11 ms·

I have a potentially silly question, and obviously naive - but why so many drawn guns? Fun music videos aside, what was the background here? Were they coming in

I have a potentially silly question, and obviously naive - but why so many drawn guns? Fun music videos aside, what was the background here? Were they coming in on a Massive gang fortress? Or are all the stereotypes of American police forces true and they just come guns a-blazing all the time? I mean, that wasn't even police officers with hand guns, they have army-like guys with massive automatic rifles, and they seem to keep them drawn and hair triggered throughout the search? :O (on aside, I do enjoy watching British crime procedural shows as contrast, where seemingly nobody has guns and they have to call in a special unit if they actually need somebody with a handgun)

ceejayoz 7mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_the_Warrior_Cop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_the_Warrior_Cop Watch the short clip in https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/rcgkis/us_delegates_discuss_police_scotland_deescalation/ https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/rcgkis/u... - American cops get shown Scottish cops' deescalation procedures, and they scoff at it. "When you say preservation of life, it is… everybody's life. Ours has a pecking order. I'm just being honest."
- petesergeant 7mo ago
  I mean the key point there I think is the one where they point out that Brits simply wouldn’t accept police regularly shooting people. Policing for the people by the people.* * and pretend Northern Ireland doesn’t exist, or course
  - GJim 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - petesergeant 7mo ago
      If you need some context, you can look up the history of policing in Northern Ireland on Wikipedia, where British police were happily shooting other British people for many years.
      - GJim 7mo ago
        [flagged]
  - roryirvine 7mo ago
    It's rare even in NI. PSNI had one single firearm discharge in the two year period covering October 2023 - September 2025. Plus 948 uses of irritant spray, 496 uses of their baton, and 38 taser discharges in the same period. And 23,489 uses of "unarmed physical tactics". That's for a population of around 2 million. By comparison, SFPD had 10 "officer involved shootings" in the past year for a population of 800k, a rate fifty times higher than that in NI.
    - Anthony-G 7mo ago
      True. The PSNI have had an excellent record – particularly given the difficult context they work in. I guess the above poster is thinking of the shoot-to-kill era of the 80s (still well within living memory): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot-to-kill_policy_in_Northern_Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot-to-kill_policy_in_Northe...
      - roryirvine 7mo ago
        Yeah, it was very different back then. And not just the police - we had the army on the streets with weapons drawn, routinely aiming at passersby. The political situation in the late 1960s provided plenty of kindling, but it seems clear that most of the sparks that actually caused the conflagration came from the barrel of guns held by soldiers and the police. They were directly responsible both for the death of the civil rights movement and the collapse of the government, and without the heavy-handed response it's likely that the settlement of the late 90s would've happened 25 years earlier. It's actually a great example of why the militarisation of policing should be resisted at all cost.
    - BobaFloutist 7mo ago
      The one thing I'll say in defense of American cops is that they are police a population that's vastly more likely to have their own guns, too. Of course it's not like American cops have recognized the danger that poses and politically aligned themselves with reducing or restricting access to guns, so they lose a lot of credit there, but they are genuinely facing a better armed and therefore more dangerous population.
  - watwut 7mo ago
    In Britain, there is independent civilian investigation when cops kill a person. It creates pressure to not kill, because you wont be judged by buddies.
    - tialaramex 7mo ago
      Well, the IOPC (Independent Office for Police Conduct) has mandatory referrals, not only when police apparently shot somebody, or they die in police custody, or in a traffic accident with a police vehicle, but also cases where the police were recently involved. e.g. Sharon calls police because she says her husband punched her, when officers attend Sharon now says he didn't mean to and seems reluctant to leave or for her husband to be arrested, attending officers decide to leave it as it is, an hour later Sharon is dead and her husband is her presumed killer - that's a police involved death and so that gets referred to the IOPC even though nobody thinks a cop killed anybody. However, the IOPC is not mandated to conduct investigations. So it is possible (though less likely for a shooting) that the IOPC will just kick it back to local police. It is also possible (and more likely) that they will oversee but use local police to do the actual work, just because that's much cheaper and their budget is limited.
  - _menelaus 7mo ago
    Have you ever been to inner city America? Honestly curious. I couldn't imagine policing it without using a gun sometime.
- EQmWgw87pw 7mo ago
  So are we all just oblivious to the fact that in the US, civilians practically have access to military gear? How can you police that type of population with sticks and stones?
  - cortesoft 7mo ago
    I can see the argument how you would treat a suspect with a gun differently than you would if they have a knife. However, American cops also use guns against suspects with knives or other weapons that they also use in places like Scotland. Why couldn’t American police use these techniques when the suspect doesn’t have a gun? I know the standard response is, “well, they COULD have a gun!”, but I don’t think that is a good enough reason to always go straight to extreme response. If a suspect is brandishing a knife, he probably doesn’t also have a gun.
    - EQmWgw87pw 7mo ago
      Personally I’ve had encounters with LE and have not had a gun drawn yet, so it’s obviously not the default. But I disagree, I think brandishing a knife is already extreme behavior, I don’t think it’s logical to think “because he has a weapon he probably doesn’t have another!”. And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?
      - tverbeure 7mo ago
        In most civilized societies, there's an extremely high chance that somebody wielding a knife doesn't have a gun.
        nsxwolf 7mo ago
        Wielding a knife is a deadly threat so I am not sure what the relevance is.
        tverbeure 7mo ago
- keybored 7mo ago
  > > I'm just being honest. Just a salt of the earth officer telling it like it dog-gamn is. :|
  - mmaunder 7mo ago
    I think she got a few "oh shit she spoke truth" reactions around her which is what prompted that.
- Henchman21 7mo ago
  That should be immediately disqualifying for an law enforcement officer. Saying that on the record should end their career immediately. Alas, we don't live in a just world and they will likely be continuously promoted.
