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Comment by jknoepfler | Hacker News Reader

The very idea that the police would return to the house without cause or warrant and search it - which is a grotesque constitutional violation - reflects an attitude of hostility and opposition to the community the police are supposed to literally "protect and serve."

I'm increasingly of the belief that the domestic police in the United States shouldn't even be called a force, they should be called a service. They should not carry firearms, and they should not receive primarily military training. They should be well paid and receive aggressive financial incentives to continue their education. They should always be wearing a body cam when on duty.

There will always be a need for armed police at some point, but that point is not the streets, and not daily response to mundane events.

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This is the perfect dilemma to bring to people who back police 100%. Who are they going to defend? The Police or the War Veteran?

Clearly the local police made various constitutional violations against a suicidal war veteran and they trashed his place and left it for him to come back to. How jaded and unconcerned?

Sadly one of my former employees left and joined the war and while there lost a buddy in Iraq. After being home for 12 months he took his life leaving all of us in shock. If police did that to a hero who are they willing to go for bat for????

Just to clarify: he was not at all suicidal, but accidentally called the suicide hotlibs instead of a crisis hotline.

Just to clarify the Veteran Crisis Hot line was renamed in 2011 from the Veteran Suicidal Prevention Line.

If he was suicidal it even makes the actions of the police even worse. The whole issue is not the initial interactions with the police nor their initial entree into the home. The issue is the second and third entree into his home and unconstitutional search of his home. This occurred hours after the first search was conducted and the subject was getting medical treatment.

> Just to clarify the Veteran Crisis Hot line was renamed in 2011 from the Veteran Suicidal Prevention Line.

...and was done so to encourage early intervention, sometimes before the veteran becomes suicidal.

https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/About/AboutVeteransCrisis...

>> In 2011, the National Veterans Suicide Prevention Hotline was renamed the Veterans Crisis Line to encourage Veterans and their families and friends to make the call. People who know a Veteran best may be the first to recognize emotional distress and reach out for support when issues reach a crisis point — and well before a Veteran is at risk of suicide.

"If police did that to a hero who are they willing to go for bat for????"

No one. This should be obvious if you're living in the US. Even if you've never had an encounter with police, watch ANY cop show, especially the reality ones. Every roughly 20-30 seconds you will hear some cop talk about how dangerous the job is (it really isn't) and how their main objective is to get back to their family. The police does not give a fuck about you and they certainly will not "stand up" for you if you are in danger. They will get back home to their families at all costs, including your own life. The rest of the "serve and protect" bullshit is for rubes and other idiots who are dumb enough to believe it and whose parents did them a huge disservice by not teaching them about one of the gravest dangers of American society.

I can personally vouch that not all police are like this. I have a handful of family friends who are/or were police officers and they very strongly embody the values of "serve and protect." Honestly, they would give their life if necessary to save a life however they obviously would try to avoid death. So while there are definitely horrible police officers, there are definitely a great deal of honest ones as well.

Rather than rally against the police in general, we really should focus on identifying the sources of the horrible ones and how to develop more of the honest officers. Personally I believe this can only occur through transparency and accountability but that's just my 2 cents.

While certainly true that not all cops are bad, my personal experience shows that it's not at all rare, either. Or if they're not "bad", at least they don't behave with the respect and responsibility that should attend the power they wield.

A really significant portion of my "official" interactions with police have been negative. I've listed these here before:

- I watched a friend being roughed up by cops. (not beaten, but physically pushed around) for absolutely no reason.

- I've had evidence of a traffic violation fabricated against me. (full disclosure: I was guilty, but that doesn't excuse lying about evidence)

- I've had police at a traffic stop curse at me and throw my documents. (I understand why he felt this way, but it was due to him making assumptions, starting with a belligerent attitude, and misreading the situation)

- Some older kids were physically bullying me and a friend. We went to a cop for help, and the extent of his aid was to say to us "better watch out, they'll probably hit you again".

Given the limited amount of interaction people normally have with police, the number of times this has happened to me says that I'm either a lightning rod for lousy cops, or the problem is more than just a few isolated bad eggs.

I agree. The only way to fix this is to remove immunity for all cops in all cases and start holding them responsible like we do regular citizens, if not to even more stringent rules. This is first and foremost a cultural problem however, one that is so ingrained in culture, especially legal culture, that I see no way of making headway. When a judge automatically believes what a police officer says and a police officer's testimony is worth more than a regular citizen's testimony in court, you're looking at challenging the whole system of justice we have as unfair, biased, and broken. I don't see a path to any reform that doesn't hit that conclusion in this country, especially when you're talking about reforming police or getting on a path to fair trials/sentencing. In the meantime, the cultural biases that lead to this are so strong and so highly ingrained, reinforced by racism and other divisive hate, that you'd have to throw out the whole idea of trial by jury (which is extremely outdated and especially unjust in modern society) to make headway.

