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Why the US military usually punishes misconduct but police often close ranks

• chrisbennet 6y ago
  We give the police some slack because its a dangerous job. They are often paid quite well because its dangerous. But how dangerous is it? 1 Logging workers 2 Fishers and related fishing workers 3 Aircraft pilots and flight engineers 4 Roofers 5 Refuse and recyclable material collectors 6 Driver/sales workers and truck drivers 7 Farmers, ranchers and other agricultural managers 8 Structural iron and steel workers 9 First-line supervisors of construction trades and extraction workers 10 First-line supervisors of landscaping, lawn service and groundskeeping workers 11 Electrical power-line installers and repairers 12 Grounds maintenance workers 13 Miscellaneous agricultural workers 14 Helpers, construction trades 15 First-line supervisors of mechanics, installers and repairers 16 Police and sheriff’s patrol officers Source: https://www.ajc.com/business/employment/these-are-the-most-dangerous-jobs-america/x2MOTeEYCgkt2zYCLfqfJJ/ https://www.ajc.com/business/employment/these-are-the-most-d... EDIT: Be nice to your fellow HNer's. Also, no one could pay me enough to be a policeman.
  • raxxorrax 6y ago
    I would have no problem with being a police officer in iceland, but certainly in the US. I get why they don't want to give up their guns, especially now, but that has consequences for policing work. If you can assume your "victim" to be unarmed, you approach the situation differently. So I do think it is a quite dangerous job there to be honest. Moreso than the ones you mentioned. Some time ago deep sea fishing was the deadliest job. Would still prefer it from a risk assessment perspective.
    • Semaphor 6y ago
      So it feels more dangerous to you. I’d assume it’s because the danger is so far out of your control?
    • woah 6y ago
      Are you saying that the stats posted above are wrong? Based just on your imagination? Or do you have some information about shortcomings in how they were collected?
      • raxxorrax 6y ago
        No, I didn't say that they are wrong. My imagination is unlimited of course. A shortcomming I see here is that the danger is reduced to fatalities as average over the whole profession. There certainly are areas in the US where policing is extremely safe, everyone knows you by name, sponsors you a donut from time to time and is happy to see you. I would do it without a problem and this is probably true for most officers. But allow me to specify, I wouldn't want to be a police officer in urban areas with focal points in crime.
    • user982 6y ago
      > I would have no problem with being a police officer in iceland, but certainly in the US. I get why they don't want to give up their guns, especially now, but that has consequences for policing work. If you can assume your "victim" to be unarmed, you approach the situation differently. Iceland has a fairly high guns-per-capita number, with about one gun for every third person. An odd choice to use as an example of a country safe due to an unarmed populace. > So I do think it is a quite dangerous job there to be honest. Moreso than the ones you mentioned. Some time ago deep sea fishing was the deadliest job. Would still prefer it from a risk assessment perspective. "I see your data, and I willfully ignore it."
      • jaxx75 6y ago
        > one gun for every third person. I would suspect it's a high rate of long guns, not hand guns.
        • de_watcher 6y ago
          not hand guns... you mean footguns?
          • blaser-waffle 6y ago
            "Longarms" or "long-arms" generally refers to rifles and shotguns, as opposed to handguns. It's an important distinction, as something on the order of 80-85% of gun violence in the US -- rape, murder, robbery, suicide, etc. -- are with handguns. Attempts to ban handguns have met stiff resistance, though, e.g. Heller v DC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
      • oh_sigh 6y ago
        Almost all deaths deep sea fishing are from mistakes. Many deaths from policing are people intentionally trying to kill you. Maybe that comes into play. With deep sea fishing , if you're careful enough, you can drastically lower the death rate - it's in your hands. Not so with policing.
    • dTal 6y ago
      Regarding this often-cited argument of "people can own guns, so cops need them" - in a situation with a gun, does it actually help if the cop also has a gun? Now you have a gunfight on your hands. By analogy, people are allowed to own rocket launchers as well (it's true!) but that doesn't mean every beat cop should carry one. What's the actual problem with disarming the police completely, and having them call in a SWAT team in the rare event that someone actually threatens a cop with a firearm?
      • gridlockd 6y ago
        Of course it helps to have a gun if your opponent has a gun, because both of you now have a risk of getting shot. If I know you don't have a gun because you're one of these unarmed cops, I can completely dominate the situation. I can make you stand on one leg and do a recital. > By analogy, people are allowed to own rocket launchers as well (it's true!) but that doesn't mean every beat cop should carry one. Rocket launchers are not anti-personnel weapons and no ordinary criminal carries them or would be expected to carry them. The best weapon to neutralize a threat wielding a rocket launcher is not another rocket launcher, it's a rifle. Should we arrive at the situation where criminals routinely arrive in armored personnel carriers or tanks, then we can talk about arming the police with rocket launchers.
        • sukilot 6y ago
          Right, so police need body armor, not handguns.
          • gridlockd 6y ago
            Body armor might save your life, but it doesn't make you invincible to bullets. If you take a bullet with body armor, you're going down. You're no threat whatsoever. You have no power in the situation, you can't get it under control, mitigate the threat, and so on.
      • michaelt 6y ago
        If you can easily get a $500 device that makes 95% of cops stop chasing you, wouldn't every rational violent criminal buy one? I suppose it could work if 95% of the police were engaged in something other than apprehending violent criminals...
    • Someone1234 6y ago
      30-40% of police officer deaths aren't gun-related, they're traffic accidents[0] with another 30% being "job related illness"[1]. And in some years traffic accidents is the leading cause of deaths. About 50~ police officers die via guns per year. The police kill about 1,000 citizens per year via guns though[2]. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/leo/default.html https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/leo/default.html [1] https://nleomf.org/facts-figures/causes-of-law-enforcement-deaths https://nleomf.org/facts-figures/causes-of-law-enforcement-d... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...
      • marcoperaza 6y ago
        It's worth noting that while every unjustified shooting is one too many, the vast vast majority of shootings by police are unambiguously justified. The US has a lot of violent criminals, many of who are bold enough to even try to kill police officers.
        • minikites 6y ago
          What evidence leads you to this conclusion?
          • marcoperaza 6y ago
            Both of these statements can be true: 1) the vast majority of shootings by police are justified, and 2) there are way too many cases of excessive use of force by police, including shootings. You can look at the reports. They don't usually leave local news, if they even make it there, because there is nothing remarkable about them. People have done aggregations of the data. I'm not saying it's going to convince you if you're already convinced otherwise. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2015/10/24/on-duty-under-fire/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2015/10/24/o... "But only a small number of the shootings — roughly 5 percent — occurred under the kind of circumstances that raise doubt and draw public outcry, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. The vast majority of individuals shot and killed by police officers were, like Snyder, armed with guns and killed after attacking police officers or civilians or making other direct threats."
    • oblio 6y ago
      What does Iceland have to do with anything? Those numbers are from the US.
    • scottoreily 6y ago
      Found the delusional power hungry fascist. What’s it like to lack complete empathy?
    • kube-system 6y ago
      I really haven't really heard anyone, even protestors, claim that police in the US should give up their guns. The recent high profile cases of deaths haven't been by gun, but with bare hands. Mostly, the discussion is around if/when deadly force should be used, no matter the implement.
      • vanattab 6y ago
        Ummm... I mean the protesters around here want the Police completely disbanded...
        • kube-system 6y ago
          That doesn't mean there won't be police. Other cities have disbanded their police departments. All have been replaced with a new police department. The idea is to replace a poorly run department when reform isn't good enough. The idea isn't to have a completely unpoliced city. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/disband-police-camden-new-jersey-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/disband-police-camden-new-...
