Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Human Toll of Flashbangs

propublica.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 262 posts

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#141

Post by base2 »

EliRivers wrote: post #135
base2 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That stuff has always irked me, trying to look threatening/intimidating. However when most people complain about military gear finding its way to police I have to laugh a little bit. When automatic grenade launchers and .50 cal machine guns start appearing then there are problems(too late at that point I guess). MWRAPS and armored personnel carriers, those are okay. Dressing in all black(A horrible tactical color BTW…

The armored tanks are not so bad as it provides something that police can feel safer and less threaten in so escalation doesn't need to happen so fast. If you turn up in an armoured tank, you have just escalated the situation.

I guess police departments (if they haven't already) would be stupid enough to deploy them in a trivial situation.

If your dealing with against a threat with a firearm I'm going to assume there are going to be more cops with guns in the majority of the situations. Those are the folks you don't want to set off!

So if you can feel a little bit safer in a little ole MRAP you might not be inclined to start a shooting gallery as quickly.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#142

Post by k-mcgrady »

Rainymood wrote: post #116
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone interested in the video: Warning it's graphical, naturally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tpAZObNZfI To summarize, indeed he says 'Im not a murderer' while picking up his bag, just standing around. They fire the grenade, tell him to get down blabla. He never steps forward in any way, charges them or attacks, while the officers close in and put a dog on him. Seconds later he turns away and gets shot mult…

And this is the problem with guns, imagine if the police didn't have any guns and they would have to approach him by first. Obviously they outnumber him but know (unless he has a lethal weapon on him) there shouldn't be any lethal force. Guns escalate the situation way too quickly to a life threatening one ...

That's how it works in the UK I think. Police don't regularly carry firearms and specially trained firearms officers are called in when necessary. I think the problem with this approach in the US is that guns are way more available and way more likely to used in a crime (I don't actually have figures on this but it seems a reasonable assumption).

Edit: Replaced incorrect use of 'weapons' with 'firearms'.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#143

Post by cmdkeen »

fapjacks wrote: post #128
mattstreet wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proper military use of flashbangs is to roll them towards the corner of a room or doorway. Not to chuck them into the room where they could land anywhere.

That's not true. The proper military use of flashbangs is to throw them into a room (to land wherever, usually the center of the room) and then run in and murder everyone inside. You are overstating the precision involved.

In the military if you want kill (not murder) everyone in a room you use a fragmentation grenade generally. Flashbangs are for when you might want to leave some of the people inside the room alive, either to capture or because they might be civilians.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#144

Post by dalke »

Spooky23 wrote: post #93
username223 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to BLS, coders make something like $93k/yr [1], while policemen make about $57k [2], and primary school teachers make $53k [3]. How much of a pay cut would you take to accept one of those jobs? How much more in taxes would you pay to hire/train better people to do those jobs? [1] http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Computer-and-Information-Technology/S... [2] http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Protective-Service/Police-and-detecti.…

Cops make crazy money. A relative is a lieutenant, make $120k, and overtime brings that up to almost $200k. If he doesn't make the next promotion in a year or two, he'll be retiring at 42 making around $100k. Unless you work for some hick department, a cop will easily make more than 80% in coders outside of the Bay Area, and unlike in software, you don't get nuked when you get old. That said, it's a brutal job that t…

"Cops" is a broad term. For police officers in general, $120K/year base salary is extremely high, and not representative of the average. To get your conclusion you have to compare the highest paying jobs for police officers with the average paying jobs for software developers.

Here are more details from the BLS about 'Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers' for 2013: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes333051.htm

  mean annual wage - $58,720
  50 percentile - $56,130
  90 percentile - $90,700
  New Jersey mean wage - $88,220
  California mean wage - $86,040
  San Francisco mean wage - $99,000
A lieutenant falls in the category "first-line supervisors of police and detectives": http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes331012.htm .

  mean annual wage - $82,710
  50 percentile - $79,190
  90 percentile - $126,320
  New Jersey mean wage - $121,670
  California mean wage - $122,680
  Oakland-Fremont-Hayward - $139,980
  New York-White Plains-Wayne, NY-NJ Metropolitan Division - $110,580
  San Francisco mean wage - $134,600
(It's very likely that your relative works in one of the major metropolitan areas, as those are almost the only ones with a mean salary around or above $120K/year.)

