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Law Enforcement’s “Warrior” Problem

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Re: Law Enforcement’s “Warrior” Problem

#101

Post by sgnelson »

Semiapies wrote: post #74
sgnelson wrote: post #53

This is yet one more of the hidden costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars. You have a large population of soldiers, many who come back home after their tours of duty, where they were in effect an occupying force. And then they get a job in law enforcement. They are used too a certain way of doing things in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they bring that culture home with them. Even for those who didn't serve, as the article not…

The vast majority of these police have no military background. It's cargo-cult behavior, not experience.

I honestly have no idea what the numbers are, it's one of those things I've been meaning to research, but have never gotten around too. But from my experience, a large number of troops coming back from the war enter law enforcement.

But I also think (key word, think, it's a hypothesis, no current hard data to back this up at this point, see above paragraph on how I need to do this, but I've been too lazy/busy) this may be highly regional. In the sense that I live in a state with a large number of military bases/troops/persons who go into the military. They come back from their deployments, they go back home, they join the local PD. Some states have less of this than others.

Further, others have made this point, and I guess I was not as clear as I should have been, but in part, you only need one officer who's a vet to come into the department and he says, "When I was in Iraq, this is how we did it..." I don't think that's a huge influence, but I do think it's part of spreading the military culture that the original article is talking about.

Call it militarization of the police, hero worship, cargo-cult, whatever. I believe at the end of the day, the effect is the same, the GWoT has had negative impacts on how America has chosen to police itself.

Re: Law Enforcement’s “Warrior” Problem

#102

Post by shit_parade2 »

happyscrappy wrote: post #81
hga wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And law enforcement weren't "heroes" before 9/11??? Now, I'm probably older than you, old enough to have watched the first run of hagiographic Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. F.B.I. TV series that ran until 1974, ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_F.B.I._(TV_series) ), but I assure this is nothing new. E.g. I can remember more than a few debates I had with co-workers in the '90s on the War on Drugs, I said we could have that,…

Your definition of police state is an insult to people who have actually lived in one.

By every measure the US has the most imprisonment. America is the première police state, how else would you measure it?

Re: Law Enforcement’s “Warrior” Problem

#103

Post by a3n »

bdavisx wrote: post #79
rayiner wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if we'll ever achieve that here in the U.S. Most of these issues arise in heavily black and Hispanic neighborhoods with high crime. These folks have very little faith in the police and for good reason. The understanding that police are there to protect rich white people from poor black and Hispanic people has gotten less overt and less official since the 1960's, but it's still there to a degree, especial…

> Here is the real question: how do you do community policing in the low-income black neighborhoods of Baltimore? How do you rebuild trust? You arrest and prosecute the perpetrators just as quickly and with just as much or more punishment than the "regular" public would get. And you keep doing that to any cop who breaks the law. You also get rid of (and prosecute) the "good" cops who don't report the bad ones. IOW yo…

"You also get rid of (and prosecute) the "good" cops who don't report the bad ones."

This is why I say the police are corrupt. Looking the other way is corrupt, even if you didn't take part in the corruption.

Would the officer in McKinney the other day feel compelled to resign if he hadn't been caught "red handed" on video? Would his fellow officers have even reported him? I seriously doubt it, and because many of us probably have that doubt then it's up to the police to make that idea unthinkable among the public.

Re: Law Enforcement’s “Warrior” Problem

#104

Post by jowiar »

maxerickson wrote: post #82
rayiner wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if we'll ever achieve that here in the U.S. Most of these issues arise in heavily black and Hispanic neighborhoods with high crime. These folks have very little faith in the police and for good reason. The understanding that police are there to protect rich white people from poor black and Hispanic people has gotten less overt and less official since the 1960's, but it's still there to a degree, especial…

Camden is touting their experiment with it as a success. I don't know how true that is or if Camden is typical enough that the experience would generalize. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/us/politics/obama-to-limit...

Camden is plenty "typical enough" in terms of poverty-stricken, gang-filled neighborhoods.

What might exist in Camden that doesn't exist elsewhere is that, at least as far as local government goes, Camden doesn't have the governing tensions that exist in other cities, with a rich "governing class" (read: white yuppies) doing all that they can to "protect themselves" from "the others". Like all cities, it gets thoroughly screwed by the State, but at least locally, has far less of an internal "us" and "them" than, say, Philadelphia (which lies just across the river, and has neighborhoods with similar problems to Camden, but less policymaking authority to address them).

Re: Law Enforcement’s “Warrior” Problem

#105

Post by Symmetry »

sgnelson wrote: post #53

This is yet one more of the hidden costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars. You have a large population of soldiers, many who come back home after their tours of duty, where they were in effect an occupying force. And then they get a job in law enforcement. They are used too a certain way of doing things in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they bring that culture home with them. Even for those who didn't serve, as the article not…

Is that really true though? I'd always heard that our military was a lot less trigger happy about arresting people - usually surrounding a house and demanding that the residents come out rather than battering down the door and rushing in with guns drawn.

