The Human Toll of Flashbangs | Hacker News Reader

The Human Toll of Flashbangs

propublica.org

440 pointsmarkmassie251 comments

The use of flash bangs by law enforcement is horrifying. These tools were design for to support direct action missions by special operations forces, and are, essentially, burning thermite [1] (e.g. able to melt through an engine block). To be clear, a direct operation mission is the use of lethal force to kill or capture one or more individuals or perform high risk hostage rescue. In these types of military operations, the operators run a extreme risk of severe injury or death and the death of the targets is both acceptable and highly likely. The balance of the risks and the battlefield circumstances make their use acceptable. However, law enforcement is rarely permitted to operate under these types of conditions. Their goal should almost always be capture working under the Fourth Amendment presumption of innocence. As such, flash bangs are simply not congruent with law enforcement operations.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite

Edit: grammer and thermite link

There's a recent case in Albuquerque where 2 police officers are being charged with murder. In the case the police disorient a guy with a flashbang then shoot him as he turns away

The police video shows Boyd talking with an officer who was seemingly trying to reach an end to the stalemate. As he picks up his backpack, Boyd tells the officer to keep his word, and not to worry about safety.

"I'm not a [f———] murderer," Boyd says.

Seconds later, a flash-bang grenade is fired at his feet. Boyd then stands facing the officers — and as he turns away from them, at least two officers open fire. Boyd was struck by live rounds, stun guns and bean-bag rounds — some of which were fired as Boyd lay on the ground saying he was unable to move.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/01/12/376767254/alb...

For anyone interested in the video:

Warning it's graphical, naturally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tpAZObNZfI

To summarize, indeed he says 'Im not a murderer' while picking up his bag, just standing around. They fire the grenade, tell him to get down blabla. He never steps forward in any way, charges them or attacks, while the officers close in and put a dog on him. Seconds later he turns away and gets shot multiple times.

From this point on he's not moving at all and just laying there. They shoot him a couple times with bean bags and put the dog on him again.

I don't hear him saying he's unable to move. It just looks like he's unconscious or dead at that point. He's just laying there still while they're deliberating whether to put the dog on him (and do).

And this is the problem with guns, imagine if the police didn't have any guns and they would have to approach him by first. Obviously they outnumber him but know (unless he has a lethal weapon on him) there shouldn't be any lethal force. Guns escalate the situation way too quickly to a life threatening one ...

That's how it works in the UK I think. Police don't regularly carry firearms and specially trained firearms officers are called in when necessary. I think the problem with this approach in the US is that guns are way more available and way more likely to used in a crime (I don't actually have figures on this but it seems a reasonable assumption).

Edit: Replaced incorrect use of 'weapons' with 'firearms'.

What you're saying is correct, but just to be pedantic: police in Northern Ireland are armed at all times, and are allowed to be armed even while off duty.

And yet practically no police use of firearms is recorded. They have to declare each time they unholster the weapon

Sure, I'm from NI so aware of that. It's a unique situation though and I thought it best to leave out rather than confuse my point that there are police forces that work without firearms.

I had the same thought, but felt it was best to be clear that the practice isn't unheard of in the United Kingdom.

Police carry weapons (truncheons, pepper spray, sometimes tasers), just not firearms by default.

Sorry, I was using weapon/firearm interchangeably by mistake. I meant firearm.

They still make mistakes ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Meneze... ), but since it takes a little more work, I'll assume they make fewer mistakes.

> since it takes a little more work, I'll assume they make fewer mistakes.

To put this in context, over the four years from 2008-2012, police officers in England and Wales opened fire on 18 separate occasions, killing nine people.

In a country of 55 million people, that's about 5 shooting incidents, and 2 people killed each year.

http://www.channel4.com/news/police-fatal-shooting-trigger-h...

Police in Australia carry guns and yet suspects being shot dead is rare enough that when it happens it tends to be headline news (often nationally). Perhaps part of this is that civilians in Australia are far less likely to be carrying weapons themselves, so police do not have to be as cautious as in the US.

Ultimately, I don't believe the problem lies with the firearms but with the culture. As an Australian visiting or moving to the US, you will inevitably be reminded that if a US police officer pulls you over you should not get out of your car. I've had people tell me that if you do get out of the car, the officer will draw their weapon and take aim. Perhaps that is exaggerated, but to me that is an absolutely ludicrous reaction. It paints a picture of US police as having an extremely paranoid, "us vs. them" mindset. What I read in the news and have witnessed since I moved here seems to confirm that.

You would be amazed at the difference in reaction time if someone steps out of a car with a weapon drawn and the time it takes to bring up your own weapon.

If the US police were so gun happy I would expect way more people to be shot per year/day.

I understand the reasoning behind the action, but it's still not justifiable. Following that same reasoning we can argue that police should approach car windows with their weapons drawn and aimed. After all, if an officer approaches a car window and sees the occupant has a gun aimed at them they won't have time to defend themselves if their sidearm is holstered. Officers have certainly been killed by vehicle occupants, so this is not some invented scenario, either.

> If the US police were so gun happy I would expect way more people to be shot per year/day.

There are, though.

A couple of articles on the subject:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-many-americans-the-p...

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/another-much-higher-count...

But if we use the FBI's number of ~400/year[0]it's still ridiculous. In the two decades between 1989-90 and 2010-11, Australian police fatally shot a total of 105 people.[1]

Looking at those figures, Australia has ~0.25 fatal police shootings per million people per year. The US has ~1.25 fatal police shootings per million people per year. Five times more. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't believe that's solely due to gun control policy in the two countries.

[0] http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/c...

[1] http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/rip/21-4...

Having your weapon drawn right from the get go is not a good thing. It tends to make calm people nervous. As far as getting out of the vehicle most police don't like surprises so if things go step by step according to the person with the gun things go much better.

If you stay in the car you have a much easier time dealing with a person who can't easily get into your personal space and limiting the options you have to protect your self.

I understand the reasoning and this is why I'm saying it's an issue with culture, not with police carrying guns.

> As far as getting out of the vehicle most police don't like surprises so if things go step by step according to the person with the gun things go much better.

In Australia I can get out of the car and go talk to the officer and everything's fine.

In the US I can't - I accept that reality.

Both officers are carrying guns, though.

>unless he has a lethal weapon on him

And if he does? Your argument has excluded half of the (rather important) outcomes.

And the problem with police not having guns is amply demonstrated by the recent terror in France. The first police to respond were unarmed.

That doesn't appear to be true.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/08/ahmed-merabet-m...

> Merabet, who according to officials was 40, was called to the scene while on patrol with a female colleague in the neighbourhood, just in time to see the black Citroën used by the two killers heading towards the boulevard from Charlie Hebdo.

> “He was on foot, and came nose to nose with the terrorists. He pulled out his weapon. It was his job, it was his duty,” said Rocco Contento, a colleague who was a union representative at the central police station for Paris’s 11th arrondissement.

> Another policeman, 48-year-old Franck Brinsolaro, was killed moments earlier in the assault on Charlie Hebdo where he was responsible for the protection of its editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, one of the 11 killed in the building. A colleague said he “never had time” to pull his weapon.

See also the NYPD cops killed recently - definitely armed - who were shot regardless.

I was going off of reports such as this:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/charlie-hebdo-french-satirical-m...

"the first two officers to arrive, who were apparently unarmed, fled after seeing gunmen armed with automatic weapons and possibly a grenade launcher."

CBS News isn't a reliable source.

This is also the same "source" which claimed that both suspects had been captured and a third killed according to "US intelligence sources" (still unnamed). Turned out that that wasn't true at that point in time or since then.

They're like the Daily Mail of the US, just peddle utter shit all of the time...

>CBS News isn't a reliable source.

This tells me nothing. Are the facts presented by parent's post false or not?

Yup, French police carry sidearms... And if that's not enough, during periods of elevated risk of a terrorist attack, you even get soldiers walking around with semi-automatic rifles in squads of three.

This interests me (in a slightly off-topic way): do the soldiers really switch their service weapons to a semi-automatic model in order to patrol, or are all the rifles within the military police (etc.) semi-automatic only?

Most military rifles are semi-automatic. Even with a fairly tame AR style rifle using automatic fire makes it a little harder to quickly engage targets and the recoil can be a little un-predictable even when just using burst fire.

In short most military rifles are single shot due to the fact that you may engage targets out to a few hundred yard to a couple of meters.

tldr; Automatic rifles for military applications, not all that great.

It's not military police, it's just plain ol' soldiers. Which kinda freaks me out, because I spend my time wondering exactly what their rules of engagement are, and how well they have been trained in them. At least they always have the safety engaged when I check...

Solders for the most part get much more time and training using firearms than police who tend to have a much wider range of duties to perform.

Most NATO militaries have increased the amount of training in urban environments. I'm pretty sure(or overly optimistic) they have decent training/drilling experience as the political backlash from having soldiers get way to aggressive in terms of resorting to military tactics vs police tactics.

They are much better marksmen, it's true. But police have waaaaaay more experience dealing with drunk idiots, mentally ill people, people doped up to their eyeballs on speed and so on. Deciding whether someone is one of these or a serious security threat is not as easy as it might sound, hence my curiousity vis-a-vis the rules of engagement...

The Australian military is generally lauded as being excellent at peace-keeping operations, yet during officer training, it was hammered into us that policing was a much harder operation, and that our hierarchy would never accept policing missions.

I suspect that you're mistaken on what semi-automatic means. Basically all of the rifles likely to be carried by law enforcement are semi-automatic, except for sharp-shooters, who my carry a single-shot with a floated barrel.

Semi-automatic is not automatic, and has no burst or rapid-fire mechanisms. All semi-automatic rifles shoot one bullet for each pull of the trigger, and in 2015, that's the norm for just about every patrol rifle in the world, except for those needing long-range accuracy, which is a fairly niche application nowadays.

The comment I responded to said that in addition to law enforcement, it's common for soldiers to patrol the streets, too, at times.

