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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?

#211

Post by Tuna-Fish »

mililani wrote: post #119
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 believe crime is at an all time low because everyone is in prison. http://dcj.state.co.us/ors/images/Stats%20Images/crime%20rat...

Even greater reductions in crime rates are visible all across the Western Europe, and they have worked to reduce incarceration.

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

#212

Post by yardie »

rayiner wrote: post #66
mitchty wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true but a lot of these murders are gang related so it isn't quite a great comparison not? I know the topics of guns in america is a hot topic in general but even for the usa the general trend is downward.

Gang-related murders are the result of gang activity, and gang-activity is very scary for a community. First, lots of teenagers and young people are gang members, and gangs have major presences in inner-city schools, so even a "gang-related murder" isn't like some mobster getting killed, but something that hits really close to home in the community. Second, this activity is very geographically segregated, which makes…

Also remember the war on drugs rocketed the number of incarcerations. Under Reagan small-time offenders went into prison for 5-10 years and emerged hardened, smarter criminals. In the mean time the removal of so many males from communities allowed an entire generation of kids and teenagers to be preyed on by gangs.

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

#213

Post by Tuna-Fish »

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?

Yes, because the same trend extends to places without massively expanded militarized police and ridiculous incarceration rates.

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

#214

Post by coopdog »

nrivadeneira wrote: post #108

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.

But are they criminals just because drugs are illegal, and they got sent to prison where crime is all they learned? Has the adversarial relationship been heightened by both sides?

When you send the police to war, the people become the enemy. The goal should be deterring the behavior not taking these people down and stomping them hard in retribution.

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

#215

Post by jbooth »

danielweber wrote: post #125
jivatmanx wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure they're protecting their turf, but they didn't start the drug war, and they're not at the forefront of promoting it. Nixon declared the "War on Drugs". He also pioneered the "Southern Strategy", and many elements of his campaign are now well accepted to have been used as code words. It wasn't a personal appeal to the puritan morality of drug users to stop, it was an appeal to the fears of scared whites. The…

http://www.npr.org/2009/08/13/111843426/folsom-embodies-cali... In three decades, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association has become one of the most powerful political forces in California. The union has contributed millions of dollars to support "three strikes" and other laws that lengthen sentences and increase parole sanctions. It donated $1 million to Wilson after he backed the three strikes law. I…

Millions????? OMG

Give me a break. Unions have a lot of problems but if they were so damned influential, maybe every public sector union except for federal security wouldn't have been losing jobs and hours for the last 10 years.

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

#216

Post by Tuna-Fish »

bstrand wrote: post #157
nostromo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attempted to address that in my comment. Check out, Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature" which shows that violent crime is down globally, not just in the US. Also, Levitt did say increased policing decreased crime, but only caused around 5% of the decline ( http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUndersta... p. 184)

Pinker's thesis is not without serious detractors. Edward Herman and David Peterson's critique[1] in ZNet is worth considering before taking it as fact. [1] http://www.zcommunications.org/steven-pinker-on-the-alleged-...

That is atrociously bad.

Among other things, it argues against the concept of normalizing death tolls of war by population (when the primary variable under consideration is the likelihood of one person to die violently across different times), it tries to cram as much contemporary political rhetoric as it can, and it uses highly pathetic analysis such as "the phenomenon of structural violence, or the kind of violence that is “built into the structure” of social relations" (yes, because past societies based aristocracy that brutally extracts what it can from the majority of the population is so much less structurally violent) and "the increasingly savage global class war of the 1 Percent against the other 99, and the “endemic undernutrition and deprivation”" (conveniently ignoring the fact that endemic undernutrition was the normal state of the world prior to recent times).

It staggers me that someone can actually read that and take it at face value. His entire thesis seems to be "ignore statistics, look at these pretty individual cases" and "look at how bad the world is", completely missing the point that Pinker didn't actually say the world is peaceful, only that it is more peaceful than it has ever been before, and completely failing to make any case against this.

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

#217

Post by yardie »

davidw wrote: post #143
Arjuna wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Today in the US, if you call 911 about an emergency medical condition, they will often send a fire engine along with an ambulance [...]" This is SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). 1. Imagine a scenario where an ambulance arrives as a first responder, and the EMTs [1] find that they cannot gain access to the emergency scene, because the home or other structure is locked or otherwise blocked. In this case, a firetruc…

Good points. Interesting anecdotal data: here in Italy you have to call the fire department to get a fire truck out, whereas they're part of the standard package described above in the US. Fires aren't that common here because of construction materials, so while you see plenty of ambulances and police cars whizzing around, fire trucks are a far rarer sight than in the US.

In France, well Paris, it is quite common to see fire trucks. Like the US they are the first responders to most medical emergencies. And since the city is very old the buildings are mix of material, my previous apartment had plaster walls with mud and hay as fill material. And the wiring looked like it existed during WWII.

Since being here, I've observed fires are quite common amongst the disaffected youth who enjoy burning cars and motos when they are bored.

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

#218

Post by flexie »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #211
mililani wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe crime is at an all time low because everyone is in prison. http://dcj.state.co.us/ors/images/Stats%20Images/crime%20rat...

Even greater reductions in crime rates are visible all across the Western Europe, and they have worked to reduce incarceration.

Interesting :-) Where can we read about that?

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

#219

Post by yardie »

mililani wrote: post #119
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 believe crime is at an all time low because everyone is in prison. http://dcj.state.co.us/ors/images/Stats%20Images/crime%20rat...

I'm going to go with Freakonomics on this one and believe crime is low because fewer criminals are being born.

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

#220

Post by arethuza »

anigbrowl wrote: post #170
arethuza wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sub-segments of the population don't viscerally hate each other in Frankfurt or London the way they do in L.A. or Detroit." Belfast still has road barriers that are raised at night blocking roads between the Shankill Road and Falls Road areas - not to mention huge walls: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_lines Edit: To be fair, I agree with your point, but there are some very noticeable dividing lines in European c…

Yeah, that's an extremely exceptional case and related to a centuries-old political conflict between nations. I'm Irish, you can't generalize from Belfast to anywhere else except maybe Israel/Palestine.

Well, for an even more extreme case of a divided European city there is always Nicosia...

[I agree that these cases are exceptional].

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