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We 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 h

We 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 ago
Or 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 ago
    Or 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.
- seretogis 6y ago
  "Risky areas" sounds like a dog whistle to me, much like "bad neighborhood"... When you think of these "risky areas", what do the people within them look like? Do they deserve to have militarized police literally rolling armored tank-like vehicles through their neighborhood, and what sort of impact do you think that has on them?
  - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
    I don't understand why this was downvoted.
    - throwaway2048 6y ago
      Because the down voters agree that "risky areas" aka communities full of minorities like black and hispanic people, deserve military style occupation and tactics. If you think that's not true, ask yourself why analysis of that term is not welcome. There is a long proud tradition of terrible anti-human bullshit being hidden behind neat euphemisms like that. Because it sounds reasonable, and civil. It isn't.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - ffggvv 6y ago
      i downvoted it because it’s not a dog whistle. people insist on seeing race everywhere. a risky area by common sense is an area with increased violence, regardless of the racial makeup. if you can’t see why somewhere with increased violence would possibly require police to have increased capabilities i’m not sure what to say. or how it’s magically a dog whistle
  - malandrew 6y ago
    If you're using the term dog whistle to describe something, you're the dog in that situation. That accusation is just a submarine form of kafkatrap.
    - 8note 6y ago
- matwood 6y ago
  > Or departments with more military gear are in more risky areas where the use of force is more likely. Maybe. I know anecdotally where I live has very little violent crime, and the police department is fully militarized with mraps and the like.
  - adwww 6y ago
    Plural? Like one could make sense, in a siege type situation or bank robbery in progress perhaps. The sort of event that might happen once a decade or so maybe. But how many sieges or bank robberies are they expecting to need multiple of these?!
    - malandrew 6y ago
      Bank robberies used to be more common, but inflation basically took care of that https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/economists-demonstrate-exactly-why-bank-robbery-is-a-bad-idea/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/economists-demonstra...
      - ArnoVW 6y ago
        Thanks for the interesting link. Ars at its best. Though my interpretation of the article is more that the risk / reward ratio simply has become too poor, nothing to do with inflation. I suppose it is easier to rob a 150k watch from an unprotected person on the street, of hold up a Chinese tourist (who often have their holiday money in cash), if you're into that sort of thing.
    - matwood 6y ago
      My city only has 1. I was mistaken because I saw a big police show and tell at an abandoned parking lot late last year, and saw multiples. The city next door has 2, and all the adjacent cities also have their own. Keep in mind these these cities are all basically considered the same large city. It's not like they separated by 100s of miles or anything.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
- jakelazaroff 6y ago
  The study controls for that variable: > 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. The article explicitly cautions against drawing conclusions about causality. My intuition is that there’s truth to both explanations: cosplaying as a military makes police more violent, and intrinsically violent departments are more likely to seek out military equipment. And frankly, the second conclusion scares me more. If the causal relationship is “equipment —> violence”, we can solve it by simply banning the use of military equipment by police. If the relationship goes the other way, though, we still have to deal with violent cops who want to hurt civilians.
  - anthony_romeo 6y ago
    > If the relationship goes the other way, though, we still have to deal with violent cops who want to hurt civilians. If the problem is iterative, then I'd think in terms of adjusting probabilities in a Markov chain, and having the goal be to minimize instances of avoidable police violence over time. Anyway, it's not possible to eliminate violence from the police, unless we find a way to eliminate violence from human nature, so the goals should be about adjusting priorities, duties, and tone to minimize unnecessary violence.
  - craftinator 6y ago