If I had to guess, I'd say they would prefer using the weapons they are accustomed to, which are probably not the same that LEO's use. Now I don't know much about the French military, but where I come from, I doubt the military even has appreciable amounts of semi-automatic rifles, as even the military police always use the same assault rifle everybody else does.

Just for clarification's sake, the rifles in question carried by the French army are almost certainly automatic-capable, but like most military organisations around the world, I would expect them to be configured in semi-automatic mode, as you will run through a full clip of ammunition in two short bursts if you're in automatic mode, and that will mostly be a waste of ammunition, unless you find yourself confronted with a massed charge. It would be difficult to believe that they weren't configured in semi-automatic mode in a friendly-territory urban setting!

Ah, my apologies. I read the comment backwards from what it was, so thanks for the clarification.

That said, I have no idea what the French Miliary use. I would guess a lot of H&K stuff. In the U.S. at least, swapping out from an M16 to an AR-15 is pretty natural, but I have no way of knowing what the transition is from or to in France.

What difference to you think it would have made if they had been armed?

In this case, since the OP is incorrect, and they were armed, absolutely nothing.

Jesus... that's completely indefensible. Now, I don't live in the US, and I only see the bad stuff that happens through the media, but I truly can't see why the police need to do things this way...

They don't have to. There are plenty of good cops, but your mileage will vary with the integrity of the local PD. There are these hot beds of systemically bad police precincts and the power structure is organized such that those who could fix it are also those initiating it.

A large contributing factor is the military industrial complex spewing out death tech at an absurd rate, and with nobody to blow up with it all it just goes to police forces at auction. So you end up with towns of a thousand having swat teams and tanks and you wonder why the culture shifts from protecting and serving to war, death, and extortion.

> A large contributing factor is the military industrial complex spewing out death tech at an absurd rate, and with nobody to blow up with it all it just goes to police forces at auction.

Sometimes not even sold, but given. There are government programs where police departments can ask for used military gear and get it at no cost (i.e. no impact to their budget). This makes the departments especially eager to acquire as much "death tech" as they can.

> So you end up with towns of a thousand having swat teams and tanks and you wonder why the culture shifts from protecting and serving to war, death, and extortion.

This makes me very sad. I was born in the 70s so I grew up during the coldest part of the cold war. We were taught in school that (sorry to Godwin) Nazi Germany was pure evil, Stalinist Russia was pure evil, Italy under Mussolini was pure evil, China under Mao was pure evil, and so on. Yet here we are becoming just as militarized on a local level as those regimes, giving our police forces nearly carte blanche to oppress the citizens at will. It's disgusting and disturbing, and I say that as a former law enforcement employee of 14 years.

While we should be on guard for police abuses let's not pretend it is anywhere near Mao or Stalin.

I said "we are becoming". I didn't say we are there, but it's a disturbing trend. Take it from someone who worked on the inside, it's only getting worse.

It's not "police abuse" anymore, it's police murdering people in broad daylight, for no reason whatsoever (e.g. see that video of a homeless person being shot). And around the whole country, military-grade equipment is widely deployed, to be used against civilian situation.

That scares the shit out of me, and I don't even live in the US. Maybe your government is nowhere near Mao or Stalin, but all the required pieces of oppression are being rapidly put into place, so be very hopeful that two elections and a terror attack from now someone won't decide to actually use those tools.

> but all the required pieces of oppression are being rapidly put into place

This was the point I was trying to make. No, we aren't there yet, but we're on the slope and it's getting more slippery every day.

Some European's cartoon vision of the US has no relevance to the likelihood of America's risk of being subjected to Mao or Stalin like oppression. It is just laughable.

Well, keep in mind that we the Europeans had a few oppressors in the last hundred years. We know how it looks.

To be fair, unless you're over 60, you probably don't know how it looks, you only know what you've been told, or what you've led yourself to believe.

Fair enough; what I know is from what we learn in school, from discussions with people, from my parents and grandparents, and of course in part from media.

You should go and read some history books, assuming you're able to read and comprehend them.

The DDR aka East Germany ended in the 90s, and the Franco regime in Spain ended 1975 with Francos death.

It is debatable if one should also count the Yugoslavian/Serbian government which existed until the mid-90s as oppressive - I certainly do, Miloševic rot in pieces.

Oh, I almost forgot the rest of the Soviet block... so you basically have oppressive regimes as low as 20-30 years ago, leaving a LOT of people with first hand experience.

Well, yes.

But typically, the sort of people who blithely compare the US to a police state do so by invoking the Nazis. I wasn't going to credit such arguments with that much subtlety or self-awareness, since they seem to come from a sense of prejudice and knowledge of pop culture rather than history. Although you're right - there are a number of recent police states and dictatorships which the US does not resemble.

> assuming you're able to read and comprehend them

Personal attacks are not ok on Hacker News. Please follow the site guidelines.

I went through school in the 70s and 80s, and also remember learning about the clear dividing lines of inalienable human rights spelled out in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution that made us different from the Soviet Union.

Maybe the difference was never as black and white as it seemed to me at the time, but I still believe we have been drifting away from the protection of basic rights I was once taught were so important to who we are as a people.

If you're white.

There's 2.5k people in my town and it's news here (literally) when someone is arrested shopping at the local Wal-Mart. The police have two miltary-issue Humvees, for some reason.

That stuff has always irked me, trying to look threatening/intimidating.

However when most people complain about military gear finding its way to police I have to laugh a little bit. When automatic grenade launchers and .50 cal machine guns start appearing then there are problems(too late at that point I guess).

MWRAPS and armored personnel carriers, those are okay. Dressing in all black(A horrible tactical color BTW) or camo now your just doing that to look upsetting.

The armored tanks are not so bad as it provides something that police can feel safer and less threaten in so escalation doesn't need to happen so fast.

The armored tanks are not so bad as it provides something that police can feel safer and less threaten in so escalation doesn't need to happen so fast.

If you turn up in an armoured tank, you have just escalated the situation.

I guess police departments (if they haven't already) would be stupid enough to deploy them in a trivial situation.

If your dealing with against a threat with a firearm I'm going to assume there are going to be more cops with guns in the majority of the situations. Those are the folks you don't want to set off!

So if you can feel a little bit safer in a little ole MRAP you might not be inclined to start a shooting gallery as quickly.

I find this attitude confusing. You're suggesting that cops are the ones who need to be made to feel safer? That by making them them feel safer they might be less likely to start shooting? Who is protecting who in this brave new world?

You're being irrational now. Of course cops need to be and feel safe. They are just humans, humans equipped with guns. Anything you can do to make sure they don't fire those guns prematurely should be done, after all, they're for protecting us.

Calling it an armored tank is exaggerating. It's basically a mobile barrier that can carry a bunch of officers. There's all kinds of nice stuff you can do with them, and frankly I think it would be kind of embarassing for a town if they couldn't get a robust all terrain vehicle to some location within a reasonable timeframe.

I want to contend this point strongly. My home city (approx 200k people) does not have gang activity, we don't have drugs or prostitution or muggings or car-jackings as major problems (or problems at all). There are very very few parts of my city that i would feel threatened walking alone down the street at 3am. All of them on the outskirts of the city and in swamp areas. And yet the city has acquired a ex-military armored troop carrier.

Why?

We don't have shootouts with drug lords going on. My city has suffered exactly 3 officer deaths on duty in the last 25 years and only one of those was by gunfire (15 years ago). I utterly reject the reasoning that my city's officers need to be made to feel safe by the acquisition of ex-military hardware.

Let me be as clear as i can, that vehicle does not make me, the citizen, feel safe. I've seen them deploy that vehicle for something as common has a home robbery. This is not Afghanistan, criminals are not enemy combatants. When you have that kind of hardware sitting around, you will find a use for it.

I don't know what kinds of 'nice things' you are referring to, i'd love to hear examples. Lastly i reject that euphemistic description of that troop carrier as a 'robust all terrain vehicle'. This is a well paved, suburban, low violence city; not Kabul.

I think the usage of the word military to describe equipment is getting convoluted. I still have an old MILITARY 2 piece canvas tent(with the little poles and stakes) It's certainly ex-military but in terms of offensive capabilities I think you might be able to cripple and enemy due to laughing at you when you try to whack them with a tent pole piece. Give that to a police department and it's still considered Ex-Military. Canteens? Military too...

In most situations a rifle is going to be able to penetrate through almost every part of a police/civilian vehicle. If someone is shooting at you the only proactive thing you can do to keep your self safe is to return fire to either take the enemy out of the fight or suppress them.

If you have a vehicle that can stop small arms fire the immediate need to start shooting back is slowed down to a degree.

They also make nice rolling barriers in case you need to move to someone that is injured with out the need for suppressing fire.

Also psychologically it slows people down due to the fact that they will have less of a chance to be able to harm/pose a threat to police.

On the other hand if they start using turret mounted automatic weapons such a MK19 then that's going to be a problem.

When folks throw around escalation when bringing in an armored vehicle I in my mind I'm thinking the bad guy is going to get MAD due to having a harder time killing a police officer.

I guess we can all take a vote with the knowledge that police get killed in the line of duty. Let's pretend we are all police here. Who want's to be the last cop killed before we achieve societal and world peace?

I find that logic utterly distorted. Give a bunch of humans guns, the right to use deadly force and then for some reason worry about making them 'feel safe' -- oh, and also absolve them if things go wrong (or even if they break the law), as we've seen in recent US news. I think they're already safer than most people.

What cops really need is better and more substantive training, not equipment to hide behind.

No, tinco is right about officer safety. You really want those "men with gun and right to use deadly force" to feel safe, so that they don't exercise their killing license prematurely. When the officers feel safe and thus sure of themselves, they're more likely to follow proper procedures instead of being afraid of their own safety.

I'm not saying that you should give them armoured troop carriers though. You want them to feel safe, not invincible.

I find it ridiculous that anyone worries about officer safety in this way. It seems almost perverse to me.

