Militarizing the police fails on every level
The theory goes that militarizing the police saves lives. They say that an overwhelming police response will deter resistance, and thus cut down on the number of police shootings.
That has been proven to be a lie.
Even controlling for other possible factors in police violence (such as household income, overall and black population, violent-crime levels and drug use), more-militarized law enforcement agencies were associated with more civilians killed each year by police. When a county goes from receiving no military equipment to $2,539,767 worth (the largest figure that went to one agency in our data), more than twice as many civilians are likely to die in that county the following year.
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Using the Puppycide Database Project, which tracks police shootings of pets across the United States, we found that in counties where police received more military equipment, law enforcement kills more pets.That finding bolsters our assessment that militarization makes police more likely to turn to violence to solve problems.
You dress people up as an occupational army, they start acting like an occupational army.
OK. So militarizing the police gets civilians killed, but it saves police lives, right? Nope.
Mummolo then looked at how crime statistics and violence against officers changed before and after those police forces militarized.The acquisition of SWAT forces had no perceptible impact on police safety — the number of officers killed or assaulted — on a national level.
So if militarizing the police gets civilians killed AND doesn't save police lives, what good is it?
It creates profits for military weapons contractors, and it creates a climate of fear.
So for some people it's worth the price.
Comments
Profits r us!
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
That people put a device that spies on them in their homes
willingly just blows my mind. This is what Alexa does, but it's not the only thing that can do it. Computers with webcams and a microphone can. Smart TVs can do it too. But tell that to people and they say that it's okay because they have nothing to hide. Like that's the point.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
They lie
Then why bother:
locking the bathroom door
putting a password on their email and social media
not sharing their diary with strangers
not telling their boss/coworker/friend what they "really think"
From listening, when cops
get together, I get the feeling they view all humanity as "dirty", guilty of something until caught out. Excepting some relatives that are ok.
and of course, they're right ...
excepting the excepting, of their relatives and/or themselves.
nobody lives from cradle to grave in perfect harmony with the "right" side of the law. this is why "profiling" is so fundamentally dangerous -- it gives cops a reason to stop you, and once they do, there's a good chance they're going to find something to charge you with. maybe not this time, but eventually, if they stop you often enough.
laws that almost everybody breaks some, most or all of the time are especially problematic, because they give the police a means to persecute, not just stochastically against a class of citizens, but determinedly against a particular enemy -- e.g., a politician who wants to rein in police power, or maybe just some cop's neighbor who worships in the wrong church.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Attributed to Cardinal Richelieu
(but disputed by various scholars): if you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
Some are working toward changing this.
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
I've only lived a few places,
I've only lived a few places, but one thing I've noticed is that police in many countries are from and known by the community. In Laos there is only one firearm, the AK. Almost no law enforcement is wealthy enough to own a sidearm, so anyone who has a firearm is carrying an AK, it's like a 6.5 lb stick to carry in the extremely rare possibility that some crazy person is doing something so violent that there's no other way to provide safety to everyone else. So you see a lot of AKs. Used to be cops didn't even have the money for a uniform, so a uniform meant army. Now the police have modified army uniforms and patches signifying police. No one is the least concerned with the police. People call them brother, strangers do. They're mostly helpful. Most aren't even party members.
So carrying a full auto rifle is not in and of itself the cause of the antipathy often felt between our population and the police. In my opinion anyway.
I've no idea why our society is sometimes so violent. Frankly why anyone would ever even consider shooting anyone is hard for me to fathom. Isn't the first rule of firearm safety never to let the muzzle cover anyone? Hard to shoot anyone if you can't point the dogone thing in their direction.
Maybe it's our effort to make even the police operate on a shoe string budget. Running from this incident to that one in their squad cars. Imagine if half the force were strictly on foot? Sure would make the police local. It would also make the police known. Maybe unarmed too.
I agree. Guns are not the problem
Don't get me wrong. I disapprove of militarizing the police force for other reasons. But police shootings, and various other forms of violence in our society are not cause by things. They are caused by us. The US is sick culturally. I suspect it comes from being the barbarian hordes. Humans, in general, are a violent species.
But the US culture takes that and elevates it to the place where even good people hope that awful forms of violence happen to other people. I frequently find myself horrified at the things which my US friends say so casually.
Then, of course, we could talk about continuous war. Americans are slaughtering people in job lots and they don't even care enough to wonder who they are killing much less why. The American first answer to pretty much every problem is either money or violence. That's going to make things interesting when more and more Americans become "the problem".
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
It must be our modern culture
After WW2 there were far more citizens with weapons and combat experience, little restriction in gun ownership and a relatively peaceful society. Today liberals and conservatives both fetishize weapons as gods or devils. I still think if we are to have a 2nd amendment, every citizen should be required to have weapons training and possibly required to own a weapon. Maybe that would defuse this stupid gun porn.
Personally, I think it's that we've enshrined greed
We have created a culture which is adamantly proud that is dog eat dog, every man for himself. I would expect a violent culture when everyone is scrambling to fight for the few scraps that fell on the floor after our betters took their share. We've basically created a Mad Max film.
I see the United States as barbarians. More specifically what I mean is "anti-civilization". The very point of civilization is to band together for mutual defense. If you turn a country into a cage match then it's not really a civilization any more.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
“It’s easy to pay for something that costs less”
MFA
Just from my observation, it
Just from my observation, it's way they recruit these days. The people that gravitate toward being violent and controling are the ones that are attracted to the job as it is described. They hire them because that's what they are looking for.
Saw on the news
about a Toys for Tots drive, and the police delivered their toys in a spectacular way. Up drives the heavily armored and seasonally decorated Bearcat, with ornaments hanging from the gun ports. The doors open and there's Santa to hand over the donations. Nothing says holiday like a Bearcat.