    Something I've long thought on is what types of people are attracted to the US police force. If you look at it economically, by what incentives are offered, it's a bit disturbing: 1) Power over others 2) Chance to stop violence 3) Little educational requirements 4) Access to cool gear 5) Immunity from law 6) Ability to help or hurt weaker people 7) Access to drugs, guns, etc... The list goes on, but I really see two types of people drawn to these: those that seek to help, and those that seek power. The defenders, and the bullies. The saviors, and the criminals. It's naive to expect that one type makes it through much more often than the other (the "a few bad apples" analogy). If I were in organized crime, or a gang, or a neo-nazi, or just someone who was a sociopath, what better possible job is there than being a cop? Would it be that hard to fake it through whatever screenings they use (which can be NONE in some PDs) to weed out the bad actors? No. We must expect some large minority or even a majority of cops to fall into the class of bad actors.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 6y ago
  > controlling for statistical variables like community income, rural-urban differences, racial makeup, and violent crime rates. So, they must have have data on low crime areas that also have similar military gear. On a related note, do surplus statisticians cause lying journalists?
  - jakelazaroff 6y ago
    They do: > A newly published article by a group of scholars with the Emory University Department of Political Science found no relationship between the presence of surplus military equipment and lower crime rates.
- burner831234 6y ago
  check out archive.is
steve76 6y ago
The mayor or governor can be corrupt and block it. The FBI has been corrupted before. Whitey Bulger. Richard Hansen. Epstein. Or they can be honest, but can't intervene because they are on the world stage and arresting a Cuban or Chinese spy running everything would start a world war. It's a lot different when your number is called, when you're the one who's going to be shot to death by a criminal. You want everything you have and it's nowhere near enough. It's the opposite of what you think. Police just contain as much as they can. And they hide a lot of horrible monsters, worse than you can believe. If they talked about what criminals really do, there would be an unrestrained outrage which would engulf us all.
SquishyPanda23 6y ago
> there is no need, ever, for police to have the automatic weapons, APCs, and "non-lethal" weapons they are buying from the military. I agree with the sentiment, but my impression (based on little evidence) is that the "need" here is to create a wider market for these weapons. It takes money to develop new weapons, and a larger customer base helps defray those costs.
- jmcqk6 6y ago
  Maybe those weapons should cost more instead.
- jjk166 6y ago
  Under the 1033 program, police departments pay for shipment and storage of the materials they request, but they do not pay for the equipment itself. While the military may purchase more equipment then it actually needs to lower per unit price, the acquisitions as a whole are not made any cheaper and the weapons developers make no more profit. In fact, given that this material is specifically diverted from what would be sold as surplus, the military would have more money to purchase weapons with if it didn't give these supplies to police forces. It's also worth noting that, while military vehicles like MRAPs are very visible, most of the requested property is more mundane: bulk ammunition is the most requested category, followed by office supplies. It's pretty obviously just a way for the federal government to subsidize domestic police forces with money nominally intended for the defense budget.
  - iguy 6y ago
    And perhaps a way to turn over the army's stockpile & keep its suppliers in business. Quite a bit of the defense budget seems to have this goal, and it's not crazy -- if you skip a generation of tanks/planes/ships because your old ones are OK, the experience to build the next generation will have to be re-grown from scratch.
    - jjk166 6y ago
      Again though, selling the old equipment as surplus or just scrapping it achieves the same goal but also brings in some money.
Symmetry 6y ago
Yeah, I wouldn't bet on it being causal though I could make a plausible story that police departments that put dangerous looking military equipment in their recruitment videos tend to attract the wrong sort of people.
- ArnoVW 6y ago
  Or that police departments in dangerous areas have to resort to buying more lethal equipment. Thus ending up killing more no-good dangerous criminals. I'm more inclined to belief the first version, but it's good to keep in mind that this sort of interpretation has it's limits.
  - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
    There is so much that is legal to own (but of course not legal to use violently). 50 caliber machine guns are legal to own, quora reports that it can take a year to get a permit. There are places you can go and fire mortars on private land. Should the police have tanks to counter these things? Because they are legally owned in the us. The answer is no, the police should not. They have shown through their actions (repeatedly during the past 6 months on top of historical actions) that they can't be trusted with weapons this powerful.
- 13415 6y ago
  For a start, they should probably train police for two to four years like in other countries, instead of just a few months.
  - Symmetry 6y ago
