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Even more fundamental is the adversarial relationship that the culture of policing has developed with the public. The warrior mindset is at the root of so many

Even more fundamental is the adversarial relationship that the culture of policing has developed with the public. The warrior mindset is at the root of so many of these problems. We need to disband all of the police forces and start again with a new culture based around a guardian mindset and community service. It's a similar problem (albeit much less extreme) to what's happening right now in Myanmar with the military. It's so difficult to defuse because the military and the civilians there have such an adversarial relationship due to the long years of dictatorship. The solution in both cases is to reincorporate the warrior subculture (police or military) into civilian life. I just don't know how you achieve that.

infogulch 6y ago
> The solution is to reincorporate the warrior subculture into civilian life. I have friends that believe that the only solution is starting a war just to provide the cultural outlet. Destroying warrior culture altogether is not an answer either (and a foolish idea besides), but I hope we can discover some other answer before the next war. Aliens maybe?
- toomanybeersies 6y ago
  Reducing the number of military veterans who become cops would be a good place to start.
  - 23iofj 6y ago
    Reducing the number of military veterans period would be a good place to start. The USA does not need a massive standing peacetime army/navy/airforce. There's a real human cost too -- we kill more of our own soldiers in accidents than in actual combat. Cut personnel in each branch by half, significantly consolidate bases, and modestly increase pay for the people who remain. Then, redirect the enormous savings to actually useful jobs programs. Build roads instead of running around in circles in rural Alabama/North Carolina for four years.
    - treeman79 6y ago
      How is your Chinese / Russian? Remove the military, and another one will replace it. Ukraine gave up its nukes and lost a lot of the country for it.
      - oblio 6y ago
        There is a middle ground between "military budget equal to that of the next 10 countries combined" and "0 military".
    - zachrose 6y ago
      Active military suicides are also more common than combat deaths. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/01/14/169364733/u-s-militarys-suicide-rate-surpassed-combat-deaths-in-2012 https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/01/14/169364733...
    - vlozko 6y ago
      If not the US, then who? Trump, for all his faults, was spot on about the Europe's lack of fiscal participation in NATO. They were enjoying the privileges of what you described without ever worrying about the need for protecting it because the US was footing the bill. If it wasn't for NATO, do you really think the Baltic States would still be free from Russia today? And what about the Pacific islands? Nobody is stepping up to the plate to protect the sovereignty of those countries, something they themselves aren't capable of doing against a force like China.
      - vkou 6y ago
        Europe's 'lack of fiscal participation' in NATO only looks anemic when compared to the United States, which alone outspends the entire rest of the world, combined, on its military. Europe's not going to afford to carry out a successful land invasion of Russia anytime soon, but if that's the level of defense spending Trump was looking for, I'm glad he was told to pound sand.
        vlozko 6y ago
  - munk-a 6y ago
    I disagree strongly with this actually. The police shouldn't be a military force and shouldn't act like it but, at least in terms of the Army, rules of engagement taught to soldiers are a lot more focused on de-escalation and proper response to force than what most police officers receive. I just think you need to filter out the nut-jobs that think they're Rambo and view the streets as a warzone.
    - Teever 6y ago
      I agree with the premise that American soldiers are taught and display a more rigid rules of engagement abroad but I would be interested to see exactly what kind of ex-soldier becomes a police officer. My suspicion is that the kinds of soldiers who become problem police officers are the soldiers who didn't actually face combat abroad. I imagine it's the kind of soldier who fantasized about front-line service but wasn't quite cut out for it for one reason or another and they've directed their disappointment about that into being an abusive police officer.
      - munk-a 6y ago
        Actually yea - I can't deny that your proposed person is pretty likely to go into policing after serving in the military. But I do think that people with a strong sense of civil service would also be likely to follow that path, people (generally speaking) aren't going into the military for glory - a lot of folks do it out of civil obligation and another large slice is there since it's a good way to get some economic mobility. That said, yea, glory hounds would make really scary police officers.
      - azernik 6y ago
        Generally, the kinds of cops that become whistleblowers, or are fired for insufficient brutality, are veterans. The archetypical "warrior cop" is a non-veteran who likes military imagery but has no experience with military discipline or subordination.