          • ajayh 6y ago
            Camden City PD was disbanded to reduce the costs of salaries and benefits with new union contracts. The CNN article doesn't even contain the word 'union'.
            • kube-system 6y ago
              That's beside the point. My reason for linking the example was to illustrate that departments have been disbanded before and it's a more aggressive strategy for change than attempting to reform an existing department, not a call for lawlessness. "disband the police" fits on a sign, but it's an incomplete statement.
      • jberryman 6y ago
        I agree with that impression, and actually find it really puzzling that disarming police isn't a central message. I think it's very likely that if the police on George Floyd had been unarmed that eventually the bystanders would have intervened (at least I hope).
  • frank2 6y ago
    I would worry more about PTSD than about death or injury if I was a cop. Almost getting killed tends to cause PTSD, but the tendency is stronger if someone intentionally tried to kill you. And doing violence to another person is also potent cause of PTSD. For those 2 reasons, I would expect rates of PTSD to be higher among cops than among the other 15 occupations you list. I would also worry that the habit of suspicion needed to be effective as a cop would be bad for my marriage and other relationships. In other words, I would worry that the work might make me pathologically cynical. Finally, some people really enjoy having power over others and using that power to inflict pain. Even if the other disadvantages of police work did not exist, it might be wise for me to avoid it just to pessimize the probability of my needing to work with someone like that. It is a complicated issue, but certainly I find such people distasteful and suspect that most adults in my country (the US) share my distaste.
    • wwright 6y ago
      I would argue that this applies to the people being policed as well, if not more so. A black man has little recourse if he is assaulted by a police man, or if his wife or child is killed by them. Families are torn apart by drug laws and prison pipelines.
      • jtbayly 6y ago
        At the jail I go to, there is more concern expressed by the prisoners about the destruction caused by the drugs than the drug sentences.
        • Uberphallus 6y ago
          Because that's the narrative that gets your sentence reduced and what any lawyer would advise: from now on, publicly you'll condemn the drugs that got you here.
          • jtbayly 6y ago
            No. You have no clue. It's because they are mourning their lost years, their failing health, their dead friends, their dead parents, their dead cousins and brothers and sisters. Oh, and their dead wives, girlfriends, and children. And probably more often than anything else, their fear that they will just go straight back to doing it all again when they get out, just like the last time they got out.
  • _iyig 6y ago
    Would you say there's a difference in kind between the risk of death due to equipment failure or negligence, versus the risk of another human being actively trying to kill you? They seem different to me, but I'm not sure how to reason about the difference.
    • mseidl 6y ago
      The actual homicide rate of cops is almost half of the normal population.
      • _iyig 6y ago
        Interesting. Do you have a link? Those numbers are hard to Google, all the results I'm getting are for deaths caused by the police vs. of police themselves.
    • alistairSH 6y ago
      Death-by-person probably less controllable than death-by-equipment-failure. But, in reality, I'm not sure that it is. There are processes/procedures to reduce the likelihood of both.
      • _iyig 6y ago
        This is exactly what I'm struggling with. Intuitively, the idea of another person trying to injure me sounds scarier than a harness failing or tree falling. People can be a lot more unpredictable than gravity or metal fatigue. But then again, the safety of loggers and roofers depends not only on their own gear & diligence, but also on human co-workers who can be just as unpredictable. Versus violent criminals, at least the co-workers aren't actively and creatively malicious (usually).
  • mseidl 6y ago
    Most of the deaths are accidents. Actual homicide rate of police are 3.0 per 100k vs 5.6 per 100k of regular people.
    • oh_sigh 6y ago
      A more important question is what is the homicide rate of the demographics of people who go into policing. Probably lower than 3.0. It's easy to get a drastically lower personal chance of being murdered in the US through simple steps like not being part of a gang. Most Americans on HN aren't going to be murdered at 5.6/100000, or even 3.0
    • rabanne 6y ago
      Can't believe people are citing this data. Comparing homicide statistics of people armed with guns being killed vs armed or unarmed regular people and thinking cops are safer than armed or unarmed regular people? Come on. How about we account assults? In 2018, 10.8% of sworn officers faced assult. Of them, 30.6% sustained injuries. In 13.2% of the incident, the attacker was prosecuted.[1] But the rate of aggravated assult against regular people is 0.2%. Clearance rate is 52.5%. Prosecution rate is much lower.[2] I really don't care about your ideology or anything, but saying police is a safe job is just stupid. 10.8% of sworn officers faced assult while armed. Let's see how things changes when police is forced not to be armed. [1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2018 https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2018 [2] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018 https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018
      • learc83 6y ago
        10.8% faced “assault” is a very misleading statistic because “assault” as reported here is completely up to the discretion of the reporting officer. Only ~1/10 of these “assaults” are even prosecuted. If prosecutors aren’t even willing to charge someone with assaulting an officer, it probably wasn’t worth calling an “assault”.
        • rabanne 6y ago
          Even accounting for that rate, police faces 5x "prosecutable assults" more than a "reported assult" on a normal person. We don't know what "prosecutable assult" statistics on a normal person so we can't compare them directly, but the rate is approx. 67%[1]. Clearance rate is 52%, so it shows that while policing in US, you get approx. 15x more chance of facing "prosecutable assult". [1] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/scpdvc.txt https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/scpdvc.txt
  • 6510 6y ago
    The danger also scales with the number of aggressive assholes wearing the same uniform. It is like any job where your coworkers don't do their job. Eventually you will be held responsible for their results. When the boss asks you about it you might be reluctant to point out your coworkers since you still have to work with them.
  • PopeDotNinja 6y ago
    I used to sell life insurance. Dangerous careers would be more expensive. When I was an agent in 2004-2005 in the USA, being a police person was not considered dangerous enough to warrant a rate increase. As a professional wrestler, you'd be lucky to get life insurance at any price.
    • hef19898 6y ago
      Insurance rates are such an underrated source for risk assessment.
      • sigwinch28 6y ago
        Though not always reliable (see: credit default swap pricing in the lead up to the financial crash in 2007/8).
        • NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
          A credit default swap is not an insurance contract; you're in the world of 'buyer beware' not 'utmost good faith'. Even the monoline insurance wrappers around the various credit products were very atypically constructed insurance contracts.
          • kansface 6y ago
            Not the swap itself, but the assessments provided by the ratings agencies.
      • hypewatch 6y ago
        Are they? What’s the alternative that gets all the undeserved attention?
        • jasonjayr 6y ago
          Simple Death rates? Insurance rates are developed by financially-motivated actuaries that consider a whole bunch of variables in order to create market-efficient rates.
  • growlist 6y ago
    I knew a really nice guy that ended up working in forestry in the US, and tragically died after backing into a powerline whilst up a tree in a harness cutting branches. Working with trees is so dangerous.
  • chrisbennet 6y ago
    I would think logging would be less dangerous now. When a was growing up in Maine, loggers cut down trees with the chainsaw and pulled the trees into the wood yard with a tractor like skidder (skidah in Maine-speak). Now, they are more likely (I think) to use a machine that clips the tree off (like scissors) and takes the branches off.
  • aetherson 6y ago
    I agree that being a police officer isn't as dangerous as cops would have you believe, but aggregating statistics for the whole profession probably hides some spikes of larger danger. Lots of cops work essentially desk jobs. Lots of cops work in safe, quiet jurisdictions. They're pulling down the average, while cops who are responders to 911 calls in high violent crime areas pull it up.
