5 ms·

Law Enforcement's "Warrior" Problem (2015)

109 points by bookofjoe 5mo ago

theturtle 5mo ago
[dead]
jqpabc123 5mo ago
And citizens become the "enemy".
- Nevermark 5mo ago
  Hey, there is no need to anthropomorphize the targets.
throwaway81523 5mo ago
(2015)
- NDlurker 5mo ago
  And more relevant with each passing year. This is a meme that seems to have infected every law enforcement organization.
NDlurker 5mo ago
There's a war going on outside no man is safe from.
- __alexander 5mo ago
  https://youtu.be/Dz5VzLz67WA?is=pLpKbcgZ59sJP7Co https://youtu.be/Dz5VzLz67WA?is=pLpKbcgZ59sJP7Co
jmclnx 5mo ago
Yes, the days of Andy Griffith is long gone, at least in the US the country is slowly turning the local police into storm troopers. But even back then, some groups of people were treated badly by the local police in some areas. Now it seems the bad treatment is has become "DEI" instead of good treatment expanding to everyone. :( Ref for non-US people and the very young: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andy_Griffith_Show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andy_Griffith_Show
- krapp 5mo ago
  Those days never existed. In real life Andy Griffith would be an alcoholic who beats his wife and lynches black people who don't get out of Mayberry before the sun sets. Cops have always been this way.
  - RickJWagner 5mo ago
    Source? I have a close relative that’s a cop, he’s a really good person, father and husband. I’ve known several other cops and never knew a truly bad person.
    - Lendal 5mo ago
      While I don't disagree with the sentiment, since you have a friend who's a cop I'm compelled to ask the uncomfortable question, is an otherwise good cop who protects bad cops still a good cop?
      - RickJWagner 5mo ago
        That’s a good question. You know how all the people taking part in a robbery get charged with murder if just one of them kills someone? I’d view it like that. A cop that covers up corruption for a partner is guilty of corruption. A cop that covers up a DUI carries a similar amount of guilt. A cop that exercises ‘professional courtesy’ to overlook a minor traffic violation? Same negligible amount of guilt. I think it seems about right.
        krapp 5mo ago
        You aren't acknowledging an awareness of culture or systemic issues. Cops that remain on the force despite being aware of the excessive force, rampant theft, corruption, institutional racism and lack of accountability choose to accept and implicitly support that system for their own benefit. That's why people use the metaphor of "bad apples" to refer to police. You can't remain a good person in an evil system. I'm sure Derek Chauvin was a real nice guy to his friends and neighbors, but he still murdered George Floyd in cold blood. Cops are great at compartmentalizing, it's part of the job.
NoMoreNicksLeft 5mo ago
This is a shallow piece, if ever there was one. Sure the word "warrior" and its connotations are dangerous, but that barely skims the surface of the problem. Why are police given military ranks? Corporals and sergeants and captains. Hell, some are majors and colonels too. Why are their uniforms styled to look martial at all? Has anyone considered that perhaps they shouldn't be armed like soldiers? There doesn't need to be an assault rifle in the trunk of each squad car (isn't this the point of having SWAT? why bother if everyone is SWAT?). Can we even safely call them officers? We call the command structure of the army and navy "officers", but we also use that term for those who aren't military, so maybe it's safe.
- MSFT_Edging 5mo ago
  I think a lot of the questions you pose have some interesting psychology behind them. Other countries don't have this same level of policing, but also have different prison systems. I think a large amount of the danger American police face is due to how easily a single arrest can ruin your productive life. One facing the loss of their home, pets, job, important documents, sentimental items might not see the difference between losing everything, and losing everything and taking the guy who's taking it from you, with you. If we had an actual system based on reform rather than punishment, I think the danger police would be in would be greatly reduced. You also have things like qualified immunity and general protections for police against being sued for an unlawful arrest. An officer can incorrectly arrest you and you could lose everything and be simply shit out of luck. If there's no repercussions for bad cops, there's no justice. If there's no justice, why would one play nicely with the law, therefore police are in danger.
  - throwway120385 5mo ago