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      Rules of engagement depend on where you are, who you're fighting and who is watching. Turns out that the US doesn't enforce any RoE in its borders, and you can use all the brutality and shiny weapons that you want against people living there with little to no oversight at all.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- CuriouslyC 6y ago
  That's how Europe got the crusades. Knights were in large part a response to raiders from the steppes and fjords, and when those raids slowed, the protectors turned into gangsters that needed to be sent on a fools errand.
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    They can man the B Ark when SpaceX gets Starship up and running...
FlownScepter 6y ago
> Even more fundamental is the adversarial relationship that the culture of policing has developed with the public. The warrior mindset is at the root of so many of these problems. We need to disband all of the police forces and start again with a new culture based around a guardian mindset and community service. The problem is every time this is brought up, it's met with talk of how reform is possible, reform is the answer, you can't disband the police because $(blatantly_ridiculous_reason). The police in this country are unaccountable, in a literal sense. There is no mechanism to hold them accountable; what exists to do this is inefficient, inaccessible to most people who may need to use it, and also largely ineffective even in the rare cases it does work. And none of this can surprise when you know the past of most police offices lies in slave patrols and union busting Pinkertons. Policing in the United States is not broken, it's doing exactly what it was always intended to do: abusing poor people in the interest of the owning class. You can't reform that which is doing exactly what it was designed to do. And if you hold officers accountable, then they won't overpolice minority neighborhoods, they won't beat people to death for sleeping in front of your buildings, they might hesitate to shoot someone in the back for stealing a $5 beer. I.e., they become less effective to the owning class. And that's why it doesn't happen. Until this cultural gap is resolved, where we acknowledge not just what is happening but why it's happening and that it's happening was the intended, desired outcome, we can't move forward on it.
- treeman79 6y ago
  Grew up in a city that disbanded its police department. Became a complete hellhole as calls to burglary, home invasion and death threats would take an hour or more for county sheriff. After numerous incidents sherif us told to get a gun; but gave a lot of warnings about how we would go to jail if we defended ourselves. Unless a very narrow range of criteria were met. Moved as far as way as possible.
  - oblio 6y ago
    I don't think people are asking for abolishing the police force, but for restarting it with new or reformed people and with strong civilian oversight. Cops should go to jail for abuses.
barry27 6y ago
@chongli This is very true, the "warrior mindset". It's the prevailing mindset, to a certain extent, with the Australian police too. As an example, drink-driving ads in Australia typically feature a stern face behind a pair of ray-bans and a message to the effect that the police are going to be hunting the civilians. "You're in our sights". "Stop it or cop it", etc. Very divisive, and bound to encourage the warrior mentality in a certain proportion of the police force. This separation of police and civilian is the core of the problem. The citizens of a country need to be able to perceive members of the police force as "one of us", rather than "one of them". In some countries the only real obstacle to reaching that point is that some people won't strictly adhere to a policy of de-escalation. In other countries there are of course far bigger, institutional, issues at play.
kingkawn 6y ago
That sounds good til you realize then you’d have released a huge number of highly trained, radicalized, disgruntled militants into the population. The disbanding of the Iraqi military by the US occupation comes to mind.
- dmd 6y ago
  Clearly, then, the answer is to keep radicalized, disgruntled militants in positions of absolute power!
- munk-a 6y ago
  If these folks are disgruntled militants then keeping them within or without of police jobs isn't going to impact that. Disbanding the Iraqi military was a very interesting event but the militia-like groups coming out of that action is more an issue of ceasing pay to folks with no other options in a pretty dysfunctional economy than anything else.
- Teever 6y ago
  Yes but now they don't have legal immunity from American citizens who both exercise their second amendment rights and willing to take proportional actions to defend themselves against individuals threatening their lives. In this situation there would be more armed citizens than disgruntled ex-cops so the problem should take care of itself in short order. The issue isn't that the police are radicalized and disgruntled. It's that they have the budgetary and legal resources to operate with impunity. Take that away and they're just a gang. Other gangs will eat them for lunch.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Some fat old police officers are no match for the (not disbanded) actual soldiers who are somehow often subject to more scrutiny than their civilian "counterparts".
- dTal 6y ago
  Released? Right now they have a government issue car and firearm! They're paid to roam the streets! How could they possibly be any more "released" than they are now?

