8 ms·

Jesus... that's completely indefensible. Now, I don't live in the US, and I only see the bad stuff that happens through the media, but I truly can't see why the

by girvo 12y ago

Jesus... that's completely indefensible. Now, I don't live in the US, and I only see the bad stuff that happens through the media, but I truly can't see why the police need to do things this way...

zanny 12y ago
They don't have to. There are plenty of good cops, but your mileage will vary with the integrity of the local PD. There are these hot beds of systemically bad police precincts and the power structure is organized such that those who could fix it are also those initiating it. A large contributing factor is the military industrial complex spewing out death tech at an absurd rate, and with nobody to blow up with it all it just goes to police forces at auction. So you end up with towns of a thousand having swat teams and tanks and you wonder why the culture shifts from protecting and serving to war, death, and extortion.
- fixedd 12y ago
  There's 2.5k people in my town and it's news here (literally) when someone is arrested shopping at the local Wal-Mart. The police have two miltary-issue Humvees, for some reason.
  - base2 12y ago
    That stuff has always irked me, trying to look threatening/intimidating. However when most people complain about military gear finding its way to police I have to laugh a little bit. When automatic grenade launchers and .50 cal machine guns start appearing then there are problems(too late at that point I guess). MWRAPS and armored personnel carriers, those are okay. Dressing in all black(A horrible tactical color BTW) or camo now your just doing that to look upsetting. The armored tanks are not so bad as it provides something that police can feel safer and less threaten in so escalation doesn't need to happen so fast.
    - EliRivers 12y ago
      The armored tanks are not so bad as it provides something that police can feel safer and less threaten in so escalation doesn't need to happen so fast. If you turn up in an armoured tank, you have just escalated the situation.
      - base2 12y ago
        I guess police departments (if they haven't already) would be stupid enough to deploy them in a trivial situation. If your dealing with against a threat with a firearm I'm going to assume there are going to be more cops with guns in the majority of the situations. Those are the folks you don't want to set off! So if you can feel a little bit safer in a little ole MRAP you might not be inclined to start a shooting gallery as quickly.
        amirmc 12y ago
        I find this attitude confusing. You're suggesting that cops are the ones who need to be made to feel safer? That by making them them feel safer they might be less likely to start shooting? Who is protecting who in this brave new world?
        sqrt17 12y ago
        The answer in other countries has been to train the police force so that they can accurately assess risks to themselves and others and use the amount of caution and, if needed, force necessary to fulfill their task. Police should value their own lives higher than that of people behaving aggressively towards them, but that's speaking in a degree. And they shouldn't behave like dangerous paranoics (because of lack of training, or because they are dangerous paranoics).
        tinco 12y ago
        You're being irrational now. Of course cops need to be and feel safe. They are just humans, humans equipped with guns. Anything you can do to make sure they don't fire those guns prematurely should be done, after all, they're for protecting us. Calling it an armored tank is exaggerating. It's basically a mobile barrier that can carry a bunch of officers. There's all kinds of nice stuff you can do with them, and frankly I think it would be kind of embarassing for a town if they couldn't get a robust all terrain vehicle to some location within a reasonable timeframe.
  - fixedd 12y ago
    *shoplifting
  - akgerber 12y ago
    A non-uparmored Humvee seems like a nicer pickup truck, and would be useful in a small town where rescues in an isolated area are part of the job. An uparmored Humvee, on the other hand, is problematic.
  - bmelton 12y ago
    The DoD is selling off the old equipment to local LEOs for pennies on the dollar. Simultaneously, the terms of the sale dictate that they must use those military items within a year of purchase, or they have to return the items. This is why the police are increasingly using military gear in situations for which they are not warranted. I don't like this source, per se, but I've seen it posted elsewhere, and this is the handiest one right now, so here it is. http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/tanks-on-the-streets-police-required-to-use-military-equipment-within-a-year-or-return-it-140826?news=854075 http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/tanks-on-the-streets-...
- morganvachon 12y ago