If we're worried about officers prematurely killing people how does giving them military-style tools make that any better? If they were going to prematurely kill people before, they're still going to do it. The definition of 'safe' simply moves to a new place. If the OP demonstrates anything, it's that if you give law enforcement these kinds of 'toys' they will find any and every excuse to use them (all under the fake banner of 'officer safety').

Edit: Taking some words from your comment, I guess what I'm arguing is that law enforcement is already pretty invincible.

> Edit: Taking some words from your comment, I guess what I'm arguing is that law enforcement is already pretty invincible.

Fair enough. What I'm arguing is just that LE officers are humans too and they both need and deserve to feel safe in their job, which involves risking their own lives for the safety of the public. But I definitely don't think that they need to go full-military for that. They indeed are pretty safe already.

I'm glad someone gets it haha! Most people and therefore police officers don't want to get shot. I'm going to assume that the group with more guns and people are the side you don't want to resort to shooting if there is not a need.

If all that can happen is the armor getting dented up your not going to feel compelled to shot back so quickly. You will have much more flexibility in responding too. Your initiative is going to get taken away if you don't need to immediately react to a threat.

I do however thing that the carriers should get painted blue or white that someone resemble police colors. The all black and super tactical looking equipment is even too much for me as former military.

>...I think it would be kind of embarassing for a town if they couldn't get a robust all terrain vehicle to some location within a reasonable timeframe.

When I went to high school in this general area (15+ years ago) they used run-of-the-mill SUVs just fine.

What is it with police and SUVs, anyway? What police function is best served by an SUV rather than a sedan? The primary use cases for police automobiles are (off the top of my head): A) get to a disturbance quickly; B) intercept traffic violators; C) transport prisoners. Except in really exceptional rural areas, none of these will be enhanced by SUVs, and in general, those SUVs perform these functions worse. In particular, they're bad at moving fast and maneuvering, which is required for (A) and (B).

Several years back, near where I lived in NJ, there was a police officer killed on duty. He was reacting to a complaint about drag racing - while he was driving an SUV. He attempted to pursue one of the drag racers, and rolled over his vehicle. Trying to chase a drag racer while you're in an SUV is stupid.

The answer in other countries has been to train the police force so that they can accurately assess risks to themselves and others and use the amount of caution and, if needed, force necessary to fulfill their task.

Police should value their own lives higher than that of people behaving aggressively towards them, but that's speaking in a degree. And they shouldn't behave like dangerous paranoics (because of lack of training, or because they are dangerous paranoics).

On the other hand, there is evidence from other situations that when people feel safer, they simply increase the risk level. When people wear seatbelts, they drive more dangerously. Fit airbags; people drive more dangerously. Wear a helmet while cycling; people cycle more dangerously. Turn up inside an armoured tank...

You´re conflating two concepts that are the opposite of each other. The examples you gave are about people putting _themselves_ in more danger when they have safety gear. This is analogous to cops being more likely to de-escalate situations instead of just shooting prematurely (the latter of which is much safer for the cop in general). The concept we´re discussing in this thread is making _others_ safer in the presence of a situation involving cops. The defenses in all of these alleged excessive cop violence cases has been that they were trying to protect their safety and were thus premature with firearm use (et al). The effect you´re describing in essence exactly what we want: cops will feel safer and thus be less inclined to excessive personal-safety measures that are actively dangerous to civilians (like quick trigger fingers).

I´m not sure I articulated that all that clearly, sorry...

I still disagree. I think if the cops feel that they are safer, they will feel that escalating the situation is less risky, and are more likely to do so.

A non-uparmored Humvee seems like a nicer pickup truck, and would be useful in a small town where rescues in an isolated area are part of the job.

An uparmored Humvee, on the other hand, is problematic.

The DoD is selling off the old equipment to local LEOs for pennies on the dollar.

Simultaneously, the terms of the sale dictate that they must use those military items within a year of purchase, or they have to return the items.

This is why the police are increasingly using military gear in situations for which they are not warranted.

I don't like this source, per se, but I've seen it posted elsewhere, and this is the handiest one right now, so here it is.

http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/tanks-on-the-streets-...

*shoplifting

> There are plenty of good cops,

If there were plenty, why are the bad cops never arrested?

The answer that hasn't yet been mentioned in this thread: racism.

Since white folks are also victims of police violence, I don't think your explanation can carry much of the weight.

To be sure, the media crows about this as the problem. But I think that's more a sign of a dysfunctional media than a real insight.

Really? Any evidence to back that up?

You must be living under a rock to not have read one of the bazillion of stories about policing and racism that have come up since last fall, but for a great overview of the subject I highly recommend The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [1]

[1] www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431/

We're talking about SWAT team raids. I am interested if the rate of raids is higher for a specific race compared to other types of arrests.

Also to be intellectually honest in the subject, one can't use media coverage as a proxy for actual data. Lots of anecdotes doesn't necessarily provide evidence. There are thousands of arrests daily. I haven't seen thousands of news stories -- generally only when there was an angle that would elicit ratings. A white man getting shot by the cops doesn't generally make national headlines just like the over 2000 shootings of (mostly) black victims in Chicago barely warrants mention.

My point isn't to argue if cops are racist. My point is that knee-jerk claims of racism ought to be quantifiable.

Police need to try harder to ignore the statistics of who commits crime. Just because one group is statistically committing more crime that should not affect their dealing with an individual who is innocent until proven guilty.

It's only a problem if unreasonable, excessive and unwarranted violence is used by the law enforcers. They should use every available indicator of crime in order to focus on problem areas. The alternative means that we're willingly sacrificing safety, peace and security in order to not offend, and that I find absolutely distasteful and negligent.

Of course, 100% innocent until proven guilty; I'm not saying we should convict/target people without merit based purely off of race/age/obesity/hair color.

No, there are problems with racial profiling long before things devolve to "unreasonable, excessive and unwarranted violence." What defines a "problem area" as you put it? What is an "indicator"? Am I incorrectly reading between the lines here to say that you believe that it is perfectly acceptable to police black neighborhoods at a higher rate merely because they are black neighborhoods? That is, your "indicator" is, to put it bluntly, blackness.

EDIT: Like any mutual fund manager will tell you, "past performance is not a guarantee of future results." Police policy is barking up the wrong tree if they think that blackness/race are the variables to watch, much like anyone would be amiss if they solely looked at TTM rate of return for an investment option, and that is to say nothing of the positive feedback loop that racial profiling creates. Poverty, education levels, and the availability of social mobility are the variables that should be watched to create sane public policy in the USA.

Yes, I absolutely think the police should not discriminate against crime-heavy neighborhoods by policing them less than they deserve/need. To police them less is the discriminatory thing to do, as they need it more than safer neighborhoods.

Of course, the entire discussion we're having is invalid if we work with the premise that more policing = more convictions, by virtue of the crime being everywhere (across boundaries in whatever criteria you wish, e.g. race) regardless, and convictions being a simple byproduct of policing and not of said underlying factor like race, obesity, education, socioeconomic status, or hair-color.

My point of contention isn't whether or not we should police high crime neighborhoods more or less, it's whether we should condone the (less-common) explicit or (more-common) implicit police policy of using race as a proxy for the other variables that I mentioned previously. You've danced around my question: is race a valid "indicator" of "problem areas" in your model?

If the statistics agree with it, then yes, of course race can be used as an indicator of problem areas. But as I said in my second paragraph, there are certain things that invalidate that completely.

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None of this screed justifies a group of men shooting dead (and continuing to shoot, even after death) a man who was not resisting in any way.

No-one doubts that police officers have a tough job. But that truth doesn't give the police the right to execute people, bomb houses and act as judge, jury and executioner. That scenario just makes the police the biggest, best funded gangs on the street.

Justify this:

"If she hadn’t been selling illegal items out of the home, no warrant would have been served," he said. "What you call extreme, we call safe."

She sold some beer and food illegally. The police through a bomb into her house. Real safe.

Pretty typical law enforcement logic for the United States. It's about like, to protect you from the supposed harm of smoking cannabis… We will anally search your wives on the side of the road, put you in prison with hardened criminals, and blow up your babies with grenades. Oh, whoops, it's almost the same topic. It's just more unusual to see this bizarrely inappropriate level of force applied to unlicensed kitchens.

Military grade stun grenades don't use thermite. Military stun grenades can barely burn anything(I have tried many many times but that's another story). hearing about people getting getting third degree burns has me wonder what are they building these things with for law enforcement usage.

"In these types of military operations, the operators run a extreme risk of severe injury or death and the death of the targets is both acceptable and highly likely."

I'd submit to you that both of these are arguably true, once the all too routine decision to take "direct action" has been made:

America is a legally well armed society, and these home invasions are indistinguishable from ones done by Official Criminals, especially since the latter are known to pretend to be police.

That "the death of the targets is" entirely "acceptable" should be evident to any unbiased observer of these direct actions. Especially since the Badge Gang, as some are taking to call them, are almost never held to account; if ever there was a case to do that, the one of Bou Bou's maiming should have been.

and are, essentially, burning thermite

What makes you think flashbangs contain thermite? From what I can tell they contain a small amount of explosives[1].

The filler consists of a pyrotechnic metal-oxidant mix of magnesium or aluminium, and an oxidizer such as ammonium perchlorate or potassium perchlorate.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stun_grenade

If I remember my chemistry correctly, thermite = aluminium + an oxidizer. So the filler you are describing is thermite.

Edit: I worry I may be incorrect. Thermite seems like a very odd thing to put in a flash bang. Perhaps it is only a thermite mixture but the reaction is different?

No biggie. Thermite is a mixture of a metal and a metal oxide, typically aluminum and iron oxide (which is an oxidizer). Thermite specifically converts the iron oxide to iron metal (very exothermic). That's why they use it to repair rail lines, etc.

If you replace the iron oxide with another oxidizer, it's not really thermite (since no iron metal is produced) and it turns it from a very exothermic reaction into an explosion (with the right oxidizer).

They do make thermite grenades, but they are typically used to destroy equipment, not make a loud sound (as flashbangs are).