    • cycomanic 6y ago
      There is a statistic somewhere (my googlefu can't find it at the moment), that shows that in less then 1% of the cases where police are called there is actually even the chance to intervene. In otherwords in 99% of the cases they come after the (possible) crime and are really just taking a statement. Still they walk into every situation with their hand on their gun. Often enough situations escalate because of that. I believe many situations would be much saver if the officers would not carry guns. Call the armed units for cases where it's warrented, like e.g. in New Zealand.
  • willcipriano 6y ago
    >They are often paid quite well because its dangerous 2019 median pay for a police officer/detective: $65,170[0] 2019 median pay for high school teachers (often cited as underpaid): $61,660[1] [0]https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/mobile/police-and-detectives.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/mobile/police-and... [1]https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/mobile/high-school-teachers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/mobil...
    • claudeganon 6y ago
      Being a high school teacher is a far worse job than being a cop. Cops don’t even have to pretend they care about helping people.
    • _jal 6y ago
      That omits overtime, which is a massive component of compensation in many departments. It also ignores after-hours gigs they can get because they're cops and pensions, which not so many get anymore. OT in Chicago: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/1/14/18343141/editorial-reining-in-chicago-s-six-figure-salary-club https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/1/14/18343141/editorial-re... : "In 2017, a sergeant who apparently never sleeps made $279,612, which included $158,917 in overtime pay. A detective made $285,070, including $144,926 in OT. In all, according to a Sun-Times report on Sunday, rank-and-file police officers in 2017 pulled in about 60 percent of the city’s overall overtime pay." Please point me to all the six-figure teaching opportunities.
      • leetcrew 6y ago
        there are several counties in maryland where a teacher with an advanced degree and/or many years on the job can make around $100k. http://www.marylandpublicschools.org/about/Documents/DCAA/SSP/20182019Staff/20182019fSalarySchedules.pdf http://www.marylandpublicschools.org/about/Documents/DCAA/SS...
        • philg_jr 6y ago
          Same with eastern PA, Bucks County comes to mind. A friend of mine teaches middle school, has her masters degree, and makes north of 100k. The property taxes in Chester Country, Delaware County, and Bucks County definitely reflect the salaries. The schools in those areas are generally pretty good, I've heard.
  • prepend 6y ago
    It reminds me of Taleb’s Extremeistan vs Mediocristan. I think it was in Fooled by Randomness. For police the danger comes in spikes with mostly non-dangerous work. For a lumberjack the danger is evenly distributed. So I think for police, it’s the constant low probability of great danger.
  • panzagl 6y ago
    There's a continual mental impact of always dealing with the nasty side of humanity that I think often gets overlooked- everyone is always lying to you or hiding something, and you get to see a large number of dead kids and wasted lives.
    • greedo 6y ago
      And a lot of the corrosiveness that cops have to suffer is from other cops. Racism, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia etc. If you're smart, you're excluded by IQ tests since departments prefer to avoid you. This ends up altering your worldview as an "Us versus Them" where there are cops and there are criminals. Everyone else is a potential criminal. Everyone is given side eye. The system is rigged, so why not put in for extra overtime. Bump up your salary the last three years so that your pension goes from a $90k/year basis to $175K. And if you think cops are out to protect you? What a joke. Cops are out to protect themselves first. They've been glamorized since the 1980s as "foot soldiers in the war on crime." Their unions have fought to protect the "few" bad apples, when the bunch is rotten. They go through the motions of "protecting" us, but that's just paperwork. Showing up and taking some notes. If you've ever had anything stolen, you'll know what I mean. The cop will write down some information, maybe give you his biz card, then that's the last you'll hear of it. They never do any leg work/investigation, unless it's something mandated by their bosses. Defund needs to happen soon. Spend the money on drug rehab, mental health, etc. We need less than half the cops we have, and no damn PD needs an MRAP.
      • panzagl 6y ago
        I mostly don't agree with this as I know too many cops. The racism is tricky- if the only X people you saw were criminals, without any balance on the positive side it can very easily get into some sort of loop. And lots of places are like that in the US, for a variety of reasons- the cops see the bad side of X, without a balance of neighbors and other helpful examples to counterbalance. They're part of the problem, but they're also caused by the problem.
    • kilroy123 6y ago
      This is exactly right. Growing up, my dad was a police officer. The mental part of being a cop dramatically affects officers and their families. Eventually, my dad got very injured on the job and had to quit. The mental part is what injured him the most.
  • vlovich123 6y ago
    Something about this list is fishy. Where are the soldiers? Also I'm thinking this is just a simplistic comparison with a base death rate on the job (ignoring age & co-morbidity factors). Police often retire after 20 years so you're looking at the majority of the police force being under ~40-50. That's a significant point of comparison because other jobs you kind of just work until your body fails you (either through extra clumsiness, too much labor for the heart, etc). So the manner of fatal death & age are super important factors here that are ignored. I don't think it's helpful to say police don't actually have a dangerous job. It is perhaps helpful to consider other HNer comments like "You couldn't pay me enough to be a cop". That might explain the pay difference. More importantly, the entire framing is the problem. As soon as you're looking for reasons to cut officers slack, you're on the wrong side. Being a police officer should have at least the same seriousness, responsibility, training, & consequences (if not more) as being a lawyer, judge, doctor, etc. Probably more since they have greater training and capability to end a life and put themselves in such situations more frequently (& often instigate/escalate such situations whether through their own actions or their association with police).
    • chrisseaton 6y ago
      > Where are the soldiers? I think the rate of death and injury where they weren't back to work in a couple of days for US troops in Iraq was a bit less than 2 in 100. * Note that most soldiers work in supply, administration, artillery, cooking, running the mail system, and things like that, and aren't exposed to any combat at all at any point in the careers. I can imagine refuse collector being more dangerous than that. * Death and Injury Rates of U.S. Military Personnel in Iraq , Goldberg, 2010
    • anoonmoose 6y ago
      I would not expect soldiers to be included as the potential and expectation for death is much higher and generally totally different. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread if you're in the military you can legally be ordered to do something that will 100% result in your death with no ability to refuse, which is not true of any of the professions on that list.
    • hwillis 6y ago
  • nabilhat 6y ago
    The original source is the Bureau of Labor Statistics [0], which is a bottomless rabbit hole of detail. Data quality side note... Others have pointed out before that a primary work related risk for nearly all of these professions is transportation. That's why the only landscapers we see on this list are the supervisors: supervisors are on the clock while they're behind the wheel, the workers aren't. Reading this data in a meaningful way requires consideration of transportation related risks. [0] https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshcfoi1.htm https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshcfoi1.htm
    • xapata 6y ago
      Leading cause of death for peace corps volunteers is (was?) motorcycle accidents.
  • macspoofing 6y ago
    >They are often paid quite well Big cities, yes. Small towns and rural areas, not so much. National average is around $60k/year - but the variance is high (from $30k to $120k - depending on the area). >But how dangerous is it? The numbers don't tell the entire story. There's a difference between danger coming from negligence vs from a chance of murder by another human. Soldiers coming back from Iraq suffered high numbers of PTSD, even though the mortality rate would probably be similar to one of the dangerous jobs you listed. Not only that Police have to deal with the darkest sides of society, including scenes of murder, rape and violence even against the most innocent of our society - like children. 'Police' is a type of job that is closer to the military example I gave, than to a logger or fisherman.
  • brightball 6y ago
    I believe that ranking shows based on statistics but the real X-factor in Police vs everything that ranks above them is "other people" or your sense of control of the situation. Think about why many people are fine with driving but fear flying, despite flying being significantly statistically safer. The difference is that when you're driving, you feel in control. The same is true of all the professions listed as more dangerous than police here. If you're following your training and the safety protocols that go with it, safety isn't a huge concern with any of them. For police, they respond to 911 calls and serve arrest warrants. A huge part of their job is getting called to potentially dangerous scenes with people who may or may not be armed, may be violent, may fire at them, may ambush them, etc. This is a recent national story from my hometown that illustrates it. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/us/south-carolina-police-shooting.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/us/south-carolina-police-... I can't imagine being more fearful about logging than worrying that something like this would be on the other end of one of the dozens of 911 calls I'm asked to respond to each day.