  - drsalt 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - tomhow 7mo ago
      This kind of comment is unacceptable on HN. It breaches these guidelines... Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - slyall 7mo ago
    So what happens to all the other cops that believe that but don't say it?
    - account42 7mo ago
      They at least know that it's not acceptable.
    - Henchman21 7mo ago
      The same thing that happens to the folks that say it out loud now. Absolutely nothing.
  - bean469 7mo ago
    Although just anecdata, I have heard the exact same point from US cops numerous times in private conversations
garciasn 7mo ago
#1 - He's Black. #2 - That's how the police in America operate now; even for the most common interactions w/the public. I know this may sound like I'm being an asshole, but I'm not.
- bigstrat2003 7mo ago
  > That's how the police in America operate now; even for the most common interactions w/the public. You cannot generalize police forces across the entire country that way. I've never had such an interaction with a police officer, presumably because the police department in my city is run better than that.
  - simonhfrost 7mo ago
    Are you white?
  - Tostino 7mo ago
    That's lucky. My county sheriff implemented predictive policing [1] until they were forced to stop because of many constitutional violations. 1. https://ij.org/press-release/case-closed-pasco-sheriff-admits-predictive-policing-program-violated-constitution/ https://ij.org/press-release/case-closed-pasco-sheriff-admit...
    - johnnyanmac 7mo ago
      Wow. I know people are talking about how they are using 1984 as an instruction manual. But I'd hope we wouldn't be stupid enough to try and re=enact The Minority Report , especially without the Sci fi psychic humans.
  - AngryData 7mo ago
    Its more likely because affluent people live in that area who can afford to drop $100k on a lawyer and sue the department. If you are in an area where people are poor and can't drop that kind of money on a lawyer and get the case pushed to state or federal courts the cops know they won't get in trouble for being pieces of shit and see citizens as an easy source of funding to exploit.
chneu 7mo ago
American police are trained to be afraid. They escalate situations constantly. They're trained that every traffic stop is LIKELY their last. I've had a gun pulled on me twice for traffic stops when I went to grab something. I'm white.
- ceejayoz 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - tacitusarc 7mo ago
    The Snopes article is useful. For those who don’t want to read it, here is what Grossman says about that quotation: > That clip took my entire, full day presentation, and took it completely out of context. -They left out the part where I say that this is a normal biological, hormonal backlash from fight-or-flight (sympathetic nervous system arousal) to feed-and-breed (parasympathetic nervous system arousal) that can happen to anyone in a traumatic event. -They left out the part where I say that there is nothing wrong if it doesn’t happen, and absolutely nothing wrong if it does happen. -They left out the part where I say it happens to fire, EMS and even victims of violent crime. -They left out where I say that it scares the hell out of people. -They left out where I talk about it (and remember it is common in survivors of violent crime), as kind of a beautiful affirmation of life in the face of death; a grasping for closeness and intimate reassurance in the face of tragedy.
    - ceejayoz 7mo ago
      Yeah, shitty people often claim the context is exonerating. > They left out where I say that it scares the hell out of people. People literally pay money to do things that feel that way. Haunted houses, bungee jumping, skydiving. Context: Grossman's employed to train cops to overcome relutance to shoot.
    - malfist 7mo ago
      I'm not sure that's at all a defense. That context in no way absolves him of bragging about how he's gets the best sex in his life EVERY TIME HE KILLS SOMEONE.
legitster 7mo ago
It's a country with a lot of guns. Police do regularly get shot at when raiding. And police departments get sent videos of every officer death from around the country and regularly watch them for "training purposes". So it makes sense that they are in a constant state of paranoia.
- martin_a 7mo ago
  > It's a country with a lot of guns. Police do regularly get shot at when raiding. Call me naive, but I think this could be solved by stricter gun laws. Yes, bad guys might have guns, but that's the case everywhere around the world. But being afraid that everybody could have a gun and use it against you while doing your work must clearly change something in your behaviour as a police officer... Why not calm down the whole situation by reducing the number of guns then...
  - Aurornis 7mo ago
    > Yes, bad guys might have guns, but that's the case everywhere around the world. The number of guns in the hands of bad guys caries drastically around the world. You can’t reduce this to “it’s the same everywhere” because it’s not.
    - martin_a 7mo ago
      True! What I meant is that I think German police, for example, are probably less worried that a traffic stop is likely to get them killed or have them escalate a situation to the use of lethal force. I think this might be different in the US because guns are just much more common there.
      - fc417fc802 7mo ago
        I think that's true but it's not guns alone it's broadly cultural in nature. Different places are different. Even in the US there are vast differences between regions.
BurningFrog 7mo ago
When you break into someone's home you want to be ready for people with guns shooting at you. Politely giving them a few seconds of free shooting before you draw your guns is not a great survival strategy.
- ceejayoz 7mo ago
  > When you break into someone's home… So we're starting right off the bat with the false premise that this is the only approach cops can take in these scenarios.
  - BurningFrog 7mo ago
    [flagged]
- downut 7mo ago
  Best to kill anything that moves; it's the only way to survive.
  - TallGuyShort 7mo ago
    The department would actually prefer that to a scenario where someone is left alive to sue them for raiding 86 1st St when the unreliable informant said 96.
  - relaxing 7mo ago
    Dead men can’t sue!
- fc417fc802 7mo ago
  If you break in with little to no notice or with a lack of manpower or if the occupant has nothing to lose, sure. This is why no knock raids are incredibly dangerous for all involved and generally a terrible practice. With the number of officers they often have in most cases it would make more sense to start off slowly and unarmed, making an earnest attempt to communicate with the target. People won't usually choose to fight a suicidal battle. Even if they're extremely upset and disagreeable almost everyone will go along with it if calmly presented with a warrant and given some time to think things through.
HEmanZ 7mo ago