If the police were using thermite grenades for raids, that would be even more horrifying than it already is.

I'm glad someone in this thread knows about thermite. Thermite also burns pretty slow(comparably) and having to roll into an area that has thermite burning everywhere is just plain....silly?

I'm just going to throw this bucket of gasoline and a lit zippo into this room before I enter it!

A mixture of potassium chlorate and aluminum powder is the original composition for M-80 firecrackers. Potassium perchlorate is a modern day swap-in. I imagine the flash bang composition is tweaked to increase the flash.

For a more hilarious use of military tech by police, see this video by Doraville, GA police of their "track-y fun-box" (a.k.a. "tank," sorry for the ear-splitting levels):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kajhu7qgojU

You have to wonder what threats they face among their population of 8,000 citizens in north-central Georgia.

I grew up in Ellijay, GA and many police offers were bullies in my highschool. The city doesn't really have the cream of the crop or the pay to choose otherwise.

When your job ads say "not much pay, but you get to carry a big gun and scare people with it," this is what you get. I wish cops and primary/secondary teachers were paid enough that the people reading this post would consider those jobs, because they kind of matter.

Higher pay doesn't address the problem with cops. They pay cops VERY well in my city, and yet they are still in the news constantly with the same sort of antics. The problem is that the job of law enforcement is BORING. There's simply very little intellectual challenge to driving around all day looking for trouble. Beyond the occasional zen master, you're going to end up with primarily one general kind of person who can tolerate being in law enforcement, and it's not the sort of person who craves sophisticated intellectual stimulation.

I've met some genuinely decent cops, e.g. state troopers, who probably make decent money and care enough to take a pay cut versus what they would make as tech middle management. Driving around issuing speeding tickets and occasionally shooting homeless guys isn't intellectual work, but convincing people who were abused by the last guy in your job that you're trying to make their lives better is tough. Would you be up to it?

Seems like a chicken and egg problem.

They barely deserve the salary they get now with all the incidents going on, but they won't get more intelligent people applying until the wages are increased.

Probably best to start with the teachers so theres a larger pool if educated people to hire from.

It doesn't help that departments don't want intelligent officers and can refuse to hire people based on high IQ scores.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=95836&page=1#.Tv-OZSNWplw

> But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training.

Yeah... you solve that with employment contracts, not discriminatory hiring practices.

I really don't see how saying "smart people will get bored and quit" is any different from saying "African-Americans are lazy and will eventually stop showing up on time", or some other nonsense.

According to BLS, coders make something like $93k/yr [1], while policemen make about $57k [2], and primary school teachers make $53k [3]. How much of a pay cut would you take to accept one of those jobs? How much more in taxes would you pay to hire/train better people to do those jobs?

[1] http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Computer-and-Information-Technology/S...

[2] http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Protective-Service/Police-and-detecti...

[3] http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Education-Training-and-Library/Kinder...

Cops make crazy money. A relative is a lieutenant, make $120k, and overtime brings that up to almost $200k. If he doesn't make the next promotion in a year or two, he'll be retiring at 42 making around $100k.

Unless you work for some hick department, a cop will easily make more than 80% in coders outside of the Bay Area, and unlike in software, you don't get nuked when you get old. That said, it's a brutal job that takes a toll on you.

"Cops" is a broad term. For police officers in general, $120K/year base salary is extremely high, and not representative of the average. To get your conclusion you have to compare the highest paying jobs for police officers with the average paying jobs for software developers.

Here are more details from the BLS about 'Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers' for 2013: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes333051.htm

  mean annual wage - $58,720
  50 percentile - $56,130
  90 percentile - $90,700
  New Jersey mean wage - $88,220
  California mean wage - $86,040
  San Francisco mean wage - $99,000

A lieutenant falls in the category "first-line supervisors of police and detectives": http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes331012.htm .

  mean annual wage - $82,710
  50 percentile - $79,190
  90 percentile - $126,320
  New Jersey mean wage - $121,670
  California mean wage - $122,680
  Oakland-Fremont-Hayward - $139,980
  New York-White Plains-Wayne, NY-NJ Metropolitan Division - $110,580
  San Francisco mean wage - $134,600

(It's very likely that your relative works in one of the major metropolitan areas, as those are almost the only ones with a mean salary around or above $120K/year.)

For "Software developers, Applications" see http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151132.htm :

  mean annual wage - $96,260
  50 percentile - $92,660
  90 percentile - $143,540
  California mean wage - $112,180
  Washington mean wage - $111,380
  San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara mean wage - $131,270
  San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City mean wage - $114,400
  Seattle-Bellevue-Everett mean wage - $112,990

The states with the lowest mean wage for software developers (ID, ND, AR, KY, etc.) pay $49,620 to 80,470. This is comparable to the national mean wage for police officers.

For "Software Developers, Systems Software", see http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151133.htm the wages are higher:

  mean annual wage - $104,480
  50 percentile - $101,410
  90 percentile - $150,760
  California - $119,180
  New Jersey - $114,630
  San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara mean wage - $132,030
  Oakland-Fremont-Hayward - $119,810

Now that there are numbers, I'll evaluate your claims:

1) "Cops make crazy money"

I don't know what "crazy money" is, but it's clear that only around 15% of first-line supervisors of patrol officers, and only a handful of patrol officers, make 120K/year. Your relative is on the very high end of a lieutenant's base salary, and probably lives in one of the major cities.

2) "Unless you work for some hick department"

I don't know what constitutes a "hick department". The 75 percentile for patrol officers is $73,710 and the 75 percentile for first-line supervisors is $102,600. There are about 6 officers for each supervisor, so I'll say that non-hick cops make around

  (73710*635380 + 102600*101320) / (635380 + 101320) = $77,683/year.

There are also higher paying police officer jobs, but I think this covers enough of the category "cops" to be meaningful.

It's hard to say what overtime might bring in on top of that. I don't know how many police officers get overtime.

3) "coders outside of the Bay Area"

I don't know what you mean by "coder". I chose "software developer" in the above. There's also "computer programmer", but the BLS says that there are only 6,000 computer programmers in the Silicon Valley area, and 28,980 "software developer, applications" (and a further 23,810 "software developer, systems software"). There are other categories as well, but those seemed the best fit for your statement.

The BLS doesn't list "outside of the Bay Area", but it does show that California pays the most of any states, and it lists the total number of software developers (I'm using the "applications" one) in California, in the US, and their mean wage. This is enough to figure out the average non-California mean wage:

    (643830*96260 - 95510 * 112180) / (643830-95510) = $93,486/year

If I further remove the second highest state, Washington, I get $91,612/year.

I trust that this is a close enough approximation to your statement?

4) "a cop will easily make more than 80% in coders outside of the Bay Area"

That does not appear to be the case. While certainly some cops will make more than 80% of coders, in general, coders will make about $15K/year more than police officers.

Again, overtime may change these numbers, but not enough to say that "cops" as a general category get paid "crazy high" income compared to software developers working the same number of hours without overtime.

5) "unlike in software, you don't get nuked when you get old"

The BLS doesn't have those numbers. The career paths are different. To get the $120K/year job requires being at least a first-line supervisor. A software developer is not a supervisor.

For example, a software developer might become a "Computer and Information Systems Manager", which has a mean wage of $132,570, and the 90 percentile is above $187,199/year. (It's off the BLS charts, which stops at $90/hour.) The mean wage for the 10,660 such managers in Silicon Valley is $183,870.

It's therefore very hard for me to figure out the career numbers. I would love to see the analysis you did to draw your conclusion.

You're missing a few key things:

- Overtime. In many cases, police overtime exceeds base salary. Example from Schenectady, NY, which is city of 50-75k people in upstate NY. ( http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Schenectady-cop-s-pa... )

- Actuarial value of pension. Even using the BLS base salary data without overtime of $58k, you need to valuate the cost of a $30k annuity for 30-40 years, as most police have 20 year retirement options at half pay.

- Actuarial value of healthcare. Most jurisdictions provide no-cost healthcare for retirees, at least until recently.

When I say "crazy" money, I mean that being a police officer is a very well paid profession, both in terms of salary and total compensation with pensions & benefits. It's one of the last really good, broadly available blue-collar jobs. That said, the trade-off is that it is a very stressful job where you're exposed to significant risks.

On the flip-side, software developers are rarely unionized and get a lousy deal. How many software developers are paid overtime? Almost all police are.

I didn't miss overtime. You wrote "A relative is a lieutenant, make $120k, and overtime brings that up to almost $200k." I only evaluated the base pay.

That was enough to establish that your relative is in an unusual situation to start with. As overtime is a function of the base pay, and most officers are not in a supervisory position, your example doesn't really reflect the typical police officer income.

Pointing to an overtime example from New York (the state with the highest base salary), and a record-setting overtime pay as well, is not useful as an average indication of what a police officer makes. Your position concerned average, non-"hick" officer.

It would be like me pointing to an instant millionaire software developer who won the startup lottery and saying that's typical.

You make good points regarding pension and healthcare. I also didn't include stock options in the software developer income, but none of my options were ever worth the paper they were printed on.

Remember too that your example was for a supervisory position. Most police officers are not in that situation.

I took a different meaning of '"crazy" money". I would have used the term "well-paid" for your definition. "Crazy" implies there's something extreme, no? What term would you use for police officers making $500K/year in base pay?

I think software developers should be unionized, but to start with, I think the programmer exemption for overtime pay should be abolished. Only software developers making less than $27.63/hour or $55,260/year have the possibility of getting overtime, which is about the 10 percentile for software developer income.

Your ignoring the value of an early pension with Heathcoverage that can easily add 30+% to base pay. Also, coders rarely qualify for overtime so that can be a 50% pay cut right there based on 1.5x to 2.0x pay during overtime.

Now adjust for cost of living and taxes which hammer the Bay Area coder's the disposable income and things don't look nearly as good as you might think.

You are correct in that I didn't include early pension. I also didn't include stock options. It's very hard to do a full cost analysis. I would be pleased if you could present better numbers.