Re: Law Enforcement’s “Warrior” Problem

#106

Post by curun1r »

dmfdmf wrote: post #28
remarkEon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another Army vet here and totally agree. I remember looking at pictures of Ferguson and seeing how they were setting up their kit and thinking "what are you guys doing? getting ready for an ambush?" They look so absurd...the one picture of the guy on top of the MRAP with a sniper rifle was equally absurd. Beyond how they look, it's like they're at times forgetting these are citizens and not enemy combatants . Edit1:…

> Beyond how they look, it's like they're at times forgetting these are citizens and not enemy combatants. This can't be stressed enough. What needs to be stopped is the false distinction of civilian vs non-civilian in police work and policy. That is strictly a military distinction in combat and does not apply to civilized enforcement of the law during normal circumstances. Cops are not above the law and are just civ…

It's also important to continually remind citizens that police officers are human beings too and not just implements the state uses to punish people. Stuff like a program a local police department started in cooperation with a local pizzeria where they stop children who are properly wearing helmets while riding their bicycles and give them a coupon for a free personal pizza and a thank you for doing the right thing.

It's been very positive for both children, parents and police in breaking down the notion that police are to be feared. More police departments need to do stuff like this to foster positive interactions with police.

Re: Law Enforcement’s “Warrior” Problem

#107

Post by hga »

shit_parade2 wrote: post #102
happyscrappy wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your definition of police state is an insult to people who have actually lived in one.

By every measure the US has the most imprisonment. America is the première police state, how else would you measure it?

That is perhaps valid, though a counter argument is that in many police states such people are executed instead of imprisoned.

Typically it means the police are an instrument of whomever is controlling the state to keep themselves in power, e.g. per Wikipedia "Police state is a term denoting government that exercises power arbitrarily through the police. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_state).

I also like to define Japan as a police state, a polite one, granted, but policing was done for the convenience of the police, not for "justice" as we at least attempt. I.e. it's more important to close a case than get the real perpetrator, which was made easy by a "judicial" system with a combined "confession" and conviction rate exceeding 99.9% (really). Past tense because citizen jurors of some sort have recently been added to the mix, although I note that the history of that in England suggests it'll be a long time if ever before that becomes anything resembling the common law system.

Re: Law Enforcement’s “Warrior” Problem

#108

Post by Jtsummers »

happyscrappy wrote: post #81
hga wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And law enforcement weren't "heroes" before 9/11??? Now, I'm probably older than you, old enough to have watched the first run of hagiographic Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. F.B.I. TV series that ran until 1974, ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_F.B.I._(TV_series) ), but I assure this is nothing new. E.g. I can remember more than a few debates I had with co-workers in the '90s on the War on Drugs, I said we could have that,…

Your definition of police state is an insult to people who have actually lived in one.

We may not have police disappearing people in the middle of the night or conducting summary executions on the street on a regular basis. They don't (well, they might thanks to the NSA and other sources) have extensive dossiers on every citizen. But we do have systemic racism and violence in the current system that leaves a large portion of the population in fear for their safety, and rightly so.

Cops conducting no knock raids for a low level meth dealer scarred a young boy and lied to his family about the severity of his injuries (claiming he'd just lost a tooth) [1]. Just check CNN for all the recent stories of unarmed black men, boys and teenagers killed by cops. An officer in Alabama paralyzed an Indian man who didn't obey his commands because he couldn't speak English [2] (at least he's been charged).

This may not be the same as police states seen in other parts of the world for the majority of Americans. But for many, we've already crossed that line.

[1] http://abcnews.go.com/US/family-toddler-injured-swat-grenade...

[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/03/27...

Re: Law Enforcement’s “Warrior” Problem

#109

Post by Semiapies »

sgnelson wrote: post #101
Semiapies wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of these police have no military background. It's cargo-cult behavior, not experience.

I honestly have no idea what the numbers are, it's one of those things I've been meaning to research, but have never gotten around too. But from my experience, a large number of troops coming back from the war enter law enforcement. But I also think (key word, think, it's a hypothesis, no current hard data to back this up at this point, see above paragraph on how I need to do this, but I've been too lazy/busy) this m…

You don't even need that one officer who's a MidEast veteran. Since the 1980s and 1990s, police have been militarizing. The only real change this century has been the explosion of surplus gear given to smaller police departments since 9/11. The mentality long predates that.

These guys were gearing up - and psyching up - to fight the War on Drugs long before any War on Terror.

Re: Law Enforcement’s “Warrior” Problem

#110

Post by jpreiland »

Someone1234 wrote: post #38
3pt14159 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

De-escalation is more effective than the slight tactical advantage.

But de-escalation training is expensive, whereas equipment is often given almost for free from ex-military surplus or paid for from "anti-terrorism" federal funds. Police in other Western countries receive significantly longer training courses than US police do. This is an issue rarely discussed in this topic. If people want de-escalation, they need to fund the longer training regime and more importantly pay for it.

>ex-military surplus

maybe reallocating funds from military to de-escalation training would reduce surplus and improve police image and effectiveness.

(disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about)

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