[djaque]

> There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.

- Commander Adama

[vsareto]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24745471

I'm starting to think it was more than just sitcoms

[farseer]

The American population is heavily armed so that comparison is not valid. You need police to be well equipped to handle a 300lb man in body armour and fielding an AR-15 style rifle.

[tertiary]

That's not true in the 80% use case of SWAT teams which is drug offenses and executing search warrants. This is the core argument for demilitarization, not the straw man of "I don't want police to have the equipment needed to respond to school shooters." Showing up with militarized teams to mostly non-violent situations just causes escalation after escalation and is why militarized units kill at a far higher rate than just the police alone.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20531680177128...

[craftinator]

> You need police to be well equipped

No; no I don't. I need police to be better equipped upstairs, maybe take some queues from the British or German police.

A slim portion of the American population is heavily armed, and police don't deal with armed suspects in something like 99% percent of 911 calls. In that <1% of cases, we can call SWAT. That's why SWAT exists, to be a highly trained, militarized version of the police.

[hourislate]

>I need police to be better equipped upstairs, maybe take some queues from the British or German police.

British Police

When they are not arresting mothers or 80 year olds for not wearing a mask or holding a sign.

https://www.dumpert.nl/?selectedId=7998859_cd38b070

German Police

They actually called in Jet Fighters, Helicopters and a few thousand active military. After have at least 1000 police looking too. In total over 5000 personal to find one guy in a forest. Seems excessive.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/17/german-police-...

[craftinator]

Oh good, I love a good cherry picking competition! As a Portlander, I can tell you first hand our police are regularly doing much worse than "arresting" mothers and grandmothers, they're first shooting them with tear-gas, impact munitions, then batoning and pepper spraying them on the ground. Watched it, first hand, just a few days ago.

As a former Marine, until watching our cops in action this year, I was all about them. Now I'm disgusted with them, and will do everything I can to take the toys away from these children. Until you've seen them first hand (or you are one... Just quit and live a better life), it's actually really hard to believe just how awful they are. Are cops are the "war on drugs" cops who bend or disregard every rule so they can "come down hard" and "make an example". That's the attitude. And if you think that's okay... Wait till your kid gets pulled over, or stopped for riding a bike through the wrong part of town. These people are thugs, and operate where no laws will touch them.

[Fnoord]

You went from one extreme position to the other.

I don't understand the position ACAB or NCAB (N = No). Clearly, some cops are bastards.

In The Netherlands my experiences with the Dutch police have been good or at worst neutral. I have been surprised numerous times how downright friendly and relaxed cops here can be. Even at the few demonstrations I been to (most notably two anti war in Iraq demos) no trouble whatsoever.

Even if you speak for US only I have a hard time believing the entire police force of US is rotten.

[hourislate]

I don't dispute there is a problem with law enforcement in the US.

[craftinator]

Good, we have a consensus then; now as for your original cherry picking comment, let's look at something more substantive[1]:

"In Germany, for example, police recruits are required to spend two and a half to four years in basic training to become an officer, with the option to pursue the equivalent of a bachelor’s or master’s degree in policing. Basic training in the U.S., by comparison, can take as little as 21 weeks (or 33.5 weeks, with field training). The less time recruits have to train, the less time is afforded for guidance on crisis intervention or de-escalation."

This isn't a single cherry picked event; it is the minimum required standard. I think that perhaps our police are just poorly trained thugs compared to the Germans; the British police force has a more comparable training to ours (36 weeks I believe), but they ARE NOT ARMED. In order to carry a firearm, they need higher rank, more years of experience, and additional training in order to carry a firearm.

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/06/am...

[nkozyra]

I think this is begging the question a bit.

We assume a lot of inevitables in this case, specifically that an interaction with law enforcement will likely end in conflict

[oneplane]

So your solution is to just keep escalating?

[almost_usual]

When there is an active shooter in body armor wielding a high powered weapon you’re deescalating and saving lives.

[numpad0]

Terrorists don’t wear body armors, and “power” of guns don’t matter as well.

In fact, it gets weaker and weaker as guns improve because the required amount to “stop” a human had been grossly overestimated.

.308 hunting rifle cartridge, still deemed necessary to stop charging wild animals, has muzzle kinetic energy of 3.5kJ. .223Rem for AR-15, used in wars against humans, is 1.8kJ, 9mmx19 used in latest “tactical self defense” PCCs is just 0.5kJ.

Bullets are all deadly if it hits and when it hits.

[farseer]

Do you have a choice? Either water down the second amendment and disarm the population or give the police what they need. I am not taking a side, simply stating the dilemna of law enforcement.

[tertiary]

> Either water down the second amendment ... or give the police what they need

That's a false dichotomy and misses the main point of the argument to reduce police militarization.

Nobody is upset when SWAT responds to a school shooting or a terrorist act. The problem (I suppose a really good problem to have after all) is that those things almost never happen, even though they are the ones we see on the news and can quickly retrieve in our minds. You're more likely to die in a plane crash than in a terrorist act in the US.

That begs the question: if militarized units don't have enough violent crime to respond to, but are still a full time unit then what do they respond to? The answer is why people are upset and it's because we are sending them to respond to drug offenses and to execute search warrants instead. Situations thay they inevitably end up escalating (on average) and killing people in.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20531680177128...

[craftinator]

New Zealand just went through an interesting experiment; they armed some of their police as a trial run, then got feedback from the community that that armed unit served. The majority response was that while people understood WHY the police were armed, they didn't want armed police doing things like traffic stops, responding to domestic disputes, etc.., because their mere presence was threatening.

[henriquez]

Watering down the second amendment would work to the extent that people wielding the guns were behaving lawfully in the first place, which is not relevant when we’re taking about armed confrontations with police.

I have yet to see any statistics showing that militarizing the police makes them any more effective or safe.

[petre]

The obvious solution is to tax ammo proportinal to its military use. You want military grade armor piercing rounds to shoot tin cans at your birthday party? Fine, that's taxed 1000%. Normal 9 mm rounds suitable for handguns should obviously be taxed lower. It doesn't ban firearms, it just creates a supply problem for nutcakes and preppers buiding arsenals. Security companies and firing ranges could recover their ammo tax at the end of the fiscal year. Hobbists could shoot assault rifles at firing ranges, as opposed to their back yard. The police won't need surplus military gear then. Your neighbour won't be wounded from a stray bullet shot from an assault rifle ten buildings away.

[numpad0]

I think you guys have laws forbid civilian possession of military AP rounds in the US.

[craftinator]

Yes, there's a choice. Again, the police don't need military gear. You keep talking about what everyone "needs" in your posts; what the police "need" is fewer opportunities to be assholes.

The police need to be trained in how to de-escalate; they need to be trained not to "dominate" every situation they're involved in. The need to be demilitarized, and SWAT units need to be expanded slightly to deal with the small number of cases every year that demand real firepower.

[rhino369]

See the North Hollywood Shootout for a good example of what happens if the cops are outgunned.

[craftinator]

Yes, and that has happened... One time. N=1. The police need less gear, and if confronted with a crazy dude in Level 4 body armor with an automatic, their job is to call SWAT, then clear all civilians out of the area.