I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying, until you have truly revolutionary change, all cops will be perceived as the absolute danger to life, limb, and property that they potentially are. That is unfortunate for the good ones, but that's life. I don't go around questioning whether members of other gangs like the Bloods or Crips have ill intent for me, so I certainly will not question whether members of the biggest, most heavily armed, most dangerous gang in the US have ill intent for me. I just assume they do because the majority do.

Actually, I'd worry less about the Bloods and the Crips: they're businesspeople, and as long as you aren't involved in their business (pushing drugs), you probably don't have too much to worry about. The police are a different story, because to them, we're all "the enemy".

Absolutely. Sorry if this didn't come through clearly.

One of the challenges today is the number of military veterans to return from the Middle East and get jobs in law enforcement after their discharge. As a matter of habit and training, they pursue the police job like the military job: as a search for and battle with enemies.

But what communities want is a police force that provides safety to citizens, not one that fights enemies. There's a big difference between those mindsets.

I've always heard that many folks often had more stringent ROEs in Iraq and Afghanistan. How does this mesh with the notion of a trigger-happy cop?

It's not about being trigger-happy, it's the focus of thinking.

The military's job is to defeat enemies. If you are a soldier, enemies are people who want to kill you, the soldier. They're enemies when everyone wakes up and they're enemies when everyone goes to bed. So the soldiers' job in-country is to sort people into enemies and civilians; to defend civilians and kill enemies.

In the U.S., a police officer's job is to enforce the law. They are supposed to be policing behavior, not sorting people. Everyone is a civilian. A civilian who broke the law is not an enemy, and the justice system is not seeking to defeat them. The law is supposed to punish behavior in proportion to the crime, and in accordance with the written law.

Now of course it's not that simple; there are organized crime syndicates, like drug gangs or terrorist cells, who target police. But the reality is that those are a tiny tiny percentage of the population.

But law enforcement has spent a decade re-organizing itself to defeat them. That's how you get an "Emergency Response Team" (SWAT) setting up a secure perimeter and clearing houses around a sleepy veteran who just called for a little support, as in this story.

They didn't show up to help a veteran; they showed up to defeat an enemy.

< They should be well paid and receive aggressive financial < incentives to continue their education.

My buddy is a copy in a mid-size south florida town and is getting 6K retirement checks after 20 years of service and still working full time in the DROP program. I'd say he's fairly well paid for only high school education.

One caveat to this: from the data I've seen a lot of these issues revolve around specific communities. Please keep in mind that police forces are not national, but rather local.

They are local, but we see patterns repeated nationally.

We also see some of the same patterns internationally. One might even venture a guess that the power the is inherently given to perform police duties has a universal appeal towards abuse that affects many humans in the same way...

Which is why I see it less as an American police problem versus an American police culture problem.

The bad cop stereotype is universal. But America's current police culture in my opinion encourages bad cop behavior. The culture is way too military-oriented versus community oriented at the moment. It is hard to "protect and serve" your community if you are always at "war" with some "enemy". This case is a perfect example of that.

but the usa has very local police forces many of which are tiny forces and have much less oversight than a centrally managed force as is common in the EU and UK

Is there strong backing for this from communities?

It seems to me like the most outrageous police brutality sources would be solved by high-level oversight.

> They should not carry firearms

Unfortunately in a society where a lot of citizens have fire arms, where gang culture exist this will not be possible at all. How many times police was shot on routine daily events? Police not carrying weapons is not realistic in USA.

If a patrolman is unarmed, he will not be perceived as a deadly threat by wrongdoers and thus will be less likely to be shot. And consider the current number of criminals apprehended without guns drawn. It is possible, even in the United States.

Certain officers and teams absolutely should well armed, but it should be a much smaller subset of the force. A call for deadly force should be an explicit, intentional escalation.

I watched a show on LA gangs and there are areas where the police don't even go anymore because the gangs are packing assault rifles.

If the police don't have any weapons, why would they patrol ANY area that might be dangerous?

Edit: I see you recognize that some should be armed. Perhaps you're right. Maybe its discretionary based on your patrol. They could deputize parking enforcement. Oh wait, that might be worse haha.

"A call for deadly force should be an explicit, intentional escalation."

> How many times police was shot on routine daily events?

About 64 officers die per year. Not all of those are shot.

In 2013: https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-release...

>> 76 law enforcement officers were killed in line-of-duty incidents in 2013. Of these, 27 law enforcement officers died as a result of felonious acts, and 49 officers died in accidents.