  • im3w1l 6y ago
    I can't help but think of this xkcd https://xkcd.com/795 https://xkcd.com/795 The title is conditional risk. The characters reason that since very few people die of thunderstorms, they don't need to take any precautions. The point is of course, that the reason that so few people die of lightning is that people are sensible and avoid danger. And that if you are reckless then you will be at much higher risk than the average person. I'm not saying that this is necessarily the case here. But it's a hypothesis that I think needs refutation.
  • AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > 16 Police and sheriff’s patrol officers Also of note, the primary reason police are even this high is for the same reason as truck drivers -- traffic accidents.
  • steve76 6y ago
    Breachers on a SWAT teams take their job into consideration when clipping their fingernails. Thousands of hours of intense training. Complete devotion or death. How many on your list take their job that seriously? Also go across the southern border, where a police officer is murdered everyday. You contribute to that through drugs and human trafficking. If we do what you say, that gets worse, and that comes here. "What explains these two armed forces’ divergent attitudes toward bad behavior?" In war, the first lesson you learn is you are going to die here. It's quite a sobering attitude, like living in a hospice. Why beat someone up when you can just burn down their aircraft carrier with napalm, likely dying horribly or crippling or maiming yourself for life doing it. Police, the only rule is just come home. Contain the violence, protect the public, don't escalate as you live there. People deserve the policing we get. No riots, no SWAT teams, not even locks on doors if people can lay off the elephant tranquilizer.
• mafm 6y ago
  Acoording to ethics class during basic training in the Australian army, the key difference between soldiers and civilians is that military personnel are under a legal obligation to follow all lawful orders. The class highlighted that police are (by definition) civilian because police are only obligated to obey reasonable orders. So a soldier refusing to carry out a lawful order that would result in near-certain death is guilty of a crime. A cop refusing to carry out the same order is entirely within their rights. And then there was also a lot of discussion of the difference between lawful and unlawful orders, My Lai, Nazi Germany, etc. Some Australian police recently refused to deal with people who had covid-19, because they argued it was unreasonably dangerous. At least in theory, military personnel are held to a much higher ethical standard than civilian police.
  • k__ 6y ago
    A lawful order doesn't have to be reasonable? Why?
    • oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
      Because lawful means based on law, and laws aren't always reasonable or even ethical.
    • mafm 6y ago
      Because being ordered to do something that might get you killed isn't reasonable.
    • zip1234 6y ago
      A military unit may have to go do something with high casualties in order to achieve a higher objective.
      • ludamad 6y ago
        I wonder at what point you typically realize you've been put on a high-chance-of-casualty mission
• shrubble 6y ago
  Was it the low-level soldiers or the higher-ups who created the plans for torture at Abu Ghraib who were publicly shamed, humiliated and then jailed?
  • hef19898 6y ago
    The higher ups created it, the average soldier was sacrificed for it. Doesn't change the fact, that the military has apparently better internal controls, better training and better rules of engagements. Even for some sorts of police work. The US military. Quite telling if you ask me.
    • idoubtit 6y ago
      > the military has apparently better internal controls Source? The video "Collateral Murder" which made Wikileaks famous is one of the many proofs of that the US military doesn't apply much control on their engagements. The army had a video of the helicopter crew that shot unarmed civilians, including reporters and children. The crew obviously had fun killing them. They used offensive words and gamer slang. And the army lied to the press in order to protect the murderers. You may also read the many NGO reports about misconducts, torture, and civilian killings in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan… The internal controls almost never do anything unless a high level of media pressure applies. The US army may have internal controls when the victims are Americans (bullying, etc), but apart from this... some lives are more equals than others.
      • hef19898 6y ago
        There were comments on another thread from soldiers being deployed to Bagdad during the surge. Citing rules of engagement, and these were a lot more stringent and de-escalating than police actions against protests in the US. Also true that US forces are the least restraint forces at the moment. Because all you said is true. And yet, it seems to work at least as good for the armed forces as it does for police. Only that the former is an occupation force on foreign soil, while the latter is nominally there to serve and protect the public.
      • deleted 6y ago
• yostrovs 6y ago
  Strangely, the word "union" doesn't appear in the article. Considering that it is the police unions that create the system within which police officers are protected, I believe their power and tactics need to be examined.
  • JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > police unions that create the system within which police officers are protected Police unions exacerbate the problem. But they aren't the root cause. Their leadership is supported by the rank and file. And police unions act much more antagonistically in comparison with other public unions.
  • Spooky23 6y ago
    That’s because it’s focused on root cause. Unions are boogeymen for these issues. They advocate for members by design so that is easy to do. The problems affecting police in states that prohibit collective bargaining for public employees or where private police are the same.
    • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      >They advocate for members by design so that is easy to do And in their blind advocacy for members they are advocating for things that are at odds with what is good for the people their members are supposed to serve therefore they are a problem that needs to be solved and cannot be left out of this.
      • Spooky23 6y ago
        So what? Change the law. Civil service employees don't make policy, nor do their unions. A union can demand 25% raises and get 2.
  • Zigurd 6y ago
    Police unions are a good indicator of how deep the problem runs. Police union bosses are elected. Google "police union boss" if you want to see a spittle flecked shouting goon defending the worst police behavior. This is the guy who won the most votes. This is how we know it is not "a few bad apples." Nevertheless, the union is a symptom of a very deep problem that will not be solved by half measures. If you build a true public safety service to replace the police, you can expect their union to look normal, not like a big city police union.
• Melting_Harps 6y ago
  I take issue with this statement/argument based on the fact that there have been several people in jail for releasing material to wikileaks that revealed the grotesque amount of Human Rights violations, not least of which the video showing how some soldiers will kill in cold blood: Collateral Murder. This ended up seeing Manning get thrown in jail, be tortured for years in isolation, as well as having attempted suicide several times while in jail (again! after getting a communicated sentence by Obama)_the last time for refusing to testify against others involved. And Assange has also had to suffer a confined existence, been dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy and placed in jail and still awaits trial while his health and mental health have deteriorated, I'd say his near 8 year amount of torture as a direct result of the Military trying to cover up misconduct showed the World just how perverse both systems really are. I'm not even going to get into things like the use of Contractors like Black Water/Xe, or black-sites/rendition camps, and spies. All I will say is read Jeremy Scahill's work, this pro-Military narrative seems entirely jingoistic and akin to 9/11 ahead of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, I have vets in both wars in my family and have seen the consequences first hand, to me and alarming as the tensions between the CCP and the US are accelerating. Just so its clear, I despise the CCP but War is not a solution or an option we should accept.
  • varjag 6y ago
    There 's really few tyrants left Assange has not been willing to support, screw him.
    • FpUser 6y ago
      Would you apply the same logic (screw them) in regards to world powers? None of them ever hesitated to support tyrants when it did suit their goals.
      • varjag 6y ago
        …yes? Is that a trick question? Supporting tyrants against their people on some feeble 18th century concept of 'sovereignty' is why we have the crisis of the last decade in the first place. Freedom for everyone or screw it all.
• churchillracist 6y ago
  "usually" punishes misconduct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_LaVena_Johnson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_LaVena_Johnson LaVena Lynn Johnson (July 27, 1985 – July 19, 2005) was an E3 in the United States Army. She was found dead in her tent. Her death was controversially ruled as a suicide, contrary to evidence of rape and battery leading many[1] to believe the United States Department of Defense covered it up.