Yes. Kind of. Anything involving home invasion I’ve usually seen them go in like an occupying force. Including the time i called them because a small group was going around the neighborhood trying to break into houses. They show up with bullet proof vests and assault rifles at the ready and pull everyone out of their houses.
johncessna 7mo ago
I'm not saying what they did was correct, but they were allegedly told that he had a drug operation and a kidnapping dungeon.
- m-s-y 7mo ago
  which is fine. But they didn't vet this info, just ran with it. Massive negligence & duty failure
  - HanClinto 7mo ago
    A judge reviewed the evidence and signed the warrant. It's not like the cops just took what the witness said and ran with it.
frmersdog 7mo ago
Situational training is a joke (based in part on tactics developed in Israel/Occupied Palestine, i.e., for a literal military occupation), load-outs aren't designed around need but as a hand-out to our arms manufacturing industry (laundered through the military), and the cops involved in these sorts of raids are literally chosen to not be intellectually curious enough to question it. I used to operate a firearms training system. To this day, I wish I'd stolen the videos that they use so that I can prove how ridiculously unprofessional and biased they are.
awkward 7mo ago
There's a reason we had a few years of heavy anti police protest across the US.
- baggachipz 7mo ago
  [dead]
deleted 7mo ago
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jmyeet 7mo ago
Let me outline how broken policing is an institution in the US: 1. Cops are generally stupid and untrained. You just had to watch them testify in the Afroman trial and you might think "geez these guys aren't the brightest bulbs". No, theyre not. But they are also the most average cops; 2. Cops are corrupt. They steal things all the time. "We miscounted the money". Yeah, right. You got got caught stealing; 3. Cops lie all the time. They'll lie on the stand. This happens so often there's a term for it: testilying [1]; 4. Cops never go after other cops. In fact, you're generally punished or even killed for going after other cops. It's career suicide; 5. If, somehow, you get charged with a crime, you as a cop have rights the rest of us can only dream about. You're not allowed to interview the suspect for 24 hours. Their union rep must be there and so on. Enough time to get their story straight. Why don't we all have those same rights? 6. Cops aren't trained to de-escalate. They're only trained to escalate, lethally. Cops kill over 1000 people a year [2]. A pretty famous example is the murder of Sonya Massey [3]. Sonya was lethally shot for being near a pot of boiling water. This case was also quite rare because somebody went to jail; 7. Some departments go so far to essentially be gangs. One of the most famous examples is the LA Sheriff's Department [4]; 8. Should a prosecutor actually go after a cop, it's typically career suicide. Prosecutors live and die by conviction stats. It's how they get promoted and seek judgeships and higher office. Why? Because for there other cases, their cop witnesses will start missing court dates or even changing their testimony so your cases get dismissed or found not guilty. A lot of TV is what's called "copaganda". It typically paints police as competent, not corrupt, honorable and not at all the job most likely to commit domestic violence [5]. One exception to this is The Wire, which is a portrayal of institutional failure at virtually every level of American society. For bonus points, We Built This City [6]. It's a much deeper topic why it is this way but unsurprisingly the answer can be overly reduced to "racism" eg the origins of American law enforcement are in slave-catching. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_perjury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_perjury [2]: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/policekillings_total.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/policekillings_total.htm... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sonya_Massey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sonya_Massey [4]: https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history/ https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history... [5]: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/1862/ https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/1862/ [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Built_This_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Built_This_City
vasco 7mo ago
A big part of being police is the cosplay of being in the army. Why do you think airsoft is so popular?
arnonejoe 7mo ago
It’s disturbing. I sometimes wonder what would happen if I were pulled over and my window and door is closed. If I reach for the door handle will the cop think I’m reaching for gun? Do wait for him to scream at me through the window? How do I keep from things escalating? Is there a place in the US where the cops aren’t totally insane? SF? Santa Barbara? Maybe Marin County?
- Shocka1 7mo ago
  This place is out of control. It's not sane to think that every police encounter is going to be violent. And yes, there are different areas than California. Do you have a chance to be treated poorly or rudely by a police officer? Of course. Is that going to be all the time? Of course not.
HanClinto 7mo ago
I'm amazed at the number of people who are answering "this is just the way that it is in America". I don't live in Adams County, but they are our direct neighbors here in rural southwest Ohio. We like Afroman over here. :) I think the answer to your question is the warrant that they were serving involved kidnapping and an alleged torture dungeon along with drug trafficking charges. Yes, it may sound ridiculous on the surface, but an informant apparently testified to this and a judge approved it, so that's the warrant they were serving. If one reads the warrant and considers the possibility that the testimony of the witness might have been true, then their show of force seems much less unreasonable. Disconnecting his cameras? Stealing his money? That's absolutely not reasonable in any case. Afroman has a lot of support in our rural Ohio community, and we're all cheering for him. :)
- markdown 7mo ago
  Sounds like swatting.
  - embedding-shape 7mo ago
    "an informant apparently testified to this and a judge approved it" sounds very far away from what I understand "swatting" to mean normally.
    - markdown 7mo ago
      AFAIK we have no idea if an informant testified to it, or even if there was an informant. Cops claimed that someone had told them about it, and the judge signed the warrant. Swatting is the action or practice of making a hoax call in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a particular address" Either there was an informant, and the false claim was made to a police officer, or there was not informant, and the cop made a false claim to the judge. Either way, the intent was to get cops to show up and screw with Afroman, and that goal was achieved.
      - HanClinto 7mo ago
busymom0 7mo ago
Considering this was a no-knock warrant, one of the probably causes being kidnapping (shady & possibly corrupt warrant in itself) where they broke down the doors, I'd say they expected some sort of gang activity or something.