For "Software developers, Applications" see http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151132.htm :

  mean annual wage - $96,260
  50 percentile - $92,660
  90 percentile - $143,540
  California mean wage - $112,180
  Washington mean wage - $111,380
  San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara mean wage - $131,270
  San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City mean wage - $114,400
  Seattle-Bellevue-Everett mean wage - $112,990
The states with the lowest mean wage for software developers (ID, ND, AR, KY, etc.) pay $49,620 to 80,470. This is comparable to the national mean wage for police officers.

For "Software Developers, Systems Software", see http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151133.htm the wages are higher:

  mean annual wage - $104,480
  50 percentile - $101,410
  90 percentile - $150,760
  California - $119,180
  New Jersey - $114,630
  San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara mean wage - $132,030
  Oakland-Fremont-Hayward - $119,810
Now that there are numbers, I'll evaluate your claims:

1) "Cops make crazy money"

I don't know what "crazy money" is, but it's clear that only around 15% of first-line supervisors of patrol officers, and only a handful of patrol officers, make 120K/year. Your relative is on the very high end of a lieutenant's base salary, and probably lives in one of the major cities.

2) "Unless you work for some hick department"

I don't know what constitutes a "hick department". The 75 percentile for patrol officers is $73,710 and the 75 percentile for first-line supervisors is $102,600. There are about 6 officers for each supervisor, so I'll say that non-hick cops make around

  (73710*635380 + 102600*101320) / (635380 + 101320) = $77,683/year.
There are also higher paying police officer jobs, but I think this covers enough of the category "cops" to be meaningful.

It's hard to say what overtime might bring in on top of that. I don't know how many police officers get overtime.

3) "coders outside of the Bay Area"

I don't know what you mean by "coder". I chose "software developer" in the above. There's also "computer programmer", but the BLS says that there are only 6,000 computer programmers in the Silicon Valley area, and 28,980 "software developer, applications" (and a further 23,810 "software developer, systems software"). There are other categories as well, but those seemed the best fit for your statement.

The BLS doesn't list "outside of the Bay Area", but it does show that California pays the most of any states, and it lists the total number of software developers (I'm using the "applications" one) in California, in the US, and their mean wage. This is enough to figure out the average non-California mean wage:

    (643830*96260 - 95510 * 112180) / (643830-95510) = $93,486/year
If I further remove the second highest state, Washington, I get $91,612/year.

I trust that this is a close enough approximation to your statement?

4) "a cop will easily make more than 80% in coders outside of the Bay Area"

That does not appear to be the case. While certainly some cops will make more than 80% of coders, in general, coders will make about $15K/year more than police officers.

Again, overtime may change these numbers, but not enough to say that "cops" as a general category get paid "crazy high" income compared to software developers working the same number of hours without overtime.

5) "unlike in software, you don't get nuked when you get old"

The BLS doesn't have those numbers. The career paths are different. To get the $120K/year job requires being at least a first-line supervisor. A software developer is not a supervisor.

For example, a software developer might become a "Computer and Information Systems Manager", which has a mean wage of $132,570, and the 90 percentile is above $187,199/year. (It's off the BLS charts, which stops at $90/hour.) The mean wage for the 10,660 such managers in Silicon Valley is $183,870.