• stefantalpalaru 6y ago
  > usually https://www.gq.com/story/male-rape-in-the-military https://www.gq.com/story/male-rape-in-the-military
• eiji 6y ago
  The military is a national organization with a hierarchy stretching from the first-day-on-the-job cadet all the way into the White House. In the US, almost every police department is it's own thing. I'm not aware of any national organization. Usually the mayor is the top of the hierarchy. That means a faceless bureaucracy, towns and states removed, will deal with individual concerns in the military. Not a known person three miles from your house.
  • save_ferris 6y ago
    Not just that, but much of the hierarchy above police forces is opaque if it exists at all. The Austin PD chief has come under intense scrutiny for his department's handling of various arrests and protests over the past few months, and after roughly half of the city council called on him to resign, it was reported that neither the city council or the mayor could legally fire him.[0] The city manager, which is appointed and not elected, has the power to demote the police chief, but the state does not permit a police chief to be terminated. Long story short, none of Austin's leaders have the power to fire the police chief. 0: https://www.texastribune.org/2020/06/18/austin-police-chief-brian-manley-keeping-job-despite-resignation-calls/ https://www.texastribune.org/2020/06/18/austin-police-chief-... edit: added reporting
    • erichocean 6y ago
      County sheriffs are similarly "protected", in that they have to be voted out in most cases in the next election.
      • sukilot 6y ago
        That's fine. They are accountable to the electorate who can recall them.
        • closeparen 6y ago
          It’s less fine when the electorate consistently delivers a mandate to brutalize a minority population, or just isn’t paying enough attention to such down-ticket races to care.
• VLM 6y ago
  It doesn't seem to actually explain anything. I was in the military and have some cop friends so maybe I can explain the divergent sociology: Post police academy, AFAIK police never experience collective punishment. In the army its normal if someone loses a weapon to have everyone doing a few pushups. When you saw your squadmate without a rifle, why didn't you ask them wtf they're doing? From large to small scale cops experience punishment alone and military suffers as a group. Small crime breeds large crime and (pardon the pun) military simply self-polices more than cops as a leadership style. I can't blame cops too much as they have to deal with demographics where saving face is important and one cop dropping another cop for pushups because they lost their summons-writing pen is impractical. Which brings up sociological difference where the enemy for cops is 40% to 100% of their daily interactions and is up close and personal, so screw these guys I'm breaking bad, whereas 100% of human interactions in the military is with buddies and the bad guys don't speak our language and the firefights are at 25 or more yards in a very abstract sense. Essentially cops spend most of their time with people who hate them so "getting even" makes more sense, whereas military spends nearly 100% of their time with friends and why would you want to screw over your buddy? The military bakes corporate style reorganization into the cake, you can expect a PCS move around the world every two or so years, its very unusual to have TV or Movie style old timers who've been in the unit forever. Even in the Reserves if you are in long enough to get E-5 or E-6 you're almost certainly going to have to move to get that next promotion and higher level leadership always rotates even in the reserves. Noobs don't even know HOW to be corrupt for the first quarter of their time on station. Its a valuable learning experience and filters out people who can't learn quickly on the job, which for military is good. Cops on the other hand will have some old sgt who's been sitting on the same desk for 25 years and the good ole boys network of questionable activities formed decades ago and ... The military is highly paid; civilians don't understand that when I got out (a quarter century ago) the current pay rate for me would be just under $3K/month, but that's not before tax like civilians, that's after getting housing, food, insurance, essentially all I have to pay for $3K/mo would be bar bill and car expenses. Cops on the other hand get paid approximately as much as public school teachers aka F-all not much in a pyramid scheme where people scream about the top of the pyramid making $100K but realize the top of the pyramid is incredibly small (like pro sports salaries) and the base of the pyramid is an immense number of people making $50K/yr or often far less. Speaking of pyramids, in the military every 5-yr experience E-4 makes the same $3K/mo after all expenses are paid, whereas with both cops and teachers its a pyramid where everyone has to compete to get up to that $100K/yr contract, there's a different attitude when you're competing vs when you all get the same paycheck. Edited to add another important sociological point: Cops usually work alone or in a very small group like two people. Two people can keep a secret, even three. The smallest "working group" I can think of in the military would be special forces teams with at least 4 people, but the rank and file work in groups who can't keep secrets. You can't expect to catch a cop who works alone or with a buddy, so things get worse and worse until they make the news in a big way; whereas the first time someone screws up in the military they generally get caught and kicked out so things rarely get worse over time. Note that outsiders think the military to cop pipeline is smooth. It CERTAINLY is NOT, and my buddies complain a lot about the sociological differences mentioned above along with others. Outsiders think they just wear a different uniform, but its really a wild cultural shift to go from military to being a cop. Maybe its the smallest shift to go from MP to civie police compared to other vocations, but its still a big shift in an absolute sense.
• squarefoot 6y ago
  When I was in the military I was taught about esprit de corps, loyalty, camaraderie etc. but they stressed that any order that goes against humanity must not be followed. Fortunately I never had to test that on my own ass, however I'm sure that the Police protecting their bad apples has nothing to do with that. Loyalty and esprit de corps must never ever go beyond the law, otherwise they become essentially like the mafia's code of silence, that is, a crime that covers other crimes. If I see a cop doing that, I cease to consider him as a cop as he just became a criminal wrapped in uniform.
  • glenstein 6y ago
    I have frequently seen police compared unfavorably to the military in recent weeks. I have never served, but everything I've seen about how the military handles use of force and how it handles incidents of violent misconduct suggest a standard that police units, at their worst, do not adhere to.
• seemslegit 6y ago
  The military is made up from officers and enlisted personnel with the former selected and cultivated for higher personal characteristics. The police otoh while referring to themselves as officers is almost entirely enlisted-class material.
  • VLM 6y ago
    Not since the 60s. On paper its possible in theory during an era of low application numbers to become an officer in an obscure location with various waivers if you're lucky, but in practice the requirements to actually get hired as a P.O. are the same as military OCS. You pretty much need a clean and successful record with a bachelors degree for both paths. Degree inflation is a real thing, similar to how receptionists in 2020 need a degree in "something" whereas in the old days high school was enough. Boomer generation cops could get hired with a mere high school diploma but that was 50 years ago.
    • seemslegit 6y ago
      Enlisted-class does not mean uneducated or unskilled (in fact the skill is usually concentrated in senior enlisted and warrant officer levels) - it means educated for certain norms of conduct. What is the police equivalent of West Point where an honor code violation would see one expelled ?
    • NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
      >On paper its possible in theory during an era of low application numbers to become an officer in an obscure location with various waivers if you're lucky, but in practice the requirements to actually get hired as a P.O. are the same as military OCS. Today, the published requirement to apply to the NYPD is 60 college credits (i.e. a two-year associate's degree). The LAPD only requires high-school graduation. On the other hand, Army OCS requires a four-year bachelor's degree.
  • GoodJokes 6y ago
    but police are also cultivated for uh, "higher personal characteristics," like the ability to follow unethical orders and kill brown people. So yea, just like the military.
• elchin 6y ago
  Military, especially Navy SEALs, are a lot more trained than police are, so their standards of behavior are higher. In US it takes 2-6 months to become a cop. In Germany, for comparison, it's around 2-3 years.