pempem 7mo ago
Not a silly question. If you go back to the 2000s, you'll see the growing militarization of local police. This is partially an economic prop-up where the military can now sell police departments materials/arms/etc. and police departments can buy them. Thus the military needs more. Nice little situation they found. At the same time as these departments getting more funding, it feels like most departments have decided its better to use taxpayer funds to settle court cases rather than train and be more selective.
scj 7mo ago
One of my favourite little details in Jeeves and Wooster is that British cops are shown as bumbling fools who fit right in with the cast. Meanwhile American police are consistently depicted as trigger happy, shooting at any minor provocation.
standardUser 7mo ago
In Europe there's a maybe 0.1% chance that any random adult is carrying a firearm. And the vast majority of those are going to be rifles for hunting. In the US, it's more like a 3% chance. And firearms in the US tend to have higher capacity and higher rates of fire. Hence the default militaristic response from law enforcement. Or at least that's one of several reasons.
saltyoldman 7mo ago
Not many people watch them, but there are countless videos of police stops where it's not the police drawing a gun, but the driver of the car pulled over. Often it's not just pulled- it's aimed and fired. Some cops die, thankfully many get hit in the arm and it's non fatal. It happens so much in the United States that you honestly can't blame the vast majority of at least being ready. That's not saying there aren't cops that are TOO ready and unclip the holster just walking up to the car.
- edmundsauto 7mo ago
  Being a police officer is not that dangerous. You are more likely to experience death or dismemberment in like 20 other jobs.
michaelmrose 7mo ago
The stereotype is probably if anything less horrible than the reality. There was a notable situation where police were called because 12 year old Tamir Rice was walking whilst black with a bb gun. The officer exited the passenger side of the cop car so fast it was still moving when he jumped out. He immediately fired and executed the little kid. Despite the horror of the situation this is what would be colloquially termed a "good shoot" and officers faced no legal consequences. Despite officer being 25th on the list of most dangerous professions falling below construction helper and farmer officers are trained as if they are going to war and equipped with many of the same toys. They are taught to prioritize preserving their lives over those they are supposed to protect.
TheCondor 7mo ago
Look up castle doctrine. It's the laws that we have. Basically, if someone breaches your home, you're under no obligation to back down and if you respond with lethal force you have a lot of the benefit of the doubt, fear is implied in that situation. The police are treating it as if they were breaking in to one of their own homes, because if you or I did that, we'd get shot and killed. The only difference it that they have a legal document that allows it in that case, you have to serve that document though. I had a coworker that lived on a street like "N 13th Avenue" and I guess there was some sort of crackhouse at "S 13th Avenue" one night the police served a no-know warrant, he was pissed and demanded to know what was going on, they shot his dog and killed his dog, he was shot in the hip and had permanent damage from it, his wife was marched out in cuffs half naked in-front of the neighborhood. When the dust settled the police realized they went to the wrong address. The police reached some sort of settlement with them, it never seemed remotely fair. (Think $700k in the mid-1990s) He was in his 50s when I worked with him, this happened in his late 30s or early 40s. He looked like he was 80 though, walked with a cane. He ultimately passed away at a fairly young age.
dogemaster2025 7mo ago
[flagged]
- Anvoker 7mo ago
  By accepting that valuing the life of a cop over a criminal is a good reason for American cops to behave the way they do, what you end up encouraging instead is cops valuing their own lives over those of citizens to a shocking extent.
  - dogemaster2025 7mo ago
    But this is not unreasonable. You value your life more than you value mine. And we are equal. But criminals are not equal to us.
SanjayMehta 7mo ago
Positive reinforcement from Hollywood movies and TV shows. Maybe 50 years ago Dirty Harry was an exaggeration but now you have several generations of wannabe cops, cops and their bosses who grew up watching those stereotypes.
galaxyLogic 7mo ago
Talk about shooting, how about shooting wearing a mask with no identifiable badge on then driving away in an unmarked car, and perhaps shooting more people who try to video you shooting people. Comparatively speaking there's nothing rotten in Denmark
whimsicalism 7mo ago
because we have 500m guns in the country.. you can’t expect european style policing
jagermo 7mo ago
i would follow that up with: Why do americans have so many cameras in their homes? not just afroman, but i see so many videos form surveilance cameras in living rooms etc, isn't that considered creepy?
quantified 7mo ago
Cops are trained as warriors now, and accultures to citizens being the enemy. Simply is now. Plus they statted getting all that cool military gear after the Cold War stockpiles were surplused over to them.
arh5451 7mo ago
1. Unions - Police unions wield considerable financial and political power. They hold local governments hostage demanding higher worker protections for officers and larger pensions and benefits. - To offset these higher costs, departments have been mandated to become "revenue sources" by collecting more tickets, arresting more peoples, etc. --> The affected peoples are usually the ones of least advantage, illegal immigrants, low income, and others who are unlikely to be able to afford a defense. - Higher union protections proctect bad cops, who in many cases are simply repremanded or move to another town, different department. In many cases after committing capital crimes. 2. Recruiting - Previously police were recrutied from local communities and for their amicability, ability to defuse situations/work within the community as a member. Now increasingly military background, weapon training, or other prerequisites are sought; whereby the purpose of these trainings is to kill other people not diffuse situations. 3. Media Influences - U.S. media is extremely culpable of painting all police officers as killers and mobsters. This is a very small minority. 4. Law Enforcement Support Office - The D.O.D. began a program of distributing military hardware to police departments across the U.S. nearly for free. Causing absolutely ludicrous scenes of tiny police departments having armoured vehicles and drones.
foxyv 7mo ago
A shady confidential informant lied and told the police that the house was a kidnapper's den with people chained up in the basement. The subsequent bad behavior of the police after they realized they were wrong prompted the drama to come.