It's therefore very hard for me to figure out the career numbers. I would love to see the analysis you did to draw your conclusion.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#145

Post by base2 »

jburwell wrote: post #2

The use of flash bangs by law enforcement is horrifying. These tools were design for to support direct action missions by special operations forces, and are, essentially, burning thermite [1] (e.g. able to melt through an engine block). To be clear, a direct operation mission is the use of lethal force to kill or capture one or more individuals or perform high risk hostage rescue. In these types of military operation…

Military grade stun grenades don't use thermite. Military stun grenades can barely burn anything(I have tried many many times but that's another story). hearing about people getting getting third degree burns has me wonder what are they building these things with for law enforcement usage.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#146

Post by amirmc »

base2 wrote: post #141
EliRivers wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The armored tanks are not so bad as it provides something that police can feel safer and less threaten in so escalation doesn't need to happen so fast. If you turn up in an armoured tank, you have just escalated the situation.

I guess police departments (if they haven't already) would be stupid enough to deploy them in a trivial situation. If your dealing with against a threat with a firearm I'm going to assume there are going to be more cops with guns in the majority of the situations. Those are the folks you don't want to set off! So if you can feel a little bit safer in a little ole MRAP you might not be inclined to start a shooting gal…

I find this attitude confusing. You're suggesting that cops are the ones who need to be made to feel safer? That by making them them feel safer they might be less likely to start shooting? Who is protecting who in this brave new world?

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#147

Post by robin_reala »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #142
Rainymood wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is the problem with guns, imagine if the police didn't have any guns and they would have to approach him by first. Obviously they outnumber him but know (unless he has a lethal weapon on him) there shouldn't be any lethal force. Guns escalate the situation way too quickly to a life threatening one ...

That's how it works in the UK I think. Police don't regularly carry firearms and specially trained firearms officers are called in when necessary. I think the problem with this approach in the US is that guns are way more available and way more likely to used in a crime (I don't actually have figures on this but it seems a reasonable assumption). Edit: Replaced incorrect use of 'weapons' with 'firearms'.

Police carry weapons (truncheons, pepper spray, sometimes tasers), just not firearms by default.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#148

Post by PJDK »

pjc50 wrote: post #133
base2 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you would be interested in how fast someone can move in with a knife. Anyways, you give them space and they bolt away and stab or take hostage the next person they encounter. There are so many what ifs in these situations then end badly that you don't even want to let it get to that point. If "lunging" was the only thing knife welding psychos could do the world would be much nicer place.

UK police routinely deal with this by talking the person down, use of TASER, or baton strike. http://www.quora.com/How-do-British-police-officers-manage-t... (There used to be an excellent police blogger who talked about doing this from firsthand experience, but he was de-anonymised and his blog taken down).

For the curious, someone rescued the archive and put it up here http://nightjackarchive.blogspot.co.uk/

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#149

Post by sqrt17 »

amirmc wrote: post #146
base2 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess police departments (if they haven't already) would be stupid enough to deploy them in a trivial situation. If your dealing with against a threat with a firearm I'm going to assume there are going to be more cops with guns in the majority of the situations. Those are the folks you don't want to set off! So if you can feel a little bit safer in a little ole MRAP you might not be inclined to start a shooting gal…

I find this attitude confusing. You're suggesting that cops are the ones who need to be made to feel safer? That by making them them feel safer they might be less likely to start shooting? Who is protecting who in this brave new world?

The answer in other countries has been to train the police force so that they can accurately assess risks to themselves and others and use the amount of caution and, if needed, force necessary to fulfill their task.

Police should value their own lives higher than that of people behaving aggressively towards them, but that's speaking in a degree. And they shouldn't behave like dangerous paranoics (because of lack of training, or because they are dangerous paranoics).

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#150

Post by k-mcgrady »

robin_reala wrote: post #147
k-mcgrady wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it works in the UK I think. Police don't regularly carry firearms and specially trained firearms officers are called in when necessary. I think the problem with this approach in the US is that guns are way more available and way more likely to used in a crime (I don't actually have figures on this but it seems a reasonable assumption). Edit: Replaced incorrect use of 'weapons' with 'firearms'.

Police carry weapons (truncheons, pepper spray, sometimes tasers), just not firearms by default.

Sorry, I was using weapon/firearm interchangeably by mistake. I meant firearm.
Post reply on HN