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Police killings more likely in agencies that get military gear, data shows
- jakelazaroff 6y ago> In Georgia alone, police departments and sheriff’s offices have received more than 2,700 military rifles, night vision goggles and laser gun sights, and literally hundreds of armored vehicles, including more than two dozen mine-resistant vehicles built to fight the war on terror abroad. How else will they protect themselves in the dangerous minefields of Atlanta? /s I’m glad someone has put together the data on this, but it’s entirely unsurprising that police cosplaying as the military murder more people. It’s dystopian as hell, and it baffles me that it’s a contentious issue rather than being universally condemned. Edit: added /s to relevant paragraph. I know, Poe's law, my bad.
- bonestamp2 6y agoThe worst part about the police getting military gear is that the actual military has much stricter rules of engagement. With great power comes great responsibility.
- throwaway2048 6y agoYep, even in a warzone, if a member of the US military killed somebody because they thought they were reaching for a gun, they would be court-martialed and put in jail, and then kicked out of the military after their sentence. The standard for police in the USA is appallingly low, and getting lower.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoThe hot head will at least get a bollocking from the captain that shooting people dead isn't how you pacify a town. Within the police, no such concerns.
- pjc50 6y agoWell, apart from that guy who shot so many civilians that his colleagues kept bending his sights, who eventually got prosecuted for war crimes .. then pardoned by the President.
- learc83 6y agoThat says more about the President than anything else.
- okasaki 6y agoCome on dude, we've all seen the drone footage showing the US blowing people to pieces for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
- throwaway2048 6y agoAs shitty as they are, drone strikes are operated by the CIA, and not subject to the military's rules of engagement, or military oversight, this is entirely on purpose.
- mcv 6y agoThere was a story about a ex-marine police officer who accurately judged that a suspect did not need to be shot, and then got fired for not shooting him.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoHere’s the link, if anyone’s interested in reading it: https://features.propublica.org/weirton/police-shooting-lethal-force-cop-fired-west-virginia/ https://features.propublica.org/weirton/police-shooting-leth... It’s frustrating and sad, like stories about this tend to be.
- phobosanomaly 6y agoI stopped and read this. Thank you very much for sharing. It is excellent and very well-written. For anyone who hasn't read it, this is a similar, excellent article in the New Yorker on an ex-CIA officer's experience working as a beat cop on the streets of Atlanta. It dovetails magnificently with the ProPublica piece. The Spy Who Came Home: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/07/the-spy-who-came-home https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/07/the-spy-who-ca... I believe that the following three paragraph-long quotes serve as a sufficient tl;dr: "According to David M. Kennedy, one of the nation’s leading criminologists, American policing is practiced more as a craft than as a profession. “The kind of thinking that should go into framing and refining what a profession of public safety should be has still not been done,” he told me. Officers are deployed as enforcers of the state, without being taught psychology, anthropology, sociology, community dynamics, local history, or criminology. Lethal force is prioritized above other options. When Skinner joined the police force, everyone in his class was given a pistol, but none were given Tasers, because the department had run out." "At Georgia’s state police-training facilities, the focus is “all tactics and law,” Skinner told me. Officers are taught that “once you give a lawful order it has to be followed—and that means immediately.” But the recipient of a “lawful order” may not understand why it’s being issued, or that his or her failure to comply may lead to the use of force. There’s no training on how to de-escalate tense scenarios in which no crime has been committed, even though the majority of police calls fall into that category. It is up to the officer’s discretion to shape these interactions, and the most straightforward option is to order belligerent people to the ground and, if they resist, tackle them and put them in cuffs." "“This is how situations go so, so badly—yet justifiably, legally,” Skinner said. Police officers often encounter people during the worst moments of their lives, and Skinner believes that his role is partly to resolve trouble and partly to prevent people from crossing the line from what he calls “near-crime” into “actual crime.” The goal, he said, is “to slow things down, using the power of human interaction more than the power of the state.”"