ceejayoz 7mo ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_the_Warrior_Cop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_the_Warrior_Cop Watch the short clip in https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/rcgkis/us_delegates_discuss_police_scotland_deescalation/ https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/rcgkis/u... - American cops get shown Scottish cops' deescalation procedures, and they scoff at it. "When you say preservation of life, it is… everybody's life. Ours has a pecking order. I'm just being honest."

petesergeant 7mo ago
I mean the key point there I think is the one where they point out that Brits simply wouldn’t accept police regularly shooting people. Policing for the people by the people.* * and pretend Northern Ireland doesn’t exist, or course
- GJim 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - petesergeant 7mo ago
    If you need some context, you can look up the history of policing in Northern Ireland on Wikipedia, where British police were happily shooting other British people for many years.
    - GJim 7mo ago
      [flagged]
- roryirvine 7mo ago
  It's rare even in NI. PSNI had one single firearm discharge in the two year period covering October 2023 - September 2025. Plus 948 uses of irritant spray, 496 uses of their baton, and 38 taser discharges in the same period. And 23,489 uses of "unarmed physical tactics". That's for a population of around 2 million. By comparison, SFPD had 10 "officer involved shootings" in the past year for a population of 800k, a rate fifty times higher than that in NI.
  - Anthony-G 7mo ago
    True. The PSNI have had an excellent record – particularly given the difficult context they work in. I guess the above poster is thinking of the shoot-to-kill era of the 80s (still well within living memory): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot-to-kill_policy_in_Northern_Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot-to-kill_policy_in_Northe...
    - roryirvine 7mo ago
      Yeah, it was very different back then. And not just the police - we had the army on the streets with weapons drawn, routinely aiming at passersby. The political situation in the late 1960s provided plenty of kindling, but it seems clear that most of the sparks that actually caused the conflagration came from the barrel of guns held by soldiers and the police. They were directly responsible both for the death of the civil rights movement and the collapse of the government, and without the heavy-handed response it's likely that the settlement of the late 90s would've happened 25 years earlier. It's actually a great example of why the militarisation of policing should be resisted at all cost.
  - BobaFloutist 7mo ago
    The one thing I'll say in defense of American cops is that they are police a population that's vastly more likely to have their own guns, too. Of course it's not like American cops have recognized the danger that poses and politically aligned themselves with reducing or restricting access to guns, so they lose a lot of credit there, but they are genuinely facing a better armed and therefore more dangerous population.
- watwut 7mo ago
  In Britain, there is independent civilian investigation when cops kill a person. It creates pressure to not kill, because you wont be judged by buddies.
  - tialaramex 7mo ago
    Well, the IOPC (Independent Office for Police Conduct) has mandatory referrals, not only when police apparently shot somebody, or they die in police custody, or in a traffic accident with a police vehicle, but also cases where the police were recently involved. e.g. Sharon calls police because she says her husband punched her, when officers attend Sharon now says he didn't mean to and seems reluctant to leave or for her husband to be arrested, attending officers decide to leave it as it is, an hour later Sharon is dead and her husband is her presumed killer - that's a police involved death and so that gets referred to the IOPC even though nobody thinks a cop killed anybody. However, the IOPC is not mandated to conduct investigations. So it is possible (though less likely for a shooting) that the IOPC will just kick it back to local police. It is also possible (and more likely) that they will oversee but use local police to do the actual work, just because that's much cheaper and their budget is limited.
- _menelaus 7mo ago
  Have you ever been to inner city America? Honestly curious. I couldn't imagine policing it without using a gun sometime.
EQmWgw87pw 7mo ago
So are we all just oblivious to the fact that in the US, civilians practically have access to military gear? How can you police that type of population with sticks and stones?
- cortesoft 7mo ago
  I can see the argument how you would treat a suspect with a gun differently than you would if they have a knife. However, American cops also use guns against suspects with knives or other weapons that they also use in places like Scotland. Why couldn’t American police use these techniques when the suspect doesn’t have a gun? I know the standard response is, “well, they COULD have a gun!”, but I don’t think that is a good enough reason to always go straight to extreme response. If a suspect is brandishing a knife, he probably doesn’t also have a gun.
  - EQmWgw87pw 7mo ago
    Personally I’ve had encounters with LE and have not had a gun drawn yet, so it’s obviously not the default. But I disagree, I think brandishing a knife is already extreme behavior, I don’t think it’s logical to think “because he has a weapon he probably doesn’t have another!”. And why would someone threatening people with a knife deserve benefit of the doubt?
    - tverbeure 7mo ago
      In most civilized societies, there's an extremely high chance that somebody wielding a knife doesn't have a gun.
      - nsxwolf 7mo ago
        Wielding a knife is a deadly threat so I am not sure what the relevance is.
        tverbeure 7mo ago
keybored 7mo ago
> > I'm just being honest. Just a salt of the earth officer telling it like it dog-gamn is. :|
- mmaunder 7mo ago
  I think she got a few "oh shit she spoke truth" reactions around her which is what prompted that.
Henchman21 7mo ago
That should be immediately disqualifying for an law enforcement officer. Saying that on the record should end their career immediately. Alas, we don't live in a just world and they will likely be continuously promoted.
- drsalt 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - tomhow 7mo ago
    This kind of comment is unacceptable on HN. It breaches these guidelines... Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- slyall 7mo ago
  So what happens to all the other cops that believe that but don't say it?
  - account42 7mo ago
    They at least know that it's not acceptable.
  - Henchman21 7mo ago
    The same thing that happens to the folks that say it out loud now. Absolutely nothing.
- bean469 7mo ago
  Although just anecdata, I have heard the exact same point from US cops numerous times in private conversations