    Unfortunately a lot of police training in the US is about lowering inhibitions about being the first to use violence, google "warrior training" for more details. But I think that is a very real problem in regards to the sort of late night kinetic entries that result in the deaths of so many civilians and cops. I think that SWAT teams can have their place in large metros like LA where the sort of events that called for them happen every once in a while. But in third or fourth tier cities the local government can't afford the sort of intensive training required for a job like that but also those teams are always being sent on drug raids or things like that because there just aren't any incidents that would justify the existence of the teams otherwise. But sending a SWAT team into a situation that isn't already violent is just a terrible idea and US army forces, for instance, make an effort to avoid late night raids in a way that I wish our law enforcement community would follow.
lmilcin 6y ago
It might also be because military equipment is statistically more likely to be acquired by departments in more dangerous environments. Though I still feel the explanation is a positive feedback, where being more aggressive causes more aggressive behavior to normalize faster, causing more aggressive equipment, causing police to feel more like an occupation force rather than civil servants, causing more aggresive behavior, and so on.
me_me_me 6y ago
I would guess that apart from 'super gear' making people feel more confident, it also would draw in even more people with power issues into police ranks.
ptero 6y ago
I agree with your first part that there is not necessarily a causal relationship between military equipment and killings. But your "no need, ever, for police to have automatic weapons" part is, to me, just wrong. In general, police should have enough kit to easily overpower the criminals they expect to face. We have been fortunate in many areas (e.g., most of the US, Europe and practically all urban areas) for the police to not need automatic weaponry. But this is not universal. In other parts of the world police may face a much better equipped adversaries and automatic weapons. We should strive to make the world safer so the strongest weapon the police on the street has is a book for writing fines, but until we are there we should equip law enforcement to overcome threats they expect to face. My 2c.
- Munksgaard 6y ago
  I don't know of any developed country where the police can reasonably expect to face better equipped adversaries than they can in the US. This is interesting for two reasons: You may have a point that it is necessary in the US for the police to have automatic weapons, but the US is also the only western country that has put itself in such a situation. Take from that what you will...
  - mineirobr 6y ago
    There are plenty of places. Mexico for example where the narcos have capabilities similar to the mexican military and In brazil we have little kids with automatic rifles roaming the favelas.
    - yeetawayhn 6y ago
      You missed the "developed countries" dogwhistle, which usually means rich and white nations.
      - leetcrew 6y ago
        is there a better way of describing the group of countries where it is unlikely to encounter criminals with lmgs mounted to pickup trucks?
tomschlick 6y ago
> Regardless, there is no need, ever, for police to have the automatic weapons, APCs, and "non-lethal" weapons they are buying from the military. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout is the catalyst for all of this. Police were heavily outgunned. The FBI would take hours to get there as FBI tactical teams are not in most cities and are not on call like normal SWAT teams are. APCs are purely defensive. Its effectively a Brinks armored money truck, but instead of money it carries people to/from gunfire safely.
- slg 6y ago
  >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout is the catalyst for all of this. Police were heavily outgunned. And yet the only two people who died were the two bank robbers. It sounds like the police were able to eventually take control of the situation even while heavily outgunned. So does adding more firepower on the side of police actually provide more safety when this is an example of the worst case scenario?
  - erik_seaberg 6y ago
    That was two guys on foot whose objective was only to escape. There are many worse scenarios than that.
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      > There are many worse scenarios than that. Then why aren't they the "here's why we need an APC" argument? Or are they largely theoretical?
      - bigbubba 6y ago
        I think most are a third option; not theoretical, but neither occurring in America. Consider something like the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 10 men with rifles and explosives terrorized an entire city causing hundreds of casualties. Is there any particular reason to think such a thing couldn't happen in America, where rifles and explosives aren't hard to get? Against that sort of threat, I think the police having a few armored vehicles makes sense.
Enginerrrd 6y ago
FBI yes. ATF no. They're reputation is horrendous.
throwawaysea 6y ago
