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Comment by elzbardico | Hacker News Reader

The militarization of law enforcement and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

> The militarization of law enforcement and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

Do you mean for the US, rather than the human race? Some of us live in countries where the only weapons most cops carry are truncheons and tasers.

The weapons are orthogonal to the culture; most of the police abuse volume is in beating, arrest and confinement, property destruction and confiscation, etc. The shootings make news, but lots of people don't get shot and still suffer lasting material consequences

I agree those are problems in many places (and to some extent will be with anywhere), but would not describe them as militarisation.

Whats bad for the US is bad for the rest of the world. America uses its outsized influence to impact the entire world

Plenty of countries are benefiting from U.S. mistakes and ‘badness’…

And yet your country may have an NYPD office.

This is at best naive, and reads pretty smug and self-satisfied. You likely still have a military, and policing isn't really about the weapons a cop carries. Ironically less deadly weapons can encourage more liberal use, so maybe you can be proud of your higher rate of non-lethal beatings?

Someone subjected to a non-lethal beating can complain, and be a witness to what happened. They can be medically examined to determine what happened. Its far harder to cover up.

I am pretty happy with the police hardly ever killing anyone, and that almost always someone who is a real danger to others. I am happy fewer people being killed by police so far this decade (and that includes road accidents involving police!), than have been killed by police in the US so far this month.

Its not just the weapons. In parts of Europe you can get arrested for posting the wrong kind of meme online.

As a side note, when trying to research this you'll see weird double speak fact checks like below:

> Fact Check: 11-year-old arrested on suspicion of violent disorder after riots, not ‘mean tweets’

> Sending grossly offensive, obscene, indecent, or menacing messages on public electronic communication networks is a criminal offence in Britain under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003

> Misleading. An 11-year-old was arrested on suspicion of violent disorder, not for social media posts, during a swathe of arrests by British police targeting those involved in rioting.

But then the authors don't write what 'violent disorder' is.

Then they try to further confuse the matter by talking about a completely unrealted 11 year old boy that was arrested for suspicion of arson

> The spokesperson said the 11-year-old, one of five juveniles arrested on suspicion of violent disorder by the force on Aug. 28 in relation to the riots, was later bailed.

> Cleveland Police arrested another 11-year-old on suspicion of arson after a police vehicle was set alight in Hartlepool on July 31, according to the spokesperson and an Aug. 1 statement, opens new tab . The child was also released on bail, the spokesperson said.

And this isn't some weird online political rag, it's Reuters. It's all very strange.

https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/11-year-old-arrested-susp...

> But then the authors don't write what 'violent disorder' is.

"Violent Disorder" is a specific offence listed in the Public Order Act.

> Then they try to further confuse the matter by talking about a completely unrealted 11 year old boy that was arrested for suspicion of arson

The way it reads doesn't seem like it's "completely unrelated" at all.

> "Violent Disorder" is a specific offence listed in the Public Order Act.

So the article should explain it.

> The way it reads doesn't seem like it's "completely unrelated" at all.

How is this related apart from the person sharing the same age and the town being the same? One is suspected of arson and the other of Violent Disorder? Does this add value to the fact check?

If you insist on the original article being very precise and very exhaustive, you should too: “wrong kind of meme” is very vague. A meme of a swastika will indeed land you in trouble in multiple countries, to pick a lightweight example. What kind of meme do you mean?

I just read about a kid being arrested for $2 bill because the cops didn't know such bills exist. Not the first time it happens too. Some of them aren't exactly brilliant, unfortunately. And there are almost never any consequences for doing stupid while in the uniform.

>And this isn't some weird online political rag, it's Reuters

What makes you think they aren't? All news media is inherently biased if they want or not. Not to mention "fact checker" are a prime candidate for corruption.

I don’t mind it being illegal.

But I think a lot of it needs to be treated as a significant mental health issue

> And this isn't some weird online political rag, it's Reuters. It's all very strange.

As Musk said: state sponsored propaganda(1).

I don't like the guy, but this one he had it right. (1) NGOs, i know.

FYI this is a reference to the opening statement of the Unabomber Manifesto "Industrial Society and its Future". Don't think OP meant anything by the distinction of US/humans

> The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

https://ia600300.us.archive.org/30/items/the-ted-k-archive-t...

Is this an obvious reference? Do people often know the text of this, or of bits of it?

Fairly obvious for those who've spent enough time online, I'd say most people would only recognize that first sentence. The Unabomber Manifesto has become something of a copypasta

In my four decades or so, I've never seen that.

Are you US-based?

US based, at UCB in the 80s, didn’t recognize it.

It would obviously fuck with the cultural reference replacing US for the world in the phrase.

But if you believe that only the US has this problem, I am sad to inform you that Taylor Swift and Hollywood Movies are not the only American cultural exports eagerly consumed around the world.

