Control of SWAT should really not be at the local police level, but at the state level. The fact that SWATing is a thing shows just how broken the current model is. The use of SWAT should be extremely rare.
The goal of this kind of thing is to condition us to a new-normal.
1 - https://www.rt.com/usa/361982-marijuana-pensioner-police-hel...
If this is the police response you think is appropriate for the vast majority of police calls then I think you should reevaluate your country of residence.
I'm sure you could go state by state and find similar percentages.
Not to mention that what they find should be worth found too (e.g. some kid's stash of weed or some guy's coke is not to be counted among the "successes" -- you don't send a SWAT team for that, you send it to major dealers).
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...
It really is power projection from a totalitarian state
Hard to think of a better model though; you never know what call is going to be real. Additionally getting local police involved does make a lot of sense, as they should have invaluable knowledge of the area and the people.
No, it's not. USA is probably the only western country with such militarized, trigger happy police force and still does worse[0] than any EU country and most Asia countries in controlling crime.
Plus, the US is extremely individualistic, while European countries tend to be more communal. I think this also contributes to the increased tension between factions in the US.
Finally, the US has far higher gun ownership, so law enforcement in the US has to deal with gun violence while Europe does not.
Good for you. Multiple studies and the FBI's own crime statistics prove you wrong.
> Plus, the US is extremely individualistic, while European countries tend to be more communal.
Irrelevant. Not all European countries are communal and some of the highest crime rate countries in the world are communal.
> Finally, the US has far higher gun ownership, so law enforcement in the US has to deal with gun violence while Europe does not.
Czech republic has just as high a gun ownership rate as the US, but much lower crime. The reason? Homogeneous population.
Do you want to make any other arguments that have been debunked to hell? I haven't heard you use the word 'racism' yet.
Cite them, please. Particularly, cite the ones showing that:
- Europe is not diverse.
- Diversity causes increased crime (and is not just correlated, in which case other factors like poverty, which seem to be correlated with diversity in the US, could be a factor).
To provide some evidence of my own, here's some evidence that violent crime in the USA is heavily correlated with poverty: https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5137
And here's some more evidence showing that poverty is associated with being a minority ethnicity: https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-17.pdf
So it seems likely that crime is correlated with diversity but it also seems (to me) that diversity isn't the cause, poverty is (you can see in the first link that whites in poverty have similar crime rates to blacks in poverty).
> Irrelevant. Not all European countries are communal and some of the highest crime rate countries in the world are communal.
I never said it was a sole factor, I believe it's a contributing factor. Those countries with high amounts of violence are also influenced by other factors, like poverty and lack of stable government.
Those communal countries also tend to be more "socialist", which leads to reduced poverty, reduced income inequality and hence, I believe, reduced crime.
To provide some evidence, it seems that people on the lowest end of the income spectrum in most of Europe have more income than their counterparts in the USA: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/01/05/america_s_poo...
> Czech republic has just as high a gun ownership rate as the US, but much lower crime. The reason? Homogeneous population.
No it doesn't. Wikipedia puts the number of license holders (and note that a license is required) at 300k: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_Czech_Republic
The population of the Czech Republic is 10m, that puts gun ownership at ~3%.
This puts gun ownership in the US at ~22%, over 6x higher: http://www.guns.com/2016/09/20/how-many-guns-owned-by-how-ma...
Further, you provide no source to support your assertion that Czech crime is lower because of a culturally homogenous population.
> Do you want to make any other arguments that have been debunked to hell?
Nothing's been debunked so far, I've simply made some suggestions and you've thrown "you're wrong" at me without any evidence to support your assertion. I've now expanded my argument, feel free to show that my evidence or the logic based upon it is flawed.
I haven't quoted the mathematical proof that 2 + 2 = 4 either. Next you'll be asking me for evidence of that as well. The studies I referred to are freely available on the internet. If you want to shore up your faulty arguments, go find them.
There are much more reasonable ways to enquire about a potential drug situation, and that is all these raids are, very violent enquiries, given little to no evidence past a phonecall exists to pin the household.
If you are going to search the whole house anyway, and surround the perimiter, what good does such an aggressive incursion produce? These aren't military outposts, the element of surprise gets you next to nothing.
Nowhere did I say anything of the sort. At least Australia is a better comparison than the EU or UK. And I agree with you that increased militarization of the police is both unnecessary and counterproductive.
So the question remains: why is the police becoming increasingly militarized when the results are worse across the board?
Translation: "We need a militarized police because we have a lot of black people."
Which I understand to an extent, but often it sounds more like a cop-out than an actual analysis of the situation.