- hguant 6y agoOn paper. I hang out a lot with a lot of former US infantry guys on discord, and they talk all the time about how rule one was come back alive, and rule two was 'make sure you all get your stories straight.' This mythos of the American warfighter being above and beyond is propaganda. Good propaganda, because it has some basis in truth, but it whitewashes a lot of nastiness.
- baq 6y agoat there are rules. you shouldn't have to go to Hague to win a case against your own sheriff.
- MperorM 6y agoThis was the case for the danish military in Iraq and Afghanistan as well. The people I feel worst for are the soldiers themselves. You're informed over and over about the rules of engagement, and when you get there none of it applies. If you don't shoot first, then your next to you friend will die. Obviously you're going to break the rules in that situation, it's what any human would do. Now you have to live the rest of your life, knowing you broke conventions. You should be tried like the war-criminal you are. Or so it feels. While I disagreed with the west's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, I have the utmost respect for the soldiers who fought there. They deserve a set of rules can realistically be followed.
- ulisesrmzroche 6y agoPropaganda. It’s the exact opposite.
- opwieurposiu 6y agoPolice in Georgia literally throw hand grenades into the cribs of sleeping babies and get away with it. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-georgia-deputy-acquitted-after-flash-bang-grenade-hurts-toddler-n479361 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-georgia-deputy-acqui...
- sandworm101 6y agoFlashbangs. They are violent, but in a totally different class than actual hand grenades. No police in the US use hand grenades. The kid in the crib survived. Had it been an actual grenade ... not a survivable event. https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/baby-in-coma-after-police-grenade-dropped-in-crib-during-drug-raid https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/baby-in-coma-...
- 8fGTBjZxBcHq 6y agoAre you really defending the police grenading a baby.
- mdorazio 6y agoAre you really purposely using the wrong word to force the conversation to fit your narrative?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jakelazaroff 6y agoWikipedia redirects "flashbang" to "stun grenade" and describes it as a "less lethal explosive device", so I'd say they're using the vernacular correctly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashbang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashbang
- bigwavedave 6y ago
- fastball 6y agoI was under the impression that one of the main reason police forces are getting "military gear" is because they're getting it at a steep discount due to the actual military not having anything else to do with it once they're done.
- asdasdasdas5453 6y agoI remember reading once that what you think of as military gear obtained at a steep discount is not the first thing that comes to mind : essentially air conditioning.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoIMO this is even less charitable, since it implies that more violent police departments are seeking out surplus military equipment to better subjugate civilians.
- fastball 6y agoIf you require a firearm, and you can buy a military surplus weapon which is cheaper than a new "civilian" firearm, wouldn't you?
- jakelazaroff 6y agoBased on the study, it seems like the answer is "yes" for violent police departments and "no" for everyone else.
- numpad0 6y agoThere’s not much technical difference in “military rifles” from civilian AR15 other than military version has an extra pin and the finger groove
- jakelazaroff 6y agoOn the other hand, there's presumably a significant technical difference between police cars and mine-resistant vehicles created for military operations in the Middle East.
- nicoburns 6y ago> How else will they protect themselves in the dangerous minefields of Atlanta? They could put the money into dealing with the social problems that cause it to be a "minefield". Their job is to protect citizens including criminals. They're not doing it properly if they're shooting people. And they're likely making people a lot more likely to shoot at them in the process.
- xenocratus 6y agoI think the parent comment is missing a "/s"arcasm tag there
- ritchiea 6y agoThis is a great point, it's not in the job description of a police officer to punish criminals. But if you see the types of language that police officers frequently post with on social media, you see them framing themselves as warriors in a battle of good and evil. Cops shouldn't see suspects as evil they the cops themselves are at war with. Formally their job is to keep the peace, get the suspect into the justice system and allow the justice system to work. Instead cops view themselves as armed enforcers on the side of "good" that the cops themselves define ad hoc.
- dntrkv 6y agoThe amount of money spent on this gear won't make a dent in resolving these societal issues. Our police are a bandaid on top of a deep wound that is our failings in mental health, poverty, and education.