infogulch 6y ago

> The solution is to reincorporate the warrior subculture into civilian life. I have friends that believe that the only solution is starting a war just to provide the cultural outlet. Destroying warrior culture altogether is not an answer either (and a foolish idea besides), but I hope we can discover some other answer before the next war. Aliens maybe?

toomanybeersies 6y ago
Reducing the number of military veterans who become cops would be a good place to start.
- 23iofj 6y ago
  Reducing the number of military veterans period would be a good place to start. The USA does not need a massive standing peacetime army/navy/airforce. There's a real human cost too -- we kill more of our own soldiers in accidents than in actual combat. Cut personnel in each branch by half, significantly consolidate bases, and modestly increase pay for the people who remain. Then, redirect the enormous savings to actually useful jobs programs. Build roads instead of running around in circles in rural Alabama/North Carolina for four years.
  - treeman79 6y ago
    How is your Chinese / Russian? Remove the military, and another one will replace it. Ukraine gave up its nukes and lost a lot of the country for it.
    - oblio 6y ago
      There is a middle ground between "military budget equal to that of the next 10 countries combined" and "0 military".
  - zachrose 6y ago
    Active military suicides are also more common than combat deaths. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/01/14/169364733/u-s-militarys-suicide-rate-surpassed-combat-deaths-in-2012 https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/01/14/169364733...
  - vlozko 6y ago
    If not the US, then who? Trump, for all his faults, was spot on about the Europe's lack of fiscal participation in NATO. They were enjoying the privileges of what you described without ever worrying about the need for protecting it because the US was footing the bill. If it wasn't for NATO, do you really think the Baltic States would still be free from Russia today? And what about the Pacific islands? Nobody is stepping up to the plate to protect the sovereignty of those countries, something they themselves aren't capable of doing against a force like China.
    - vkou 6y ago
      Europe's 'lack of fiscal participation' in NATO only looks anemic when compared to the United States, which alone outspends the entire rest of the world, combined, on its military. Europe's not going to afford to carry out a successful land invasion of Russia anytime soon, but if that's the level of defense spending Trump was looking for, I'm glad he was told to pound sand.
      - vlozko 6y ago
- munk-a 6y ago
  I disagree strongly with this actually. The police shouldn't be a military force and shouldn't act like it but, at least in terms of the Army, rules of engagement taught to soldiers are a lot more focused on de-escalation and proper response to force than what most police officers receive. I just think you need to filter out the nut-jobs that think they're Rambo and view the streets as a warzone.
  - Teever 6y ago
    I agree with the premise that American soldiers are taught and display a more rigid rules of engagement abroad but I would be interested to see exactly what kind of ex-soldier becomes a police officer. My suspicion is that the kinds of soldiers who become problem police officers are the soldiers who didn't actually face combat abroad. I imagine it's the kind of soldier who fantasized about front-line service but wasn't quite cut out for it for one reason or another and they've directed their disappointment about that into being an abusive police officer.
    - munk-a 6y ago
      Actually yea - I can't deny that your proposed person is pretty likely to go into policing after serving in the military. But I do think that people with a strong sense of civil service would also be likely to follow that path, people (generally speaking) aren't going into the military for glory - a lot of folks do it out of civil obligation and another large slice is there since it's a good way to get some economic mobility. That said, yea, glory hounds would make really scary police officers.
    - azernik 6y ago
      Generally, the kinds of cops that become whistleblowers, or are fired for insufficient brutality, are veterans. The archetypical "warrior cop" is a non-veteran who likes military imagery but has no experience with military discipline or subordination.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    Rules of engagement depend on where you are, who you're fighting and who is watching. Turns out that the US doesn't enforce any RoE in its borders, and you can use all the brutality and shiny weapons that you want against people living there with little to no oversight at all.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
CuriouslyC 6y ago
That's how Europe got the crusades. Knights were in large part a response to raiders from the steppes and fjords, and when those raids slowed, the protectors turned into gangsters that needed to be sent on a fools errand.
- nostrademons 6y ago
  They can man the B Ark when SpaceX gets Starship up and running...