There is no statistical evidence supporting the claims implied by this article or even the reversed claim that 'more aggressive' departments are seeking out military equipment. > 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). I disagree with this. The police should have automatic weapons so they are able to overpower criminals and protect themselves in dangerous situations. I want my police department to be effective and safe. It is also important that they have non-lethal equipment to de-escalate situations safely when possible. As for APCs - if it is available as a surplus piece of equipment, why shouldn't they have it? It isn't something they use everyday. There aren't police departments using heavy gas guzzling APCs for daily patrol. They use it for rare situations like riots and shootouts. Your statement about the FBI and ATF doesn't make sense to me and makes me think you aren't aware of what those agencies actually do.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tathougies 6y ago
> 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). Except those agencies aren't responsible for everday law enforcement, and some police departments are essentially fighting a war. For example, when I was a kid growing up in LA in the 90s, the gangs there were basically like warlords. Even recently, you can find examples of execution style gang murders in Los Angeles, and shootouts on the streets.
malandrew 6y ago
It may also be that the police departments that seek to purchase military equipment operate in cities/neighborhoods with a higher incident of violent crime. Los Angeles PD for example was the poster boy for getting military style gear before most departments in the country, but at the time it also dealt with more serious violence than most police departments (such as drive-by shootings). The per capita incidence of police shootings in the US compared to other developed nations seems high until you normalize it by the per capita rate of violent crimes committed by citizens.
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Its all fine to imagine the police are operating in a vacuum, where they can wait days for the FBI to respond when they encounter an emergency call with somebody with an automatic weapon. Sure, they shouldn't have to have that kind of weaponry. But neither should they encounter them on the street. Are the police are some sort of ablative shield, that can be sacrificed to a political ideal?
giantg2 6y ago
ATF has a terrible track record with this type of stuff (and other things too).
tehjoker 6y ago
If the reverse is true, you are positing that American society, the most wealthy society in the history of Earth, is so dangerous that we need jackboots and APCs in the streets. I don't buy it for a second. I think cops should be unarmed, and if they are armed, they should at least pretend to be as brave as their propaganda portrays them as and resist shooting people even if it puts them in danger. EDIT: To be even more clear, when you are not literally in a state of existential civil war, deploying militarized police is a political judgement not an evidence based one. It is a tool of para-military force used against the less powerful by the more powerful. I would argue that paramilitaries are never appropriate in civil society, even in a state of war.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>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). The FBI doesn't answer the phone when the ATF calls anymore. They learned that lesson the hard way.
Shivetya 6y ago
Oh I want to give them the benefit of doubt but metropolitan Atlanta's Doraville Police department made headlines a decade ago with their tank video. Frankly, as a Libertarian, I see zero reason that any police department have at its disposal any equipment the military has used or discarded that can lead to physical harm. This includes no vehicle that is not street legal; and no making exceptions to grant them legality does not count. As for automatic weapons, they should require a court order to unseal usage of if not by a committee which must be alerted to any request to use them. If there is an excuse for heavy weapons or such, call in the national guard or local military to assist. The police still do not need this hardware. Oh, the video is cringe heaven https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2014/sep/30/help-crowdfund-release-infamous-doraville-swat-tan/ https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2014/sep/30/help-crow...
SN76477 6y ago
When you train warriors, they start looking for a war. We need to change the mindset that police are fighting everyday. They should be community servants that aid in settling disputes.
diob 6y ago
I think these statistics tell us everything we need to know: 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... The right to a fair trial in the USA has been utterly destroyed by police who seek to be judge, jury, and executioner.
squarefoot 6y ago
"We 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." True. Still, when the only tool you have is a hammer, soon or later every problem will look like a nail.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
This makes a lot more logical sense. The already had pistols and shotguns aplenty to shoot people, adding some armored carriers, camo, and some AR15s isn't going to really add much to that capability. I find your proposal a lot more likely, the police departments that get this stuff are much more aggressive and see it more as a War on Crime, rather than to Protect and to Serve.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