garciasn 7mo ago

#1 - He's Black. #2 - That's how the police in America operate now; even for the most common interactions w/the public. I know this may sound like I'm being an asshole, but I'm not.

bigstrat2003 7mo ago
> That's how the police in America operate now; even for the most common interactions w/the public. You cannot generalize police forces across the entire country that way. I've never had such an interaction with a police officer, presumably because the police department in my city is run better than that.
- simonhfrost 7mo ago
  Are you white?
- Tostino 7mo ago
  That's lucky. My county sheriff implemented predictive policing [1] until they were forced to stop because of many constitutional violations. 1. https://ij.org/press-release/case-closed-pasco-sheriff-admits-predictive-policing-program-violated-constitution/ https://ij.org/press-release/case-closed-pasco-sheriff-admit...
  - johnnyanmac 7mo ago
    Wow. I know people are talking about how they are using 1984 as an instruction manual. But I'd hope we wouldn't be stupid enough to try and re=enact The Minority Report , especially without the Sci fi psychic humans.
- AngryData 7mo ago
  Its more likely because affluent people live in that area who can afford to drop $100k on a lawyer and sue the department. If you are in an area where people are poor and can't drop that kind of money on a lawyer and get the case pushed to state or federal courts the cops know they won't get in trouble for being pieces of shit and see citizens as an easy source of funding to exploit.

chneu 7mo ago

American police are trained to be afraid. They escalate situations constantly. They're trained that every traffic stop is LIKELY their last. I've had a gun pulled on me twice for traffic stops when I went to grab something. I'm white.

ceejayoz 7mo ago
[flagged]
- tacitusarc 7mo ago
  The Snopes article is useful. For those who don’t want to read it, here is what Grossman says about that quotation: > That clip took my entire, full day presentation, and took it completely out of context. -They left out the part where I say that this is a normal biological, hormonal backlash from fight-or-flight (sympathetic nervous system arousal) to feed-and-breed (parasympathetic nervous system arousal) that can happen to anyone in a traumatic event. -They left out the part where I say that there is nothing wrong if it doesn’t happen, and absolutely nothing wrong if it does happen. -They left out the part where I say it happens to fire, EMS and even victims of violent crime. -They left out where I say that it scares the hell out of people. -They left out where I talk about it (and remember it is common in survivors of violent crime), as kind of a beautiful affirmation of life in the face of death; a grasping for closeness and intimate reassurance in the face of tragedy.
  - ceejayoz 7mo ago
    Yeah, shitty people often claim the context is exonerating. > They left out where I say that it scares the hell out of people. People literally pay money to do things that feel that way. Haunted houses, bungee jumping, skydiving. Context: Grossman's employed to train cops to overcome relutance to shoot.
  - malfist 7mo ago
    I'm not sure that's at all a defense. That context in no way absolves him of bragging about how he's gets the best sex in his life EVERY TIME HE KILLS SOMEONE.

legitster 7mo ago

It's a country with a lot of guns. Police do regularly get shot at when raiding. And police departments get sent videos of every officer death from around the country and regularly watch them for "training purposes". So it makes sense that they are in a constant state of paranoia.

martin_a 7mo ago
> It's a country with a lot of guns. Police do regularly get shot at when raiding. Call me naive, but I think this could be solved by stricter gun laws. Yes, bad guys might have guns, but that's the case everywhere around the world. But being afraid that everybody could have a gun and use it against you while doing your work must clearly change something in your behaviour as a police officer... Why not calm down the whole situation by reducing the number of guns then...
- Aurornis 7mo ago
  > Yes, bad guys might have guns, but that's the case everywhere around the world. The number of guns in the hands of bad guys caries drastically around the world. You can’t reduce this to “it’s the same everywhere” because it’s not.
  - martin_a 7mo ago
    True! What I meant is that I think German police, for example, are probably less worried that a traffic stop is likely to get them killed or have them escalate a situation to the use of lethal force. I think this might be different in the US because guns are just much more common there.
    - fc417fc802 7mo ago
      I think that's true but it's not guns alone it's broadly cultural in nature. Different places are different. Even in the US there are vast differences between regions.

BurningFrog 7mo ago

When you break into someone's home you want to be ready for people with guns shooting at you. Politely giving them a few seconds of free shooting before you draw your guns is not a great survival strategy.

ceejayoz 7mo ago
> When you break into someone's home… So we're starting right off the bat with the false premise that this is the only approach cops can take in these scenarios.
- BurningFrog 7mo ago
  [flagged]
downut 7mo ago
Best to kill anything that moves; it's the only way to survive.
- TallGuyShort 7mo ago
  The department would actually prefer that to a scenario where someone is left alive to sue them for raiding 86 1st St when the unreliable informant said 96.
- relaxing 7mo ago
  Dead men can’t sue!
fc417fc802 7mo ago
If you break in with little to no notice or with a lack of manpower or if the occupant has nothing to lose, sure. This is why no knock raids are incredibly dangerous for all involved and generally a terrible practice. With the number of officers they often have in most cases it would make more sense to start off slowly and unarmed, making an earnest attempt to communicate with the target. People won't usually choose to fight a suicidal battle. Even if they're extremely upset and disagreeable almost everyone will go along with it if calmly presented with a warrant and given some time to think things through.

