[algorithmsRcool]

I want to contend this point strongly. My home city (approx 200k people) does not have gang activity, we don't have drugs or prostitution or muggings or car-jackings as major problems (or problems at all). There are very very few parts of my city that i would feel threatened walking alone down the street at 3am. All of them on the outskirts of the city and in swamp areas. And yet the city has acquired a ex-military armored troop carrier.

Why?

We don't have shootouts with drug lords going on. My city has suffered exactly 3 officer deaths on duty in the last 25 years and only one of those was by gunfire (15 years ago). I utterly reject the reasoning that my city's officers need to be made to feel safe by the acquisition of ex-military hardware.

Let me be as clear as i can, that vehicle does not make me, the citizen, feel safe. I've seen them deploy that vehicle for something as common has a home robbery. This is not Afghanistan, criminals are not enemy combatants. When you have that kind of hardware sitting around, you will find a use for it.

I don't know what kinds of 'nice things' you are referring to, i'd love to hear examples. Lastly i reject that euphemistic description of that troop carrier as a 'robust all terrain vehicle'. This is a well paved, suburban, low violence city; not Kabul.

[base2]

I think the usage of the word military to describe equipment is getting convoluted. I still have an old MILITARY 2 piece canvas tent(with the little poles and stakes) It's certainly ex-military but in terms of offensive capabilities I think you might be able to cripple and enemy due to laughing at you when you try to whack them with a tent pole piece. Give that to a police department and it's still considered Ex-Military. Canteens? Military too...

In most situations a rifle is going to be able to penetrate through almost every part of a police/civilian vehicle. If someone is shooting at you the only proactive thing you can do to keep your self safe is to return fire to either take the enemy out of the fight or suppress them.

If you have a vehicle that can stop small arms fire the immediate need to start shooting back is slowed down to a degree.

They also make nice rolling barriers in case you need to move to someone that is injured with out the need for suppressing fire.

Also psychologically it slows people down due to the fact that they will have less of a chance to be able to harm/pose a threat to police.

On the other hand if they start using turret mounted automatic weapons such a MK19 then that's going to be a problem.

When folks throw around escalation when bringing in an armored vehicle I in my mind I'm thinking the bad guy is going to get MAD due to having a harder time killing a police officer.

I guess we can all take a vote with the knowledge that police get killed in the line of duty. Let's pretend we are all police here. Who want's to be the last cop killed before we achieve societal and world peace?