nojokes 6y ago

Or 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 ago
  Or 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.
seretogis 6y ago
"Risky areas" sounds like a dog whistle to me, much like "bad neighborhood"... When you think of these "risky areas", what do the people within them look like? Do they deserve to have militarized police literally rolling armored tank-like vehicles through their neighborhood, and what sort of impact do you think that has on them?
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  I don't understand why this was downvoted.
  - throwaway2048 6y ago
    Because the down voters agree that "risky areas" aka communities full of minorities like black and hispanic people, deserve military style occupation and tactics. If you think that's not true, ask yourself why analysis of that term is not welcome. There is a long proud tradition of terrible anti-human bullshit being hidden behind neat euphemisms like that. Because it sounds reasonable, and civil. It isn't.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ffggvv 6y ago
    i downvoted it because it’s not a dog whistle. people insist on seeing race everywhere. a risky area by common sense is an area with increased violence, regardless of the racial makeup. if you can’t see why somewhere with increased violence would possibly require police to have increased capabilities i’m not sure what to say. or how it’s magically a dog whistle
- malandrew 6y ago
  If you're using the term dog whistle to describe something, you're the dog in that situation. That accusation is just a submarine form of kafkatrap.
  - 8note 6y ago
matwood 6y ago
> Or departments with more military gear are in more risky areas where the use of force is more likely. Maybe. I know anecdotally where I live has very little violent crime, and the police department is fully militarized with mraps and the like.
- adwww 6y ago
  Plural? Like one could make sense, in a siege type situation or bank robbery in progress perhaps. The sort of event that might happen once a decade or so maybe. But how many sieges or bank robberies are they expecting to need multiple of these?!
  - malandrew 6y ago
    Bank robberies used to be more common, but inflation basically took care of that https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/economists-demonstrate-exactly-why-bank-robbery-is-a-bad-idea/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/economists-demonstra...
    - ArnoVW 6y ago
      Thanks for the interesting link. Ars at its best. Though my interpretation of the article is more that the risk / reward ratio simply has become too poor, nothing to do with inflation. I suppose it is easier to rob a 150k watch from an unprotected person on the street, of hold up a Chinese tourist (who often have their holiday money in cash), if you're into that sort of thing.
  - matwood 6y ago
    My city only has 1. I was mistaken because I saw a big police show and tell at an abandoned parking lot late last year, and saw multiples. The city next door has 2, and all the adjacent cities also have their own. Keep in mind these these cities are all basically considered the same large city. It's not like they separated by 100s of miles or anything.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
jakelazaroff 6y ago
The study controls for that variable: > 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. The article explicitly cautions against drawing conclusions about causality. My intuition is that there’s truth to both explanations: cosplaying as a military makes police more violent, and intrinsically violent departments are more likely to seek out military equipment. And frankly, the second conclusion scares me more. If the causal relationship is “equipment —> violence”, we can solve it by simply banning the use of military equipment by police. If the relationship goes the other way, though, we still have to deal with violent cops who want to hurt civilians.
- anthony_romeo 6y ago
  > If the relationship goes the other way, though, we still have to deal with violent cops who want to hurt civilians. If the problem is iterative, then I'd think in terms of adjusting probabilities in a Markov chain, and having the goal be to minimize instances of avoidable police violence over time. Anyway, it's not possible to eliminate violence from the police, unless we find a way to eliminate violence from human nature, so the goals should be about adjusting priorities, duties, and tone to minimize unnecessary violence.
- craftinator 6y ago
  Something I've long thought on is what types of people are attracted to the US police force. If you look at it economically, by what incentives are offered, it's a bit disturbing: 1) Power over others 2) Chance to stop violence 3) Little educational requirements 4) Access to cool gear 5) Immunity from law 6) Ability to help or hurt weaker people 7) Access to drugs, guns, etc... The list goes on, but I really see two types of people drawn to these: those that seek to help, and those that seek power. The defenders, and the bullies. The saviors, and the criminals. It's naive to expect that one type makes it through much more often than the other (the "a few bad apples" analogy). If I were in organized crime, or a gang, or a neo-nazi, or just someone who was a sociopath, what better possible job is there than being a cop? Would it be that hard to fake it through whatever screenings they use (which can be NONE in some PDs) to weed out the bad actors? No. We must expect some large minority or even a majority of cops to fall into the class of bad actors.
0xdeadbeefbabe 6y ago
> controlling for statistical variables like community income, rural-urban differences, racial makeup, and violent crime rates. So, they must have have data on low crime areas that also have similar military gear. On a related note, do surplus statisticians cause lying journalists?
- jakelazaroff 6y ago
  They do: > A newly published article by a group of scholars with the Emory University Department of Political Science found no relationship between the presence of surplus military equipment and lower crime rates.
burner831234 6y ago
check out archive.is

