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Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

nytimes.com

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Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#271

Post by beart »

ardy42 wrote: post #202
sandworm101 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5) Change the uniforms. Dress for the job you want. If they all dress like storm troopers some of them will act like storm troopers. NY state patrol uniform: Grey with purple ties. https://northcountrynow.com/sites/default/files/images/Zone2... NYPD (new york city ) police: Black on black with black ties. https://media.timeout.com/images/103899055/image.jpg It seems meaningless, but having interacted with a few polic…

> Dress for the job you want. If they all dress like storm troopers some of them will act like storm troopers. Relevent: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-blazer-experiment... > For many years, the Menlo Park police had worn some variation of the traditional, pseudo-military, dark blue uniform. But Cizanckas thought that look was too intimidating and aggressive, so he traded it for slacks, dress shirts with…

There's even a paragraph in there about an incident with the Minneapolis police. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#272

Post by Zigurd »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #246
namelessoracle wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having gone through police training in another life, you are absolutely correct. I think it's deeper than just what you wear, it's the attitude of the higher ups and overall culture. The leadership team for police that wants you dressing all paramilitary and in all black is going to have a focus on you acting a different way during training and in what your day to day is like than the other group. There's also the br…

This is important to introduce into the discussion. I have felt that in the vast majority of controversial police shootings, especially in the mistaken identity cases, they were likely the result of a hair-trigger reflex and being on high alert, with your conditioning telling you that if an adversary either gets the jump on you or even gets into a strategically advantageous position, today is the day that you are goi…

Police in other countries, ones that have better-performing police, are trained to deescalate in the same situations you describe.

People are right not to empathize.

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#273

Post by pmorici »

syshum wrote: post #252
pmorici wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No where, I said 'slightly above starting out'. For example in Baltimore where they have a $15 minimum wage (~31k /yr) the advertised starting salary for a police officer is something like $35-38k while they are in training which as far as I can tell lasts for 6-12 months that gets bumped up to ~$53k and after several years you can take some kind of test to become a supervisor where you make up to low six figures. A…

So are you advocating we charge police officers $100-300K for their training as well? They get paid a reasonable salary to be trained in a job that will provide them a nice income for the rest of their life. Having a lower salary while in training is not unheard of in any field, I am not sure why you believe those numbers are unacceptable. Further Baltimore shows why a national $15 min wage is untenable, as all that…

No, I'm saying that comparing police to doctors isn't useful.

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#274

Post by beart »

ta17711771 wrote: post #254
Leherenn wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't a lot of private security guards just off duty officers?

Correct, and in that case, they regularly wear POLICE insignia

And in some places continue to act with full police authority.

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#275

Post by maest »

namelessoracle wrote: post #175
sandworm101 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5) Change the uniforms. Dress for the job you want. If they all dress like storm troopers some of them will act like storm troopers. NY state patrol uniform: Grey with purple ties. https://northcountrynow.com/sites/default/files/images/Zone2... NYPD (new york city ) police: Black on black with black ties. https://media.timeout.com/images/103899055/image.jpg It seems meaningless, but having interacted with a few polic…

Having gone through police training in another life, you are absolutely correct. I think it's deeper than just what you wear, it's the attitude of the higher ups and overall culture. The leadership team for police that wants you dressing all paramilitary and in all black is going to have a focus on you acting a different way during training and in what your day to day is like than the other group. There's also the br…

Something I've noticed in a lot of police encounter videos: there is no attempt at de-escalating the situation. The shooting of Daniel Shaver is a prime example of that: a benign situation made deadly by high strung officers shouting and giving conflicting orders to a stressed, innebriated man. I get that they shot because it sorta looked like Shaver may have been reaching for a gun while he was stumbling, but that whole situation could have been avoided with some simple deescalation techniques.

Is the lack of interest in deescalating situations due to training or mentality or the wish to maintain authoritative appearances or some other factor I'm not thinking of?

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#276

Post by ailun »

vkat wrote: post #270
namelessoracle wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having gone through police training in another life, you are absolutely correct. I think it's deeper than just what you wear, it's the attitude of the higher ups and overall culture. The leadership team for police that wants you dressing all paramilitary and in all black is going to have a focus on you acting a different way during training and in what your day to day is like than the other group. There's also the br…

I have never understood why the police in the US shoot to kill(chest area) as opposed to disarming or injuring by shooting in the leg.