    > I think a large amount of the danger American police face is due to how easily a single arrest can ruin your productive life. One facing the loss of their home, pets, job, important documents, sentimental items might not see the difference between losing everything, and losing everything and taking the guy who's taking it from you, with you. I don't think it's that complicated. Rather, I think that a lot of cops think they're in more danger than they really are. The vast, vast majority of people aren't going to gun them down for a traffic stop or for providing a warning about something. The situations where they're likely to get shot are exceedingly rare. By treating policing as some tremendously dangerous job we're completely ignoring the actual statistics, which show that firefighters and construction workers are far more routinely in physical danger. The police then get carte blanche to walk around treating everyone like some dangerous creature ready to explode at the slightest provocation when most of us are just trying to get by and are pretty accepting of the benign law enforcement interactions we get.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
Zigurd 5mo ago
When a Karen calls the cops you have to hope a Proctor doesn't show up.
- cwmoore 5mo ago
  Even not knowing what “a Proctor” is meant to reference, I can immediately assume they are armed and interrogatory, and “Karen” described the situation to sound much worse than it was.
  - Zigurd 5mo ago
    There's been a big and long running case of Massachusetts state police and the town of Canton police trying to frame a woman for the death of a policeman. Michael Proctor is a former state police detective who "investigated" the case. At one point in the case, a large number of text messages between various cops was released. They won't make you optimistic about cop culture.
    - cwmoore 5mo ago
      Cop culture is our culture, but with qualified immunity. My point is the same either way. Thanks for the explanation.
      - Zigurd 5mo ago
        I've really got to push back on the claim that cop culture is just part of mainstream culture. For starters, it is a self isolating subculture. It is filled with paranoia. Some cops would claim that's for good reasons and I don't disagree, though I might be thinking of different reasons. Cops have an elevated rate of domestic violence and addiction. The self isolation and paranoia feeds into those problems. The extreme reluctance to accept oversight and accountability that every other part of government must accept is a product of that isolation and paranoia. It's a subculture with distinctive pathologies.
        cwmoore 5mo ago
trhway 5mo ago
Look at some cities Animal Control officers - athletic guys, black uniform, black high boots - real Warriors-Stormtroopers protecting the defenseless community from that kitten.
- sellmesoap 5mo ago
  As an urban farm nerd I've experienced this first hand in western Canada, "the chickens smell" indeed and??? "Our bylaws are so poorly written we can fine you $10,000 a day for your 6 urban chickens subjectively having a smell" ... Plus bylaw officers can enter property without a warrant, they've got more rights then the police! And yet they don't know how to determine if animals are kept in appropriate conditions/can't tell if animals in your care are healthy etc. It's like a montey python sketch IRL!
- IncreasePosts 5mo ago
  Loose dogs can injure or kill random people they come across. Why would you mention kittens when approximately 0% of their time is spent dealing with kittens? I have no idea what animal control outfit you're talking about, but maybe they wear high boots because they go out into fields often for their work and it's more appropriate for than environment than wearing sneakers.
  - trhway 5mo ago
    >Loose dogs can injure or kill random people they come across. In theory - may be. On practice - typical fear mongering. The dogs in US cities are very docile, and those couple times (over 26 year here) i saw lost dogs they were pretty skittish about strangers. >Why would you mention kittens when approximately 0% of their time is spent dealing with kittens? you again have no idea what you're talking about. > I have no idea what animal control outfit you're talking about yep. > but maybe they wear high boots because they go out into fields often for their work and it's more appropriate for than environment than wearing sneakers. again pure theory. It was an urban AC. And neighboring ACs wear normal dark shoes. There are a lot of high boots if one needs it, yet these ones were obviously designed/chosen to complete the Stormtrooper look (tactical pants into the boots, etc.). No wonder they had these athletic youngish guys working there - in all other ACs that i've seen the mix of the people has been much more diverse.
red_admiral 5mo ago