  • GVIrish 6y ago
    Not only that, but to join the military is to join a way of life. In the military your conduct is still governed by military regulations after you go home for the day. You can't just quit the military if you want a new job. You can be punished in your career for wrongdoing by one of your dependents. Your career can suffer for doing things in your off time that aren't illegal (adultery for example). Not to say the military is perfect by any stretch. You still have your portion of GI's committing crimes and scandals at various levels of organization. And you still have problems someone of a higher rank can get away with stuff because of their power over subordinates. But by and large the military has much stronger mechanisms to maintain and enforce accountability than the average police department.
• mchusma 6y ago
  I've come to believe public sector unions in their current form just shouldn't exist, as they exacerbate these kinds of problems. It is the Union's job to protect members, and the only group who is by design trying to make this happen. I can't see the benefit to having an organization whose role it is to fight the public (citizens) in order to improve the lives of a group granted a monopoly over a function (e.g. use of force/policing). With private company unions, there is at least market pressures that solve some issues. (I am not against all forms of representatation for workers, and think unions should exist but be more like "hollywood agents", and sell their services to individuals. The power to strike always still exists if you can convince the individuals it is a good idea.)
• dx87 6y ago
  I think another reason could be the wide latitude you have in the military to punish someone without any official paperwork. If someone did something wrong, you could punish them with physical exercise, cleaning duties, taking away weekend liberty, etc., all without any paperwork. When you don't have to worry that you're going to ruin someone's career every time you punish them, it's a lot easier to keep them in line.
  • 082349872349872 6y ago
    I was thinking the opposite: the US military has "up or out", where one has to advance to stay in, tending to weed out bad apples in the officer corps. As far as I am aware, police have nothing similar (and furthermore, don't rotate). So my assessment is that it's much easier to get along to go along in US police forces than in their military.
    • LanceH 6y ago
      The big problem with up or out is that officers eventually become politicians (literally connected to politicians) with the pseudo-immunitiy that politicians seem to enjoy. Prosecutors just choose not to prosecute, or they just retire in lieu of what should be jail time.
• fmajid 6y ago
  The US Armed Forces' record on prosecuting sexual assault is abysmal. You have travesties like this: https://www.stripes.com/news/emails-show-general-warned-against-reversing-wilkerson-verdict-1.238114 https://www.stripes.com/news/emails-show-general-warned-agai...
  • austincheney 6y ago
    Prosecution of sexual assaults in general is abysmal.
• crazygringo 6y ago
  Having become very interested in police brutality for obvious reasons, I recently finished Danger, Duty, and Disillusion: the Worldview of Los Angeles Police Officers [1] by Joan Barker, an academic book from 1999 that takes an anthropologist's view to understanding the LAPD after the Rodney King riots, and pretty much the only work I could find that tries to understand the police officer mindset holistically. It is utterly fascinating and I highly recommend it, but one of the most interesting takeaways (consistent with this article) is that police officers quickly become utterly disillusioned with the integrity of the police department as an institution. They complain about unfair recruitment and promotion policies, injured officers who become "disposable", an emphasis on quotas instead of applying the law consistently, on politicization of policing priorities, and above all the city always settling cases against police misconduct so that accused officers never get a chance to clear their name in court, when innocent. With this mindset, when they don't trust their own institution, the only people they trust are fellow officers -- not captains, not management, not the department, not the mayor. Which aligns with this article -- that Marines view the Marines as a trustworthy institution, while police don't see their own police department in the same light. Now obviously police misconduct and brutality exist and are a huge problem. But the book very much opened my eyes to the idea that it's not only the behavior of police officers that needs better standards and accountability -- that treating police officers themselves better and more fairly may also be just as necessary to achieve full transparency and accountability. What if the "blue wall of silence" dissolved because police officers trusted their own institution, rather than just each other? [1] https://www.amazon.com/Danger-Duty-Disillusion-Worldview-Officers/dp/1577660412 https://www.amazon.com/Danger-Duty-Disillusion-Worldview-Off...
  • sukilot 6y ago
    The weirdest thing is that police complain so loudly about public mistrust of police, when police don't even trust police.
  • GVIrish 6y ago
    That's an interesting and I think valuable angle to all of this. Trust in institutions is absolutely key to the proper functioning of government, but it is also key to maintaining ethical behavior in any institution. If you can't trust your institution to do the right thing, it means you're less likely to speak up when there's wrong doing, and it emboldens those who commit wrongdoing. Over time one can see how this system calcifies into a culture of unaccountable behavior. This is why the solution to police misconduct problems is going to require systemic change. There needs to be independent investigations and oversight of misconduct, and better systems to support whistleblowers. Those that are terminated for misconduct should not be reinstated and shouldn't be able to become officers elsewhere. In the military, you can't re-enlist if you've been dishonorably discharged, why should officers who abused their power be allowed to regain that power?
• 7532yahoogmail 6y ago
  Great read and better distinction
• redm 6y ago
  I think they are more similar than not. The military does have mechanisms to investigate and punish misconduct, but so do the police, internal affairs departments. I believe the difference is internal vs. external initiation of claims. I don't see the military being very open to criticism from non-military personnel, in other words, they close ranks too. I think its more to do with tribalism.
• coronadisaster 6y ago
  Did anything happen to the soldiers (and their officer) shown killing civilians in Wikileaks' Collateral Murder video [0]? What about whoever ordered that drone strike on a wedding [1]? 0. https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/ https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/ 1. https://www.newsweek.com/wedding-became-funeral-us-still-silent-one-year-deadly-yemen-drone-strike-291403 https://www.newsweek.com/wedding-became-funeral-us-still-sil...
  • NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
    On [0]: as far as I know, the U.S. armed forces instigated an internal review immediately after the events in the video. The review determined that the use of force was consistent with the prevailing rules of engagement, and so there wasn't any disciplinary action.
    • coronadisaster 6y ago
      Does that sound right to you?
      • NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
        I really don't know. I think it's a bit more nuanced than some of the commentary around it suggests, particularly stuff that was based on the original Wikileaks selective cut.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• otikik 6y ago
  The article links one study baking the "blue wall of silence" claim, but provides only personal anecdotes backing the "US military usually punishes misconduct" claim. In fact, the last part of the article seems to imply the opposite (due to the influence of the current administration). I think a more appropriate title would have been "When facing misconduct, Police often close ranks. How does the US military handle it?"
• john-shaffer 6y ago
  > “A soldier is reasoning agent,” a military court explained in the 1991 case U.S. v. Kinder, in which a soldier who killed a civilian was convicted of murder on the grounds that his superior’s order to do so was obviously illegal and should have been reported. This reference appears to be completely wrong. The case it links to is an appeal of drug dealing convictions. The phrase "A soldier is a reasoning agent" appears in the 1973 case U.S. v. Calley [1] appealing Calley's conviction for murder at My Lai. [1] https://casebook.icrc.org/case-study/united-states-united-states-v-william-l-calley-jr https://casebook.icrc.org/case-study/united-states-united-st...
• GuB-42 6y ago
  Does it mean the US should get a military police? Such an organization is called "gendarmerie" and it is seen in many countries like France, Italy, Spain, Argentina,... usually alongside the civilian police force.
  • pas 6y ago
    This seems like a simple case of local prosecutors and juries not doing their work. The officers were acquitted in the Rodney King trial too. (And that's why currently people are bending backwards trying to argue against Quantified Immunity - in civil suits! These cases should never even reach that level. These should be criminal cases, and the police/city/county/state/country should automatically compensate the wrongly harmed.) The federal level should step in and charge/indict officers. There might be obvious constitutional issues though. So the next best thing could be an oversight system that is actively against bias (racial, ethnic, and occupational in case of somehow the local system consistently siding with local police). Of course it's unlikely that such a law could survive for long and still be effective, so this probably some other solution is needed - maybe/probably something like tying federal funds to implementing better state-level oversight, etc.