steve76 6y ago

The mayor or governor can be corrupt and block it. The FBI has been corrupted before. Whitey Bulger. Richard Hansen. Epstein. Or they can be honest, but can't intervene because they are on the world stage and arresting a Cuban or Chinese spy running everything would start a world war. It's a lot different when your number is called, when you're the one who's going to be shot to death by a criminal. You want everything you have and it's nowhere near enough. It's the opposite of what you think. Police just contain as much as they can. And they hide a lot of horrible monsters, worse than you can believe. If they talked about what criminals really do, there would be an unrestrained outrage which would engulf us all.

SquishyPanda23 6y ago

> there is no need, ever, for police to have the automatic weapons, APCs, and "non-lethal" weapons they are buying from the military. I agree with the sentiment, but my impression (based on little evidence) is that the "need" here is to create a wider market for these weapons. It takes money to develop new weapons, and a larger customer base helps defray those costs.

jmcqk6 6y ago
Maybe those weapons should cost more instead.
jjk166 6y ago
Under the 1033 program, police departments pay for shipment and storage of the materials they request, but they do not pay for the equipment itself. While the military may purchase more equipment then it actually needs to lower per unit price, the acquisitions as a whole are not made any cheaper and the weapons developers make no more profit. In fact, given that this material is specifically diverted from what would be sold as surplus, the military would have more money to purchase weapons with if it didn't give these supplies to police forces. It's also worth noting that, while military vehicles like MRAPs are very visible, most of the requested property is more mundane: bulk ammunition is the most requested category, followed by office supplies. It's pretty obviously just a way for the federal government to subsidize domestic police forces with money nominally intended for the defense budget.
- iguy 6y ago
  And perhaps a way to turn over the army's stockpile & keep its suppliers in business. Quite a bit of the defense budget seems to have this goal, and it's not crazy -- if you skip a generation of tanks/planes/ships because your old ones are OK, the experience to build the next generation will have to be re-grown from scratch.
  - jjk166 6y ago
    Again though, selling the old equipment as surplus or just scrapping it achieves the same goal but also brings in some money.

Symmetry 6y ago

Yeah, I wouldn't bet on it being causal though I could make a plausible story that police departments that put dangerous looking military equipment in their recruitment videos tend to attract the wrong sort of people.

ArnoVW 6y ago
Or that police departments in dangerous areas have to resort to buying more lethal equipment. Thus ending up killing more no-good dangerous criminals. I'm more inclined to belief the first version, but it's good to keep in mind that this sort of interpretation has it's limits.
- NotSammyHagar 6y ago
  There is so much that is legal to own (but of course not legal to use violently). 50 caliber machine guns are legal to own, quora reports that it can take a year to get a permit. There are places you can go and fire mortars on private land. Should the police have tanks to counter these things? Because they are legally owned in the us. The answer is no, the police should not. They have shown through their actions (repeatedly during the past 6 months on top of historical actions) that they can't be trusted with weapons this powerful.
13415 6y ago
For a start, they should probably train police for two to four years like in other countries, instead of just a few months.
- Symmetry 6y ago
  Unfortunately a lot of police training in the US is about lowering inhibitions about being the first to use violence, google "warrior training" for more details. But I think that is a very real problem in regards to the sort of late night kinetic entries that result in the deaths of so many civilians and cops. I think that SWAT teams can have their place in large metros like LA where the sort of events that called for them happen every once in a while. But in third or fourth tier cities the local government can't afford the sort of intensive training required for a job like that but also those teams are always being sent on drug raids or things like that because there just aren't any incidents that would justify the existence of the teams otherwise. But sending a SWAT team into a situation that isn't already violent is just a terrible idea and US army forces, for instance, make an effort to avoid late night raids in a way that I wish our law enforcement community would follow.

