Comment by josh2600 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by josh2600 | Hacker News Reader

I have an experience to relate about the small town I grew up in (Bay Area).

While I was a youngster I had numerous run ins with the local cops. Nothing serious, but I remember feeling mistreated, literally manhandled by the officers to this day.

Tangentially, the town I grew up in is not typically thought of as violent, but several folks in my high school class were violently murdered over the years. We've also had the misfortune to experience a few other heinous crimes which don't deserve to be repeated in polite company.

The local police basically failed, but a few years ago the county sheriffs took over.

Whereas, as a youngster I had numerous bad encounters with local authorities, now the sheriffs wave to me when I drive through town and I see them with the local kids working more like local cops.

I've never been a fan of the police, but this has been a welcome change in my community. I realize the visibility of age can change your relationship with authority but I think there was a cultural change as well.

Now, on the other hand, I'm also painfully aware of the shenanigans that police pull all over the US. The incidents of police brutality are too numerous to mention, and the justice dispensed is a pitiable counterweight (I'm referring to the prosecution of police brutality, not the justice of the police action, for clarity's sake).

I think there are too many weapons in America in general, and the militarization of the police is just another example of that. There's always the part of this argument where someone yells "but why can we see people getting shot on the television but we can't see sex?".

I think the militarization of the police has become a part of American culture and that my experience with my local authorities is an outlier. I wish the culture of our police was based around community development and not militarization.

> I wish the culture of our police was based around community development and not militarization.

There is something funny about that sentence. We have police imitating military yet the US military, during the current Iraq/Afghanistan "military operation", came to realize that a "knock-and-talk" approach was/is more effective than "kick-in-the-door" night raids while looking for insurgents.

Hahahaha. Oh man.

And if they violate the Rules of Engagement, it's going to hurt a lot worse than paid time off.

That's an interesting connection, thanks for sharing it.

I wonder if that's because the US military felt it had/has its back to the wall in terms of the success of its mission, and thus was forced to do the more effective thing, even though it's a bit outside of the purpose of their organization.

Conversely, police departments aren't under that much pressure to perform. Our country is experiencing a peace wave.

Instead, they're free to worry only about protecting their turf and increasing their budgets, through wasteful vanity projects like their tremendously overused SWAT teams, and over-targeting non-violent drug users.

A peace wave ... and yet, at the same time, dramatically higher budgets and paranoia due to 9/11. Do we really need/want cops with drones?

I think it has to do with oversight. There's a strong precedent for the international community to hold a country's leaders as responsible for their military's actions. The chain of command reflects that.

Compare that to internal affairs in law enforcement. It's a terrible joke.

There are also fiscal pressures, in the way budgets are set, and with civil asset forfeiture. The US military budget is not set by how many kills they get, and units are not permitted to pillage and plunder the countries they invade.

I live in Houston, fourth largest city in the US.

We're a spread-out city, and our police force (at least at the time of the Occupy Houston protests) was undergoing severe budget and pension cuts. We simply are not providing police the resources they need to create a solid and friendly community relationship, are not giving them the opportunity to be anything other than random thugs in Crown Vics.

Military style gear and SWAT training requires resources. Resources that could be spent on community policing.

I rather suspect that the lifetime cost of a new officer (pension, healthcare, etc.) greatly exceeds the toys of a SWAT team.

And SWAT teams don't have pensions, and never get hurt on the job?

Also, I expect SWAT teams need/get more time to practice SWATting than regular officers need/get time to practice policing.

Radley Balko, mentioned in the article, has been covering this story for several years now. He has repeatedly made the point that most SWAT teams receive very little additional training.

Extra toys but not extra training to go with them?

I'm curious - what do they do when they're not on SWAT missions? Do they go back to being regular cops, or do they sit on the bench?

In most smaller departments, it's an extra duty for regular police, so they go around (usually with SWAT gear in the car) and do normal policing.

I'm out of my depth here. Perhaps someone good at hacking and analyzing government data can help?

The real comparisons seem:

1) If SWAT officers do regular policing too, then compare the incremental annual cost of their goodies versus the 1 year fully loaded (salary + pension + benefits + equipment) cost of a police officer. I won't pretend to know this answer, other than tanks seem expensive, but then again so are cops.

2) If SWAT officers don't do regular policing, or do significantly less, then you need to add that to the equation.

Slightly off-topic, I have to admit that seeing cops patrol the streets with machine guns is a little off-putting. It reminds me quite a bit of Israel.

Most of those toys are provided "free" by the federal government. Rifles that would cost the police a few thousand dollars can be purchased for (last time I looked, about a year ago) $20, as an example.

The program used to be called DRMO, I can't find a price list online right now but here's a program page: https://www.dispositionservices.dla.mil/rtd03/leso/weapons.s...

Wow - sounds like deliberate arming. But even if it doesn't cost the local department, it costs us in aggregate. (What's rational for the local government may still not be rational for the taxpayer)

I recently read former Seattle police chief's book "Breaking Rank" http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Rank-Expose-American-Policing... where he talks a lot about the idea of community policing and de-militarization. It's a great book.

The local police basically failed, but a few years ago the county sheriffs took over. Whereas, as a youngster I had numerous bad encounters with local authorities, now the sheriffs wave to me when I drive through town and I see them with the local kids working more like local cops.

I wonder how much of this can be attributed to the fact that the position of Sheriff is usually directly elected, contrary to other chiefs of law enforcement that typically serve at the whim of other politicians and, consequently, their political parties?

Counterpoint: People in Arizona keep voting for Joe Arpaio.

Can you explain what actually changed when the sheriffs took over for the local police? Aside from everything was then better?

Frankly it was financially motivated. It was a lot cheaper to consolidate resources with the county.

The happy consequence of community development was not, I assume, planned.

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