Because that’s action movie nonsense. The issue is that they pull out their guns too easily, not the place they aim them. Guns are not a tool for disarming or wounding. For one thing, a leg shot can easily kill. Second, it’s extremely difficult to make that shot with a pistol, even for trained police. Third, if someone has a weapon and they are about to kill someone (which is the only time police should be pulling out their guns), a leg shot might not stop them quickly enough. And disarming someone with a bullet is absurd except in very rare stand-off situations where the person is sitting still, and a sniper has had time to get set up.

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#277

Post by mdorazio »

vsareto wrote: post #146
scottlamb wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they can. jeffbee was still correct. And no matter what other hats they might wear, it's inappropriate to show up like this when there's no reason to anticipate any violence.

We can't end this debate without the warrant. You can acknowledge that you don't have that information and there's a chance it was justified before they rolled up if any of the people were known to be affiliated with dangerous people. If you know of a way to figure out if every situation is going to be dangerous before it happens, definitely put that forward. I'll acknowledge that it could have been some bored SWAT g…

I'm trying to figure out what kind of warrant you're imagining that would justify bringing a full SWAT team to evict squatters who were known protesters in an ongoing legal dispute with the property owner, not some gang kids.

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#278

Post by [deleted] »

c2471 wrote: post #268
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a false positive in threat identification means killing an innocent person, and a false negative means getting killed because you failed to identify and mitigate a threat, it sounds like you are saying that we must accept that an innocent person will be treated like a threat some percentage of the time in order for a police officer to have any hope of surviving the job. Is that accurate? Edit: I am not criticizing…

The point is that the two are coupled. It is not clear why 0 false negatives is the aim. In almost all hard problems, you cannot have 0 false positives and 0 false negatives. Normally, getting to 0 false negatives requires a large number of false positives. E.g. if I wanted a 0 false negative pregnancy test, the only feasible way would be to tell some very large proportion (maybe all) test takers they are pregnant. I…

[deleted]

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#279

Post by lawnchair_larry »

c2471 wrote: post #268
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a false positive in threat identification means killing an innocent person, and a false negative means getting killed because you failed to identify and mitigate a threat, it sounds like you are saying that we must accept that an innocent person will be treated like a threat some percentage of the time in order for a police officer to have any hope of surviving the job. Is that accurate? Edit: I am not criticizing…

The point is that the two are coupled. It is not clear why 0 false negatives is the aim. In almost all hard problems, you cannot have 0 false positives and 0 false negatives. Normally, getting to 0 false negatives requires a large number of false positives. E.g. if I wanted a 0 false negative pregnancy test, the only feasible way would be to tell some very large proportion (maybe all) test takers they are pregnant. I…

I want to disengage from the false positives/negatives discussion, it’s too abstract to be relevant, and demonstrably false anyway. There exists a system with 0% false positives.

I find point (a) interesting. You posit that they have control over which situations they enter. But one of the major criticisms I hear, after abuse of force, is that “the police didn’t do anything”. It would seem that these are incompatible. They can choose, but we expect them not to. We expect them to put themselves in harms way for us. As a society, we do value civilian lives the same as police lives. In fact, we value civilian lives far more. By and large, so do they. If they did not, they would not ever put themselves in a position where they might be killed. But, we expect them to do just that. If there is a heavily armed lunatic inside his house threatening to kill his wife and kids, we get out of dodge and tell the police to deal with it. I sure as hell am not going near that.

Just look at the outrage and protests every time an innocent man is killed. When is the last time anyone rioted, protested, or even remembered when an innocent police officer was killed? Never going to happen. By and large, we don’t give much of a shit about their lives. Most of us don’t even seem to consider them human. They know that, yet they do the job anyway.

Do you know how many police have been killed so far during the riots? One of them was just gunned down in cold blood in Oakland while guarding a federal building. He wasn’t doing any crowd control or engaged with protesters. A white van drove past, stopped, opened the sliding door, gunned him and his partner down, and drove off.

Another police chief was found dead outside of a looted pawn shop last night.

Nobody is ever going to protest this.

Re: Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear

#280

Post by lawnchair_larry »

Zigurd wrote: post #272
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is important to introduce into the discussion. I have felt that in the vast majority of controversial police shootings, especially in the mistaken identity cases, they were likely the result of a hair-trigger reflex and being on high alert, with your conditioning telling you that if an adversary either gets the jump on you or even gets into a strategically advantageous position, today is the day that you are goi…

Police in other countries, ones that have better-performing police, are trained to deescalate in the same situations you describe. People are right not to empathize.

You don’t seem to know what empathize means and didn’t read my comment very carefully.
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