lmilcin 6y ago

It might also be because military equipment is statistically more likely to be acquired by departments in more dangerous environments. Though I still feel the explanation is a positive feedback, where being more aggressive causes more aggressive behavior to normalize faster, causing more aggressive equipment, causing police to feel more like an occupation force rather than civil servants, causing more aggresive behavior, and so on.

me_me_me 6y ago

I would guess that apart from 'super gear' making people feel more confident, it also would draw in even more people with power issues into police ranks.

ptero 6y ago

I agree with your first part that there is not necessarily a causal relationship between military equipment and killings. But your "no need, ever, for police to have automatic weapons" part is, to me, just wrong. In general, police should have enough kit to easily overpower the criminals they expect to face. We have been fortunate in many areas (e.g., most of the US, Europe and practically all urban areas) for the police to not need automatic weaponry. But this is not universal. In other parts of the world police may face a much better equipped adversaries and automatic weapons. We should strive to make the world safer so the strongest weapon the police on the street has is a book for writing fines, but until we are there we should equip law enforcement to overcome threats they expect to face. My 2c.

Munksgaard 6y ago
I don't know of any developed country where the police can reasonably expect to face better equipped adversaries than they can in the US. This is interesting for two reasons: You may have a point that it is necessary in the US for the police to have automatic weapons, but the US is also the only western country that has put itself in such a situation. Take from that what you will...
- mineirobr 6y ago
  There are plenty of places. Mexico for example where the narcos have capabilities similar to the mexican military and In brazil we have little kids with automatic rifles roaming the favelas.
  - yeetawayhn 6y ago
    You missed the "developed countries" dogwhistle, which usually means rich and white nations.
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      is there a better way of describing the group of countries where it is unlikely to encounter criminals with lmgs mounted to pickup trucks?

tomschlick 6y ago

> Regardless, there is no need, ever, for police to have the automatic weapons, APCs, and "non-lethal" weapons they are buying from the military. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout is the catalyst for all of this. Police were heavily outgunned. The FBI would take hours to get there as FBI tactical teams are not in most cities and are not on call like normal SWAT teams are. APCs are purely defensive. Its effectively a Brinks armored money truck, but instead of money it carries people to/from gunfire safely.

slg 6y ago
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout is the catalyst for all of this. Police were heavily outgunned. And yet the only two people who died were the two bank robbers. It sounds like the police were able to eventually take control of the situation even while heavily outgunned. So does adding more firepower on the side of police actually provide more safety when this is an example of the worst case scenario?
- erik_seaberg 6y ago
  That was two guys on foot whose objective was only to escape. There are many worse scenarios than that.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    > There are many worse scenarios than that. Then why aren't they the "here's why we need an APC" argument? Or are they largely theoretical?
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      I think most are a third option; not theoretical, but neither occurring in America. Consider something like the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 10 men with rifles and explosives terrorized an entire city causing hundreds of casualties. Is there any particular reason to think such a thing couldn't happen in America, where rifles and explosives aren't hard to get? Against that sort of threat, I think the police having a few armored vehicles makes sense.

