Comment by sdenton4 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sdenton4 | Hacker News Reader

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It's exactly the riot cop problem. On the cop side, the more armor you have, the less you see and the more hostile the world /seems/; this increases the chance of using force instead of diplomacy in any given situation.

On the civilian side, you get to feel like you live in a goddamned war zone, with the police as combatants. It's not a nice feeling.

My own approach is to treat cops as large, gun-wielding wild animals: maybe they'll be fine, but in any interaction there's a chance they'll fuck up your life permanently. And that's a direct consequence of having police on 'war footing' with the community, where the default reactions to problems are either violence or long-term imprisonment. And the ethics of this extends beyond my own interactions: if I see something illegal happening, calling the cops means putting people in extreme danger. As a result, I'm not going to call the cops for anything less than assault. Thus, police militarization works against actual enforcement of the law, because it estranges police from the population. (For a whole lot more, go listen to season 3 of the Serial podcast...)

> this increases the chance of using force instead of diplomacy in any given situation.

I'm not sure diplomacy works when someone is actively shooting at you or other people.

If people are rioting (actually rioting, not protesting) then I honestly don't care how the presence of a MRAP makes them feel. It's the police's job to stop the riot and they need tools to do that.

> I'm not going to call the cops for anything less than assault.

I'm glad you're not the majority. Because the world would be pretty shitty if all the police responded to was physical assaults and above.

> I'm not sure diplomacy works when someone is actively shooting at you or other people.

Most of the time, police aren't being shot at. And they tend to react to peaceful protest exactly as if it were a riot. This is well documented.

Here's an example I was present for: Peaceful protest at the university. Cops in riot gear show up, fly around in helicopters, etc. One of the cops pushes/bumps a girl who then bounces into another cop, who slams her against the hood of cop car, arrests her, charges her with assault, and tries to get her expelled from the university. (The same department, six months later, gave us this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4 )

> I'm glad you're not the majority. Because the world would be pretty shitty if all the police responded to was physical assaults and above.

If that's not the world you like, let's fix the police!

> Most of the time

Key phrase there. We expect our police to be equipped for any situation. So what happens when something like the North Hollywood shooting happens again and you have pinned cops/civilians? In that case officers had to commandeer actual money trucks and raid gun shops to get the equipment they needed to stop the shooters.

> Here's an example I was present for

If that's true then I'm all for punishments / legal action against officers that do wrong.

> If that's not the world you like, let's fix the police!

I'm all for police reform where evidence shows it can help.

If they only used that stuff when called for, that would be nice.

In practice, most of the time, all that gear is used to serve no-knock warrants on non-violent offenders (usually involving drugs).

Maryland used to publish statistics for their use of SWAT teams; look that up, and note the breakdown on kinds of circumstances they were called in for, and whether it was no-knock or not. No-knock generally means busting doors and sometimes ramming walls (with those very MRAPs), throwing flashbangs etc.

It really depends on the exact location of the cops. As a younger person I personally witnessed local police use those vehicles in ways that were very much overkill. I've also personally winessed those same police officers lie " on the stand" in court to " make" thier case and the judge always buys it. Doesn't take a genius to understand that there is a huge problem with law enforcement in the US. Isn't this a thread about Google?

>I'm not sure diplomacy works when someone is actively shooting at you or other people.

I mean, not only is it required by law, as per Graham v. Connor, but the current trend in national standards for dealing with riots is trending towards implementing de-escalation techniques and other measures designed to protect the sanctity of life rather than using escalating violence to disperse the crowd.

You seem to be conflating two issues there. If there is a shooting there is no negotiation until they can deem the situation under control.

For riots, obviously using other dispersion tactics is preferable and should be used before physical force is employed.

> > I'm not going to call the cops for anything less than assault.

> I'm glad you're not the majority. Because the world would be pretty shitty if all the police responded to was physical assaults and above.

Only ancentotal, I know, but every time I have called the cops for any reason in my life, the situation was arguably made worse for everyone present... In some cases, severely so.

In m several cases, the threat of deadly force was brought into cases where nothing but a stern hand was needed. In one, it almost resulted in the death of the person that was actually doing the most to help the situation.

I will never again call the police for any reason unless I think with some certainty that a life will be lost if I dont.

> I'm not sure diplomacy works when someone is actively shooting at you or other people.

So the best option is to go to the other extreme, and give our police military weapons, vehicles, and armor--except that police get a looser RoE, they investigate themselves, and have a great history of murdering civilians.

> If people are rioting (actually rioting, not protesting) then I honestly don't care how the presence of a MRAP makes them feel. It's the police's job to stop the riot and they need tools to do that.

These vehicles show up at protests. Someone else here suggested we look them up on YouTube so we can see how they SAVE LIVES when police use them. Except the only video that I found in my admittedly short YouTube search was the police using these at a protest, lol. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71-R2D0-wOI&t=3462s I'm so glad the police had all of that protection there. Phew. Saved so many police lives.

How do you know they’re not the majority?

Because outside the bubble of HN, people generally support their community police and don't feel threatened to call them when a crime is occurring to them / in front of them.

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