Actual military officer (at the time of writing) doesn't thing much of "warrior mindset" even _in the army_: https://angrystaffofficer.com/2016/12/14/stop-calling-us-warriors/ https://angrystaffofficer.com/2016/12/14/stop-calling-us-war... Worth reading together with the OP article.
- jcranmer 5mo ago
  Another article in the same vein is this one, criticizing the increasing role of former special officers people in military planning roles: https://secretaryrofdefenserock.substack.com/p/the-triumph-of-the-operator https://secretaryrofdefenserock.substack.com/p/the-triumph-o..., seeing it as catalyzing a lot of destruction of US military capabilities.
- boondongle 5mo ago
  People need to be bigger on efficacy. If it worked, we'd see evidence of it. No one's bringing that evidence forward and frankly its questionable if US officers are better than their international peers. I don't think it's accidental the overlap between lack of accountability and the fact that warriors historically are a class, not a job.
- unholythree 5mo ago
  My father has commented to me about the weird warrior/war-fighter phrasing that came into vogue in the late 90’s. He remembered as a young soldier in the early 80’s not hearing those terms at all, but during a stint in the National Guard in the years before 9/11 he started hearing that sort of phrasing all the time. It stuck him as vaguely undemocratic or even slightly barbaric. More suited to some caste in the Middle Ages than a modern all volunteer force of citizens-soldiers.
  - stult 5mo ago
    I think warfighter crept into the lexicon for somewhat understandable reasons, likely because of the increasing frequency of joint operations (i.e., operations involving more than one branch of the military working together) after Vietnam, combined with the long-standing military tradition whereby members of any given branch take great offense if you refer to them using the wrong professional label (i.e., soldier, sailor, ~crayon-eater~ marine, airman, space cadet). That is, we can't just call all of them soldiers because only members of the Army are soldiers, so if for example you call a mixed group of marines and soldiers "soldiers", the marines will make their displeasure known to you, aggressively and in no uncertain terms. When you're talking about DoD stuff all day long and frequently need to refer generically to the mixed personnel involved in a joint operation, warfighters beats saying Soldier-Sailor-Marine-Airman-Spacecase. All the other alternative phrases for the concept of "person employed by the military in one of the five combat arms branches" are variations on "member" and tend to sound clunky or be overly verbose, like "service member" or "member of the military." Try saying "service members" 50 times per day. Trust me, it gets old fast. And frankly I don't see the problem with warfighter. Fighting wars is quite literally what they do, and pretending otherwise does a disservice to the truth and risks papering over the deadly seriousness of their work. Warfighter is also quite distinct from "warrior," which carries connotations of a specifically aggressive and barbaric flavor of professional violence purveyor. Like you say, it sounds like some atavistic hereditary soldier caste for whom violence is a sacred vocation joyfully undertaken rather than a solemn duty carried out only with great reluctance and forbearance.
Animats 5mo ago
This is a price the US pays for the right to keep and bear arms. US cops have to assume that everyone is armed. That leads to a paranoid style of policing. As gun laws have become less restrictive, cops have armed and armored up.
- Lendal 5mo ago
  That doesn't explain the first ~230 years of US history though, where police weren't this way and we had the same Constitution.
  - mc32 5mo ago
    It’s possible it’s a bit of an “arms” race, the police are more aggro but so are the public. At least in public perception back before the 70s its was perceived that by and large there was “respect for authority” but that’s eroded over the decades for various reasons among them court cases asserting more rights for individuals where cops can’t just up and arrest willy nilly. But also movements like “sovereign citizen” leaks in places enough to affect behavior elsewhere. Also weapons are relatively cheaper today than decades ago.
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    - mothballed 5mo ago
      There's an insane number of police shootings where it turns out the person was looking at an insanely large sentence and they "weren't going back to jail." From that perspective it's not even clear they're acting irrationally -- if the penalty for third-striking for stealing a TV and murder is the same then some criminals are going to make it worth their while.
