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Too Many Cops Are Told They’re Soldiers Fighting a War. How Did We Get Here?

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Re: Too Many Cops Are Told They’re Soldiers Fighting a War. How Did We Get Here?

#101

Post by mathattack »

nostromo wrote: post #80

Crime is at an all-time low yet spending on police is near an all-time high. (Those factors could have a causal relationship, but I doubt it's the primary cause based on reading "The Better Angels of Our Nature".) http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1950_2010... Having big budgets but less crime means these swollen budgets end up being wasted on a lot of "fun" things like military gear. (Did you know t…

"Crime is at an all-time low yet spending on police is near an all-time high."

Isn't this cause and effect? Crime is lower because we are hiring more policemen. That is certainly one conclusion from Freakonomics.

This is just a digression, because I do think the "Cops as Warriors" model is very scary, as "collateral damage" becomes acceptable in a war.

Re: Too Many Cops Are Told They’re Soldiers Fighting a War. How Did We Get Here?

#102

Post by calibraxis »

rayiner wrote: post #89
nostromo wrote: post #80

Crime is at an all-time low yet spending on police is near an all-time high. (Those factors could have a causal relationship, but I doubt it's the primary cause based on reading "The Better Angels of Our Nature".) http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1950_2010... Having big budgets but less crime means these swollen budgets end up being wasted on a lot of "fun" things like military gear. (Did you know t…

> Crime is at an all-time low yet spending on police is near an all-time high. Two words: public unions.

This is why tech workers need unions. When Facebook does something nasty, they can blame the unions; the billionaires and millionaires were merely cowering behind their desks.

We shouldn't contort ourselves to avoid the simplest answer: the state is getting what it paid for. The US incarcerates its population more than any known state on earth. That isn't unions' fault — other countries with more powerful unions don't jail themselves like this.

If any enemy nation did this, we wouldn't have any illusions. But we refuse to apply the same logic to ourselves, nor conclude as Chomsky did, "Remember, any state has a primary enemy: its own population."

Otherwise, it might be obvious why police are fighting a war, and who their enemy is.

Re: Too Many Cops Are Told They’re Soldiers Fighting a War. How Did We Get Here?

#103

Post by rayiner »

wwhitman wrote: post #98
rayiner wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crime is at an all-time low yet spending on police is near an all-time high. Two words: public unions.

Is it inconceivable that crime is lower due to more police on the streets and more criminals in jail?

I think that's true, but I also think it's true that it would be possible for police forces to demobilize a bit, instead of continuing their ramp-up. It's like invading Iraq. The police went in and broke the criminal gangs and organized crime. What's needed now is nation building, so to speak. The crime that's left is leaderless gangs of youths shooting each other up in turf wars, and SWAT teams aren't the answer to that.

Re: Too Many Cops Are Told They’re Soldiers Fighting a War. How Did We Get Here?

#104

Post by betterunix »

rayiner wrote: post #47

How did we get here? When gangs and organized crime turned the cities into war zones in the 1970's and 1980's.

Which could not have had anything to do with the actions of the state:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs

Re: Too Many Cops Are Told They’re Soldiers Fighting a War. How Did We Get Here?

#105

Post by rayiner »

calibraxis wrote: post #102
rayiner wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crime is at an all-time low yet spending on police is near an all-time high. Two words: public unions.

This is why tech workers need unions. When Facebook does something nasty, they can blame the unions; the billionaires and millionaires were merely cowering behind their desks. We shouldn't contort ourselves to avoid the simplest answer: the state is getting what it paid for. The US incarcerates its population more than any known state on earth. That isn't unions' fault — other countries with more powerful unions don'…

> That isn't unions' fault

It is, in fact, the unions' fault. The prison unions and police unions are huge proponents of the drug war, longer sentences, etc. It isn't just there fault, of course, America's general Puritan streak helps, but the public unions have really capitalized on that.

> other countries with more powerful unions don't jail themselves like this.

