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Police killings more likely in agencies that get military gear, data shows

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Re: Police killings more likely in agencies that get military gear, data shows

#131

Post by baq »

hguant wrote: post #85
bonestamp2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part about the police getting military gear is that the actual military has much stricter rules of engagement. With great power comes great responsibility.

On paper. I hang out a lot with a lot of former US infantry guys on discord, and they talk all the time about how rule one was come back alive, and rule two was 'make sure you all get your stories straight.' This mythos of the American warfighter being above and beyond is propaganda. Good propaganda, because it has some basis in truth, but it whitewashes a lot of nastiness.

at there are rules. you shouldn't have to go to Hague to win a case against your own sheriff.

Re: Police killings more likely in agencies that get military gear, data shows

#132

Post by andreilys »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #70
andreilys wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cause and effect is important to distinguish. Spurious correlations exist everywhere (ice cream consumption is correlated with drowning, should we ban ice cream before swimming?) From my experience most people don’t understand this difference and assume any narrative around correlation equals causation.

>Cause and effect is important to distinguish. Alternatively we should probably abandon the notion that anything at the society level has a simple cause and a simple effect. When dealing with society, we're dealing with a chaotic system. I don't see much in society that can be clearly defined in terms of "if this then that." It seems like we would be much better off by being honest about the complexities of what we'r…

There is a lot of work being done in the casual space. Sure we might not be able to ever arrive at 100% causation but doesn’t mean we can’t improve our tooling and understanding.

Policy decisions based on simple correlations can range from harmless to disastrous.

Re: Police killings more likely in agencies that get military gear, data shows

#135

Post by save_ferris »

thdrdt wrote: post #115

Jocko Willing was asked about the issues with the police (in the US). His response was very insightful. He observed that most problems boiled down to lack of training. For an untrained cop an arrest can be very stressful. This then can result in using way too much force. I believe he also mentions this in the Joe Rogan podcast: https://youtu.be/iUhdc1GAddk

> For an untrained cop an arrest can be very stressful. This then can result in using way too much force.

I don't doubt that this is true at all, but it still points to major systemic flaws in how police are managed throughout the country.

We wouldn't permit or accept a first-year medical student to perform open heart surgery, nor a first-time flight student to pilot a commercial plane full of people, but throughout the country, we're seeing brutal violence being carried out by people who lack the training, and in many cases, the emotional intelligence to do a job that very clearly requires it.

Such failure warrants massive overhauls to the system, regardless of whether it's a training issue or something more sinister. "Lack of training" is, frankly, a really piss-poor excuse when you're seeing videos like George Floyd. How much training do you need to know not to kneel on someone's neck for almost 9 minutes?

The culture and management of policing is far too opaque and if the lack of training is the number one issue, the various systems of police training programs need to be brought to light and people need to be fired across the board.

Re: Police killings more likely in agencies that get military gear, data shows

#136

Post by notmyname9173 »

99_00 wrote: post #120

Every modern police department all over the world has assualt rifles, carbines, military sights, sniper rifle a, scopes, and armored vehicles.

Sources? I've got a dozen contradictions in mind already and I haven't even hit Wikipedia yet.

Re: Police killings more likely in agencies that get military gear, data shows

#137

Post by yborg »

throwawaysea wrote: post #124
mywittyname wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No city in the USA looks like a war zone, but they can encounter situations that are dangerous. Things like gang shootouts or riots. I don't understand why APCs are a reason to be outraged. They are armored personnel carriers. Is it bad to want to keep our limited, trained, experienced police staff safe? I feel like APCs and MRAPs have been picked as a target of manufactured outrage without any concrete reason to act…

It's commonly understood by even a child that an armored military vehicle belongs in a war zone. Having one driving around your home town sends the message that you live in a war zone, and guess what - you, the citizen, are the enemy.

Even if they are reserved for "gang shootouts or riots" you are wasting money in the 95% of US towns that don't have gang shootouts or riots on such a regular basis that police need to engage in military operations to contain them. So I'm outraged as a taxpayer to see my money being wasted.

Re: Police killings more likely in agencies that get military gear, data shows

#139

Post by malandrew »

Communitivity wrote: post #34

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…

It may also be that the police departments that seek to purchase military equipment operate in cities/neighborhoods with a higher incident of violent crime.

Los Angeles PD for example was the poster boy for getting military style gear before most departments in the country, but at the time it also dealt with more serious violence than most police departments (such as drive-by shootings).

The per capita incidence of police shootings in the US compared to other developed nations seems high until you normalize it by the per capita rate of violent crimes committed by citizens.

Re: Police killings more likely in agencies that get military gear, data shows

#140

Post by craftinator »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #71
nojokes wrote: post #39

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.

The study controls for that variable: > The newspaper’s analysis used the military’s database and paired it with a database of fatal police shootings from across the state, controlling for statistical variables like community income, rural-urban differences, racial makeup, and violent crime rates. The article explicitly cautions against drawing conclusions about causality. My intuition is that there’s truth to both e…

Something I've long thought on is what types of people are attracted to the US police force. If you look at it economically, by what incentives are offered, it's a bit disturbing: 1) Power over others 2) Chance to stop violence 3) Little educational requirements 4) Access to cool gear 5) Immunity from law 6) Ability to help or hurt weaker people 7) Access to drugs, guns, etc...

The list goes on, but I really see two types of people drawn to these: those that seek to help, and those that seek power. The defenders, and the bullies. The saviors, and the criminals.

It's naive to expect that one type makes it through much more often than the other (the "a few bad apples" analogy). If I were in organized crime, or a gang, or a neo-nazi, or just someone who was a sociopath, what better possible job is there than being a cop? Would it be that hard to fake it through whatever screenings they use (which can be NONE in some PDs) to weed out the bad actors? No. We must expect some large minority or even a majority of cops to fall into the class of bad actors.

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