- reificator 6y ago> They could put the money into dealing with the social problems that cause it to be a "minefield". I think you're missing the joke here, here's the relevant part of the gp: > > including more than two dozen mine-resistant vehicles built to fight the war on terror abroad. > How else will they protect themselves in the dangerous minefields of Atlanta?
- nicoburns 6y ago
- numpad0 6y agoOr how else US Army get rid of barely used gears and armored vehicles unfit for their uses?
- piahoo 6y ago"Our apologies, unfortunately our website is currently unavailable in most European countries due to GDPR rules." :(
- hownottowrite 6y agohttps://archive.is/d1GIz https://archive.is/d1GIz
- gadders 6y agoI can't read the article because of GDPR, but do they discuss whether police forces are more likely to request this gear if they are in a high crime area?
- jakelazaroff 6y ago> The newspaper’s analysis used the military’s database and paired it with a database of fatal police shootings from across the state, controlling for statistical variables like community income, rural-urban differences, racial makeup, and violent crime rates.
- drdec 6y agoHere's a relevant quote from the article: > The results paint a troubling picture: The more equipment a department receives, the more people are shot and killed, even after accounting for violent crime, race, income, drug use and population. Personally my first thought was that police that were already predisposed to kill suspects are more likely to want the military gear. But it wouldn't surprise me if the effect works but ways.
- hownottowrite 6y agohttps://archive.is/d1GIz https://archive.is/d1GIz
- ruminasean 6y ago"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
- abootstrapper 6y agoIf all you have is an AK-47 everything looks like an enemy combatant.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jankyxenon 6y agoI'm not saying it's warranted for Police to have military weapons - but wouldn't departments that request military gear be somewhat correlated with ones with more intense crime. I'm guessing there aren't many sleepy hamlets that request the high-end stuff.
- dfxm12 6y agoWhy guess when the data is out there? https://www.themarshallproject.org/mp-graphics/201412-dod/embed.html https://www.themarshallproject.org/mp-graphics/201412-dod/em...
- mywittyname 6y agoThe police department at Ohio State University has an APC. No city in the USA, much less college campus, looks like a war zone. I would hope most people would not need to experience Kandahar first-hand to understand this fact.
- throwawaysea 6y agoNo city in the USA looks like a war zone, but they can encounter situations that are dangerous. Things like gang shootouts or riots. I don't understand why APCs are a reason to be outraged. They are armored personnel carriers. Is it bad to want to keep our limited, trained, experienced police staff safe? I feel like APCs and MRAPs have been picked as a target of manufactured outrage without any concrete reason to actually be outraged.
- yborg 6y agoIt's commonly understood by even a child that an armored military vehicle belongs in a war zone. Having one driving around your home town sends the message that you live in a war zone, and guess what - you, the citizen, are the enemy. Even if they are reserved for "gang shootouts or riots" you are wasting money in the 95% of US towns that don't have gang shootouts or riots on such a regular basis that police need to engage in military operations to contain them. So I'm outraged as a taxpayer to see my money being wasted.
- leroy_masochist 6y agoThe question here, in my opinion, is whether we're looking at actual causation or simple correlation. Is this an example of, "receiving free coyote-colored tacticool gear and MRAPs prompts cops to become more aggressive, detached from the population they are ostensibly there to protect, and likely to unnecessarily end civilian lives in the course of doing their job"? Or is it an example of, "police departments with toxic cultures -- e.g., power-tripping, roided-out hardos with motarded haircuts who treat black people like shit and maintain a blue wall of silence -- are more likely to jump through the hoops necessary to get the military surplus gear, and as a result, departments who have embraced the 1033 program generally do more bad cop shit"? Or is it both, or is it something else?