  • muricula 6y ago
    Organizations like the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Guard, and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms collectively fill a similar role to the gendarmeries in other countries. I'm not sure we need another armed federal agency to enforce the law.
• tehjoker 6y ago
  This article is basically undone by the existence of this headline: "Trump authorizes sanctions against International Criminal Court officials" https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/11/politics/icc-executive-order/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/11/politics/icc-executive-order/... "The latest move comes months after the ICC authorized a probe into alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan by US and Afghan forces as well as alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Taliban. It also follows a push by the court's Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to investigate potential crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinians -- a prospect about which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said they were "gravely concerned."" ... "The ICC prosecutor Bensouda sought authorization in November 2017 to open an investigation into crimes connected to the conflict in Afghanistan. According to documents from the time, Bensouda's office determined that there was "a reasonable basis to believe" that members of the Afghan National Security Forces, the US armed forces and the CIA had committed "war crimes," including torture and rape. "
• alecco 6y ago
  Not a single mention of police unions.
• jeffdavis 6y ago
  Does the quantity and quality of training play a role? I don't just mean telling recruits to behave well over and over, although maybe that helps, too. I suspect that training in general makes people behave a little better. If you are proud of your abilities, in your element, and confident that you are in control, I would like to think that results in a better outcome.
  • digsy 6y ago
    My experience of the non-US military is that soldiers have a lot more accountability. You are told the rules, standards are high and you are held accountable by your peers and superiors. Infractions are punished and squads are self-policing as you can be punished if one of your squad is caught breaking the rules. IE people are always looking over your shoulder and you are looking over theirs. And the US military seems very similar. Yes mistakes are made and crimes are committed but overall standards are high. Most cops I see in the US operate on their own (so no squad policing) and standards dont seem to be very high compared to non-US cops I know.
• guscost 6y ago
  Another difference: The US Army doesn’t have a fucking union. These are public-sector employees who are authorized to use deadly force, and they have union representation. How is even a single person OK with that?
• awal2 6y ago
  You know an organization is corrupt AF when someone can use it to make the US military look like a bastion of accountability.
• frogpelt 6y ago
  How many government organizations (especially unionized ones) get rid of or otherwise deal with bad performers? Instead of pointing out the military as the rule and police officers as the exception, maybe we should consider that the military is the exception. Teachers, federal employees, and government employees at all levels of local government are known for being able to keep their jobs long after they should have been fired or disciplined. The egregiousness of bad policing is that many times they are breaking laws. But honestly, there are gray areas. The police are allowed to hit some people. They have to shoot some people. So it's not a huge leap to assume that some of them will overstep their bounds. And when they do, the union will back them, and their colleagues will back them. And we'll hear how underpaid they are (just like teachers). And they keep their jobs, just like bad teachers.
• hosh 6y ago
  Interesting. Following that line of reasoning, I wonder how that played out with Chelsea Manning's court martial.
• fchu 6y ago
  Given how police as an institution is failing, I wonder if there is a way to "reboot the system" (#RebootThePolice?) in a way that prevent bad culture to reproduce within. Like building a new corps of police ("NeoPolice") alongside existing police with same responsibilities, but with a more stringent process on recruiting, training, internal culture, values, etc. And have it slowly supplement the old, dysfunctional police. Some rationale: - When something is really broken, non amount of repair can fix it, you need a new thing. Shifting some policing responsibilities to other institutions (eg Defund the Police) might reduce the negative impact of a failing institution, but doesn't fix it. - We need a transition plan if we defund/abolish the police, and so far there is none to replace the police core responsibilities (around the use of force) - New competition drives innovation, and having a new police force can shine the line on how much better our experience of the product can be, driving further change. It'll require strong, sustained leadership to build those institutions from scratch which will be difficult, given how police is mostly a local institution and the resulting outcome can vary greatly. (For the curious, check how Brazil transitioned to a new currency to stop inertial inflation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidade_real_de_valor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidade_real_de_valor Similar mindset, albeit for a completely different domain)
  • pdonis 6y ago
    > Given how police as an institution is failing I don't think we can consider "police" as a single institution, or in isolation. The character of the police in a particular locality depends on the local government of that locality. If the police are corrupt, it is because the local government is corrupt. That is going to vary widely from locality to locality, and fixing it cannot be a matter of simply changing the police alone; it has to be a matter of changing the local government.
• nicwolff 6y ago
  It's the culture – but that starts with the leadership. These videos are messages to the entire fleet from the head of all US Naval operations, three weeks ago and then yesterday. The first is a call to humbly listen, and the follow-up presents the voices of sailors, to be heard: https://www.dvidshub.net/video/754884/cno-message-sailors-june-3-2020 https://www.dvidshub.net/video/754884/cno-message-sailors-ju... https://www.dvidshub.net/video/757420/starts-with-us https://www.dvidshub.net/video/757420/starts-with-us Have you seen anything like that from police officials?
• rafiki6 6y ago
  Great article and I think it talks about a lot of fundamental reasons, but not the primary "why". The way most police organizations are setup is already contentious with the population, where as the way that the military is setup is contentious with other countries and their militaries rather than the immediate population. That already means police are provided perverse incentives. How do you measure the success of a police department? It's a common issue in all security circles. Considering that most if not all police departments are usually receiving funding at a regional or local level, where the government can't just print money to keep their existence going, you now have an organization that needs to justify it's existence by making arrests, giving out tickets and essentially maintaining the reason for their existence. The military really doesn't have that problem. The strength of the military is usually directly tied to the existence of the established order. It is military's that over throw governments and bring in new ones. The military also has little to no interactions with the population. They are almost entirely focused on foreign populations and enemies. When abu ghraib happened, the military acted swiftly. It was a major PR nightmare for the US. The government needed the population's support for the war. So they cleaned up. And that is really what the major differences are. TLDR; Military -> little interaction with populace, existence tied to government, needs populations support to do War which is major measure of success Police -> funded without unlimited money, needs to justify their existence, direct interaction with populace, naturally in contention with population
• m3kw9 6y ago
  One is the interfacing the public. When you are interfacing with the public, you have an incentive to look your best. The easiest way is to not admitting fault, and the police have plenty of power to do that unfortunately. Military to the public is as a whole, so internally they don’t have these powerful forces acting on them.
• mattlondon 6y ago
  Because in the military, the "enemy" are the terrorists/belligerent nation etc. Complaints from terrorists/enemy nations etc as they are in a battle situation are obviously disregarded. The army serve the public, and fight the enemy. For the police, the "enemy" is the public who are complaining about what the police are doing. It is them Vs us. To quote George W Bush, you are either with us or against us.
• dogman144 6y ago
  Really good article, but misses a large part of why military self-enforces well: integrity above all is a, or the value that is stressed-stressed-stressed. The reasoning goes that while any UCMJ violation short of the big ones (abandoning post, AWOL, murder, etc.) is recoverable from with regards to career impact by a PCS (change bases you're stationed at), a new commander, whatever, the ONLY thing that will really sink you is lying. You can recover from all sorts of failures. What you will never recover from is lying on a sworn statement about that failure. Enforcement of UCMJ proves this out. Officers and Enlisted both follow this in various ways from small infractions to things that involve UCMJ. The service academies only have 1 non-crime that will really get you kicked out: honor violations. Etc. etc. The interesting background aspect is Army values get pounded into you from Day 0, and Integrity is one of them. Legitimate corrective action will go around violating them from Basic Training all the way through the last day of your career. Not a lot of other orgs take organizational value lists that are on the proverbial office wall quite so seriously. I'm almost positive the police do none of this approach, but also they don't have a federal police force really to enforce it top-down like the Army does. edit grammar
• TrackerFF 6y ago
  Military careers are very short, sans being an officer Police careers tend to be life-long.
