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The problem with "better equipment" is it needs to continuously be justified. That means it needs to be used.
by nkozyra 6y ago
The problem with "better equipment" is it needs to continuously be justified. That means it needs to be used.
- runawaybottle 6y agoArmored and heavily equipped cops are not what’s causing police brutality by and large. It’s your run of the mill guy with a simple handgun racially profiling and using deceptive tactics to drum up charges. We can keep our focus exactly where the issue is (for once we identified it exactly), or we can emotionally extrapolate it into the larger narrative. Armored cops are a much bigger deal in China where the CCP uses them in places like Hong Kong to enact quasi martial law.
- nkozyra 6y ago> Armored and heavily equipped cops are not what’s causing police brutality by and large. I agree with this, but wonder if it's more a law of averages than anything. The guy driving the local PD tank does not have nearly as many interactions as the beat cop or the traffic cop.
- Turing_Machine 6y agoThe classic example here is Arlo Guthrie's song/story "Alice's Restaurant". For those who haven't heard it, the protagonists are guilty of littering, and the local cops wind up using dogs, tire-track analysis, and even aerial photography to make their case. As the song puts it, "They was usin' up all kinds of cop equipment that they had hangin' around the police officer station". Recommended if you haven't heard it, or even if you haven't heard it for a while.