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Comment by ptero | Hacker News Reader

I agree with your first part that there is not necessarily a causal relationship between military equipment and killings.

But your "no need, ever, for police to have automatic weapons" part is, to me, just wrong. In general, police should have enough kit to easily overpower the criminals they expect to face. We have been fortunate in many areas (e.g., most of the US, Europe and practically all urban areas) for the police to not need automatic weaponry. But this is not universal. In other parts of the world police may face a much better equipped adversaries and automatic weapons.

We should strive to make the world safer so the strongest weapon the police on the street has is a book for writing fines, but until we are there we should equip law enforcement to overcome threats they expect to face. My 2c.

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The problem with your logic here is it makes the line between police and the military incredibly blurry to the point where police become just another type of military personnel.

Maybe if you have criminal activity at the level of needing automatic weapons, then you need military intervention and not police.

As many ex-military have pointed out in various forums, even in war situations rules of engagement for soldiers are very clear and strict, which is not true of most police. Soldiers are trained to deal with situations where lethal force and high power weaponry are assumed standard.

Police, if they are really to protect and serve, and act as part of the community should be dealing with an entirely different set of tools and skills. A solider and a police officer should be completely different roles. The former should be an expert in using state sanctioned violence to deal with high level threats to public safety and the latter should be a member of the community with the ability to resolve local conflicts and enforce standards agreed upon by that community.

You can't reasonably mix these two responsibilities and expect good results.

> The problem with your logic here is it makes the line between police and the military incredibly blurry to the point where police become just another type of military personnel.

Many other countries have Gendarmerie forces that bridge this gap in various ways. The most famous being the RCMP. Other countries mix these responsibilities with varying success, but they do it intentionally. Some have found good success with it.

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

The RCMP isn't a great example for why militarized police are a good idea.

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

RCMP are regular police everywhere but Ontario and Quebec. RCMP are closer in remit to the US Marshals, but also have the investigatory powers of the FBI. "Gendamarie" isn't inaccurate, but they're not militarized any greater or lesser than the SPVM.

How does "protect and serve" not include removing dangerous, violent criminals from society?. To do so you need efficient weaponry and tactics that differ from conventional warfare. Does every police officer need to be equipped with such firepower? No, but police forces around the world facing these threats tend to have an intermediate (or more) group for dealing with threats that fall between petty thievery and terrorist organizations/nation-state level actors.

Are you taking about actual real need in cities or a fantasy? It sounds flippant, but other counties don't need such ammo.

The murder clearance rates are low, corruption seem to be persistent problem and actual police work does not actually seem to involve attacking actual super armed gangs.

Of course I'm talking about an actual real need in cities, it's bewildering to me someone can't even see it as obvious.

What country do you live in where there's no need for SWAT-like teams or a straight-up Gendarmerie?

SWAT-like teams are used rarely and they don't buy used arms from military. They are few in numbers.

The issue with catching organized criminality is in investigation and dealing with corruption - including police corruption. The whole need to shoot out with them thing does not happen unless the local police is spectacularly bad.

To me, the military should not be a part of any law enforcement for the citizens. In practical terms, "never" is too harsh, but the bar should be very high. When military gets involved in local matters there is a risk that it takes power and holds it for a long time. Sometimes a military junta might be the least bad option, but this is not a path the country should risk taking lightly.

There were plenty of countries where gangs possessed and used automatic weapons, from Scandinavia to Germany, from Brazil to former Soviet Union. And that is not even touching Africa. A gang with machine guns is not a reason to ask military to take over law enforcement. My 2c.

what's the difference between military and police if both look the same and use the same weapons? what's stopping a rebel police chief from taking power in that case instead of some rebel general?

What parts of the world are you referring to? In general if you have people with automatic weapons attacking the police, you are basically in a civil war and the army takes over. The police is supposed to be a numerous local presence, not a fighting force.

When police has been equipped with automatic weapons, things usually end badly, particularly in those other parts of the world where police pay is nothing and alternative sources of revenue are very tempting when you are armed like a soldier. Having a corrupt cop is a thing, but a corrupt military armed cop is even worse.

Yeah I agree that specialized police forces (e.g. those who are called when people are taken hostage) need modern weapons that can counter the weapons of criminals.

But when I say specialized I mean specialized. That means special training, special deployments, special oversight.