Most of those felonious killings were by gun.

>> In 2013, of the 49,851 officers assaulted while performing their duties, 29.2 percent were injured. The largest percentage of victim officers (31.2 percent) were assaulted while responding to disturbance calls. Assailants used personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.) in 79.8 percent of the incidents, firearms in 4.5 percent of incidents, and knives or other cutting instruments in 1.8 percent of the incidents. Other types of dangerous weapons were used in 13.9 percent of assaults. Expanded assault details have been included in the 2013 publication. Data for assaults during which officers were injured with firearms or knives/other cutting instruments are located in new tables, figures, and selected narratives.

From this I don't know if the 4.5% of gun incidents refers to 4.5% of 49,851 officers assaulted, or to the 29.2% of those which were injured.

How many people are shot and killed by police each year? We don't know, the police don't count these numbers. How many people are shot and injured by police each year? Again, we don't know, because the police don't count these shootings.

When shot during routine daily events, what makes it different from the criminal stumbling upon a postman, an unarmed private security guard, or just a regular unarmed person? We don't hear "postman shot when doing his routine"; so I wonder if the fact that the police is armed and authorized to kill you if necessary is actually contributing.

While I disagree with the premise that police officers in the US need guns 100% of the time, the general argument against

>what makes it different from the criminal stumbling upon a postman, an unarmed private security guard, or just a regular unarmed person?

Is that police officers jobs have them actively going towards and engaging these criminals, not just accidentally stumbling upon them like the postman.

A private security guard does too. And surely most of the time a police office is dealing with law-breakers that aren't violent, or that aren't carrying a firearm if they're violent?

Most private security firms spring for CCWs. Here in Jersey it's a norm for most private security to either have tasers or a CCW.

What do you think a beat cop does on a daily basis that requires the threat of armed violence from that cop in particular?

"gang culture" and "lots of firearms" are not reasons for beat cops to be armed on a daily basis.

"how many times has a police officer been shot during routine daily events?" - this is not relevant. Having a gun does not protect you from being shot. Quite the opposite, in general.

If a police officer is attempting to make an arrest and experiences armed resistance, then it is of course necessary to have a small, dedicated part of the police force that is authorized to use firearms.

It's also unfortunate that the police in many places have become accustomed to treating everyone like they were part of a heavily-armed gang. That's the police's problem, and they need to fix it, pronto.

I think it's a reasonable hypothesis that the ability to use lethal force with near impunity has enabled a police culture of maximum-confrontation. That culture is going to be hard to root out, and taking away the guns that enabled it (from most cops, and increasing scrutiny of who are still allowed to carry) could be a good start and do a lot of good.

Give 'em ballistic shields.

agreed. if they are unarmed then they can forget about arresting people and bringing them into jail and in front of a judge. plenty of people are willing to kill to avoid that outcome.

> they can forget about arresting people and bringing them into jail and in front of a judge

Hyperbole much? I expect most arrests are done without firearms being drawn.

> plenty of people are willing to kill to avoid that outcome.

And plenty of people are willing to kill for other reasons too, which is why no one's discussing that zero police officers should carry firearms. What's being questioned is the policy of all of them doing it.

maybe most arrests happen that way, but you need to be prepared for any reasonable eventuality. apprehending people can be very dangerous. I see no reason why an officer would willingly go into that situation unprepared to defend him/herself with lethal force. having armed help a radio call away doesn't seem comforting when you're dealing with someone who's armed and angry now.

I would bet most shots at the police aren't because the criminal wants to straight up murder a police officer out of anger in the heat of the moment. Rather because he's scared, wants to flee, and his only option left for that is his gun.

It's a given here in the US that the moment you as much as appear to draw a gun at a cop, you're getting shot. So I don't think criminals even have to think about it to know that it's a "kill first or die" situation, once you're down that route. Now, if the criminal knows that the cop is unarmed, all of that changes: his gun is just leverage. He flees (or expels the cops off his house), which is undesirable; but then's when the situation can be escalated. No more "wild West" situations of "this guy might shoot me any moment, better be prepared to kill him for my life".

> if they are unarmed then they can forget about arresting people and bringing them into jail and in front of a judge. plenty of people are willing to kill to avoid that outcome.

I'm going to call bullshit on that. Proportionally few criminals are North Hollywood Shootout types that require lethal force to be subdued. I would think that a very large fraction of arrests can be accomplished with threats of extra legal penalties or physical man-handling.

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

And yet, in UK criminals are arrested absolutely fine, even though police does not carry guns!

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

> They should always be wearing a body cam

Agreed. Also works if the citizenry wear body cams.

Interestingly, the police in China do not carry firearms nor are they allowed to do high speed car chases.

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