city police department recently got a grant for 450 high powered assault rifles and armored vests, on top of the hundreds they already had. There are only 700 officers including things like traffic enforcement. Of course the police union lobbied for more. They have armored trucks and undercover vehicles. They have mobile towers to survey. They have closed circuit cameras at every major intersection. They have Stingrays. They have purchased LRADs which can permanently deafen. They have helicopters, tear gas cannons for hundreds of officers, batons. And they trot it out for peaceful protests. The police did not come equipped to protect, they came equipped to escalate and occupy. Hell, they even manage to bust a lot of the equipment out at concerts and festivals. I stopped going to a local outdoor concert series when they decided to gate a park off and start pat downs and metal detecting everyone who entered.

zentiggr 6y ago
This sounds like an excellent case for equipment limitations. At the very least making departments pay 'retail' for gear instead of getting effectively donated surplus.
- core-questions 6y ago
  Why should taxpayers who fund the police have to artificially pay more markup, making someone else rich, just so the police have less equipment?
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    Why should the police get a discount? They should have to buy their MRAPs through the auction systems the same way that someone running a logging company has to buy surplus LMTVs. I'm sympathetic to the cause of saving money but if the military won't auction something to a random US citizen I don't see why they should be auctioning that thing to a random US civilian police force. They can sell that stuff to other nations if they can't sell it domestically. I don't particularly care what the standard is for disposing of unwanted military hardware is so long as it's not a double one. A civilian police force should get no special treatment above any other civilian entity.
    - core-questions 6y ago
      > I'm sympathetic to the cause of saving money but if the military won't auction something to a random US citizen I don't see why they should be auctioning that thing to a random US civilian police force. I don't see why it's not clear there's a difference here, in terms of community interest, but whatever > A civilian police force should have no special rights above any other civilian entity. What a weird way of looking at the world. I've genuinely never heard this take. Police have power over you, if you break the law; that's the point, no?
      - jeffbee 6y ago
        Police power is not intrinsic. It is granted by the people through their elected government. In my state, every local authority has the power to designate entities to exercise their various powers. By tradition these are police or sheriff departments but there's nothing preventing the local government from vesting police powers in the 4-H club or Wal-mart.
        jointpdf 6y ago
        > there's nothing preventing the local government from vesting police powers in the 4-H club Would love to see this happen. Being policed by literal pigs would be better than...well, you know.
        mulmen 6y ago
        “License, registration and club card please.”
      - qball 6y ago
        >What a weird way of looking at the world. I've genuinely never heard this take. That's interesting, and betrays the fact that modern policing has somewhat drifted away from its historic tradition. (https://www.techuk.org/insights/opinions/item/15744-behind-policing-by-consent-the-peelian-principles https://www.techuk.org/insights/opinions/item/15744-behind-p...)
      - mulmen 6y ago
  - zentiggr 6y ago
    (Disclosure: proud US submariner '94 - '00) We're talking about them paying for military surplus like vehicles, machineguns and other items that 95% of departments don't need. If the DoD weren't spreading surplus Army gear out like candy to babies who don't know how to use it, there would be a lot fewer opportunities for the not so stable elements of police departments to escalate otherwise normal situations just so they can play with big boy toys/get that "underfire" adrenaline hit again/get that power trip high that they craved from high school/soothe that sociopathic itch to dominate others. We can put our voices together and force the DoD to stop this bullshit surplus program and acjnowledge that they built and bought too much and get egg on their faces as they destroy old gear and vehicles.
catalogia 6y ago
The equipment they request betrays their perspective. They see themselves as having more in common with soldiers in occupied Baghdad than police officers.
- dashundchen 6y ago
  That so many American officers choose to represent themselves with "The Punisher" is very revealing. https://www.vulture.com/2017/11/marvel-punisher-police-military-fandom.html https://www.vulture.com/2017/11/marvel-punisher-police-milit...
inerte 6y ago
I live close to a small town in the Bay Area, called Los Gatos. Quaint, expensive, beautiful place. It was Big Truck Day at the library and a lot of government employees were showing their vehicles. Fire trucks, trash compactors, a huge bulldozer, and there was a police car and a handful of officers around. A little girl came and pointed at a rifle and asked the officer, “what is this for?” He said, “to protect myself”, paused and caught his breath and said “and to protect you”. This happened a couple years ago. I still think about his pause, the afterthought on why he needs the truck, the rifle and the gear.
- defterGoose 6y ago
  Wow, anecdotal but very telling. I tend to think that most cops are "good people", but that doesn't mean that the majority also doesn't go around envisioning their job primarily as a combat deployment to a war zone, and only secondarily as an exercise in protecting and strengthening their communities. The bellicose see war everywhere...
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  The (presumably white) little girl probably needs someone to explain to that the police have a duty to the public to protect order, not any given individual
paloaltokid 6y ago
> And they trot it out for peaceful protests. The police did not come equipped to protect, they came equipped to escalate and occupy. "What's the point of having all this cool shit if we never get to use it?!"
rsynnott 6y ago
> But my small city police department recently got a grant for 450 high powered assault rifles and armored vests, on top of the hundreds they already had. What always confuses me (I live in a country where the police don't generally get guns, even) is what they're preparing for with this sort of thing? A full-on war? Like, if they need hundreds of assault rifles for police work, then arguably society has already collapsed and the police are probably surplus to requirements anyway.
- ggreer 6y ago
  I think the term "assault rifle" is very misleading here. People are imagining fully automatic weapons like the ones the military uses. But outside of SWAT, such weaponry is very rare. (And in most countries, their equivalent of SWAT has fully automatic weapons.) The rifles used by everyday police are the same as those owned by tens of millions of civilians. These weapons are cosmetically similar to those used by the military, but they have the same functionality and fire the same cartridge as the Ruger Mini-14.[1] They are semi-automatic. Every "bang!" requires a pull of the trigger. The reasons police have these weapons are because pistols are less accurate, have shorter range, and are unable to penetrate body armor. These rifles are usually locked in the back of the vehicle and only brought out for standoff situations, or if the cop has retreated due to being outgunned. Such occasions are rare, but when they happen, those rifles are worth their weight in gold (as are the fire extinguishers and medical kits in practically all police cars). Moreover, police have always used the latest weaponry. A century ago, they were equipped with the Thompson submachine gun[2] and the Browning Automatic Rifle[3] (both of which are fully automatic weapons). I agree that police have gotten more militarized over time, and I would love to roll that back, but it's also true that many of those arguing in this thread are either misled or disingenuous. We're much more likely to convince others if we make sure our arguments and our facts are unimpeachable. 1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ruger_Mini-14.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ruger_Mini-14.jpg 2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thompsonad1sm.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thompsonad1sm.jpg 3. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Firearms_practice,_1936.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Firearms_practice,_1...
ggreer 6y ago
> But my small city police department recently got a grant for 450 high powered assault rifles and armored vests, on top of the hundreds they already had. There are only 700 officers including things like traffic enforcement. I'm pretty sure you're talking about Buffalo, NY.[1] They purchased 115 semi-automatic rifles that use the same .40S&W ammunition as their pistols. That's the opposite of "high powered". And they're not fully automatic. They can in no way be construed as assault rifles. The 450 vests they bought are resistant to rifle rounds. Their old vests could only stop pistol rounds. I agree that many departments go overboard, but this doesn't seem like an instance of that. 1. https://buffalonews.com/2017/03/07/buffalo-police-to-get-new-rifles-and-vests/ https://buffalonews.com/2017/03/07/buffalo-police-to-get-new...