  > A large contributing factor is the military industrial complex spewing out death tech at an absurd rate, and with nobody to blow up with it all it just goes to police forces at auction. Sometimes not even sold, but given. There are government programs where police departments can ask for used military gear and get it at no cost (i.e. no impact to their budget). This makes the departments especially eager to acquire as much "death tech" as they can. > So you end up with towns of a thousand having swat teams and tanks and you wonder why the culture shifts from protecting and serving to war, death, and extortion. This makes me very sad. I was born in the 70s so I grew up during the coldest part of the cold war. We were taught in school that (sorry to Godwin) Nazi Germany was pure evil, Stalinist Russia was pure evil, Italy under Mussolini was pure evil, China under Mao was pure evil, and so on. Yet here we are becoming just as militarized on a local level as those regimes, giving our police forces nearly carte blanche to oppress the citizens at will. It's disgusting and disturbing, and I say that as a former law enforcement employee of 14 years.
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    While we should be on guard for police abuses let's not pretend it is anywhere near Mao or Stalin.
    - morganvachon 12y ago
      I said "we are becoming". I didn't say we are there, but it's a disturbing trend. Take it from someone who worked on the inside, it's only getting worse.
    - jimbokun 12y ago
      I went through school in the 70s and 80s, and also remember learning about the clear dividing lines of inalienable human rights spelled out in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution that made us different from the Soviet Union. Maybe the difference was never as black and white as it seemed to me at the time, but I still believe we have been drifting away from the protection of basic rights I was once taught were so important to who we are as a people.
    - 12y ago
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  > There are plenty of good cops, If there were plenty, why are the bad cops never arrested?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- chris_wot 12y ago
  Justify this: "If she hadn’t been selling illegal items out of the home, no warrant would have been served," he said. "What you call extreme, we call safe." She sold some beer and food illegally. The police through a bomb into her house. Real safe.
  - code_duck 12y ago
    Pretty typical law enforcement logic for the United States. It's about like, to protect you from the supposed harm of smoking cannabis… We will anally search your wives on the side of the road, put you in prison with hardened criminals, and blow up your babies with grenades. Oh, whoops, it's almost the same topic. It's just more unusual to see this bizarrely inappropriate level of force applied to unlicensed kitchens.
- nagrom 12y ago
  None of this screed justifies a group of men shooting dead (and continuing to shoot, even after death) a man who was not resisting in any way. No-one doubts that police officers have a tough job. But that truth doesn't give the police the right to execute people, bomb houses and act as judge, jury and executioner. That scenario just makes the police the biggest, best funded gangs on the street.
pjc50 12y ago
The answer that hasn't yet been mentioned in this thread: racism.
- briandear 12y ago
  Really? Any evidence to back that up?
  - king_jester 12y ago
    You must be living under a rock to not have read one of the bazillion of stories about policing and racism that have come up since last fall, but for a great overview of the subject I highly recommend The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [1] [1] www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431/
    - happyscrappy 12y ago
      Police need to try harder to ignore the statistics of who commits crime. Just because one group is statistically committing more crime that should not affect their dealing with an individual who is innocent until proven guilty.
      - zo1 12y ago
        It's only a problem if unreasonable, excessive and unwarranted violence is used by the law enforcers. They should use every available indicator of crime in order to focus on problem areas. The alternative means that we're willingly sacrificing safety, peace and security in order to not offend, and that I find absolutely distasteful and negligent. Of course, 100% innocent until proven guilty; I'm not saying we should convict/target people without merit based purely off of race/age/obesity/hair color.
        rmxt 12y ago
        No, there are problems with racial profiling long before things devolve to "unreasonable, excessive and unwarranted violence." What defines a "problem area" as you put it? What is an "indicator"? Am I incorrectly reading between the lines here to say that you believe that it is perfectly acceptable to police black neighborhoods at a higher rate merely because they are black neighborhoods? That is, your "indicator" is, to put it bluntly, blackness. EDIT: Like any mutual fund manager will tell you, "past performance is not a guarantee of future results." Police policy is barking up the wrong tree if they think that blackness/race are the variables to watch, much like anyone would be amiss if they solely looked at TTM rate of return for an investment option, and that is to say nothing of the positive feedback loop that racial profiling creates. Poverty, education levels, and the availability of social mobility are the variables that should be watched to create sane public policy in the USA.

