Sometimes I wonder if cops have watched too many action movies and try to emulate these movies. How about first waiting and assess the situation? Why that rush and aggressiveness?
They do all the time. I saw a video where American police were yelling confusing instructions at a drunk guy clearly trying to do what they ask but unable to work out what they want and when he fell over they opened fire at him because he made a quick movement.
But its almost justified. I have seen videos where someone moves their arm just a bit and the police start shooting instantly before I even know what has happened and a gun falls out of the dead targets pocket.
Thats just what happens when any random stranger could be carrying a gun. Its almost unheard of for someone to be wrongly shot by police in Australia (Probably has happened but its no where near like America)
I'm not so sure about that. Admittedly I haven't spent the time to do reliable research, but I get the distinct impression that fewer people here are actively carrying weapons today than in, say, the 1950s. Yet over time the police seem to have an increasing amount of military gear, generally seem more on edge when I encounter them in public, and it feels much more like an "Us vs Them" thing is going on. It also concerns me that I can't seem to identify a clear root cause for why that would be happening.
I reckon even if I did something stupid around them I'd probably get pepper sprayed rather than shot.
If I was going to be mentally ill, I think Australia would be towards the top of my list somewhere of places I'd want to be.
What are the incentives for the PD in an armed situation? To stay alive, yes, of course. But are there other incentives? The guns blazing approach indicates there are other incentives. If they wanted to 'just' stay alive, they'd put a lot of distance between themselves and the suspect, get a lot of back-up, etc.
But there is another possible incentive too: glory/honor. For many male-centric groups, dis/honor is a VERY powerful incentive. Taking down the 'bad-guy' and earning honor/glory through that act can be quite motivating.
But can you replace that incentive with another one that is less 'thrill seeking'? How about 'hazard pay', payed by the number of hours that an officer is in a life-threatening situation, escalating with the time spent on scene? Like, you corner a suspect, but the longer the standoff lasts, the more pay the officer gets, and the more officers there are on the scene, the more the pay increases? That'll incentivize the officers to wait things out, get back-up, give time for media to get on site, and probably decrease fatalities.
Or, you know, less guns on the streets too.
Only if you somehow manage to ignore everything the federal government is doing internationally (15 & 17yr wars [with no end], ignoring ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, etc).
> and they are also exempt from oversight from the Federal Government
That's not true at all. For a very recent (today) example: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-files-net-...
Secondly, you decided to link something completely out of context to the discussion of the state's well armed militias, which is the only thing I am referring to in the whole post.
You claimed "The States are exempt ... from oversight from the Federal Government as long as they pass their own laws to justify their egregious behavior" as an explanation for why the US Federal Government does not (or chooses to not) interfere with State militia. The lawsuit by the US DoJ against California's NN law demonstrates that your claim doesn't hold.
> won't assume oversight of police departments if there is some form of due process
Those two statements (by you) are quite different. I'm inclined to agree with the second one, as I've never heard of a federal agency taking over a local police department before. However, I'm inclined to disagree with the first (depending on the precise definition of oversight, of course). As just one example, consider the DoJ investigation of the SPD a few years ago. https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/...
Also, yes, the federal government will assume administration of police departments if its FUBAR, local municipalities can even ask for it to happen, like San Francisco has done and received since 2016.
> The Federal Government is more humane than the independent states' well armed militias.
So this is referring only to "well armed militias", and we're defining that in such a way as to exclude any police forces?
> We're talking about the state's police departments
Ok, so "well armed militias" includes police departments then?
> It was carefully worded to deal with ... overly semantical programmers
The problem isn't overly semantic programmers, the problem is that you are contradicting yourself. To respond unambiguously only to your original comment then:
> The Federal Government is more humane than the independent states' well armed militias.
This is quite debatable, and depends on the definition of "well armed militias" as well as how one goes about judging how humane the behavior of a given large institution is. I'm also not very clear on it's relevance to the larger topic of police militarization.
> The States are ... exempt from oversight from the Federal Government as long as they pass their own laws to justify their egregious behavior.
This technically depends on the definition of "oversight", but I think that for any reasonable definition it is very obviously false. Historically the federal government has stepped in on numerous occasions, either when they felt they had explicit authority (ex interstate commerce clause, intellectual property, etc), or when they felt that states were violating the constitutional rights of their citizens (ex my previously linked DoJ investigation of the SPD). In any of these cases it did not generally matter what the state laws said, as the constitution very clearly preempts those.
https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/national/prank-swat-call-...
Yes, that seems to be the key. If armed people point rifles toward you, lay flat on the ground, extend your arms away from your core, and wait. Eventually they will calm down and search you.