Spooky23 specifically excluded the Bay Area ("coders outside of the Bay Area") so your point doesn't apply.

Sorry, that was less clear, the same thing that hurts bay area Developers are just as relevant in other areas.

Sure, the bay area is a very expensive area, but so are NY and DC which also have lots of software developers. Police are paid more in high cost of living areas, but they are also far more widespread spread.

Consider Virginia: Northern Virginia has higher cost of living and a disproportionate share of developers. The police in that area are also paid more to compensate, but if you look at things state wide you’re going to miss out in a massive cost of living discrepancy.

As to pension numbers I don't know of a good way to calculate that. http://ballotpedia.org/Public_pensions_in_West_Virginia EX: Deputy Sheriff Retirement System lists $113,574,000 for 954 active members. So 100k per person. But there are active inflows and outflows of cash it's not directly calculable with those numbers. Per the U.S. Census, in FY 2011, employer contributions to West Virginia state and local government pension plans were 5.01 percent of all state and local government direct general spending. http://ballotpedia.org/Public_pensions_in_West_Virginia#cite... So pensions being ~10-20% boost to base salary seem to be in the right ballpark on average, but Police get early retirement so 20-40% of base salary seems more appropriate.

All of what you are saying is true, but it's on a different track. I was addressing what I thought and still think were incorrect statements by Spooky23.

I did not restrict myself to state-wide numbers. I also listed information about the metropolitan regions with the highest officer, first-line management of officers, and software developer salaries.

I am unsure as to what your point is. Should I have included cost-of-living adjustments? That seems unduly difficult for the point I was trying to make, which itself was an order of magnitude above the written effort by Spooky23 in making those statements in the first place.

The numbers I reported already seemed tilted since I excluded the two highest paying states (California and Washington). Even then, software developers were still making 15K/year more than the 75 percentile of police officers (patrol and first-line). The full analysis would also have to define what "hick" means; I arbitrarily decided it was the bottom 20 or 30% of salaries. I strongly doubt this is true.

There are 954 people in the Deputy Sheriff Retirement System of West Virginia. this is essentially confirmed with https://www.wvretirement.com/DSRS.html which says "DSRS currently has approximately 990 active members and 299 retired members."

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_wv.htm#23-0000 says there are 3,500 "Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers" for West Virginia, and 410 "First-Line Supervisors of Police and Detectives" with median wages of $37,830 and $54,910, respectively.

You can see that Deputy Sheriffs don't make much ( http://woodcountywv.com/page/page149.php says Annual Salary $32,603, http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Berkeley-County-Sheriff-West... says $36K, http://www.heraldmailmedia.com/news/tri_state/west_virginia/... says $36,048.)

Thus it cannot be that most of the police officers employed in West Virginia retire in the Deputy Sheriff Retirement System because some 75% of the police officers are not deputy sheriffs.

As a further refinement of your numbers, https://www.wvretirement.com/DSRS.html reports "Active members contribute 8.5% of their gross monthly salary pre-tax and the Sheriff's Office contributes an additional 12.5% of the member's gross monthly salary... A member is vested after completion of 60 months of covered employment. ... A regular retirement benefit, paid in equal monthly installments, is an amount equal to 2.25% of a member's final average salary multiplied by the member's years of credited service." This is in line with what you estimated.

I then went to https://www.wvretirement.com/Forms/2012-CAFR.pdf . On p187 it says that 1 pensioner made over $60K/year in pension, 1 made over $48K, and most (168 of 272) made under $24K/year. It also says that plan is set up to earn 7%/year. The math to see if that all works out is not something I want to do now.

Under my earlier numbers, I estimated a software developer salary of $93,486, which is about 20% higher than the officer salary of $77,683. With access to the same pension savings fund, doesn't that make the two salaries roughly equivalent, and give the software developer a chance to retire after 20 years?

Of course, there are no software development unions in the US to oversee such a retirement fund. Our loss.

IMO that's really the point. A police officers base salary is significantly lower than a software developers base salary. Add in pensions and there reasonably close. Add in Overtime and the officers may in some cases make more. Granted, a tiny fraction of software developers end up making far higher salarys, but the total/hour worked gap is not exacly all that huge.

PS: Of course some developers also make tiny salary's.

The original point was that a police officer get paid "crazy money." Without a segue into your new point I didn't recognize that you were starting a new conversation.

How many software developers retire as software developers? How many police officers retire as a first line supervisor or higher?

That's a really interesting question; I know plenty of developers that move on to making less money. Either though Developer -> (part time) Developer, Developer -> Teacher or in one case Developer -> Raft Guide. But, I don't really know what happens as an industry.

However, I seems like a lot of officers retire early and either just retire or take a side job with higher pay and little benefits or just something to pass the time.

Honestly, I have no idea what the average is, but there are probably some interesting trends.

I'm not able to find the BLS methodology used to come up with that $57k figure, does anybody know? Unless they're drawing that from the IRS, I really doubt the accuracy. Cops generally make quite a bit of money from overtime and generous pensions. They also frequently moonlight and get paid well to do very little: any business that employs a large number of temp workers will have an off duty cop hanging out in a back office, for liability reasons. This demand for off duty cops is a result of cities taking on liability for the off duty cop's actions - instead of the business. At one place I worked, security alerted the off duty that somebody was on the roof late one night (presumably to steal copper from the AC units). The cop made a phone call and within minutes a police helicopter was launch and circling the building, that is another reason why off duty cops get paid so well - the employing business gets a little taste of state power at the tax payer's expense.

They survey employers:

http://www.bls.gov/oes/oes_ques.htm#overview

(The OOH uses OES data: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/about/occupational-information-includ... )

It specifically does not include overtime:

http://www.bls.gov/respondents/oes/payterms.htm#overtime_pay

Ah, thanks. So yeah, I'd interpret the information as only accurately reflecting the results of the survey - not reality :)

You'd think the BLS would be able to get anonymized IRS data.

I think that police get lots of overtime in addition to the basic salary, and there are often perks, like extra pay for motorcycle cops to clean and polish their motorcycles, etc...

why should I take a paycut? if we end the war on drugs, we could pay fewer officers more money to do more effective and humane policing, with more training. win/win/win.

Lose for the prison industry, the pharma industry, the military arms industry, the black market drug industry, and police unions. All of which have huge power, and all of which will continue to bribe to keep the blood money flowing.

Small world: My grandparents have lived there for a fair length of time. I remember driving by the county courthouse where a klan rally was being held in the mid 2000's with a Grand Wizard in red robes and everything. I've been told that the county/town even had a celebration when the census came back with no minorities at one point. As such, it's no stretch of my imagination what kind of gray areas the law enforcement in that area is in.

In the mid 2000's? That's just so sad.

"Jobs for those of job age," as Anthony Burgess put it.

"in north-central Georgia"

While this sentence is technically a correct description, it conveys the impression that Doraville is a rural town which it certainly isn't (Doraville is "ITP" - inside I-285).

You pretty bang on. I think the unfortunate thing is that it has become an arms race. The police up their arms in response to civilians-gone-bad having heavier weapons. If I were in the police, I can imagine I'd feel safer riding in a tank to take down a suspected 'dangerous' criminal too.

I think in some ways, this is a result of our fondness for the second amendment rights and arms as well as accepting the police as a necessary force to keep the peace.

I'm not sure if there is an easy way to de-escalate things. We might start with police 'engagement' procedures standardized from a federal level --but there'd probably be pushback from the states.

I do have a quibble with _always_ presuming innocence. If you see someone in the act, then I think they can take action without such presumption.

One of the specially hard things for me to understand is the necessity to shoot at 'disturbed' people wielding knives. Yes, I know knives are deadly --however, knives don't travel very far, compared to firearms, why not back up, give them a safe distance and try to de-escalate before shooting at the 'lunge.' Again, I know most of those disturbed people do mean harm[1], but you can avoid their intended harm by giving them space.

[1] Some intending assisted but unintended suicide from the police.

I think you would be interested in how fast someone can move in with a knife. Anyways, you give them space and they bolt away and stab or take hostage the next person they encounter. There are so many what ifs in these situations then end badly that you don't even want to let it get to that point.

If "lunging" was the only thing knife welding psychos could do the world would be much nicer place.

UK police routinely deal with this by talking the person down, use of TASER, or baton strike. http://www.quora.com/How-do-British-police-officers-manage-t...

(There used to be an excellent police blogger who talked about doing this from firsthand experience, but he was de-anonymised and his blog taken down).

As a former UK police officer I can assure you that if armed police officers came across someone with a drawn knife at least one firearm would be aimed at them. One of my officer safety trainers was a qualified close protection officer (i.e. bodygaurd) who ran through one of their scenarios whereby someone with a knife faces off across the diagonal length of a basketball court sized room with someone with a holstered gun. Even trained officers can't reliably get a shot off if that person starts sprinting towards them.

Believe me no-one wants to try and tackle a knife wielding suspect with a baton, at that point you're using defensive tactics and your partner will use their CS/PAVA to try and disable them.

Fortunately, in the UK, the vast majority of people with knives aren't actively homicidal at the point at which the police turn up.

Nightjack was amazing, the Times is in my permanent bad books for their nonsensical justification for outing him. He thoroughly deserved the Orwell prize that he won for his blogging.

This is something that we legally armed US citizens train in, along of course with our police: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill

For others reading this, there are a lot of good videos on the net showing examples of it.

I can remember the proper name for them but it's along the line of Armed Emergency Response Teams. Watching tapes and a short training exercise the amount of trigger discipline and weapons handling is amazing.

Armed Response Vehicles (ARVs) are the mainstay of British armed policing, outside of London they are pretty rare and often fall back to traffic policing duties.

The qualfiied officers are Authorised Firearms Officers who will also stand up the equivalent of SWAT teams as needed for each constabulary.

London has Specialist Firearms Officers as well who are a standing set of SWAT type teams. Several have written some very good books about their experiences, Steve Collins especially.