      - RajT88 5mo ago
        "suicide by cop" is a narrative also used to cover up a bad police shooting.
alexpotato 5mo ago
Reminds me of the study that showed that you got very different types of people signing up to be police officers if your town's police recruiting brochure had pictures of a SWAT team versus pictures of a police officer doing community outreach at a school and shaking hands.
- jMyles 5mo ago
  ...without apparently controlling for the extent to which people _become_ "very different types of people" in agencies who advertise one way or the other. Either way, it's beyond obvious in 2026 that SWAT teams are no longer necessary and are far, far more trouble than they're worth. Abolish them today.
  - mothballed 5mo ago
    It's probably indisputable at this point that inviting the citizen gravy seals to deal with real threats will probably result in fewer innocent victims than a professional SWAT force that professionally sometimes rescues hostages while also mostly being used to throw flashbangs at babies and terrorize people at 2am no-knocks over petty crimes.
  - pstuart 5mo ago
    And it's almost always done for some drug related crime. End the War on Drugs now!
- m463 5mo ago
  I knew a guy who wanted to be a police officer in the LA area. They gave him a psychological exam. one of the questions was something along the lines of "you pull over a drunk driver, and it turns out to be your mother. what do you do?" I asked him what he said. He said he would call another officer and have him take her home. I was thinking, wow. He said if someone answers that they would arrest her, they wouldn't hire that person. Took me a while to work through it and wrap my mind around all of it.
  - mothballed 5mo ago
tearwear 5mo ago
semantic reinterpretation on Austrian overload. knock your favorite downer down with at least 3 bottles of wine and you'll feel only slightly behind ... an IVY LEAGUE AFICIONADO got something to say. what's the shape of his intent? levels down, I mean, not the superficial that he modestly commands ...
tearwear 5mo ago
the fear to lose control due to incompetence .... is that how all those former and current self-driving/self-flying/self-digging engineers and founders feel? jeez must they be grateful to all that stupidity their ( practically ) grand- daddies established among the rest of the world! #HerrenRasseViaSabotageForTheWin #Austria #SouthAfrica #USA #USA #USA
copindustrial 5mo ago
Those who get to brand a thing rules a thing! This quote comes to mind: "Ain't no Uzi's made in Harlem. Not one of us in here owns a poppy field. This thing is bigger than Nino Brown. This is big business. This is the American way."
- FireBeyond 5mo ago
  I'm so ingrained to the sampling of this song that I heard it as "This thing is bigger than Immortal Technique." before "Oh... yeah."
pstuart 5mo ago
I think it should be pointed out that we have the police we have because enough of the population is ok with it -- because they operate with the assumption that the cops exist to harass "others" but not themselves. If the entire citizenry said "no more!" to this nonsense we could have better policing all around.
yndoendo 5mo ago
Warrior mentality creates an US vs Them framework vs We. In Game Theory, with two parties, this equates to Win, Loose scenario. The best outcome in Game Theory is Win, Win. Society will fall part in the long run when not focused on the best outcome for all parties.
Jtsummers 5mo ago
Two past discussions on this one (it seemed familiar): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23441606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23441606 - 6 years ago, 78 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699893 - 11 years ago, 151 comments Some interesting comments in there.
FireBeyond 5mo ago
> it has become a point of professional pride to refer to the “police warrior.” Conversely, in a large portion of the fire service, the movement has been to eschew the title "firefighter" for "fireman" (regardless of gender). Part tradition but also part a belief that being "a man of fire", living, breathing... understanding... it goes a long way towards being able to control and manage it safely. Backdraft was cheesy and cringy in many a way, but one thing it touched on is the predictability of fire, and how absent variables (sadly a rare thing in the real world) it is possible to understand how it moves and grows and how best to contain it.
cadamsdotcom 5mo ago
For anyone curious about how others have solved this in the past it Is worth looking into Community Policing. This problem has been solved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_policing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_policing