FlownScepter 6y ago

> Even more fundamental is the adversarial relationship that the culture of policing has developed with the public. The warrior mindset is at the root of so many of these problems. We need to disband all of the police forces and start again with a new culture based around a guardian mindset and community service. The problem is every time this is brought up, it's met with talk of how reform is possible, reform is the answer, you can't disband the police because $(blatantly_ridiculous_reason). The police in this country are unaccountable, in a literal sense. There is no mechanism to hold them accountable; what exists to do this is inefficient, inaccessible to most people who may need to use it, and also largely ineffective even in the rare cases it does work. And none of this can surprise when you know the past of most police offices lies in slave patrols and union busting Pinkertons. Policing in the United States is not broken, it's doing exactly what it was always intended to do: abusing poor people in the interest of the owning class. You can't reform that which is doing exactly what it was designed to do. And if you hold officers accountable, then they won't overpolice minority neighborhoods, they won't beat people to death for sleeping in front of your buildings, they might hesitate to shoot someone in the back for stealing a $5 beer. I.e., they become less effective to the owning class. And that's why it doesn't happen. Until this cultural gap is resolved, where we acknowledge not just what is happening but why it's happening and that it's happening was the intended, desired outcome, we can't move forward on it.

treeman79 6y ago
Grew up in a city that disbanded its police department. Became a complete hellhole as calls to burglary, home invasion and death threats would take an hour or more for county sheriff. After numerous incidents sherif us told to get a gun; but gave a lot of warnings about how we would go to jail if we defended ourselves. Unless a very narrow range of criteria were met. Moved as far as way as possible.
- oblio 6y ago
  I don't think people are asking for abolishing the police force, but for restarting it with new or reformed people and with strong civilian oversight. Cops should go to jail for abuses.

barry27 6y ago

@chongli This is very true, the "warrior mindset". It's the prevailing mindset, to a certain extent, with the Australian police too. As an example, drink-driving ads in Australia typically feature a stern face behind a pair of ray-bans and a message to the effect that the police are going to be hunting the civilians. "You're in our sights". "Stop it or cop it", etc. Very divisive, and bound to encourage the warrior mentality in a certain proportion of the police force. This separation of police and civilian is the core of the problem. The citizens of a country need to be able to perceive members of the police force as "one of us", rather than "one of them". In some countries the only real obstacle to reaching that point is that some people won't strictly adhere to a policy of de-escalation. In other countries there are of course far bigger, institutional, issues at play.

kingkawn 6y ago

That sounds good til you realize then you’d have released a huge number of highly trained, radicalized, disgruntled militants into the population. The disbanding of the Iraqi military by the US occupation comes to mind.

dmd 6y ago
Clearly, then, the answer is to keep radicalized, disgruntled militants in positions of absolute power!
munk-a 6y ago
If these folks are disgruntled militants then keeping them within or without of police jobs isn't going to impact that. Disbanding the Iraqi military was a very interesting event but the militia-like groups coming out of that action is more an issue of ceasing pay to folks with no other options in a pretty dysfunctional economy than anything else.
Teever 6y ago
Yes but now they don't have legal immunity from American citizens who both exercise their second amendment rights and willing to take proportional actions to defend themselves against individuals threatening their lives. In this situation there would be more armed citizens than disgruntled ex-cops so the problem should take care of itself in short order. The issue isn't that the police are radicalized and disgruntled. It's that they have the budgetary and legal resources to operate with impunity. Take that away and they're just a gang. Other gangs will eat them for lunch.
mhh__ 6y ago
Some fat old police officers are no match for the (not disbanded) actual soldiers who are somehow often subject to more scrutiny than their civilian "counterparts".
dTal 6y ago
Released? Right now they have a government issue car and firearm! They're paid to roam the streets! How could they possibly be any more "released" than they are now?