Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear • Hacker News Board

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#191

Post by ameister14 » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

hugh4life wrote: post #88

rconti wrote: post #14

A common response to the idea of "police reform" is that it will make it harder/more expensive/etc to hire police, which we all agree we need. As an armchair economist who believes that everything DOES happen at the margins, we can't completely ignore this, so I'm at least somewhat sympathetic to the argument. But what really kills the argument is looking at how our medical professionals have stepped up and responded…

"But what really kills the argument is looking at how our medical professionals have stepped up and responded to COVID-19, putting their lives on the line every day, with utterly inadequate gear. And still they serve." You can't compare spontaneous heroism with mundane risk.

It's funny because nursing isn't much less dangerous than policing.

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#192

Post by ameister14 » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 9:49 PM UTC

remarkEon wrote: post #49

paloaltokid wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the more reason to not give the police even more powerful tools with which to brutalize people. If the equipment is not the problem, take it away. That's one less thing to worry about.

This isn't true. Modern tools are significantly less lethal, and give police more options on the spectrum of escalation before having to draw their service pistol. This is why protests were much more deadly in the 1970s.

Were protests much more deadly in the 1970's? I'm not actually sure they were. Do you have easy access to any data that supports that?

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#193

Post by agensaequivocum » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #30

core-questions wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should taxpayers who fund the police have to artificially pay more markup, making someone else rich, just so the police have less equipment?

Why should the police get a discount? They should have to buy their MRAPs through the auction systems the same way that someone running a logging company has to buy surplus LMTVs. I'm sympathetic to the cause of saving money but if the military won't auction something to a random US citizen I don't see why they should be auctioning that thing to a random US civilian police force. They can sell that stuff to other nat…

> I don't particularly care what the standard is for disposing of unwanted military hardware is so long as it's not a double one. A civilian police force should get no special treatment above any other civilian entity.

Agreed, the NFA needs to go and every citizen should be able to purchase military surplus.

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#194

Post by geodel » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

rconti wrote: post #14

A common response to the idea of "police reform" is that it will make it harder/more expensive/etc to hire police, which we all agree we need. As an armchair economist who believes that everything DOES happen at the margins, we can't completely ignore this, so I'm at least somewhat sympathetic to the argument. But what really kills the argument is looking at how our medical professionals have stepped up and responded…

> But what really kills the argument is looking at how our medical professionals have stepped up and responded to COVID-19, putting their lives on the line every day, with utterly inadequate gear.

This is exactly an American hero obsession that is causing police problem. Everyone here : police, fire department, medical staff and so on have to be heroes.

From where I come, all doctors, lawyers, police or any other service provides are identified at best working for a pay or more commonly out there to rip off common people at first chance they get.

My US experience of doctors is not much better considering how much private, non-insurance covered treatment they "recommended" for my kid. It feels highly unlikely that they had my best interest at their heart.

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#195

Post by andromeduck » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

bgentry wrote: post #174

milkytron wrote: post #172

I get that they're trying to address the current issues this nation is facing. But if the issue is related to police officers not facing punishment for their crimes, wouldn't revising qualified immunity[0] be a pretty good solution? It seems to be clear that qualified immunity has been taken advantage of and is potentially the main reason why officers are able to get away with the crimes they commit. This might get b…

It's entirely insufficient. Qualified immunity is a concept that protects officers from civil liability. It's part of the puzzle for sure, but the much bigger issue is that officers that violate the law or others' rights almost never face criminal liability. An officer that chokes a nonviolent person to death for 9 minutes straight, or an officer that kicks an unthreatening protester in the face, or that fires rounds…

Civil liabilities go a long way. The bulk of the original civil rights lawsuits were civil suits stemming from constitutional violations.

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#196

Post by abootstrapper » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

hysan wrote: post #155

abootstrapper wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equipment is not the only problem. But it is a very big problem, and it’s the easiest to solve. So let’s solve it.

If it's easy to solve, then it should be a footnote in a much more difficult to tackle solution. Right now, this reads very much like a deflection of the core issues at hand. This will not alleviate the core issue at all in the long term, but gives the appearance that lawmakers are "doing their best" to solve the problem. That they've "taken first steps" and that protests should stop. No. This is an extremely common…

That’s a great point. To your point, tackling the root of the problem should address the military hardware issue. I yield the point.

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#197

Post by pc86 » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

stdbrouw wrote: post #166

rconti wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pusher bumpers are just standard, and have been forever. A friend got accidentally rear-ended by a cop, no damage thanks to the pusher. The police need to push cars to the side of the road on, I'd venture, a daily basis.

> The police need to push cars to the side of the road on, I'd venture, a daily basis. In what kind of weird and twisted world do police officers need to push cars to the side on a daily basis?

Literally any accident where stopped traffic can be more dangerous than slow-moving traffic (such as any highway).

It's really not a strange concept and it's weird to me that you can't comprehend a first responder having a need to move a large, heavy, immobilized object.

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#198

Post by pc86 » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

mstade wrote: post #183

stdbrouw wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The police need to push cars to the side of the road on, I'd venture, a daily basis. In what kind of weird and twisted world do police officers need to push cars to the side on a daily basis?

Clearly you’ve never driven in the US of A. ;o) Facetious commentary aside – and I do apologize for the tongue in cheekness – as a European I’ve always been struck by just how many wrecks and other debris are littered by the side of the roads in the US. Mileage varies I’m sure (no pun intended) but I covered 6660 miles on a road trip through in the US last year and it seemed almost universal to me that you’d see at l…

This is going to be very dependent on location. I've commuted on various 20-40 mile stretches of highway for the past decade and it's rare to see debris for more than a day or two before someone cleans it up. And I've seen a car "engulfed in flames" exactly one time in my entire adult life.

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#199

Post by pc86 » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

tharne wrote: post #150

nds43242 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you engender an idea of a UK/Canada-type cop in a country where there are more guns than people? I assume cops here are trained to see all citizens as armed threats, which systematically produces cops who are always on edge and ready to kill. The whole thing feels like a deeper problem than just training cops to be nicer.

Not enough people acknowledge this. The U.S. is a heavily armed country. It is very easy to (legally) buy military grade weapons in most states. Knowing that you could potentially get your head blown off anytime you pull someone over is going to lead to a very different psychology than you might see in a country like South Korea or Germany where very few people, if any, are armed. You can't just say, "Oh look how nic…

> It is very easy to (legally) buy military grade weapons in most states.

I would love to know what you mean by "military grade" because by every definition I can think of this is so wrong it's either a statement with no bearing in reality, or an intentional lie.

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#200

Post by geodel » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 10:04 PM UTC

pmorici wrote: post #18

rconti wrote: post #14

A common response to the idea of "police reform" is that it will make it harder/more expensive/etc to hire police, which we all agree we need. As an armchair economist who believes that everything DOES happen at the margins, we can't completely ignore this, so I'm at least somewhat sympathetic to the argument. But what really kills the argument is looking at how our medical professionals have stepped up and responded…

I agree that both professions have the same sort of "service in a time of crisis" mythology surrounding them but how does the fact that the norm for the medical profession is high pay where as the norm for police is slightly above minimum wage starting out with a shot as average pay after several years of service affect those myths?

You make good point. From what I read here apart from medical professional or software developers, forget increment, no one really deserves the pay they are getting now.