The main thing in the UK is that armed officers who discharge their weapon, let alone kill someone, face extremely rigorous scrutiny by an external agency. This combined with no specific legal protections means that a police officer shooting their weapon is very rare, it happens a handful of times across the UK each year.

I think I helps when the odds are low that suspects will be carrying firearms. In north America the odds are much higher that police will have a confrontation with armed suspects --and of course NaM police have greater legal protection when discharging a weapon.

For the curious, someone rescued the archive and put it up here http://nightjackarchive.blogspot.co.uk/

UK police get stabbed a lot too but they have much better armor.

Yes, talking people down works in every situation.

Not to say that guns work every time but if someone has the intent to get all staby It's time to go lethal.

I think it would be eye opening for everyone to get a taste of how things can go wrong in police situations themselves.

In some situations that is a concern (hostages, bystanders) but my understanding is SOP means getting bystanders out of the way ASAP and dealing with the disturbed person. It's not like the police are six feet from them, they typically have a good cushion of space (and should take more) and take every chance to deescalate --throw fishing net at them, whatever, but use lethal force as last resort, not at the first lunge.

Does anybody else know about Thermite from the Jolly Roger's cookbook? I think that file, on a 486 laptop owned by my friend's mid-life-crisis separated father, was my life's best illicit thrill.

Bou Bou was sleeping in a portable playpen at the foot of his parents’ bed when the Habersham County Special Response Team broke down the door to the room and threw a flashbang. The grenade landed on a pillow next to Bou Bou’s face. The blast blew a hole in his chest, severed his nose, and tore apart his lips and mouth.

That's horrifying. I can't believe that these things are allowed to be used with so little oversight.

In October, a Habersham County grand jury declined to indict the officers involved. “Some of what contributed to this tragedy can be attributed to well-intentioned people getting in too big a hurry,” the grand jury wrote in its findings.

What they call "too big a hurry" I call reckless endangerment.

...and what they call "well-intentioned" I call "doing a job despite its moral indefensibility."

(and to be clear: I'm talking specifically about pre-dawn violent raids as a measure to ostensibly enforce drug laws, not policing in general)

What's most amazing is how smug and unapologetic the involved LEOs are when they've been interviewed on camera about this incident. One can only hope that the video is accepted as evidence in the civil case and will add a significant multiplier to the damages awarded.

I'm guessing their lawyers have told them not to apologize (show apathy), as it may actually be worse for them in the civil suit.

FYI you wrote apathy when you likely meant empathy.

Apathy fits there if you take the parenthetical to be clarifying "not apologize" instead of just "apologize".

Cops in the US are immune to civil liability for acts while on duty.

There are two flaws in this statement:

1) Police, and most public officials, are subject to qualified, not absolute, immunity.

2) Given that municipal or state governments have to pick up the check when juries find against police departments, the comment you are responding to is still sensible (I'm not saying I agree with it, only that it's not illogical in the matter that you seem to be suggesting).

This comment doesn't need to be downvoted. It's not stating anything as fact - quite the opposite - it's very clear it's just a guess. And it makes logical sense according to this [1]

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology

The officers involved most likely were following both their training and their department's policy here. That something terrible happened as a result doesn't necessarily mean they did something wrong from a legal and professional standpoint. Police work is full of situations that are ugly, even when well-thought out policy is followed to the T.

Of course, the wisdom of ever using flash bangs in policing outside of extraordinary circumstances is suspect.

Which is of course the problem with departmental policy. We routinely see SWAT teams investigating themselves and finding that everything they did was in line with departmental policy.

And policy is not law. We should not allow a shield of false legitimacy protect illegal actions.

The problem is that the law often isn't clear. You have assault, battery, manslaughter, murder, unlawful detainment, and similar laws on the books, all with varying requirements and all with various carveouts for law enforcement, self-defense, etc. They tend to be written in broad language because real life is complicated. In the end, the law in this area is generally in the form of case law created by courts in response to novel situations. The courts have to make judgement calls. In my experience, LE agencies make a lot of effort to ensure their policies conform to existing caselaw and cover the gaps in it. Sometimes they get it wrong. But more often than not, when a policy is particularly egregious, the underlying law is to blame.

In the end, police have broad authority to use reasonable force to effect lawful arrests and searches. And most people don't understand just how broad that authority is under the law.

Which is why the cases in which the police harm or injure people should be brought before the court. Not decided by a prosecutor or grand jury, those entities shouldn't be deciding what is lawful.

The proper military use of flashbangs is to roll them towards the corner of a room or doorway. Not to chuck them into the room where they could land anywhere.

Yeah the chucking part seems where they go wrong. Normally you want to get them into the area called the fatal front, around 4 to 5 feet away right in front of the door. Your basically aiming for the floor and don't want them to go very far.

I'm going to extrapolate from experience, I'm pretty sure a flash-bang in a crib is not going to have the intended effect.

Nope. You want them IN the room, not in front of your point man. It's called a "fatal funnel" also. All this shit goes out the window anyway (sideways pun intended) in combat. My preference is hand grenades, but you don't get many of those (or flashbangs, for that matter), so it really depends on the circumstance. Either way, you'll get kicked in the head if you toss a flashbang right inside the door.

Grenades blow through almost every building material you can think of with ease. Grenades thrown in-doors are pretty loud even if you have some sort of hs/ld ear protection it's going to rock you pretty good.

I may have not been clear, yes you want it in the room. Generally you want in the fatal front area, yes it's called a fatal funnel for that entire situation/entry point (and all sorts of other names).

In this instance its the fatal front(in relation to that fatal funnel). Generally you want to be able to clear your nearside corners and the immediate area in front of the door. The point is not to chuck the Flashbang in too far or you are not going to get the full stun effect in areas with the highest threat.

If you are 6ft like me you generally pretend you are tossing it just to your head if you were laying down. It's going to roll/bounce in most cases and go farther. In any case you are aiming for a point that is most likely going to be open. Flashbangs don't work so well if they roll under a couch or a TV stand.

I guess our grenade experiences differ, If I requested a crate of grenades. I would get a crate of grenades.

If you wanted to reduce things down you want to get the maximum stun in the areas where you do your fan-out to slow down anyone who might get grabby or dont need to get a good sight picture to hit you. That's all going to happen in proximity to door. in an ideal world your going to want to hit closer to the center but in less you stick your head in first or have a god-like sense of the local building construction and layout signatures you might as well throw into an area that everyone can see the flash and for the folks close in the bang.

That's not true. The proper military use of flashbangs is to throw them into a room (to land wherever, usually the center of the room) and then run in and murder everyone inside. You are overstating the precision involved.

In the military if you want kill (not murder) everyone in a room you use a fragmentation grenade generally. Flashbangs are for when you might want to leave some of the people inside the room alive, either to capture or because they might be civilians.

Why does everyone seem to derive the usage of flashbangs from something like Counter Strike. Knowing the room layout/size as well as what kind stuff is in the room is never a sure thing. I'm going to assure you that the most common place you are going to find an open area is closer to the entry point due to the need for people to enter and exit through a door.

I guess its a moot point to try and explain the concepts that are common to almost every CQCish type training out there.

The point is you don't throw a flash-bang and grenade at full power. Knowing where the center of the room is and even if that's the best place for it to land is not the easiest thing in the world.

Nearside corners people, most people that are under a threat will be closer to the corners than the middle of the room and the corners that will give you the most problems to due the amount of time it takes to clear and how quickly they can ruining your day is throwing stun grenades to get effects on the nearside corners.

I can tell you haven't much in the way of combat experience. All of these things you've read online or in a FM somewhere go totally out the window in combat. All of these things you're talking about are completely in the land of theory when people are trying to kill you and vice versa. On two of my three combat tours in the infantry I spent most of the time kicking in doors, zip-tying people to themselves, and tossing a hood over their heads. And that was when they weren't trying to fight. The real world is far too chaotic and fast for the games you are talking about playing. You know I once had to clear the first three stories of an office building between myself and two other guys. There were a stupid amount of rooms. We cleared upwards of thirty rooms because of one smartass firing down from the top floor. All those Youtube videos you're quoting are meaningless in a situation like that.

> “Some of what contributed to this tragedy can be attributed to well-intentioned people getting in too big a hurry,”

The things you can get away with when you have an uniform...

Every single person ever booked for speeding would love to use this excuse I'm sure.

> “If she hadn’t been selling illegal items out of the home, no warrant would have been served,” he said. “What you call extreme, we call safe.”

Disgusting. The militarisation of police is a blight on our societies progress. And now where I live is succumbing to it too, albeit far more slowly than what those in the US have to deal with. The fact that SWAT teams are using flash bangs and automatic weaponry to raid a woman's house for selling beer without a license blows my mind.

> Department officers testified that their general SWAT training included work with flashbangs even though it wasn’t formally recorded in department training logs.

In other words, they're lying to cover their asses again. Like police have never done that before. Disgusting.

> “If she hadn’t been selling illegal items out of the home, no warrant would have been served,” he said. “What you call extreme, we call safe.”

The thing that disgusts me the most is not the fact she received a wallet. The cop seems to think (or at least avert the question) that the warrant was the problem. The journalist doesn't mention this because this comment is just so clearly ridiculous that his silence is probably more powerful than to point out the obvious.

I will, in any case. The issue is that you can have a warrant for Osama Bin Laden, and you can have a warrant for an elderly lady who sells some home made food without a license to scrape by.

And for the latter you just don't throw a freaking explosive into her home. It's ridiculous. What, was she going to take her Samurai Sword and invisibility cloak and go on a murderous rampage? This woman is described as a diminutive grandmother for crying out loud. You literally could have knocked on the door like any of her customers buying food and told her to come to the station. Yet they treat her home like a siege in a game of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six.

> This woman is described as a diminutive grandmother for crying out loud.

Ah, but don't the second amendement defenders keep reminding everyone that guns are the "great equalizer" that allows elderly ladies to be just as dangerous as a 250lbs steroid addict?

