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Comment by rbanffy | Hacker News Reader

> there would have been lots of great claims: "Train police", "Restructure Police", "Rebuild Police"... but what's a single good argument do Defund Police other than going back to anarchy?

I believe it's a reaction to police forces now having military gear when it should be totally unnecessary. In many places police officers don't even need guns.

Maybe spending less money in militaria and more in training would be a consequence of not having to fund military equipment, supplies, and maintenance. It'd, at least, limit the violent options police has when they are going to engage a suspect.

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Also to police forces closing ranks around their own misbehaving officers, such that it's not possible to effect change within the system short of tearing down the whole system and replacing it with something else.

I think that 2020s protests might've gone very differently if, after the previous 18 complaints against Chauvin for racially-motivated excessive use of force, his department had said "Yes, this is a problem. He is no longer with the force" rather than continuing to employ him until somebody died. Most police officers I know have been decent people, with some bad apples. But unfortunately the bad apples are protected and ruin the trust in the police force for everyone.

Which is ironically the moral of the bad apples aphorism: a few bad apples spoil the bunch.

It seems the bunch is made almost exclusively of bad apples right now.

"Unfortunately, as a reaction to our budget cuts, the department has decided today to drop all unneccessary training, public relations, proactive policing and vehicle maintenance. We hope there won't be more cuts in the future so we can afford maintaining the urban tanks and full battle gear our officers so direly need in these dangerous times."

Duh. Who could possibly have foreseen that defunding would not change their attitude?

> defunding would not change their attitude?

It's almost like a job where you get to work in military cosplay and just intimidate and sometimes kill people you don't like without facing any consequences would attract people suitable for being a police officer. When you offer sociopath-candy, you attract sociopaths.

It isn't a recent issue. Progressives in the US were warning about this trend in the 1980s

The FBI also reported a lot of police forces have been infiltrated by white supremacists. One wonders where the violence comes from...

Oftentimes they are given this military gear for pretty much free. When is the last time you've even seen SWAT deployed that made you think "I wish they didn't deploy SWAT?"

TANSTAAFL - who's paying for that gear? How'd it get in the police department's hands "for free"?

I don't want to be SWATTED (for script kiddie's Lulz) just because the police have the equipment and need to justify usage of it.

Well the US taxpayer is paying for it. It is military equipment that is transferred to police departments

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/24/pros-j24.html

A surplus that's a side effect of a bad habit of invading other countries and occupying them for decades. Kick the habit and the surplus goes away.

Also, international good will increases.

Federal programs transfer this equipment to police force for free other than like shipping and ongoing maintenance(1). Easy for ARs since they already have the gun lube. Harder for the Armored Personel Carrier so that is usually found parked in front of HQ just for show like an old WWII tank. SWATTING is extremely rare and unlikely to ever happen to you or anyone you personally know. Meanwhile there's been plenty of cases that have demonstrated the need for police to have access to weaponry, like the north hollywood shootout(2).

1. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/09/why-police-pay-nothing-for-m... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout

> shipping and ongoing maintenance

Get it now and pay forever. Sounds like a sweet deal to the manufacturer.

The reality of ongoing maintenance is that they just don't maintain the APC and leave it parked out front. If it doesn't work in 30 years they don't care, it's a playpiece for kids to climb over worst case like the Sherman WWII tanks given to U.S. cities under a similar program in the 1950s. For the other ongoing maintenance, for something like an M16 it's not going to require very much costly specialized things from the armory. It's going to use the same gun lube, the ammunition used is economical, it's literally the toyota corolla of spare parts in terms of a gun given how many manufacturers exist producing AR15 parts at scale and therefore at affordable prices. Stuff like a military flashlight or a rifle sight or ballistic vest doesn't really need ongoing maintenance either.

Police departments, and thus municipalities, have to pay for both the allocation and maintenance of all equipment given from the 1033 Program.

>When is the last time you've even seen SWAT deployed that made you think "I wish they didn't deploy SWAT?"

Literally 100% of the times I hear about them using SWAT in the news I think this.

If someone is truly valuable they tail them and conduct a fishing stop and arrest them. SWAT is all for show these days.

> If someone is truly valuable they tail them and conduct a fishing stop and arrest them. SWAT is all for show these days.

While I agree that there is a trend in this direction, an import exception where SWAT is used that isn’t just for show (and where a tail + fishing stop as you describe would not work) is high-threat hostage situations, which do occur.

You must not be following what SWAT is actually used for. This was from just two months ago in my city (1). You couldn't use traditional police for a hostage situation like this; it reads like a scene in a Tom Clancy novel but this happens in real life too.

https://abc7.com/hostage-downtown-la-suspect-dead-police-sho...

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