- Pfhreak 6y agoIt seems like those two causes plausibly amplify each other - machismo warrior culture more likely to take military gear, which in turn makes it easier to recruit more machismo types.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sandworm101 6y agoI would like to see if there is an correlation between the hiring of ex-military people, the purchase of military equipment, and any increase in police-related violence. Many people think that soldiers make good cops. In reality, the jobs share almost nothing in common.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoIn reality, the jobs share almost nothing in common That's right, the military has rules of engagement and no mirrored sunglasses. With cops it's opposite. Imagine, standing in formation with half of the men wearing cool sunglasses. It would be unthinkable.
- ordu 6y agoIn social sciences cause and effect often intermixed. It is pain in the ass for researchers. From the other hand, it means that it not so important to distinguish cause and effect. If we had a correlation, we would have a predictor, so we could do something about it. Just studying agencies with military gear would change outcomes. Even media discussing this correlation could change things. The role of an observer even more noticeable than with quantum phenomena.
- torwayburger 6y agoHow much training/school do US police get on average before starting their jobs?
- Fezzik 6y agoIn Oregon it’s 21-weeks followed by a probationary period. At least for the Oregon State Police: you attend five weeks of pre-academy and sixteen weeks of regular academy. Then there are ongoing trainings and required education courses. I’ve had numerous friends go through the process, with some failing out, and they all agree it is both thorough and grueling. Edit: grammar
- 082349872349872 6y agoIt's two years for the local municipal police. For comparison, nationwide we have less than 1 police fatality per 10 mm population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
- jessaustin 6y agoWhat municipality is that? That is remarkably longer than the training taken by multiple family members of mine.
- jcims 6y agoThere's typically a training 'residency' period for new police officers as well. Where I'm at it's one year plus the original ~600-1000 hours in academy.
- 082349872349872 6y agoA municipality in one of denmark, iceland, japan, poland, switzerland, taiwan, or the UK. Compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23376741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23376741 (It's difficult to bear witness for any length of time without revealing far more than 30 bits of information about oneself. Therefore, my post history will narrow it down to the city, if you really wish that level of detail. But I believe the 2 years is the same for my "state" and its neighbours, whom we share a police academy with, and roughly the same across the country. NB that we don't even have judicial execution, so extra-judicial execution would especially be frowned upon. Regret, by definition, comes too late; Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate. )
- EvanAnderson 6y agoIt's probably worth referencing yesterday's discussion on "Pentagon funnels $7.4B in surplus military gear to police", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24745955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24745955
- boomboomsubban 6y agoWhile I think these finding would hold up to be true, I find it difficult to believe they can sufficiently account for external factors given the sample size is 261 deaths. I wish they could perform the same comparison using police shootings, though I doubt that data would be available to the press.
- Communitivity 6y agoWe should be careful to draw a causal relationship here. It might not be that getting the military equipment causes police to be more aggressive and therefore have more killings. It might instead be that the more aggressive police departments are the ones that more seek to purchase military equipment, and the more aggressive police are the ones with more killings. I tend to think that's the case. Regardless, there is no need, ever, for police to have the automatic weapons, APCs, and "non-lethal" weapons they are buying from the military. If they are facing an opponent like that then call in the FBI, who generally have much better training, or ATF (no idea about their training).
- nojokes 6y agoOr departments with more military gear are in more risky areas where the use of force is more likely. I could not read the article because it is blocked for me.
- ryandrake 6y ago> Or departments with more military gear are in more risky areas where the use of force is more likely. Which, itself deserves a different study to understand whether risky areas lead to more use of force, or whether excessive use of force leads to police distrust, making areas more risky for police. There is probably no single causal path here. Use of force, aggressive police, police's fear of the public, the public's distrust of police, militarized training, military gear, socioeconomics, race, and crime are likely interrelated in complex ways, without an easy line to draw from one to the other.