109 points by bookofjoe 5mo ago

theturtle 5mo ago

[dead]

jqpabc123 5mo ago

And citizens become the "enemy".

Nevermark 5mo ago
Hey, there is no need to anthropomorphize the targets.

throwaway81523 5mo ago

(2015)

NDlurker 5mo ago
And more relevant with each passing year. This is a meme that seems to have infected every law enforcement organization.

NDlurker 5mo ago

There's a war going on outside no man is safe from.

__alexander 5mo ago
https://youtu.be/Dz5VzLz67WA?is=pLpKbcgZ59sJP7Co https://youtu.be/Dz5VzLz67WA?is=pLpKbcgZ59sJP7Co

jmclnx 5mo ago

Yes, the days of Andy Griffith is long gone, at least in the US the country is slowly turning the local police into storm troopers. But even back then, some groups of people were treated badly by the local police in some areas. Now it seems the bad treatment is has become "DEI" instead of good treatment expanding to everyone. :( Ref for non-US people and the very young: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andy_Griffith_Show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andy_Griffith_Show

krapp 5mo ago
Those days never existed. In real life Andy Griffith would be an alcoholic who beats his wife and lynches black people who don't get out of Mayberry before the sun sets. Cops have always been this way.
- RickJWagner 5mo ago
  Source? I have a close relative that’s a cop, he’s a really good person, father and husband. I’ve known several other cops and never knew a truly bad person.
  - Lendal 5mo ago
    While I don't disagree with the sentiment, since you have a friend who's a cop I'm compelled to ask the uncomfortable question, is an otherwise good cop who protects bad cops still a good cop?
    - RickJWagner 5mo ago
      That’s a good question. You know how all the people taking part in a robbery get charged with murder if just one of them kills someone? I’d view it like that. A cop that covers up corruption for a partner is guilty of corruption. A cop that covers up a DUI carries a similar amount of guilt. A cop that exercises ‘professional courtesy’ to overlook a minor traffic violation? Same negligible amount of guilt. I think it seems about right.
      - krapp 5mo ago
        You aren't acknowledging an awareness of culture or systemic issues. Cops that remain on the force despite being aware of the excessive force, rampant theft, corruption, institutional racism and lack of accountability choose to accept and implicitly support that system for their own benefit. That's why people use the metaphor of "bad apples" to refer to police. You can't remain a good person in an evil system. I'm sure Derek Chauvin was a real nice guy to his friends and neighbors, but he still murdered George Floyd in cold blood. Cops are great at compartmentalizing, it's part of the job.

NoMoreNicksLeft 5mo ago

This is a shallow piece, if ever there was one. Sure the word "warrior" and its connotations are dangerous, but that barely skims the surface of the problem. Why are police given military ranks? Corporals and sergeants and captains. Hell, some are majors and colonels too. Why are their uniforms styled to look martial at all? Has anyone considered that perhaps they shouldn't be armed like soldiers? There doesn't need to be an assault rifle in the trunk of each squad car (isn't this the point of having SWAT? why bother if everyone is SWAT?). Can we even safely call them officers? We call the command structure of the army and navy "officers", but we also use that term for those who aren't military, so maybe it's safe.