Enginerrrd 6y ago

FBI yes. ATF no. They're reputation is horrendous.

throwawaysea 6y ago

There is no statistical evidence supporting the claims implied by this article or even the reversed claim that 'more aggressive' departments are seeking out military equipment. > 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). I disagree with this. The police should have automatic weapons so they are able to overpower criminals and protect themselves in dangerous situations. I want my police department to be effective and safe. It is also important that they have non-lethal equipment to de-escalate situations safely when possible. As for APCs - if it is available as a surplus piece of equipment, why shouldn't they have it? It isn't something they use everyday. There aren't police departments using heavy gas guzzling APCs for daily patrol. They use it for rare situations like riots and shootouts. Your statement about the FBI and ATF doesn't make sense to me and makes me think you aren't aware of what those agencies actually do.

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tathougies 6y ago

> 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). Except those agencies aren't responsible for everday law enforcement, and some police departments are essentially fighting a war. For example, when I was a kid growing up in LA in the 90s, the gangs there were basically like warlords. Even recently, you can find examples of execution style gang murders in Los Angeles, and shootouts on the streets.

malandrew 6y ago

It may also be that the police departments that seek to purchase military equipment operate in cities/neighborhoods with a higher incident of violent crime. Los Angeles PD for example was the poster boy for getting military style gear before most departments in the country, but at the time it also dealt with more serious violence than most police departments (such as drive-by shootings). The per capita incidence of police shootings in the US compared to other developed nations seems high until you normalize it by the per capita rate of violent crimes committed by citizens.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

Its all fine to imagine the police are operating in a vacuum, where they can wait days for the FBI to respond when they encounter an emergency call with somebody with an automatic weapon. Sure, they shouldn't have to have that kind of weaponry. But neither should they encounter them on the street. Are the police are some sort of ablative shield, that can be sacrificed to a political ideal?

giantg2 6y ago

ATF has a terrible track record with this type of stuff (and other things too).

tehjoker 6y ago

If the reverse is true, you are positing that American society, the most wealthy society in the history of Earth, is so dangerous that we need jackboots and APCs in the streets. I don't buy it for a second. I think cops should be unarmed, and if they are armed, they should at least pretend to be as brave as their propaganda portrays them as and resist shooting people even if it puts them in danger. EDIT: To be even more clear, when you are not literally in a state of existential civil war, deploying militarized police is a political judgement not an evidence based one. It is a tool of para-military force used against the less powerful by the more powerful. I would argue that paramilitaries are never appropriate in civil society, even in a state of war.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

>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). The FBI doesn't answer the phone when the ATF calls anymore. They learned that lesson the hard way.

Shivetya 6y ago

Oh I want to give them the benefit of doubt but metropolitan Atlanta's Doraville Police department made headlines a decade ago with their tank video. Frankly, as a Libertarian, I see zero reason that any police department have at its disposal any equipment the military has used or discarded that can lead to physical harm. This includes no vehicle that is not street legal; and no making exceptions to grant them legality does not count. As for automatic weapons, they should require a court order to unseal usage of if not by a committee which must be alerted to any request to use them. If there is an excuse for heavy weapons or such, call in the national guard or local military to assist. The police still do not need this hardware. Oh, the video is cringe heaven https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2014/sep/30/help-crowdfund-release-infamous-doraville-swat-tan/ https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2014/sep/30/help-crow...

SN76477 6y ago

When you train warriors, they start looking for a war. We need to change the mindset that police are fighting everyday. They should be community servants that aid in settling disputes.

diob 6y ago

I think these statistics tell us everything we need to know: 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... The right to a fair trial in the USA has been utterly destroyed by police who seek to be judge, jury, and executioner.

squarefoot 6y ago

"We 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." True. Still, when the only tool you have is a hammer, soon or later every problem will look like a nail.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

This makes a lot more logical sense. The already had pistols and shotguns aplenty to shoot people, adding some armored carriers, camo, and some AR15s isn't going to really add much to that capability. I find your proposal a lot more likely, the police departments that get this stuff are much more aggressive and see it more as a War on Crime, rather than to Protect and to Serve.

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