  • dogman144 6y ago
    Culture of silence comes from the top, or more realistically mid-career people who have bought into the system. Your proverbial E4 (junior enlisted with some clout) is the same as a early but motivated patrolman, and those are the parties that do the locker room harassment. But their direction and latitude to behave that way comes from that former party. With that in mind... The police leadership that condones the integrity violations required to stay silent are peers to the E6-8's/O4s-O5s who are in the military for 7-14 years and are vectoring towards a career. While bad apples exist in those parties, and those parties have enough influence to create culture of silence, it's never sustainable. So, life-long careers exist in both for parties with influence enough to do a wall of silence, both have similar danger to the job, but the military has a fraction of these ethical shortcomings police are experiencing.
• cobbal 6y ago
  So what you're saying is that we need more militarization of the police?
• scarface74 6y ago
  What I find so strange is that while I am no supporter of the military complex in the US, all of my ire is directed at the civilian oversight and not the military itself. The military generals wanted to close bases that it didn’t need and that they thought was wasteful - the government wouldn’t close them because of the job loss. The military leaders have said one of the biggest threats to our democracy is our ballooning national debt - I can’t find a quote from a general but you will find plenty of pro-military sites that agree. But yet the civilian government ignores the threat. The military has plenty of weapon programs that it would love to mothball. But again, Senators are worried about job loss and they keep making weapons and selling them to foreign governments. The government can spend billions on weapons that the military doesn’t need and private contractors but won’t equip soldiers with what they need. There have been plenty of stories about how the civilian government has recently put soldiers health in danger for photo ops and exposing them to Covid unnecessarily. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/magazine/navy-captain-crozier-positive-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/magazine/navy-captain-cro...)
  • user_0x 6y ago
    This also goes for global warming etc. The military is a really interesting institution when it comes to politics in the US, and undoubtedly anywhere really.
    • scarface74 6y ago
      I can’t really say that I disagree with anything on a meta level in recent history that the military has done or that military generals have said that wasn’t a direct result of incompetence, greed, or just wrong headed ideology by the civilian government.
      • user_0x 6y ago
        as it should be in a civilian society.
        • scarface74 6y ago
• pragmatic 6y ago
  Unions.
• bladegash 6y ago
  I'll probably be down voted, but this article seems incredibly out of touch with reality. I was a Marine and a Federal civilian for 11+ years, but this is solely my opinion/based on my own experiences. I am also generally proud of my service and have a great deal of respect for current/former service members. Hopefully I don't offend any of you - my angst is directed towards the cherry-picking and misrepresentation of facts in this article. That being said, at least in my experience, it is, and always has been, very much culturally ingrained that you handle problems internally and you do not rat on friends. There is an implicit trust that exists for those in combat-oriented roles, that others will watch your back and you'll watch theirs. That doesn't stop at combat situations. Trust me, the forms of reprisal taken against people in the military who rat on others is far worse than simply ending your career. I find it a bit ridiculous we are now holding up the military justice system as some kind of panacea or institution that has it right. Just a few years ago, we were castigating the military for it's handling of sexual assault. One of the key issues? Sexual assault reporting being handled at the unit-level, unit commanders being disincentivized from escalating reports (e.g., it reflecting poorly on the unit commander when sexual assault takes place in their unit), and as a result, sweeping the issues under the rug. Now we are holding up military culture as being at risk of the "camouflage wall of silence" rising? The Eddie Gallagher case is another great example. The article conveniently fails to mention that one of the key reasons Gallagher was able to walk away was due to an SF soldier covering his ass. One of the Government's key witnesses, who had already been given immunity, decided to change his story and take the blame for the killing the boy Gallagher was accused of murdering. Kind of throws off a murder charge when someone else says they're the ones who committed it. Less explicit, is the fact that Gallagher bragged about averaging three kills per day, including four women, over 80 days. You're telling me that, through the course of this guy's service, this was the only time he messed up? The SEALs that finally did report Gallagher will never work in any kind of a special operations, law enforcement, government, or any other field where their skill-sets can be used. That may not seem like much, but it's akin to someone becoming a doctor and losing their license to practice. People outside of these communities don't realize just how small these circles are and how pervasive their former/current members are elsewhere in the industry/government. Word travels and stuff like what they did is not forgotten. Look no further than the Navy Times article from 2019 titled, "What motivated fellow SEALs to dime out Eddie Gallagher?". For the uninitiated, "dime out" is synonymous with "rat out". There are many reasons law enforcement recruits heavily from prior military service members (e.g., prior training, physical fitness, etc.), but a big one is because they're already at least partially vetted as being a good "culture" fit.
• rclayton 6y ago
  IMHO this article is nonsense. Even the Gallagher example contradicts the premise. The SEALs that reported him basically risked their careers in doing so. The military may have laws/rules to report misconduct, but structurally, units are incentivized to hide misconduct (e.g. “handle internally”) because they don’t want the embarrassment. More importantly, failures by subordinates are often seen as leadership problems (you can make an argument that in many cases this is true) which mean officers and SNCOs are likely to sweep them under the rug if they can. I saw many, many cases of this in the USMC. DUIs turned into “wet and reckless” because it involved a SNCO (an NCO or lower would have lost rank). NCOs (rightfully) pressing charges against subordinates for misconduct, only to be pressured by company/battalion leadership to accept “alternative punishment” (which often amounted to nothing). A let’s not even talk about all the case where there was sexual or physical abuse that went unreported despite everyone knowing it was happening. The only time the military is motivated to act on misconduct is when it can’t hide it.
  • narag 6y ago
    The military may have laws/rules to report misconduct, but structurally, units are incentivized to hide misconduct The key word seems to be structurally. The US have this much copied feature of decentralization. Every town elects his sheriff, judges, a lot of the administration is local, then statal. Federal bodies are a far away, mistruted entities. Police is local. It made sense for a huge country developed at the rhythm of railroad. Law and order must exist near the place where the crime is. I'm not so sure that it's still the case with current connected world. Maybe the US still needs a level more decentralization than most other countries. But if you look at other countries where police is less corrupt and citizens trust them, it's usually an entity dependent on central government, not the city council. Making the investigative entity as far as possible from the investigated is much better for imparciality. Also involving judges, not in the same branch. Local police here has limited competences. Any serious crime goes to national corps. Police needs to go to national academy and get certified for the whole country. In my country I would trust police much more than the military.
    • rclayton 6y ago
• RNCTX 6y ago
  False. Colin Powell made his entire career on being the person willing to help cover up the My Lai massacre.
• graycat 6y ago
  Okay, here I saw no mention of the relevant points in "Executive Order on Safe Policing for Safe Communities" June 16, 2020 at https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-safe-policing-safe-communities/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or... So, in short, "money talks"! Yes, it's the money the DoJ has long been giving to local police departments to help them "protect and serve" and in general be pretty. So, we get to set up a company, say, Local Police Audits, Inc. and a company Audits and Approvals, Inc. The second works to make sure the DOJ thinks they are pretty and, then, works to make sure the first is pretty; and then the first works to make sure the police departments, e.g., in Minneapolis, Atlanta, NYC, Baltimore, etc. are pretty, get a coveted, official pretty prize. And if a police department does not get a pretty prize? Then the DoJ "will make them an offer they can't refuse" -- get a pretty prize or lose your DoJ money. The Blue Line, police contracts, and police unions aside, this offer will be meaningful to the local mayor, town council, and maybe the local newspapers, voters, taxpayers, chief of police, the state governor, and even the mainstream media (MSM). It's all right there in that executive order.