It's a bit more complicated than just equipment I reckon. Australian cops don't necessarily use literal military equipment (as frequently as US cops) but they sure know how to and make time to beat and rough ride someone within an inch of their lives, harass and arrest political youtuber staff members (friendly jordies) for literally no reason, or tase people to death (a tiny ~92 year old demented lady at a nursing home with a blunt steak knife, for example) at impressive scale. Aboriginal Australians couldn't be the most incarcerated peoples on earth without the dedication of our repugnant police forces. It speaks to militarisation or being a disaster to me despite not rolling out the tanks because of the severity of responses is still utterly beyond reason and has basically the same outcomes including no repercussions for going so far beyond what could possibly be justified even when there actually is danger or a crime happening.

Your comment is a bit off topic IMO. Swatting can occur regardless of how "militarized" a police force actually is.

Can it?

Do you really think that dressing in military special ops tactical clothing, with advanced and powerful weaponry, balaclavas, helmets and responding to a call in a armoured vehicle doesn't create any weird expectations on the mind of police officer of how they should behave in a call?

Does playing dress up make any difference to how much murdering they do? I don't think that outcomes would be any different if they were sent in in their regular uniforms with their regular weaponry.

The whole point of swatting is to cause massive over-reaction by the police endangering victim's life. If it would just cause a regular visit by a cop nobody would do it - what would be the point of it, waste 5 minutes of person's time? The whole premise relies on the massive militarized response.

How is this even related to militarization? The perp is abusing emergency response systems with a total lack of empathy for the damage it did to the victim and the department.

The separation of empathy from an 18 year old online kid from his peers is the true tragedy here.

I think they are saying in the US the SWAT team shows up ready for war, while a more measured response would be a couple cops knocking on the door to see what's going on. Obviously the cops don't have a crystal ball and there's not going to be a clean solution here, outside of catching the person earlier.

It sucks this person was so angry and unfeeling to the world at a young age.

Not at all. It’s good that law enforcement have the tools to deal with serious threats. You’re just throwing around a fear word.

The big guns are hidden from sight anyway, and only brought out when need be. We don’t need any Oct 7th type attacks happening on home soil.

If they can be summoned by just placing an anonymous phone call with an unverified claim, that might be a problem though.

This. There are valid reasons to have the big guns, though I still think we’ve overreached. It is terrifying that a damn teenager managed to trick the cops into whipping out the big guns hundreds of times.

Despite that the teenager will likely be going to jail, the most damning indictment is of the police forces that were repeatedly co-opted by the teenager. It should really take something much more clever to trigger this kind of systemic response repeatedly.

What's the alternative? Waiting for New York Times to verify a home invasion has indeed taken place before sending over cops?

Maybe just sending out a single squad car first to get a credible assessment?

I'm not sure who aided in constructing this mental representation for you that the number of cops is directly proportional with the scale of conflict that's about to happen.

I'd challenge that view by claiming that if the threat is of someone holding their family hostage threatening to kill them (just a guess at what these "swatters" might say to the dispatcher to get cops to actually kick in some doors, I don't know what their state-of-the-art accusation is), then sending one cop car, poorly equipped, sounds a bit silly for multiple reasons.

Just to be clear, your version of the ideal response to an unverified claim of a hostage situation is to immediately escalate?

It's because they have to assume it's real. Same reason behind weather warnings. They can't know for sure if it's real, but it's 'better' to assume it's real and respond accordingly only to discover it's a hoax, than it is to assume it's a prank and show up unprepared only to have it be real and they aren't ready to handle it. It's Schrodinger's hostage.

> We don’t need any Oct 7th type attacks happening on home soil.

USA has 1-2 mass shootings everyday on average. This is far worse than a singular big attack. And how long would the reaction of police to any big attack even take? Is it actually realistic that they will have a useful impact with big guns?

>USA has 1-2 mass shootings everyday on average.

2+ victims is a mass shooting per the FBI definition so while what you say is technically true it's also a particularly evil way to mislead the reader as the typical mass shooting of the FBI definition consists of 2-4 people shot over the course of an otherwise normal crime wheres the colloquial definition of "mass shooting" is more along the lines of a crazy suicidal person killing as many others as they can.

The USA is the only first-world country I'm aware of where many people are happy to argue that a 2+ victim shooting (in any context) is NOT a mass shooting.

"2" being a large number of people to be killed in a crime does not necessarily make it sensible (to me, a Dutchman, very much not American) to call that crime a "mass shooting". If the crime was e.g. a bank robbery (sorry for the unimaginative example), and they shot a member of staff and later a civilian to get away, then that's a robbery with two dead, not a mass shooting. What people imagine when you say "mass shooting" is sensational stories from (predominantly) the US where some mad kid takes a gun to a school and shoots around. If that kid shoots 2 people, that's a mass shooting with 2 dead.

Gun control advocates will say things like:

> Mass shootings like Columbine happen every day in America.

The guy you’re replying to (and I as well) are saying that this is an intentionally misleading statement. Three people being wounded but not killed in a shootout they started is still considered on the same level as dozens of innocent children being hurt and killed. IMO that’s straight up misinformation. It’s designed to illicit the strongest emotional reaction possible, while being not even technically wrong.