- steve76 6y agoOr government officials from Cuba and Venezuela have a good old laugh when they see everyone in Atlanta dying from oxies. And a lot of people here in America join up. Rich spoiled fools far removed from the brutality they cause. Police do very little even with gun shots. Don't let the violence spread. Come back tomorrow morning and collect the casings. Smart, because if you brought what really happens to the public, it would get out of control. The American public beats to death every foreign agent in the street. China invades Taiwan, Venezuela invades Columbia, Russia invades Belarus or Poland and we have a full on nuclear exchange. Join up and stop it, or be quiet. You are in something way over your head. The people pushing this, like Soros, don't care. They care about the money and leave town first sign of trouble.
- bcrosby95 6y agoNote that the 1033 program has a "use it or lose it" provision. Police must use equipment they receive via this program or it's taken away. So they find reasons to use their toys.
- koheripbal 6y agoI wonder what the details around that are. So if I drive the APC on a training run once per year... is that "using it"? Have any of these departments actually lost any equipment? ie. is there any enforcement of that rule? Is it the actually equipment they must use, or is it the funding? ...because if it's the funding, that's a pretty standard accounting practice.
- boomboomsubban 6y agoIt's the equipment, they must apply for a reason they need it and conduct audits to make sure they still have the item. The rule is in place to prevent requesting items and then selling them though. Even that is rarely enforced, I doubt anyone has been punished for not using something. The article mentions a department that keeps some guns permanently locked up because the DLA refused to take them back.
- rweir 6y agowhy do any police forces get military hardware at all? it seems mad to take an already over-armed group and then give them APCs and even more guns.
- Fricken 6y agoCheck out this clip from South Park's 'Pandemic Special': https://youtu.be/uo63QQsm5Dw https://youtu.be/uo63QQsm5Dw
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 6y agoOh I see from the article it isn't MREs or bugles.
- unnouinceput 6y agoSite inaccessible from Europe. I had to go through a US proxy to read the article.
- hownottowrite 6y agohttps://archive.is/d1GIz https://archive.is/d1GIz
- edward1 6y agoI think this is because the police departments that get military gear are in more dangerous areas, with more dangerous situations, leading to more deaths.
- wonderwonder 6y agoExcept for the fact that the study controlled for that.
- jcims 6y agoThe biggest problem I have with the article is that it focuses on absolute numbers rather than any kind of proportional impact. Per-capita numbers or something along those lines would be helpful. Even the chart halfway down that appears to address proportionality doesn't indicate what percentage of indicated departments are in each distribution...you could have, for example, a university police department that's in a district with 15k violent crimes per year but they are only responsible for handling parking and property violations. I don't doubt there's an impact, I would expect it to be honest, but it's not clear that this article is making an objective case for it.
- bobthechef 6y agoSeems there is actually a direct link between the knee-on-the-neck technique and military tactics, i.e., that the Minneapolis police had learned that through IDF training (and that that technique is used against Palestinians) [0]. [0] https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/minnesota-cops-trained-israeli-forces-restraint-techniques https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/minnesota-cops-train...
- throwawaysea 6y agoRemember, the total spending on police budgets annually is around $115B a year. The total value of all former military equipment held by police departments is less than $2B (https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/05/29/how-much-is-the-military-equipment-transferred-to-law-enforcement-worth-infographic/#7081de523718 https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/05/29/how-mu...). The total amount of equipment transferred since 1990 is $6B but the majority of that gear is in non-military-specific items like office furniture, generators, and so on (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/06/12/surplus-military-gear-keeps-flowing-after-trump-reversed-policy/5340013002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/06/1...). The breakdown of the military bits can be seen at https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/05/29/how-much-is-the-military-equipment-transferred-to-law-enforcement-worth-infographic/#7081de523718 https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/05/29/how-mu....
- stanrivers 6y agoWhen I first read this I thought is was going to be a study that concluded that more policed were killed in departments where police have military gear. That would have been interesting. At the same time, I wonder if the units that are more likely to ask for military equipment are the ones that need it - meaning there are in a situation where life or death confrontations, given current gun laws in the US, are more common. I have in the back of my head the idea that less access to firearms for citizens equals less deaths for citizens at the hands of police. If every encounter a police offer has is blanketed with the idea that, at any moment, a gun could be drawn, they have a seriously different mentality than if worst case is a knife. That’s why studies like this bother me a bit... I’m biased for sure, but it feels like, if people can have firearms, police need firearms and equipment that severely outclass citizen firearms. I don’t like that conclusion, which is why gun control laws seems to be a better target for consideration...
