[runsWphotons]

Why should I live in a more dangerous society than the Netherlands (which isn't "nordic")? Or Australia? I fit in those places fine. Why can't we have that at home? Why is this level of crime acceptable just because it is lower than 1980? What liberty do I give up by having some guardsmen standing around?

[cthalupa]

His point is that the crime rate being lower in these places does not happen due to them having militarized police, so assuming that militarized police in general, much less literally using the military for policing will drop the crime rate doesn't track.

[runsWphotons]

You can see my comment below for some facts about the Netherlands. They do, literally, have a militarized police (the gendarmerie) which has civilian duties while operating under the defense ministry (and having military duties as well). They operate at airports, do border control, protect state assets (especially in capitol), do crowd control at major events, contain riots etc. You will see them if you go and even try to look.

Their normal police is very similar to America's in number and capability. They may be trained better, which seems like an argument for better training.

I have the opposite hypothesis: I think more police, even from the NG, will help. I think if our society is more criminal, for whatever reasons, it should be policed more. I do not see any good arguments for how having a few hundred NG deployed will strip me of any important liberty, and I think it is much better than tech solutions in that regard.

We now have a test case, and we can come back and see.

[jacquesm]

Gendarmerie is the Belgian term still in use there, in NL we use Marechaussee because we didn't like to be reminded of the French occupation.

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koninklijke_Marechaussee

[cthalupa]

The Royal Marechaussee is 1/10th the size of the National Police Force and as you noted have quite specialized tasks. They are not the people handling day to day crime and interactions with civilians for mundane police actions. They also receive plenty of training related to the policing duties and are trained on how to police civilians. The national guard does not, and even MPs receive very different training and operate in a very different manner to the regular police.

This is very different than universally militarizing your police force across the nation or employing soldiers untrained in policing as police.

What do you believe the venn diagram of soldier and police skillsets looks like?

[runsWphotons]

I think it looks like a normal venn diagram. Some things are similar and some different and it depends on what deployments or forces each has worked on. That's why NG troops are getting extra training in police duties and working together with normal police.

[cthalupa]

Police training academy is already generally considered to be insufficient, which is part of why cops continue to receive so much ongoing training as part of the job.

Getting a few rushed bootcamp style classes is not going to do anything to remotely bridge that gap.

[UncleMeat]

My point is that an ever more militarized police directed by a vengeful president is not actually going to make society safer. I too would like programs that actually address the causes of crime but instead we are going to get more violence done to the poor, racial minorities, and people using their voices.