zentiggr 6y ago

This sounds like an excellent case for equipment limitations. At the very least making departments pay 'retail' for gear instead of getting effectively donated surplus.

core-questions 6y ago
Why should taxpayers who fund the police have to artificially pay more markup, making someone else rich, just so the police have less equipment?
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Why should the police get a discount? They should have to buy their MRAPs through the auction systems the same way that someone running a logging company has to buy surplus LMTVs. I'm sympathetic to the cause of saving money but if the military won't auction something to a random US citizen I don't see why they should be auctioning that thing to a random US civilian police force. They can sell that stuff to other nations if they can't sell it domestically. I don't particularly care what the standard is for disposing of unwanted military hardware is so long as it's not a double one. A civilian police force should get no special treatment above any other civilian entity.
  - core-questions 6y ago
    > I'm sympathetic to the cause of saving money but if the military won't auction something to a random US citizen I don't see why they should be auctioning that thing to a random US civilian police force. I don't see why it's not clear there's a difference here, in terms of community interest, but whatever > A civilian police force should have no special rights above any other civilian entity. What a weird way of looking at the world. I've genuinely never heard this take. Police have power over you, if you break the law; that's the point, no?
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      Police power is not intrinsic. It is granted by the people through their elected government. In my state, every local authority has the power to designate entities to exercise their various powers. By tradition these are police or sheriff departments but there's nothing preventing the local government from vesting police powers in the 4-H club or Wal-mart.
      - jointpdf 6y ago
        > there's nothing preventing the local government from vesting police powers in the 4-H club Would love to see this happen. Being policed by literal pigs would be better than...well, you know.
      - mulmen 6y ago
        “License, registration and club card please.”
    - qball 6y ago
      >What a weird way of looking at the world. I've genuinely never heard this take. That's interesting, and betrays the fact that modern policing has somewhat drifted away from its historic tradition. (https://www.techuk.org/insights/opinions/item/15744-behind-policing-by-consent-the-peelian-principles https://www.techuk.org/insights/opinions/item/15744-behind-p...)
    - mulmen 6y ago
- zentiggr 6y ago
  (Disclosure: proud US submariner '94 - '00) We're talking about them paying for military surplus like vehicles, machineguns and other items that 95% of departments don't need. If the DoD weren't spreading surplus Army gear out like candy to babies who don't know how to use it, there would be a lot fewer opportunities for the not so stable elements of police departments to escalate otherwise normal situations just so they can play with big boy toys/get that "underfire" adrenaline hit again/get that power trip high that they craved from high school/soothe that sociopathic itch to dominate others. We can put our voices together and force the DoD to stop this bullshit surplus program and acjnowledge that they built and bought too much and get egg on their faces as they destroy old gear and vehicles.