This is the logical conclusion: the police treat every arrest like a battlefield operation because it could conceivably turn out to be exactly that.

Maybe they could have come to the logical conclusion that the best way to arrest this woman would be to approach her while she's selling her illegal things again, in the same manner as the first time.

Maybe in plainclothes again. They didn't seem so worried about it during the buy operation.

Logical conclusion? So you believe, in the absence of the 2nd Amendment (which allows law-abiding citizens to arm themselves), police executing warrants against suspected law-breaking criminals can safely assume that their targets wouldn't possibly be in violation of gun control regulations?

And yet, American citizenry at large and the justice system in general gives the police the benefit of the doubt in all matters versus the populace. Are we really that dumb as a country? If you have to ask...

As horrible as police brutality it, it still directly hurts less than ~20% of society (more in some really bad areas, less in others). So only those, plus the few percent of others who have a sense of compassion, are opposed to the brutality. The rest are either ignorant or complicit or in cognitir dissonance.

> As horrible as police brutality it, it still directly hurts less than ~20% of society. So only those, plus the few percent of others who have a sense of compassion, are opposed to the brutality.

Your unsupported position is disgusting.

It hurts all of us when some are beyond reproach for brutalizing and murdering the most vulnerable in our society.

It's a shame the parent is being downvoted, as I read it they're not condoning that reaction, merely commenting on it. And they're right: that's exactly how the masses react to things like this. I wish more people reacted like you did, and I want to help build a world where that's the case.

That's either a lie, or just poor record-keeping. I would find the poor record-keeping entirely believable, but besides the point: even if they _had_ been trained to use flashbangs, then they we not trained properly or the shouldn't have been used at all.

Just because something is standard procedure doesn't make it the correct procedure.

I'd be more inclined to believe it was poor record keeping if there wasn't a decades long history of police lying to cover for each other. Fool me a thousand times...

I'd be worried about confirmation bias on that front. You don't remember all the times they told the truth but just did a poor job. It sounds like a lie either way.

But in my experience in the military, record-keeping is boring and routine, so there is a tendency to just pump out sub-standard paperwork and say "nobody is really going to look at it anyway, and if they do, they already know it's not reliable."

Training records? Pah. I'm surprised they even have training records. It's probably just a speedily-drafted form with a signature line on it. That's how you train 45 people at once: you make one form, have them all sign it, then you do the training. The form isn't accurate? Who cares, you got the signature and 'did your job'.

Next time the IRS calls I will just tell them not worry, "It was just poor record keeping."

I'm so past fed up with police in America. The drug war is pathological. The notion that a cop can kill an unarmed suspect with impunity (especially if they're black or homeless or mentally ill) is disgusting. The belief that "law and order" is a value worth allowing one group the exclusive privilege of breaking any law and causing any disorder they like without consequence simply has to end.

I'm at the point where I think the only sane thing is to dismantle the police, as we know it, and rebuild something less violent, less systemically racist, less prone to imprison or kill the mentally ill, and more aligned with basic human decency.

Talking about how dangerous flashbangs are misses the point of how dangerous the system that wields them is and how dangerous the people employed by that system are. Police have dozens of tools and techniques for destroying human life. As long as they are empowered (and even expected) to use them with impunity, there will be tragedy after tragedy, where children, the mentally ill, and innocent people, are injured or killed or imprisoned.

Not that talking about flashbangs is a bad idea. I just think we're past the point where fixing flashbangs will significantly fix things. This is a systemic problem which can only be resolved by systemic solutions.

America isn't the problem, Americans are. Everyone who voted for this is to blame. From what I understand you can even vote for some of the local judges or prosecutors too! There's no excuse but to recognize that your neighbors are responsible for the problems due to their own selfishness. They want the police to be brutal because the drug raid isn't going to be on their home, it'll be on some poor person's home and they don't care about poor people.

This might sound harsh, but it's what most American voters do. That's why they continually vote for police violence. If they don't understand the consequences of their vote then they're as negligent as the policeman who doesn't understand the consequences of throwing a flashbang into a bedroom.

You're partially right, though overly optimistic about the power of "democracy" in America. It's worth recognizing the power of gerrymandering and money in elections. But, that's another discussion. There is no such thing as a viable political candidate who discusses reigning in police power...not because of the voting public. In America we choose between two parties who have differences, but there are entire categories of governance on which they are in lock step. Police is one of those categories. You will never hear a Republican or a Democrat suggest abolition of the institution of police as we know it, or even demanding basic accountability for killer cops.

Short of revolution, the only effective tools citizens have is to educate more people about the problems (and the cost of "tough on crime" policies), protest the clear human rights violations, film police so there are fewer invisible victims, demand accountability from city councils and mayors and police chiefs, etc. And, I do a little bit of all of these things (there's a Black Lives Matter march on Saturday here in Austin; I'll be there).

So, yes, many Americans are stupid, violent, poorly-educated, racist, and vindictive, or at least support law enforcement that is all of those things. But, the number of people who support no-knock raids is surely not high enough to claim the people chose this (I don't know, but I can't imagine it would be).

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/ron-paul-ferguson-mili...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/29/ron-paul-pol...

It's not like there are any other countries where there isn't a drug war.

Every first world country outlaws addictive drugs for the same ignorant reasons. (not harm-reduction)

I think you are allowing "war" to be a metaphor for restrictive policies, where "war" in this context is literally armed conflict with a death toll.

You are right, but there's a huge obstacle in the form of people who trumpet the notion of liberty (for some) while simultaneously supporting draconian/authoritarian policies for other people, and who make up a fairly solid political constituency. Even people who don't necessarily approve of such policies are strongly conditioned to accept them through their incessant repetition on television shows, news, and so forth. Producers of such shows aren't necessarily part of a secret conspiracy to scare the populace - although you could wonder about their network buyers - but are simply trying to provide engaging entertainment, and police shows reliably draw large audience, as do detective shows and stories. I'm not immune from this, I love a good detective story.

The net effect is an ideological structure within which the distribution of power becomes further entrenched. No conspiracy to engineer such an outcome is required; like many other social phenomena, it can emerge naturally due to market forces, and is arguably a unintentional by-product of the economic and political structures.

I don't live in the US, so I am maybe missing something but, if the police wants to arrest someone, wouldn't be easier to wait until this person leaves the house, grab him on the street and tell him: "Hi mate, we are the police and now you are under arrest".

I don't see the need of assaulting a home.

Of course it's not necessary to assault a home. But tactics like this intimidate the population into stunned compliance. The word for this is "terrorism", from the French reign of terror where enemies of the revolutionary state were summarily executed in public. Of course, terrorist states managed to redefine the term by the mid-20th century.

Depending on where you live, that's exactly what happens.

In Kentucky, they'll send (usually) 3 state troopers, and knock on your door. If the person that they want isn't at home, they'll take your word for it, and let you be on your way.

In Ohio, it's usually six or more officers with guns drawn. They'll try to open the doors of the house to gain entry without knocking or announcing their presence. When the person that they're looking for isn't at home, they'll try to find a reason to come inside and search the property looking for that person (and a reason to arrest everyone inside). They'll then circle the house outside for 24-48 hours to intimidate the people inside but eventually give up when they realize that the person doesn't actually live there.

What's really sad is that I was great friends with a member of Law Enforcement until I realized how short-sighted and two-faced he was; the LEO community really breeds an environment of "us versus them" and if you're a defendant (regardless of guilt or innocence), you're a scumbag who deserves to be in jail.

Not criticizing you for ending your friendship; but, as a side note, this contributes to another effect- basically the only people that thuggish oppressive cops can actually relax around, and be casual friends with, are other cops. Which only contributes further to "us vs them".

If a sci-fi novel portrayed a society where the police were a separate race of creatures who lived in walled compounds and survived by robbing and intimidating the citizens around them, I'd agree that it was far-fetched... But it seems like our society is taking constant, purposeful steps towards such a world. The war on drugs, asset forfeiture laws, militarization of cops.... violent raids on a little old woman selling illegal beer, followed by attempts to have her home destroyed...

Yikes.

Not to mention the fact that many police officers don't live in the communities they, er, police (I can't bring myself to use the word 'serve' any more in relation to the police :-( ).

An ex-cop I know justified this on the basis that you don't want people who would probably have a grudge against you to know where you live, which would be reasonable enough if police didn't have so many other protections in place. I don't think his attitude is universal, but there is clearly a significant cohort of police officers who are fully engaged in a 'race to the bottom' and consider themselves the rightful beneficiaries of a secular antinomianism.

The war on drugs is a primary driver for militarization of police in the US. To be fair, SWAT teams who raid drug houses often face heavily armed, violent criminals. There's a need -- sometimes -- for aggressive tactics. But the SWAT officers are far better trained than the regular police force who should not be engaged in this level of high risk, forced entry.

I've known SWAT officers and non-violent drug dealers who were both fundamentally decent people.

The problem can often be traced back to how police departments make up budget gaps. A large chunk of a department's budget comes from federal funding. The more drug related arrests, the more "war on drugs" money a department gets. This inadvertently enters a slippery slope where militarization on both sides is incentivized.

If local communities actually covered the full budget of a police department, the system would probably tend towards a more just and appropriate level of force.

> wouldn't be easier to wait until this person leaves the house, grab him on the street and tell him: "Hi mate, we are the police and now you are under arrest".

But then they wouldn't get to use all the paramilitary gear and act like they are some special Commando unit or something. They would be boringly waiting outside for hours and they just say "Hands behind your back, you are under arrest". That is absilutely not fun compared to busting door with a ram, throwing flashbang grenades, running around like idiots crouching and shouting at the top of their lungs like in video game, wearing cool full body bullet proof with kevlar elbow pads and so on.

paramilitary gear

There's nothing "para" about it. That gear is coming straight from the military.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/upshot/data-on-transfer-of...

As I understand it, this is part of the war-on-drugs mindset. Since possession of even minor quantities of drugs can result in severe sentences, they assume offenders will be as violent as anyone receiving such sentences.