America has lots of problems, and guns are definitely one of them. Everyone agrees with this, we just disagree on how to fix it. Twisting words and lying is never helpful.

Mass shootings as defined to inflate statistics by groups like the Gun Violence Archive aren’t what people usually think of when they think of mass shootings. Those figures include anything with four victims including gang violence, robberies, etc. The more accurate measure is from the Mother Jones database, which lists just two this year.

> We don’t need any Oct 7th type attacks happening on home soil.

Well homegrown attacks happen DAILY. "Averaging almost 50,000 deaths from firearms annually". But no, once they're not on the news like the Oct 7th attacks where, it's fine I guess.

https://www.statista.com/topics/10904/gun-violence-in-the-un...

The number you’re citing is much higher than the number of firearm-related homicides on your linked page; I believe that’s because it includes suicides, which are not relevant to this conversation.

2023 which was the peak had homocides at 14,244.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/249803/number-of-homicid...

So you want police to deal with 10k+ gun related homicides using only batons and pepper spray?

If there are guns, there is death. Frankly, if there are no guns, there's still death.

You pulling an argumentative sleight of hand here conflating your run of the mill gun violence with terrorist attacks or mass shootings isn't cool.

It doesn't matter how the police is equipped, they can't stop a guy from walking up to his neighbor and shooting him in the face unless they're already there pointing guns at him. Although, maybe some sort of remote mind control chip is the answer there?

Also, I'm certain every shooting ends up on local news.

Or 1948-onwards-style genocides. One Palestinian child has been killed every 2 days since Oct 7th by the way.

The military model is that they are organized into units with training, and obey a central authority. On the whole, it's been an improvement over forming ad hoc posses of farmers and shopkeepers and arming them, or the medieval hue and cry model where someone screams and then everybody in town comes over and beats a stranger to death for having a different accent after dark. I'd love to see some statistics about how much worse it is now that we have professional police, though, if you've got any to share.

The "military model" goes so much further than that. They are "officers" and have military ranks as their position/title. They wear military-styled uniforms and headwear. They engage in military-style ceremonies.

> I'd love to see some statistics about how much worse it is now that we have professional police,

How fortunate that they're willing to collect statistics on their own performance for you.

> The "military model" goes so much further than that.

Claiming that police are being militarized is a very broad statement. Depending on your perspective it can be positive or negative.

You could argue that consistency and having a common operating model with accountability is a good thing. Unfortunately many would argue the adopted model is very flawed and that the level accountability is tied to public outrage or scrutiny.

I think everyone would agree that adequate training is essential but we would disagree on what type of training is appropriate. Some argue that sensitivity and deescalation training are where the focus should be, while others are arguing for the warrior training.

The true conservative would say that we can't do it right so we shouldn't attempt because doing it badly will be more harmful than not having done it at all.

> You could argue that consistency and having a common operating model with accountability is a good thing.

Why would that require that a "captain" has several subordinates ranked "Lieutenant" and "Sergeant"? Why do the highest ranked police have caps with brocade, and gold braid on their shoulders? Is that part of the consistency? Why does the NYPD have dress uniforms? Why do they give military style funerals for those who die, or x-gun salutes? We're often told they're out there fighting "wars", though everyone is always vague about who the other side is.

I'm not making the claim that they've been militarized recently. It seems to have been the case no matter how far you go back.

> I think everyone would agree that adequate training is essential but we would disagree on what type of training is appropriate.

I don't think this is a training problem. When they shoot some grandma or shake down travelers for the cash in their wallets, I don't think this could ever be corrected no matter how much or what sort of training they are required to undergo. This is some baseline ethics problem, that could only be corrected with initial selection, and then only if the selection process itself were relatively uncorrupted (and it's not).

Your comment doesn't just suggest you are mistaken about this or that, but that you aren't in a frame of mind where you could recognize or appreciate that there is a problem.

> The true conservative would say that we can't do it right so we shouldn't attempt because

What if the task were something absolutely morally abhorrent? What if the task was to efficiently and artfully carve the hearts out of newborn babies and toddlers, and to terrorize the parents with the mutilated remains of their children? But you've been doing this task for so long, that you and everyone else just assumes that it's something that needs to be done. You're sitting around arguing "ok, maybe we need to do only have as many satanic baby sacrifices, and I won't listen to the people who say we need to have more not less". And there's another guy sitting next to you saying "I don't know why we need the terror... we could kill just as many babies without being cruel, they could get anesthesia, and we could do grief counseling for the mom and dad".

And you endlessly yammer about this stuff, for decades, never noticing that you're all lunatics. The concept that this just shouldn't be done at all, in any manner, it's something you can't possibly hear. Even those who can understand this like to whine that they're powerless to stop it, that they don't have the tools to put a stop to it, etc. The truth is we all have the power to stop, none of you want to.

> Your comment doesn't just suggest you are mistaken about this or that, but that you aren't in a frame of mind where you could recognize or appreciate that there is a problem.

Popping in here to say that it's funny how you said this then go on about baby sacrifice.

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