HEmanZ 7mo ago

Yes. Kind of. Anything involving home invasion I’ve usually seen them go in like an occupying force. Including the time i called them because a small group was going around the neighborhood trying to break into houses. They show up with bullet proof vests and assault rifles at the ready and pull everyone out of their houses.

johncessna 7mo ago

I'm not saying what they did was correct, but they were allegedly told that he had a drug operation and a kidnapping dungeon.

m-s-y 7mo ago
which is fine. But they didn't vet this info, just ran with it. Massive negligence & duty failure
- HanClinto 7mo ago
  A judge reviewed the evidence and signed the warrant. It's not like the cops just took what the witness said and ran with it.

frmersdog 7mo ago

Situational training is a joke (based in part on tactics developed in Israel/Occupied Palestine, i.e., for a literal military occupation), load-outs aren't designed around need but as a hand-out to our arms manufacturing industry (laundered through the military), and the cops involved in these sorts of raids are literally chosen to not be intellectually curious enough to question it. I used to operate a firearms training system. To this day, I wish I'd stolen the videos that they use so that I can prove how ridiculously unprofessional and biased they are.

awkward 7mo ago

There's a reason we had a few years of heavy anti police protest across the US.

baggachipz 7mo ago
[dead]

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

jmyeet 7mo ago

Let me outline how broken policing is an institution in the US: 1. Cops are generally stupid and untrained. You just had to watch them testify in the Afroman trial and you might think "geez these guys aren't the brightest bulbs". No, theyre not. But they are also the most average cops; 2. Cops are corrupt. They steal things all the time. "We miscounted the money". Yeah, right. You got got caught stealing; 3. Cops lie all the time. They'll lie on the stand. This happens so often there's a term for it: testilying [1]; 4. Cops never go after other cops. In fact, you're generally punished or even killed for going after other cops. It's career suicide; 5. If, somehow, you get charged with a crime, you as a cop have rights the rest of us can only dream about. You're not allowed to interview the suspect for 24 hours. Their union rep must be there and so on. Enough time to get their story straight. Why don't we all have those same rights? 6. Cops aren't trained to de-escalate. They're only trained to escalate, lethally. Cops kill over 1000 people a year [2]. A pretty famous example is the murder of Sonya Massey [3]. Sonya was lethally shot for being near a pot of boiling water. This case was also quite rare because somebody went to jail; 7. Some departments go so far to essentially be gangs. One of the most famous examples is the LA Sheriff's Department [4]; 8. Should a prosecutor actually go after a cop, it's typically career suicide. Prosecutors live and die by conviction stats. It's how they get promoted and seek judgeships and higher office. Why? Because for there other cases, their cop witnesses will start missing court dates or even changing their testimony so your cases get dismissed or found not guilty. A lot of TV is what's called "copaganda". It typically paints police as competent, not corrupt, honorable and not at all the job most likely to commit domestic violence [5]. One exception to this is The Wire, which is a portrayal of institutional failure at virtually every level of American society. For bonus points, We Built This City [6]. It's a much deeper topic why it is this way but unsurprisingly the answer can be overly reduced to "racism" eg the origins of American law enforcement are in slave-catching. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_perjury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_perjury [2]: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/policekillings_total.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/policekillings_total.htm... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sonya_Massey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sonya_Massey [4]: https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history/ https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history... [5]: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/1862/ https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/1862/ [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Built_This_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Built_This_City

vasco 7mo ago

A big part of being police is the cosplay of being in the army. Why do you think airsoft is so popular?

arnonejoe 7mo ago

It’s disturbing. I sometimes wonder what would happen if I were pulled over and my window and door is closed. If I reach for the door handle will the cop think I’m reaching for gun? Do wait for him to scream at me through the window? How do I keep from things escalating? Is there a place in the US where the cops aren’t totally insane? SF? Santa Barbara? Maybe Marin County?

Shocka1 7mo ago
This place is out of control. It's not sane to think that every police encounter is going to be violent. And yes, there are different areas than California. Do you have a chance to be treated poorly or rudely by a police officer? Of course. Is that going to be all the time? Of course not.

HanClinto 7mo ago

I'm amazed at the number of people who are answering "this is just the way that it is in America". I don't live in Adams County, but they are our direct neighbors here in rural southwest Ohio. We like Afroman over here. :) I think the answer to your question is the warrant that they were serving involved kidnapping and an alleged torture dungeon along with drug trafficking charges. Yes, it may sound ridiculous on the surface, but an informant apparently testified to this and a judge approved it, so that's the warrant they were serving. If one reads the warrant and considers the possibility that the testimony of the witness might have been true, then their show of force seems much less unreasonable. Disconnecting his cameras? Stealing his money? That's absolutely not reasonable in any case. Afroman has a lot of support in our rural Ohio community, and we're all cheering for him. :)

markdown 7mo ago
Sounds like swatting.
- embedding-shape 7mo ago
  "an informant apparently testified to this and a judge approved it" sounds very far away from what I understand "swatting" to mean normally.
  - markdown 7mo ago
    AFAIK we have no idea if an informant testified to it, or even if there was an informant. Cops claimed that someone had told them about it, and the judge signed the warrant. Swatting is the action or practice of making a hoax call in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a particular address" Either there was an informant, and the false claim was made to a police officer, or there was not informant, and the cop made a false claim to the judge. Either way, the intent was to get cops to show up and screw with Afroman, and that goal was achieved.
    - HanClinto 7mo ago

busymom0 7mo ago

Considering this was a no-knock warrant, one of the probably causes being kidnapping (shady & possibly corrupt warrant in itself) where they broke down the doors, I'd say they expected some sort of gang activity or something.