by girvo 12y ago

Jesus... that's completely indefensible. Now, I don't live in the US, and I only see the bad stuff that happens through the media, but I truly can't see why the police need to do things this way...

zanny 12y ago

They don't have to. There are plenty of good cops, but your mileage will vary with the integrity of the local PD. There are these hot beds of systemically bad police precincts and the power structure is organized such that those who could fix it are also those initiating it. A large contributing factor is the military industrial complex spewing out death tech at an absurd rate, and with nobody to blow up with it all it just goes to police forces at auction. So you end up with towns of a thousand having swat teams and tanks and you wonder why the culture shifts from protecting and serving to war, death, and extortion.

fixedd 12y ago
There's 2.5k people in my town and it's news here (literally) when someone is arrested shopping at the local Wal-Mart. The police have two miltary-issue Humvees, for some reason.
- base2 12y ago
  That stuff has always irked me, trying to look threatening/intimidating. However when most people complain about military gear finding its way to police I have to laugh a little bit. When automatic grenade launchers and .50 cal machine guns start appearing then there are problems(too late at that point I guess). MWRAPS and armored personnel carriers, those are okay. Dressing in all black(A horrible tactical color BTW) or camo now your just doing that to look upsetting. The armored tanks are not so bad as it provides something that police can feel safer and less threaten in so escalation doesn't need to happen so fast.
  - EliRivers 12y ago
    The armored tanks are not so bad as it provides something that police can feel safer and less threaten in so escalation doesn't need to happen so fast. If you turn up in an armoured tank, you have just escalated the situation.
    - base2 12y ago
      I guess police departments (if they haven't already) would be stupid enough to deploy them in a trivial situation. If your dealing with against a threat with a firearm I'm going to assume there are going to be more cops with guns in the majority of the situations. Those are the folks you don't want to set off! So if you can feel a little bit safer in a little ole MRAP you might not be inclined to start a shooting gallery as quickly.
      - amirmc 12y ago
        I find this attitude confusing. You're suggesting that cops are the ones who need to be made to feel safer? That by making them them feel safer they might be less likely to start shooting? Who is protecting who in this brave new world?
        sqrt17 12y ago
        The answer in other countries has been to train the police force so that they can accurately assess risks to themselves and others and use the amount of caution and, if needed, force necessary to fulfill their task. Police should value their own lives higher than that of people behaving aggressively towards them, but that's speaking in a degree. And they shouldn't behave like dangerous paranoics (because of lack of training, or because they are dangerous paranoics).
        tinco 12y ago
        You're being irrational now. Of course cops need to be and feel safe. They are just humans, humans equipped with guns. Anything you can do to make sure they don't fire those guns prematurely should be done, after all, they're for protecting us. Calling it an armored tank is exaggerating. It's basically a mobile barrier that can carry a bunch of officers. There's all kinds of nice stuff you can do with them, and frankly I think it would be kind of embarassing for a town if they couldn't get a robust all terrain vehicle to some location within a reasonable timeframe.
- fixedd 12y ago
  *shoplifting
- akgerber 12y ago
  A non-uparmored Humvee seems like a nicer pickup truck, and would be useful in a small town where rescues in an isolated area are part of the job. An uparmored Humvee, on the other hand, is problematic.
- bmelton 12y ago
  The DoD is selling off the old equipment to local LEOs for pennies on the dollar. Simultaneously, the terms of the sale dictate that they must use those military items within a year of purchase, or they have to return the items. This is why the police are increasingly using military gear in situations for which they are not warranted. I don't like this source, per se, but I've seen it posted elsewhere, and this is the handiest one right now, so here it is. http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/tanks-on-the-streets-police-required-to-use-military-equipment-within-a-year-or-return-it-140826?news=854075 http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/tanks-on-the-streets-...
morganvachon 12y ago
> A large contributing factor is the military industrial complex spewing out death tech at an absurd rate, and with nobody to blow up with it all it just goes to police forces at auction. Sometimes not even sold, but given. There are government programs where police departments can ask for used military gear and get it at no cost (i.e. no impact to their budget). This makes the departments especially eager to acquire as much "death tech" as they can. > So you end up with towns of a thousand having swat teams and tanks and you wonder why the culture shifts from protecting and serving to war, death, and extortion. This makes me very sad. I was born in the 70s so I grew up during the coldest part of the cold war. We were taught in school that (sorry to Godwin) Nazi Germany was pure evil, Stalinist Russia was pure evil, Italy under Mussolini was pure evil, China under Mao was pure evil, and so on. Yet here we are becoming just as militarized on a local level as those regimes, giving our police forces nearly carte blanche to oppress the citizens at will. It's disgusting and disturbing, and I say that as a former law enforcement employee of 14 years.
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  While we should be on guard for police abuses let's not pretend it is anywhere near Mao or Stalin.
  - morganvachon 12y ago
    I said "we are becoming". I didn't say we are there, but it's a disturbing trend. Take it from someone who worked on the inside, it's only getting worse.
  - jimbokun 12y ago
    I went through school in the 70s and 80s, and also remember learning about the clear dividing lines of inalienable human rights spelled out in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution that made us different from the Soviet Union. Maybe the difference was never as black and white as it seemed to me at the time, but I still believe we have been drifting away from the protection of basic rights I was once taught were so important to who we are as a people.
  - 12y ago
NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
> There are plenty of good cops, If there were plenty, why are the bad cops never arrested?

