hang on. Are you telling me the SS literally started out as hall monitors?
15 Likes
To someone who’s not from the US the word that stands out is “additional”.
Additional killings.
This is very much not normal. Any killings at all by the police should be a failure, a terrible incident that requires urgent investigation. There shouldn’t be a base-line, background level of killing that’s aggravated by nonsense like this. This is not fine.
30 Likes
3 Likes
ok can we quantify how many police chiefs when shown this make a happy speech about productivity being up?
2 Likes
Anyone can compare those two s-runes (sól) and see that they are not esoteric Armanen but Younger Fuᚦark, angled and out of line.
One of my grandfathers started as a policeman, then became a mass murderer with that outfit.
2 Likes
What’s the fun of having them if you don’t get to use them?
2 Likes
I think you’re right.
These guys also live in a weird kind of bubble where a very high percentage of the people they encounter are involved in some level of law-breaking. I think it really distorts their perception of the general population. I don’t know how that could be avoided, though.
After a quarter of a century of falling violent crime rates, we’re now also experiencing a mild upward trend in the violent crime rate. I have not idea if that figures into this, but it seems like an additional variable.
2 Likes
The most interesting part of the Washington Post article to me:
We reasoned that if officers become more prone to use violence, we should also see more pets killed by police. 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.
I had an inkling that doggy death by cop was an increasing issue, but had no idea that it was driven by the same shit that’s causing the increased use of violence against people.
16 Likes
Give 'em a book and they’re confused as hell.
7 Likes
This is one of the problems that arose from the general decline in foot patrols in the evolution of the modern police job.
12 Likes
and that’s before they leave the precinct!!
18 Likes
On the topic of civilian and military force, for what it is worth, it is against the Geneva Convention to use siege warfare, ie surrender or starve, against civilian targets. At one time, it was discussed being used against Standing Rock but the idea was dispensed with. However, the time when any thought of revolution upon a government which is not fulfilling its basic tenets via the advisement of John Locke, is quickly coming to a close.
1 Like
I dunno, seems like there are a lack of civilian deaths attributed to grenade launchers and artillery fire. In fact it seems a large amount of deaths are attributed to standard sidearms. Perhaps there is a greater correlation between the budget being used to buy “surplus” military gear and not being used to properly train the officers in proper use of said “surplus” and appropriate force response to a given situation.
2 Likes
limiting police “tactics” worked very well for the mendocino county sheriffs dept when pot wars were brewing. EVERYBODY stepped back and gave a sigh of relief.
2 Likes
I have a hypothesis about the militarization of police that I think might be worth looking into. See, even if you are a terrible human being and would like to shoot people or people of the ‘wrong’ color or… doing so as a cop is a terrible idea. Ferguson put paid to any fond dreams of it being done quietly and via a internal investigation which, amazingly, finds that the shooting was not only justified but damn near heroic. Now, there’s going to be a firestorm of controversy.
But the shootings still happen. And they don’t happen to just young cops who you can assume are just that evil and can’t control themselves, but to career cops who, even if they are evil, at least have shown the ability for self-control.
Or, perhaps, it is a conjunction of two unfortunate things. See those target pop-up things that the police use for training were originally military and, if what I’ve read is true, they were designed to stop the problem of people being terribly reluctant to pull the trigger of a firearm in war unless directly, actively threatened. Apparently, what they help with is automating the acquire target-aim-shoot cycle to the status of a reflex: an instinctive response to a threat.
After the big fiasco of the 1986 shootout in Miami, I think, police forces were suddenly faced with the inadequacy of their personnel as fighters and so adopted scarily overpowered sidearms (.40 S&W is a lot of gun, though at least they didn’t adopt the 10mm Auto) and, crucially, military training methods.
Now if you take a merely ordinarily racist cop who doesn’t want to gun down black people, but is leery of them and thinks they are a threat (to forestall the inevitable rejoinder: yes, they do kill more cops per head but the baseline rate is so low that it’s an unjustifiable heuristic to use especially if it leads to killing people) and you teach him to, when feeling threatened, instantly draw his weapon, acquire the target, aim, and shoot. The result is… well, this.
I’ve no proof, I hasten to add. It’s just a hypothesis, but I’d dearly love to see it researched. Or debunked, if anyone here’s of a mind to do so, 'cause it’d be nice to know either way.
As for the military gear I’m sure it doesn’t help. Honestly, what baffles me most of all aren’t even the M4s (which the Ferguson cops so famously carried dead wrong) but the armored vehicles with the .50 machine guns on the top. I’d like someone who knows their firearms like @Mister44 to tell me what on Earth those are for and what happens if you let loose a burst in a suburban street where the houses are made chiefly of plaster and clapboard. Because I’ve tried to imagine it and my mind plum ran out of curse-words.
4 Likes
Being a Non-American it may seem the right for US citizens to ‘carry arms’, in case British forces cross the Erie or Ontario lakes… back in the day of course. Hence todays urgency for Municipal and Provincial / State law enforcement to be equally equipped for any occasion. Sort of catch 22 , if the citizens are well armed… hence law enforcement needs to be betterly armed?
Are you trying to speak out against the circle jerk?
Heck, where police only carry truncheons, those too are of military origin.
This reads very poorly as if data and methodologies were cherry picked to lead to the desired conclusion.
1033 has certainly had unintended or undesirable results and is worth investigation however the above bothers me as it makes it seem as if the investigation was anything but impartial.
dont worry. with the republicans in control of congress and the white house, and the supreme court basically split down the middle: no cop will be losing their armored tank any time soon.
fwiw: it doesn’t take clever studies to see it’s a terrible idea to militarize the police. but, a certain group of people are in love with ideology over common sense.
11 Likes
It’s disturbingly easy to write this crap. You could replace your president with a small shell script.
1 Like
This is a topic Terry Pratchett returned to several times
“It always embarrassed Samuel Vimes when civilians tried to speak to him in what they thought was ‘policeman’. If it came to that, he hated thinking of them as civilians. What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers.”
- Snuff
“You’re going to let them play soldiers?” said Vimes.
“Oh, Commander Vimes,” said Mr. Burleigh, smiling. “As a military man yourself, you must—”
Sometimes people can attract attention by shouting. They might opt for thumping a table, or even take a swing at someone else. But Vimes achieved the effect by freezing, by simply doing nothing. The chill radiated off him. Lines in his face locked like a statue.
“I am not a military man.”
And then Burleigh made the mistake of trying to grin disarmingly.
“Well, commander, the helmet and armor and everything… . It’s really all the same in the end, isn’t it?”
“No. It’s not.”
- Jingo
12 Likes