catalogia 6y ago

The equipment they request betrays their perspective. They see themselves as having more in common with soldiers in occupied Baghdad than police officers.

dashundchen 6y ago
That so many American officers choose to represent themselves with "The Punisher" is very revealing. https://www.vulture.com/2017/11/marvel-punisher-police-military-fandom.html https://www.vulture.com/2017/11/marvel-punisher-police-milit...

inerte 6y ago

I live close to a small town in the Bay Area, called Los Gatos. Quaint, expensive, beautiful place. It was Big Truck Day at the library and a lot of government employees were showing their vehicles. Fire trucks, trash compactors, a huge bulldozer, and there was a police car and a handful of officers around. A little girl came and pointed at a rifle and asked the officer, “what is this for?” He said, “to protect myself”, paused and caught his breath and said “and to protect you”. This happened a couple years ago. I still think about his pause, the afterthought on why he needs the truck, the rifle and the gear.

defterGoose 6y ago
Wow, anecdotal but very telling. I tend to think that most cops are "good people", but that doesn't mean that the majority also doesn't go around envisioning their job primarily as a combat deployment to a war zone, and only secondarily as an exercise in protecting and strengthening their communities. The bellicose see war everywhere...
selimthegrim 6y ago
The (presumably white) little girl probably needs someone to explain to that the police have a duty to the public to protect order, not any given individual

paloaltokid 6y ago

> And they trot it out for peaceful protests. The police did not come equipped to protect, they came equipped to escalate and occupy. "What's the point of having all this cool shit if we never get to use it?!"

rsynnott 6y ago

> But my small city police department recently got a grant for 450 high powered assault rifles and armored vests, on top of the hundreds they already had. What always confuses me (I live in a country where the police don't generally get guns, even) is what they're preparing for with this sort of thing? A full-on war? Like, if they need hundreds of assault rifles for police work, then arguably society has already collapsed and the police are probably surplus to requirements anyway.

ggreer 6y ago
I think the term "assault rifle" is very misleading here. People are imagining fully automatic weapons like the ones the military uses. But outside of SWAT, such weaponry is very rare. (And in most countries, their equivalent of SWAT has fully automatic weapons.) The rifles used by everyday police are the same as those owned by tens of millions of civilians. These weapons are cosmetically similar to those used by the military, but they have the same functionality and fire the same cartridge as the Ruger Mini-14.[1] They are semi-automatic. Every "bang!" requires a pull of the trigger. The reasons police have these weapons are because pistols are less accurate, have shorter range, and are unable to penetrate body armor. These rifles are usually locked in the back of the vehicle and only brought out for standoff situations, or if the cop has retreated due to being outgunned. Such occasions are rare, but when they happen, those rifles are worth their weight in gold (as are the fire extinguishers and medical kits in practically all police cars). Moreover, police have always used the latest weaponry. A century ago, they were equipped with the Thompson submachine gun[2] and the Browning Automatic Rifle[3] (both of which are fully automatic weapons). I agree that police have gotten more militarized over time, and I would love to roll that back, but it's also true that many of those arguing in this thread are either misled or disingenuous. We're much more likely to convince others if we make sure our arguments and our facts are unimpeachable. 1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ruger_Mini-14.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ruger_Mini-14.jpg 2. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thompsonad1sm.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thompsonad1sm.jpg 3. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Firearms_practice,_1936.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Firearms_practice,_1...

ggreer 6y ago

> But my small city police department recently got a grant for 450 high powered assault rifles and armored vests, on top of the hundreds they already had. There are only 700 officers including things like traffic enforcement. I'm pretty sure you're talking about Buffalo, NY.[1] They purchased 115 semi-automatic rifles that use the same .40S&W ammunition as their pistols. That's the opposite of "high powered". And they're not fully automatic. They can in no way be construed as assault rifles. The 450 vests they bought are resistant to rifle rounds. Their old vests could only stop pistol rounds. I agree that many departments go overboard, but this doesn't seem like an instance of that. 1. https://buffalonews.com/2017/03/07/buffalo-police-to-get-new-rifles-and-vests/ https://buffalonews.com/2017/03/07/buffalo-police-to-get-new...