MSFT_Edging 5mo ago
I think a lot of the questions you pose have some interesting psychology behind them. Other countries don't have this same level of policing, but also have different prison systems. I think a large amount of the danger American police face is due to how easily a single arrest can ruin your productive life. One facing the loss of their home, pets, job, important documents, sentimental items might not see the difference between losing everything, and losing everything and taking the guy who's taking it from you, with you. If we had an actual system based on reform rather than punishment, I think the danger police would be in would be greatly reduced. You also have things like qualified immunity and general protections for police against being sued for an unlawful arrest. An officer can incorrectly arrest you and you could lose everything and be simply shit out of luck. If there's no repercussions for bad cops, there's no justice. If there's no justice, why would one play nicely with the law, therefore police are in danger.
- throwway120385 5mo ago
  > I think a large amount of the danger American police face is due to how easily a single arrest can ruin your productive life. One facing the loss of their home, pets, job, important documents, sentimental items might not see the difference between losing everything, and losing everything and taking the guy who's taking it from you, with you. I don't think it's that complicated. Rather, I think that a lot of cops think they're in more danger than they really are. The vast, vast majority of people aren't going to gun them down for a traffic stop or for providing a warning about something. The situations where they're likely to get shot are exceedingly rare. By treating policing as some tremendously dangerous job we're completely ignoring the actual statistics, which show that firefighters and construction workers are far more routinely in physical danger. The police then get carte blanche to walk around treating everyone like some dangerous creature ready to explode at the slightest provocation when most of us are just trying to get by and are pretty accepting of the benign law enforcement interactions we get.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

Zigurd 5mo ago

When a Karen calls the cops you have to hope a Proctor doesn't show up.

cwmoore 5mo ago
Even not knowing what “a Proctor” is meant to reference, I can immediately assume they are armed and interrogatory, and “Karen” described the situation to sound much worse than it was.
- Zigurd 5mo ago
  There's been a big and long running case of Massachusetts state police and the town of Canton police trying to frame a woman for the death of a policeman. Michael Proctor is a former state police detective who "investigated" the case. At one point in the case, a large number of text messages between various cops was released. They won't make you optimistic about cop culture.
  - cwmoore 5mo ago
    Cop culture is our culture, but with qualified immunity. My point is the same either way. Thanks for the explanation.
    - Zigurd 5mo ago
      I've really got to push back on the claim that cop culture is just part of mainstream culture. For starters, it is a self isolating subculture. It is filled with paranoia. Some cops would claim that's for good reasons and I don't disagree, though I might be thinking of different reasons. Cops have an elevated rate of domestic violence and addiction. The self isolation and paranoia feeds into those problems. The extreme reluctance to accept oversight and accountability that every other part of government must accept is a product of that isolation and paranoia. It's a subculture with distinctive pathologies.
      - cwmoore 5mo ago

trhway 5mo ago

Look at some cities Animal Control officers - athletic guys, black uniform, black high boots - real Warriors-Stormtroopers protecting the defenseless community from that kitten.

sellmesoap 5mo ago
As an urban farm nerd I've experienced this first hand in western Canada, "the chickens smell" indeed and??? "Our bylaws are so poorly written we can fine you $10,000 a day for your 6 urban chickens subjectively having a smell" ... Plus bylaw officers can enter property without a warrant, they've got more rights then the police! And yet they don't know how to determine if animals are kept in appropriate conditions/can't tell if animals in your care are healthy etc. It's like a montey python sketch IRL!
IncreasePosts 5mo ago
Loose dogs can injure or kill random people they come across. Why would you mention kittens when approximately 0% of their time is spent dealing with kittens? I have no idea what animal control outfit you're talking about, but maybe they wear high boots because they go out into fields often for their work and it's more appropriate for than environment than wearing sneakers.
- trhway 5mo ago
  >Loose dogs can injure or kill random people they come across. In theory - may be. On practice - typical fear mongering. The dogs in US cities are very docile, and those couple times (over 26 year here) i saw lost dogs they were pretty skittish about strangers. >Why would you mention kittens when approximately 0% of their time is spent dealing with kittens? you again have no idea what you're talking about. > I have no idea what animal control outfit you're talking about yep. > but maybe they wear high boots because they go out into fields often for their work and it's more appropriate for than environment than wearing sneakers. again pure theory. It was an urban AC. And neighboring ACs wear normal dark shoes. There are a lot of high boots if one needs it, yet these ones were obviously designed/chosen to complete the Stormtrooper look (tactical pants into the boots, etc.). No wonder they had these athletic youngish guys working there - in all other ACs that i've seen the mix of the people has been much more diverse.