What happens in other countries isn't a good model for the U.S. Sub-segments of the population don't viscerally hate each other in Frankfurt or London the way they do in L.A. or Detroit. It will be interesting to see what happens to the internal social cohesion European countries have enjoyed post-WWII as middle eastern immigration continues to rise. A few more muslim youths rioting in Paris and I think you'd be surprised by what kind of police escalation Parisians will be willing to put up with...

Re: Too Many Cops Are Told They’re Soldiers Fighting a War. How Did We Get Here?

#106

Post by lukifer »

calibraxis wrote: post #102
rayiner wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crime is at an all-time low yet spending on police is near an all-time high. Two words: public unions.

This is why tech workers need unions. When Facebook does something nasty, they can blame the unions; the billionaires and millionaires were merely cowering behind their desks. We shouldn't contort ourselves to avoid the simplest answer: the state is getting what it paid for. The US incarcerates its population more than any known state on earth. That isn't unions' fault — other countries with more powerful unions don'…

I fully agree with your point, but there is a union that contributes significantly to the prison-industrial complex: the various prison guard unions. (Also culpable are privatized prisons, which are often little more than slave labor camps.)

Re: Too Many Cops Are Told They’re Soldiers Fighting a War. How Did We Get Here?

#107

Post by nrivadeneira »

nostromo wrote: post #80

Crime is at an all-time low yet spending on police is near an all-time high. (Those factors could have a causal relationship, but I doubt it's the primary cause based on reading "The Better Angels of Our Nature".) http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1950_2010... Having big budgets but less crime means these swollen budgets end up being wasted on a lot of "fun" things like military gear. (Did you know t…

I used to be a volunteer junior firefighter as a teen (many of Long Island's fire departments are volunteer based). Fire engines were sent out on emergency calls because many times the situation calls for tools and equipment that ambulances don't carry. I doubt it was budget-related, considering nobody was on payroll.

Re: Too Many Cops Are Told They’re Soldiers Fighting a War. How Did We Get Here?

#108

Post by nrivadeneira »

One of my best friends is NYPD working in the projects in Brownsville NY, one of the most dangerous cities in NYC. From the stories he tells me, he is fighting a war.

Of course, that's not applicable to most other areas, but it's worth noting that when your day-to-day job is dealing with the criminals and scum of the earth, it changes your perspective on life.

Re: Too Many Cops Are Told They’re Soldiers Fighting a War. How Did We Get Here?

#109

Post by freditup »

blhack wrote: post #81
enko wrote: post #75

You can't make this shit up. > Police in North Dakota borrowed a $154 million MQ-9 Predator B drone from the Department of Homeland Security to arrest a family of anti-government separatists who refused to return six cows that wandered onto their farm.

That's really misleading. There is a base in Grand Forks, ND that houses several CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) Predator Drones, and they work with local law enforcement when asked to. So, more than likely, the drone is going to be flying home here anyway, and made a pass over some property. The facility where these things are flown from isn't some top secret bunker or anything, it's an office building on the air fo…

Thanks for the counterpoint. I'm completely of the mindset that police should take the mindset of community-servants first (perhaps the fighting mentality is appropriate in certain situations at specific times.) But so many of these kinds of articles (not this one specifically) take anecdotal incidents, tell them from one specific viewpoint that makes the cops look like trash, and expect you to be all outraged with them. I'm personally not going to get outraged until things are prevented in a fair light and I can decide if things are over-militarized.

Re: Too Many Cops Are Told They’re Soldiers Fighting a War. How Did We Get Here?

#110

Post by lukifer »

parfe wrote: post #56
rayiner wrote: post #47

How did we get here? When gangs and organized crime turned the cities into war zones in the 1970's and 1980's.

The existence of drug organizations is a capitalist response to government intervention in the market. Prohibition is the source of the black drugs market as well as the reason the police militarized themselves.

It is impossible to outlaw drugs. Attempting to do so merely increases the price by increasing the risk, resulting in unending escalatio.

http://longnow.org/seminars/02010/may/03/deviant-globalizati...

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