- thdrdt 6y agoJocko Willing was asked about the issues with the police (in the US). His response was very insightful. He observed that most problems boiled down to lack of training. For an untrained cop an arrest can be very stressful. This then can result in using way too much force. I believe he also mentions this in the Joe Rogan podcast: https://youtu.be/iUhdc1GAddk https://youtu.be/iUhdc1GAddk
- save_ferris 6y ago> For an untrained cop an arrest can be very stressful. This then can result in using way too much force. I don't doubt that this is true at all, but it still points to major systemic flaws in how police are managed throughout the country. We wouldn't permit or accept a first-year medical student to perform open heart surgery, nor a first-time flight student to pilot a commercial plane full of people, but throughout the country, we're seeing brutal violence being carried out by people who lack the training, and in many cases, the emotional intelligence to do a job that very clearly requires it. Such failure warrants massive overhauls to the system, regardless of whether it's a training issue or something more sinister. "Lack of training" is, frankly, a really piss-poor excuse when you're seeing videos like George Floyd. How much training do you need to know not to kneel on someone's neck for almost 9 minutes? The culture and management of policing is far too opaque and if the lack of training is the number one issue, the various systems of police training programs need to be brought to light and people need to be fired across the board.
- jcims 6y ago>I don't doubt that this is true at all, but it still points to major systemic flaws in how police are managed throughout the country. I think that's what Jocko's point is, there's a systemic lack of training in police forces across the country, and some portion of the newsworthy interaction with the general public stem from that. >Such failure warrants massive overhauls to the system, regardless of whether it's a training issue or something more sinister. Unless the federal government takes control of law enforcement nationwide, it's not even obvious where how you would start a 'massive overhaul to the system'. You'd probably have to start with declaring martial law then plan to operate that way for the next 5-10 years as law enforcement is reshaped from the ground up. The likelihood that anyone in our current administration or on deck would attempt that is vanishingly small, and the likelihood that they would actually pull it off even less so. It's likely going to take decades to fully repair this, and I think we need to consider incremental improvements vs some kind of big bang change. > "Lack of training" is, frankly, a really piss-poor excuse when you're seeing videos like George Floyd. How much training do you need to know not to kneel on someone's neck for almost 9 minutes? It's not piss-poor, it's just not a complete explanation. There isn't one. More training isn't going to help if you don't have sound policies at their foundation. Policies need to be adjusted for sure, practices need to be expanded to build a relationship with the community, and then training needs to be increased to navigate the broad set of circumstances that police officers may counter. All of this might not have prevented Chauvin from doing what he did, but it seems likely that if the other officers at the scene were better equipped across those dimensions we wouldn't have had the same result.
- 99_00 6y agoEvery modern police department all over the world has assualt rifles, carbines, military sights, sniper rifle a, scopes, and armored vehicles.
- notmyname9173 6y agoSources? I've got a dozen contradictions in mind already and I haven't even hit Wikipedia yet.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoModern law enforcement universally has access to those things. But in most countries (and many areas of the US) they're limited to specific, organizationally disjoint departments which are specifically trained to use such force. That's different than what's happening here.
- refurb 6y agoIsn't that the case here? They don't give out SWAT vehicles to beat cops. Even smaller cities have distinct SWAT teams with specific training.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoThe smaller cities you're thinking of are very large compared to the median sheriff's office, with less than 25 sworn personnel. (https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/so07st.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/so07st.pdf) It's hard for a SWAT team to be meaningfully distinct at such a small size, when you're counting on one or two hands the number of times it's needed in a year.
- hikerclimb 6y agoGood... hopefully lots of people die..:
- sk2020 6y agohttps://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations They’re also much more common in locations with indoor plumbing. Maybe we’re on to something here.