red_admiral 5mo ago

Actual military officer (at the time of writing) doesn't thing much of "warrior mindset" even _in the army_: https://angrystaffofficer.com/2016/12/14/stop-calling-us-warriors/ https://angrystaffofficer.com/2016/12/14/stop-calling-us-war... Worth reading together with the OP article.

jcranmer 5mo ago
Another article in the same vein is this one, criticizing the increasing role of former special officers people in military planning roles: https://secretaryrofdefenserock.substack.com/p/the-triumph-of-the-operator https://secretaryrofdefenserock.substack.com/p/the-triumph-o..., seeing it as catalyzing a lot of destruction of US military capabilities.
boondongle 5mo ago
People need to be bigger on efficacy. If it worked, we'd see evidence of it. No one's bringing that evidence forward and frankly its questionable if US officers are better than their international peers. I don't think it's accidental the overlap between lack of accountability and the fact that warriors historically are a class, not a job.
unholythree 5mo ago
My father has commented to me about the weird warrior/war-fighter phrasing that came into vogue in the late 90’s. He remembered as a young soldier in the early 80’s not hearing those terms at all, but during a stint in the National Guard in the years before 9/11 he started hearing that sort of phrasing all the time. It stuck him as vaguely undemocratic or even slightly barbaric. More suited to some caste in the Middle Ages than a modern all volunteer force of citizens-soldiers.
- stult 5mo ago
  I think warfighter crept into the lexicon for somewhat understandable reasons, likely because of the increasing frequency of joint operations (i.e., operations involving more than one branch of the military working together) after Vietnam, combined with the long-standing military tradition whereby members of any given branch take great offense if you refer to them using the wrong professional label (i.e., soldier, sailor, ~crayon-eater~ marine, airman, space cadet). That is, we can't just call all of them soldiers because only members of the Army are soldiers, so if for example you call a mixed group of marines and soldiers "soldiers", the marines will make their displeasure known to you, aggressively and in no uncertain terms. When you're talking about DoD stuff all day long and frequently need to refer generically to the mixed personnel involved in a joint operation, warfighters beats saying Soldier-Sailor-Marine-Airman-Spacecase. All the other alternative phrases for the concept of "person employed by the military in one of the five combat arms branches" are variations on "member" and tend to sound clunky or be overly verbose, like "service member" or "member of the military." Try saying "service members" 50 times per day. Trust me, it gets old fast. And frankly I don't see the problem with warfighter. Fighting wars is quite literally what they do, and pretending otherwise does a disservice to the truth and risks papering over the deadly seriousness of their work. Warfighter is also quite distinct from "warrior," which carries connotations of a specifically aggressive and barbaric flavor of professional violence purveyor. Like you say, it sounds like some atavistic hereditary soldier caste for whom violence is a sacred vocation joyfully undertaken rather than a solemn duty carried out only with great reluctance and forbearance.

Animats 5mo ago

This is a price the US pays for the right to keep and bear arms. US cops have to assume that everyone is armed. That leads to a paranoid style of policing. As gun laws have become less restrictive, cops have armed and armored up.

Lendal 5mo ago
That doesn't explain the first ~230 years of US history though, where police weren't this way and we had the same Constitution.
- mc32 5mo ago
  It’s possible it’s a bit of an “arms” race, the police are more aggro but so are the public. At least in public perception back before the 70s its was perceived that by and large there was “respect for authority” but that’s eroded over the decades for various reasons among them court cases asserting more rights for individuals where cops can’t just up and arrest willy nilly. But also movements like “sovereign citizen” leaks in places enough to affect behavior elsewhere. Also weapons are relatively cheaper today than decades ago.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - mothballed 5mo ago
    There's an insane number of police shootings where it turns out the person was looking at an insanely large sentence and they "weren't going back to jail." From that perspective it's not even clear they're acting irrationally -- if the penalty for third-striking for stealing a TV and murder is the same then some criminals are going to make it worth their while.
    - RajT88 5mo ago
      "suicide by cop" is a narrative also used to cover up a bad police shooting.