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

chris_wot 12y ago
Justify this: "If she hadn’t been selling illegal items out of the home, no warrant would have been served," he said. "What you call extreme, we call safe." She sold some beer and food illegally. The police through a bomb into her house. Real safe.
- code_duck 12y ago
  Pretty typical law enforcement logic for the United States. It's about like, to protect you from the supposed harm of smoking cannabis… We will anally search your wives on the side of the road, put you in prison with hardened criminals, and blow up your babies with grenades. Oh, whoops, it's almost the same topic. It's just more unusual to see this bizarrely inappropriate level of force applied to unlicensed kitchens.
nagrom 12y ago
None of this screed justifies a group of men shooting dead (and continuing to shoot, even after death) a man who was not resisting in any way. No-one doubts that police officers have a tough job. But that truth doesn't give the police the right to execute people, bomb houses and act as judge, jury and executioner. That scenario just makes the police the biggest, best funded gangs on the street.

pjc50 12y ago

The answer that hasn't yet been mentioned in this thread: racism.

briandear 12y ago
Really? Any evidence to back that up?
- king_jester 12y ago
  You must be living under a rock to not have read one of the bazillion of stories about policing and racism that have come up since last fall, but for a great overview of the subject I highly recommend The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [1] [1] www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431/
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    Police need to try harder to ignore the statistics of who commits crime. Just because one group is statistically committing more crime that should not affect their dealing with an individual who is innocent until proven guilty.
    - zo1 12y ago
      It's only a problem if unreasonable, excessive and unwarranted violence is used by the law enforcers. They should use every available indicator of crime in order to focus on problem areas. The alternative means that we're willingly sacrificing safety, peace and security in order to not offend, and that I find absolutely distasteful and negligent. Of course, 100% innocent until proven guilty; I'm not saying we should convict/target people without merit based purely off of race/age/obesity/hair color.
      - rmxt 12y ago
        No, there are problems with racial profiling long before things devolve to "unreasonable, excessive and unwarranted violence." What defines a "problem area" as you put it? What is an "indicator"? Am I incorrectly reading between the lines here to say that you believe that it is perfectly acceptable to police black neighborhoods at a higher rate merely because they are black neighborhoods? That is, your "indicator" is, to put it bluntly, blackness. EDIT: Like any mutual fund manager will tell you, "past performance is not a guarantee of future results." Police policy is barking up the wrong tree if they think that blackness/race are the variables to watch, much like anyone would be amiss if they solely looked at TTM rate of return for an investment option, and that is to say nothing of the positive feedback loop that racial profiling creates. Poverty, education levels, and the availability of social mobility are the variables that should be watched to create sane public policy in the USA.