That is how it is done in most civilised nations and it works very well. Regular cops rarely even need their handarm in most western nations. The whole German police force fires roughly 35 bullets at people in an average year, with an average of 8 deadly ones. There are cops in the US who shoot more bullets at people in a week than the entire police force of a nation with 80 million people in an entire year.

This so obviously due to bad (and too short) training, a misguided police culture (rather than neutral enforcers many US cops seem to think they are the law) and of course a lack of hard consequences for the "bad apples".

Of course it has to do with weapons in general, but the Austrian village I grew up in has a Glock factory in it, every second family has rifles in their locked rifle cabinets etc — yet Austria and other Nations with a lot of guns (Canada, Finland) don't have comparable problems.

My brother, who spend most of his life in the Marines, explained the difference between the military and the police to me many years ago.

The job of the military is to accomplish a set mission by any means necessary, including force. The job of the police is to ensure that law and order are kept. If you send the police to do the job of the military, the result will be dead police and and unaccomplished missions. If you send the military to do the job of the police the result will be dead civilians, and eventually civil disorder.

We have a lot of police who have forgotten this. And the results are obvious.

Case in point: when they sent the 82nd Airborne down to Haiti for peacekeeping things didn't go as well as they had hoped.

1. you're advocating providing people with milspec weaponry but without milspec training. there's a saying - with great power comes great responsibility - which seems to be forgotten about in some police departments.

2. you don't want to engage in an arms race with criminals.

3. law enforcement shouldn't be confused with urban warfare.

I don't know of any developed country where the police can reasonably expect to face better equipped adversaries than they can in the US. This is interesting for two reasons: You may have a point that it is necessary in the US for the police to have automatic weapons, but the US is also the only western country that has put itself in such a situation. Take from that what you will...

There are plenty of places. Mexico for example where the narcos have capabilities similar to the mexican military and In brazil we have little kids with automatic rifles roaming the favelas.

You missed the "developed countries" dogwhistle, which usually means rich and white nations.

is there a better way of describing the group of countries where it is unlikely to encounter criminals with lmgs mounted to pickup trucks?

>is there a better way of describing the group of countries where it is unlikely to encounter criminals with lmgs mounted to pickup trucks?

The dogwhistle has now turned into a full on bullhorn.

"first and second world" does a pretty good job covering it since there's plenty of nations that are formerly in the USSR's sphere of influence that aren't exactly rich but don't have to worry about cartel type violence.

Pretty much nobody likes to think that way though because the majority of the time "developed nations" are brought up it's in the context of how the US should be more like western Europe and it's usually ideologically convenient to leave Eastern Europe out of those kinds of comparisons.

"first and second world" describes more or less the same set of countries (perhaps modulo some eastern european countries like you said), but doesn't it have most of the same baggage as "developed nations"? as I understand it, the problem with "developed nations" is that it raises the question "developed compared to what?". in other words, it implicitly sets the west as the standard against which "developed" is measured. doesn't first/second/third world center the western perspective in pretty much the same way?

"Europe, but only the parts I like"

It specifically does mean rich, but includes China and Japan and South Korea, which are not white. The description of economic development was specifically to exclude race and political affiliation from the equation while still capturing the relevant metrics -- poverty causes violent crime.

"automatic weapons" is sort of a red herring. even in the military (US military at least), rifles are usually used in semi-auto mode. AFAIK, the main exception would be suppressive fire on a position, which is probably not an appropriate tactic for police in a residential area.

even in the US, you are much more likely to encounter criminals armed with pistols than rifles. it's a much more appropriate platform for the use case.

That’s because with a m4, your job isn’t to push random rounds down range. Your job is to actually hit what you’re aiming at. Even with covering or suppressive fire, you’re not randomly shooting down range and your shots are calculated to keep whomever your shooting at either dead or where they are so they can be flanked. You might have some full automatic weapons in your team, but they can’t hit anything so they just lay down suppressive fire. Point is, you can’t hit what you’re aiming at in full auto.

Source: ex-military

Denmark and Sweden have increasing problems with drugs gangs using hand grenades, and they've had a lot of experience with the motorbike club gangs in the eighties and nineties, who raided army barracks for military weapons and waged war.

Should they use the military to patrol the streets?

I disagree; there's some range the police should be equipped to handle. When the danger escalates out of that range, they should step back and have a better equipped group step in like the national guard

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