alexpotato 5mo ago

Reminds me of the study that showed that you got very different types of people signing up to be police officers if your town's police recruiting brochure had pictures of a SWAT team versus pictures of a police officer doing community outreach at a school and shaking hands.

jMyles 5mo ago
...without apparently controlling for the extent to which people _become_ "very different types of people" in agencies who advertise one way or the other. Either way, it's beyond obvious in 2026 that SWAT teams are no longer necessary and are far, far more trouble than they're worth. Abolish them today.
- mothballed 5mo ago
  It's probably indisputable at this point that inviting the citizen gravy seals to deal with real threats will probably result in fewer innocent victims than a professional SWAT force that professionally sometimes rescues hostages while also mostly being used to throw flashbangs at babies and terrorize people at 2am no-knocks over petty crimes.
- pstuart 5mo ago
  And it's almost always done for some drug related crime. End the War on Drugs now!
m463 5mo ago
I knew a guy who wanted to be a police officer in the LA area. They gave him a psychological exam. one of the questions was something along the lines of "you pull over a drunk driver, and it turns out to be your mother. what do you do?" I asked him what he said. He said he would call another officer and have him take her home. I was thinking, wow. He said if someone answers that they would arrest her, they wouldn't hire that person. Took me a while to work through it and wrap my mind around all of it.
- mothballed 5mo ago

tearwear 5mo ago

semantic reinterpretation on Austrian overload. knock your favorite downer down with at least 3 bottles of wine and you'll feel only slightly behind ... an IVY LEAGUE AFICIONADO got something to say. what's the shape of his intent? levels down, I mean, not the superficial that he modestly commands ...

tearwear 5mo ago

the fear to lose control due to incompetence .... is that how all those former and current self-driving/self-flying/self-digging engineers and founders feel? jeez must they be grateful to all that stupidity their ( practically ) grand- daddies established among the rest of the world! #HerrenRasseViaSabotageForTheWin #Austria #SouthAfrica #USA #USA #USA

copindustrial 5mo ago

Those who get to brand a thing rules a thing! This quote comes to mind: "Ain't no Uzi's made in Harlem. Not one of us in here owns a poppy field. This thing is bigger than Nino Brown. This is big business. This is the American way."

FireBeyond 5mo ago
I'm so ingrained to the sampling of this song that I heard it as "This thing is bigger than Immortal Technique." before "Oh... yeah."

pstuart 5mo ago

I think it should be pointed out that we have the police we have because enough of the population is ok with it -- because they operate with the assumption that the cops exist to harass "others" but not themselves. If the entire citizenry said "no more!" to this nonsense we could have better policing all around.

yndoendo 5mo ago

Warrior mentality creates an US vs Them framework vs We. In Game Theory, with two parties, this equates to Win, Loose scenario. The best outcome in Game Theory is Win, Win. Society will fall part in the long run when not focused on the best outcome for all parties.

Jtsummers 5mo ago

Two past discussions on this one (it seemed familiar): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23441606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23441606 - 6 years ago, 78 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699893 - 11 years ago, 151 comments Some interesting comments in there.

FireBeyond 5mo ago

> it has become a point of professional pride to refer to the “police warrior.” Conversely, in a large portion of the fire service, the movement has been to eschew the title "firefighter" for "fireman" (regardless of gender). Part tradition but also part a belief that being "a man of fire", living, breathing... understanding... it goes a long way towards being able to control and manage it safely. Backdraft was cheesy and cringy in many a way, but one thing it touched on is the predictability of fire, and how absent variables (sadly a rare thing in the real world) it is possible to understand how it moves and grows and how best to contain it.

cadamsdotcom 5mo ago

For anyone curious about how others have solved this in the past it Is worth looking into Community Policing. This problem has been solved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_policing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_policing