pempem 7mo ago

Not a silly question. If you go back to the 2000s, you'll see the growing militarization of local police. This is partially an economic prop-up where the military can now sell police departments materials/arms/etc. and police departments can buy them. Thus the military needs more. Nice little situation they found. At the same time as these departments getting more funding, it feels like most departments have decided its better to use taxpayer funds to settle court cases rather than train and be more selective.

scj 7mo ago

One of my favourite little details in Jeeves and Wooster is that British cops are shown as bumbling fools who fit right in with the cast. Meanwhile American police are consistently depicted as trigger happy, shooting at any minor provocation.

standardUser 7mo ago

In Europe there's a maybe 0.1% chance that any random adult is carrying a firearm. And the vast majority of those are going to be rifles for hunting. In the US, it's more like a 3% chance. And firearms in the US tend to have higher capacity and higher rates of fire. Hence the default militaristic response from law enforcement. Or at least that's one of several reasons.

saltyoldman 7mo ago

Not many people watch them, but there are countless videos of police stops where it's not the police drawing a gun, but the driver of the car pulled over. Often it's not just pulled- it's aimed and fired. Some cops die, thankfully many get hit in the arm and it's non fatal. It happens so much in the United States that you honestly can't blame the vast majority of at least being ready. That's not saying there aren't cops that are TOO ready and unclip the holster just walking up to the car.

edmundsauto 7mo ago
Being a police officer is not that dangerous. You are more likely to experience death or dismemberment in like 20 other jobs.

michaelmrose 7mo ago

The stereotype is probably if anything less horrible than the reality. There was a notable situation where police were called because 12 year old Tamir Rice was walking whilst black with a bb gun. The officer exited the passenger side of the cop car so fast it was still moving when he jumped out. He immediately fired and executed the little kid. Despite the horror of the situation this is what would be colloquially termed a "good shoot" and officers faced no legal consequences. Despite officer being 25th on the list of most dangerous professions falling below construction helper and farmer officers are trained as if they are going to war and equipped with many of the same toys. They are taught to prioritize preserving their lives over those they are supposed to protect.

TheCondor 7mo ago

Look up castle doctrine. It's the laws that we have. Basically, if someone breaches your home, you're under no obligation to back down and if you respond with lethal force you have a lot of the benefit of the doubt, fear is implied in that situation. The police are treating it as if they were breaking in to one of their own homes, because if you or I did that, we'd get shot and killed. The only difference it that they have a legal document that allows it in that case, you have to serve that document though. I had a coworker that lived on a street like "N 13th Avenue" and I guess there was some sort of crackhouse at "S 13th Avenue" one night the police served a no-know warrant, he was pissed and demanded to know what was going on, they shot his dog and killed his dog, he was shot in the hip and had permanent damage from it, his wife was marched out in cuffs half naked in-front of the neighborhood. When the dust settled the police realized they went to the wrong address. The police reached some sort of settlement with them, it never seemed remotely fair. (Think $700k in the mid-1990s) He was in his 50s when I worked with him, this happened in his late 30s or early 40s. He looked like he was 80 though, walked with a cane. He ultimately passed away at a fairly young age.

dogemaster2025 7mo ago

[flagged]

Anvoker 7mo ago
By accepting that valuing the life of a cop over a criminal is a good reason for American cops to behave the way they do, what you end up encouraging instead is cops valuing their own lives over those of citizens to a shocking extent.
- dogemaster2025 7mo ago
  But this is not unreasonable. You value your life more than you value mine. And we are equal. But criminals are not equal to us.

SanjayMehta 7mo ago

Positive reinforcement from Hollywood movies and TV shows. Maybe 50 years ago Dirty Harry was an exaggeration but now you have several generations of wannabe cops, cops and their bosses who grew up watching those stereotypes.

galaxyLogic 7mo ago

Talk about shooting, how about shooting wearing a mask with no identifiable badge on then driving away in an unmarked car, and perhaps shooting more people who try to video you shooting people. Comparatively speaking there's nothing rotten in Denmark

whimsicalism 7mo ago

because we have 500m guns in the country.. you can’t expect european style policing

jagermo 7mo ago

i would follow that up with: Why do americans have so many cameras in their homes? not just afroman, but i see so many videos form surveilance cameras in living rooms etc, isn't that considered creepy?

quantified 7mo ago

Cops are trained as warriors now, and accultures to citizens being the enemy. Simply is now. Plus they statted getting all that cool military gear after the Cold War stockpiles were surplused over to them.

arh5451 7mo ago

1. Unions - Police unions wield considerable financial and political power. They hold local governments hostage demanding higher worker protections for officers and larger pensions and benefits. - To offset these higher costs, departments have been mandated to become "revenue sources" by collecting more tickets, arresting more peoples, etc. --> The affected peoples are usually the ones of least advantage, illegal immigrants, low income, and others who are unlikely to be able to afford a defense. - Higher union protections proctect bad cops, who in many cases are simply repremanded or move to another town, different department. In many cases after committing capital crimes. 2. Recruiting - Previously police were recrutied from local communities and for their amicability, ability to defuse situations/work within the community as a member. Now increasingly military background, weapon training, or other prerequisites are sought; whereby the purpose of these trainings is to kill other people not diffuse situations. 3. Media Influences - U.S. media is extremely culpable of painting all police officers as killers and mobsters. This is a very small minority. 4. Law Enforcement Support Office - The D.O.D. began a program of distributing military hardware to police departments across the U.S. nearly for free. Causing absolutely ludicrous scenes of tiny police departments having armoured vehicles and drones.

foxyv 7mo ago

A shady confidential informant lied and told the police that the house was a kidnapper's den with people chained up in the basement. The subsequent bad behavior of the police after they realized they were wrong prompted the drama to come.