- zalkota 6y agoData also shows African Americans to murder more than white people.
- netsharc 6y agoYes because systemic racism means they have less chance of getting a good education, less chance of getting good careers, higher chances of ending up in prison and with a criminal record after a cop encounter, and in the end, a higher chance of having a life of crime. Including murder. But I'm sure you have data to show that America is land of the free and equal...
- diffrinse 6y agoComments like this weren't here 10 years ago, what happened?
- lovetocode 6y agoWas any research done on which police departments receive this gear and the rate of crime in their AoR?
- dcolkitt 6y agoI think one possible reform is that SWAT teams should belong to a separate department than the regular police. If the situation gets out of hand, then the police can call in the SWAT. But we shouldn't be expect regular beat cops and detectives to be the people kicking down doors with bullet proof vests. The two jobs require very different skillsets and temperaments. Unfortunately because of the long-running wars in the Middle East, the US has no shortage of combat veterans with experience in these types of urban warfare situations. I'd definitely a trust a SWAT department filled with ex-special forces more than I'd trust a small-town cop LARPing in military gear. The second benefit is that a lot of times, I think police start itching to break out the military gear because they have it and think it looks cool. By separating the departments, it removes that incentive. They're not going to hesitate calling in SWAT, when the situation's genuinely dangerous. But they're going to think about letting an outside agency step on their turf for everyday situations.
- bigbubba 6y ago> I'd definitely a trust a SWAT department filled with ex-special forces more than I'd trust a small-town cop LARPing in military gear. I know soldier worship is the national religion or something, but I think that's something you should reconsider: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30281075/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30281075/ More research needs to be done, but there is evidence that police officers with military backgrounds are more likely to be involved in shootings. Consider also that some of the training soldiers receive today is meant to overcome the natural tendency of soldiers to deliberately miss when shooting at the enemy. Consider also that the mindset of a veteran who seeks out a job with the police is not necessarily representative of the typical veteran mindset. It's a subset of veterans, those who wish to work with guns and have authority over others.
- phobosanomaly 6y agotl;dr: 10-years of data were pulled from Dallas PD. "Records were abstracted for 516 officers. In the adjusted models, veteran LEOs who were not deployed were significantly more likely to be involved in a shooting than non-veteran officers. Veterans with a deployment history were 2.9 times more likely to be in a shooting than non-veteran officers." Interesting food for thought. I've heard many arguments about ex-military folks training in rules of engagement making them less-likely to use a weapon in a frivolous scenario. But, maybe that's not borne out by the data. Or there's a selection-bias thing. Either way, good point. I think what the parent was getting at though, was that this would silo the guys with all the guns and stuff in a way that they're used only in more carefully-considered situations as opposed to giving every yahoo on the force an MRAP, a tactical vest full of 123123 mags for their AR-15, and a fuzzy mandate to enforce the 'thin blue line.' You both make really, excellent points, honestly.
- rabbitrecon 6y agoI would think agencies that relieve military gear would be operating in more dangerous cities. That would explain the higher level of police involved shootings.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y agoDo they send police gear to agencies in bad areas more often?
- krsdcbl 6y agowould have loved to read it, but ajc seems to think blocking traffic from Europe is a good replacement for gdpr compliance.
- hownottowrite 6y agoThe AJC blocks traffic from Europe but like most articles it can be read on archive.is https://archive.is/d1GIz https://archive.is/d1GIz
- jjones2 6y agoPolice do tend to harm more when given more funds and/or gear so this is not surprising in the least.
- ev0lv 6y agoThe sentiment of the threads in this discussion are very anti-police. I personally see this as a privileged perspective. >It might instead be that the more aggressive police departments are the ones that more seek to purchase military equipment, and the more aggressive police are the ones with more killings. I tend to think that's the case. Causal relationship between killings and military gear can easily be explained by "dangerous communities motivate police to seek out military gear. Dangerous communities have more killings in general." I believe it's the most straightforward explanation.