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Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO this is even less charitable, since it implies that more violent police departments are seeking out surplus military equipment to better subjugate civilians.
If you require a firearm, and you can buy a military surplus weapon which is cheaper than a new "civilian" firearm, wouldn't you?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or departments with more military gear are in more risky areas where the use of force is more likely. I could not read the article because it is blocked for me.
> controlling for statistical variables like community income, rural-urban differences, racial makeup, and violent crime rates. So, they must have have data on low crime areas that also have similar military gear. On a related note, do surplus statisticians cause lying journalists?
> A newly published article by a group of scholars with the Emory University Department of Political Science found no relationship between the presence of surplus military equipment and lower crime rates.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Risky areas" sounds like a dog whistle to me, much like "bad neighborhood"... When you think of these "risky areas", what do the people within them look like? Do they deserve to have militarized police literally rolling armored tank-like vehicles through their neighborhood, and what sort of impact do you think that has on them?
I don't understand why this was downvoted.
I'm not saying it's warranted for Police to have military weapons - but wouldn't departments that request military gear be somewhat correlated with ones with more intense crime. I'm guessing there aren't many sleepy hamlets that request the high-end stuff.
The police department at Ohio State University has an APC. No city in the USA, much less college campus, looks like a war zone. I would hope most people would not need to experience Kandahar first-hand to understand this fact.
We should be careful to draw a causal relationship here. It might not be that getting the military equipment causes police to be more aggressive and therefore have more killings. It might instead be that the more aggressive police departments are the ones that more seek to purchase military equipment, and the more aggressive police are the ones with more killings. I tend to think that's the case. Regardless, there is…
I agree with your first part that there is not necessarily a causal relationship between military equipment and killings. But your "no need, ever, for police to have automatic weapons" part is, to me, just wrong. In general, police should have enough kit to easily overpower the criminals they expect to face. We have been fortunate in many areas (e.g., most of the US, Europe and practically all urban areas) for the po…
2. you don't want to engage in an arms race with criminals.
3. law enforcement shouldn't be confused with urban warfare.
We should be careful to draw a causal relationship here. It might not be that getting the military equipment causes police to be more aggressive and therefore have more killings. It might instead be that the more aggressive police departments are the ones that more seek to purchase military equipment, and the more aggressive police are the ones with more killings. I tend to think that's the case. Regardless, there is…
Except those agencies aren't responsible for everday law enforcement, and some police departments are essentially fighting a war. For example, when I was a kid growing up in LA in the 90s, the gangs there were basically like warlords. Even recently, you can find examples of execution style gang murders in Los Angeles, and shootouts on the streets.
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Under the 1033 program, police departments pay for shipment and storage of the materials they request, but they do not pay for the equipment itself. While the military may purchase more equipment then it actually needs to lower per unit price, the acquisitions as a whole are not made any cheaper and the weapons developers make no more profit. In fact, given that this material is specifically diverted from what would…
And perhaps a way to turn over the army's stockpile & keep its suppliers in business. Quite a bit of the defense budget seems to have this goal, and it's not crazy -- if you skip a generation of tanks/planes/ships because your old ones are OK, the experience to build the next generation will have to be re-grown from scratch.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with your first part that there is not necessarily a causal relationship between military equipment and killings. But your "no need, ever, for police to have automatic weapons" part is, to me, just wrong. In general, police should have enough kit to easily overpower the criminals they expect to face. We have been fortunate in many areas (e.g., most of the US, Europe and practically all urban areas) for the po…
I don't know of any developed country where the police can reasonably expect to face better equipped adversaries than they can in the US. This is interesting for two reasons: You may have a point that it is necessary in the US for the police to have automatic weapons, but the US is also the only western country that has put itself in such a situation. Take from that what you will...
We should be careful to draw a causal relationship here. It might not be that getting the military equipment causes police to be more aggressive and therefore have more killings. It might instead be that the more aggressive police departments are the ones that more seek to purchase military equipment, and the more aggressive police are the ones with more killings. I tend to think that's the case. Regardless, there is…
Yeah, I wouldn't bet on it being causal though I could make a plausible story that police departments that put dangerous looking military equipment in their recruitment videos tend to attract the wrong sort of people.
I'm more inclined to belief the first version, but it's good to keep in mind that this sort of interpretation has it's limits.