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Comment by nojokes | Hacker News Reader

Or departments with more military gear are in more risky areas where the use of force is more likely.

I could not read the article because it is blocked for me.

The study controls for that variable:

> The newspaper’s analysis used the military’s database and paired it with a database of fatal police shootings from across the state, controlling for statistical variables like community income, rural-urban differences, racial makeup, and violent crime rates.

The article explicitly cautions against drawing conclusions about causality. My intuition is that there’s truth to both explanations: cosplaying as a military makes police more violent, and intrinsically violent departments are more likely to seek out military equipment.

And frankly, the second conclusion scares me more. If the causal relationship is “equipment —> violence”, we can solve it by simply banning the use of military equipment by police. If the relationship goes the other way, though, we still have to deal with violent cops who want to hurt civilians.

> If the relationship goes the other way, though, we still have to deal with violent cops who want to hurt civilians.

If the problem is iterative, then I'd think in terms of adjusting probabilities in a Markov chain, and having the goal be to minimize instances of avoidable police violence over time. Anyway, it's not possible to eliminate violence from the police, unless we find a way to eliminate violence from human nature, so the goals should be about adjusting priorities, duties, and tone to minimize unnecessary violence.

Something I've long thought on is what types of people are attracted to the US police force. If you look at it economically, by what incentives are offered, it's a bit disturbing: 1) Power over others 2) Chance to stop violence 3) Little educational requirements 4) Access to cool gear 5) Immunity from law 6) Ability to help or hurt weaker people 7) Access to drugs, guns, etc...

The list goes on, but I really see two types of people drawn to these: those that seek to help, and those that seek power. The defenders, and the bullies. The saviors, and the criminals.

It's naive to expect that one type makes it through much more often than the other (the "a few bad apples" analogy). If I were in organized crime, or a gang, or a neo-nazi, or just someone who was a sociopath, what better possible job is there than being a cop? Would it be that hard to fake it through whatever screenings they use (which can be NONE in some PDs) to weed out the bad actors? No. We must expect some large minority or even a majority of cops to fall into the class of bad actors.

one more thing to add to your list is that police tend to be pretty well paid for their level of education. in my area, starting salary for a police officer is not much lower than a typical salary for a junior dev. a rank-and-file cop with a few years of experience who pulls a lot of OT can make a surprising amount of money.

We would have to deal with violent cops who want to hurt civilians, but at least they'd have less efficient tools to do so. And maybe the violent people would be less drawn to a career in law enforcement if it wasn't associated with a militarised image.

If it's both effects at the same time, in a feedback loop, it's actually ok - you can stop the loop by cutting either effect.

When I think of the outrageous crimes committed by police, I see handguns and batons and knees, not military gear.

I suspect the tacticool gear is more about the culture and mindset (your second effect). As tech companies attract computer nerds with computer toys, LE attacks violence nerds with violence toys.

I'm sorry a 38 caliber "old school" pistol will kill you just about as quickly as an AR15 and a shot gun with correct shells will be far more likely to end you. It's not about the style of gun, it's about who's using it and how aggressive they are.

"Risky areas" sounds like a dog whistle to me, much like "bad neighborhood"... When you think of these "risky areas", what do the people within them look like? Do they deserve to have militarized police literally rolling armored tank-like vehicles through their neighborhood, and what sort of impact do you think that has on them?

I don't understand why this was downvoted.

Because the down voters agree that "risky areas" aka communities full of minorities like black and hispanic people, deserve military style occupation and tactics.

If you think that's not true, ask yourself why analysis of that term is not welcome.

There is a long proud tradition of terrible anti-human bullshit being hidden behind neat euphemisms like that.

Because it sounds reasonable, and civil.

It isn't.

i downvoted it because it’s not a dog whistle. people insist on seeing race everywhere. a risky area by common sense is an area with increased violence, regardless of the racial makeup. if you can’t see why somewhere with increased violence would possibly require police to have increased capabilities i’m not sure what to say. or how it’s magically a dog whistle

If you're using the term dog whistle to describe something, you're the dog in that situation.

That accusation is just a submarine form of kafkatrap.

People can also hear dog whistles through technology. You don't have to be a dog to hear it, just get a microphone and a Fourier transform.

Similarly, people can figure out how to spot dog whistles without being a dog.

I honestly do not know about how they look like. What I meant was higher rate of crime against people and police.

But to give you an idea what might turn police force to want to have more serious weapons. Just few days ago there was a 2 hours long attack on the local police station in France. Attackers used fireworks. Police did not respond though and I do not have an idea why. Perhaps they were outnumbered and outgunned.

In such situation, where criminals do what they like, would you prefer your police force have some serious weapons or you would think that it would be an overreaction?

CNN: "Police said no one was injured and an investigation to identify the perpetrators is underway."

The police did a great job and I'm glad it didn't turn into a massacre that could have exploded into an outright civil war.

of course i'd rather the police sit and watch and maybe throw some tear gas around. why do think violence or even lethal force would work?

> Or departments with more military gear are in more risky areas where the use of force is more likely.

Maybe. I know anecdotally where I live has very little violent crime, and the police department is fully militarized with mraps and the like.

Plural? Like one could make sense, in a siege type situation or bank robbery in progress perhaps. The sort of event that might happen once a decade or so maybe.

But how many sieges or bank robberies are they expecting to need multiple of these?!

Bank robberies used to be more common, but inflation basically took care of that

https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/economists-demonstra...

Thanks for the interesting link. Ars at its best. Though my interpretation of the article is more that the risk / reward ratio simply has become too poor, nothing to do with inflation.

I suppose it is easier to rob a 150k watch from an unprotected person on the street, of hold up a Chinese tourist (who often have their holiday money in cash), if you're into that sort of thing.

My city only has 1. I was mistaken because I saw a big police show and tell at an abandoned parking lot late last year, and saw multiples. The city next door has 2, and all the adjacent cities also have their own. Keep in mind these these cities are all basically considered the same large city. It's not like they separated by 100s of miles or anything.

Bored police departments spend their money on toys.

Busy police departments spend their money hiring more cops so that they aren't so over worked.

> Or departments with more military gear are in more risky areas where the use of force is more likely.

Which, itself deserves a different study to understand whether risky areas lead to more use of force, or whether excessive use of force leads to police distrust, making areas more risky for police.

There is probably no single causal path here. Use of force, aggressive police, police's fear of the public, the public's distrust of police, militarized training, military gear, socioeconomics, race, and crime are likely interrelated in complex ways, without an easy line to draw from one to the other.

> controlling for statistical variables like community income, rural-urban differences, racial makeup, and violent crime rates.

So, they must have have data on low crime areas that also have similar military gear.

On a related note, do surplus statisticians cause lying journalists?

They do:

> A newly published article by a group of scholars with the Emory University Department of Political Science found no relationship between the presence of surplus military equipment and lower crime rates.

check out archive.is

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