Yep. As long as enough of the population continues to buy into this nonsense they will have "legitimacy" to act this way.

The problem with that is that it makes entirely too much goddamn sense. </cynicism>

Also something about cops being in such constant terror and fear for their lives that criminals are constantly carrying around AR-15 gas powered rifles, that it's easier to catch them by surprise at home than to risk doing your job more humanely and end up with a 5.56 round in the chest.

Or something like that.

</Snark>

One, lots of people like kicking doors in. Two, there are no consequences for getting it wrong in most cases. Three, there's a slim possibility that if they stop someone in the street and they've underestimated the situation, someone in the house would open fire on them, so it's become increasingly standard to carry out every raid like they're in a John Carpenter movie.

That didn't work in England when they wanted to arrest a terror suspect, so they secretly followed him to work one day, then shot him dead as he entered the train station. It turned out he was a plumber, not a terrorist.

Context: this was two weeks after the Tube bombings in London. It was a tragic error, but it is absolutely not routine.

Wikipedia has a convenient list of UK mainland police shootings, which happen less than once a year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_firearms_in_the_U...

(The word "mainland" there excludes Northern Ireland, where the RUC behaved as an occupying force with the support of the army until the peace agreement with the IRA, at which point the police were reconstituted as PSNI with an explicit effort to be police for all the community equally.)

If you want an idea of what a western 'police state' would look like, then Northern Ireland, say Belfast between 1970 and 1995, is a good proxy. Police and soldiers on patrol togetrher, an official shoot-to-kill policy, military checkpoints, internment without trial and conviction without jury, all that good stuff.

That was all in the name of terrorism and was orders of magnitude worse that the policies that have been put in place in the UK and USA since 9/11, for the next round of terrorism. So until we are at 'Troubles' levels of policing, I think the GWoT policing responses have actually been pretty restrained.

> I don't see the need of assaulting a home.

it's almost always for drugs, where they'd be afraid the person could flush them down the toilet.

If you arrest people outside their house when they go for a walk, how on earth are they going to "flush the drugs down the toilet"?

What, you don't carry a portable toilet around?

As the GP said, that's why you simply wait until they leave the house. In nearly all these cases, they're only looking for one person.

Sometimes people barricade themselves inside the home or have hostages. I had assumed that was the only case where they used flashbangs ... until I read this article. According to the article police can get a no-knock arrest warrant. I don't get why that type of warrant is authorized so frequently. I guess courts are giving the police whatever they ask for.

It seems like cops are afraid of losing their lives, and they think flashbangs protect them. I can understand that thought process. But it doesn't excuse what is happening. I couldn't live with myself if I burned up a baby like they did. Unbelievable that the county won't pay medical bills.

Yeah, but that's less fun and would require patience.

Who has time for patience?

“Everyone carries a flashbang,” Malette testified. “Any time we encounter locked doors, we have an unknown, we have to gain back that initiative.”

I understand that police are interested in maintaining control of a situation, but practices like throwing flashbang grenades into houses without looking...these guys seem to think they're Delta Force.

It's insane.

He literally said 'there's something behind this door, we don't know whether it's a guy with a rocket launcher or an innocent baby, so let's throw a grenade in there and 'gain the initiative' whichever case it may be'.

I never quite understood raids in the first place. Between scoping out a house, arresting any individuals outside as they walk on the curb while entering an empty home with a warrant, and raiding a house delta-force style with guns, an unknown number of people in the house with no knowledge of what you'll find. I'm sure house raids have their place, but to me that place feels rather limited. Raiding someone's house because of something like pot, or selling nachos, with grenades and all?

Part of the problem is they are asked to be Delta Force. I wouldn't storm a house without a sub machine and a flashbang either.

But I also wouldn't storm houses in the first place.

Raids aren't needed except in very exceptional cases like a hostage situation or a spree killer.

It's time for police to need a court's permission to specifically raid without a clear and present danger.

There will NEVER be accountability as long as the conflict of interest remains where police actions are investigated by a prosecutor that relies on these same police for him to do a successful job.

This fact was so evident last year. I don't understand why cop cases don't have special prosecutors or fall under federal jurisdiction.

Cops testify in federal courts, too. There is no incentive for prosecutors to indict cops.

Because the cops have all the guns and a good union.

I don't think the problem is so much that flashbangs are being thrown, as that they are thrown when storming the house of someone committing the grave crime of illegally selling nachos.

Not only a raid with flashbangs. They also tried to take an old lady's house for selling Nachos.

"Afterward, the city of Little Rock sued Harris, alleging that her property should be declared a nuisance and “abated” — or razed — since it was being used to facilitate criminal violations."

There seems to be a some demand for safer flashbangs (perhaps something with really bright LEDs and really loud speakers). This[0] seems to at least address the brightness aspect of it.

I mean, if the point of flashbang use by LEOs is supposedly to disorient/confuse/distract a suspect during arrest, this seems to be better-suited to that role. And better yet, if they're electronic, they should be (at least hypothetically) entirely reusable, saving a LEA a lot of money in the long run.

[0]: http://www.bluesheepdog.com/2012/03/13/delta-light-ball-flas...

Home invasion will never be safe, regardless of the tools they use.

If law enforcement's answer to tragedies like this is, "We'll train our people in use of less dangerous tools", then the wrong questions are being asked. The question should be, "What the hell were you doing breaking into someone's home in the middle of the night?"

Use weapons against civilians and you get predictable consequences.

Not sure why this is permitted in the USA, starting to think that most Americans are really a bit braindead.

Is there anyway to push for or endorse research into police weapons use in USA? I seem to remember a discussion some time back pointing out there was no central registry or even need to report gun use for all police forces.

It just seems that blowing the face off a sleeping baby ought to be the point you start filling in forms and asking questions like "is the person throwing a grenade well trained? Has the information they are acting upon come from as reliable source? Is there post action public reviews?

It seems that some parts of the USA lead the world and some parts still have hay stalks in their mouths.

There seems to be some room for innovation here. The police are throwing these things blind. Evidence? Well, I refuse to believe anyone, no matter how debased, would intentionally throw a flashbang into a baby's crib. What's needed is a flashbang that either won't go off if in close proximity to a living being (e.g. perhaps add an IR sensor) or a flashbang that is triggered remotely, so it can be thrown, spotted, and triggered only if in a desirable location.

Personally, I think building a flashbang that's harder to injure people with will simply result in increasingly idiotic behavior on the part of the police. The real solution is to use flashbangs less and with better training. That means regulations and oversight because the police apparently suck at policing themselves. However, the U.S. loves to solve problems with tech even when it's not the best solution, so there's money to be made here.

> Well, I refuse to believe anyone, no matter how debased, would intentionally throw a flashbang into a baby's crib

I can. In the extended circle of acquintances, two of the cops are the worst abusers of their families, children & wives, the are the most racists and full of hatred. One would enjoy showing others how he would spin his son by his hand while simultaneously kicking him in the back with his foot (granted this is not a US policeman, not that a US policemen are somehow qualitatively more noble).

I think there is link between saddism (enjoyment of inflicticting pain) and choosing to be that kind of a profession (just like there might be a link between wanting to help people and choosing to do it).

Sadly, statistics back you up in this case. US police appear to have a much higher propensity to engage in domestic violence than the general population: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-o...

> Well, I refuse to believe anyone, no matter how debased, would intentionally throw a flashbang into a baby's crib.

Read some stories of the Holocaust, then. They didn't have flashbangs, but there were cases of babies being killed by being repeatedly swung into brick walls.

I've read the same about the Rwandan Genocide.

The Cambodian killing fields as well.

However, you have to remember that in none of these cases did the perpetrators act spontaneously on random victims. They were all primed to see the victims as part of a group both inferior (i.e. not deserving of empathy) and threatening (i.e. to be feared, hated and eliminated).

> They were all primed to see the victims as part of a group both inferior (i.e. not deserving of empathy) and threatening...

Well, there you have it.

Your typical racist cop is primed the same way.

It shouldn't be necessary to do paramilitary raids of homes unless there is some desperate situation like hostages being killed.

Isn't that just a band-air for the real problem, which is the general culture of infalibility at many police departments and the shocking lack of training in light of the fact that they've been given military grade toys?

Yes, but we can always try to solve the inconviences of our world in multiple venues. Let's try politics and simultaneously use the ingenuity we have to solve the problem while politics resolves.

I'd bet by stopping the water supply (out), disabling wifi and power, we can solve the destruction of evidence issue which could warrant the police actions.

Additionally, we could send a robot in place to search for unsafe conditions prior to the entry by armed police.

What other issues do we need to solve make this not happen while we wait for politics to catch up?

Biggest issue is that the military suppliers that end up giving local PDs all this war tech are being paid federally on an untouchable military budget. They produce the flashbangs outside market conditions at all and under guaranteed federal contracts, and when the US military doesn't actually need more tanks, APVs, and flashbangs they get raffled off to police departments.

So build your personnel sensing flashbang, these PD's won't get them, they rarely pay for this stuff. Its mostly free, or at least its on a fixed grant they need to spend or lose. There is no real market for a police department to deploy tanks and SWAT in a town of a thousand people.

> Well, I refuse to believe anyone, no matter how debased, would intentionally throw a flashbang into a baby's crib.

I partly agree. I don't think even the very worst cop would do it (so I agree it was unintentional in this case).

But I do think there are people who are debased enough to do so on purpose.

As an infantry combat veteran of multiple tours, the idea that police forces are using flashbangs is disgusting.

That the officers involved in these incidents are never indicted is kind of a red herring. They follow procedure and feel like they've done nothing wrong.

The real issue is that we allow a procedure in which occasionally we throw grenades at babies.

OT: This is the third of fourth site in recent days that I've been on and thought I was on Medium. The designs all look identical. Medium's design is really nice so I'm not about to complain but it is a bit strange.

Propublica is actually even nicer than Medium, if you ask me.

The similarity you're noticing is partly fashion, but largely just that the technology and market conditions finally exist to use magazine-style type on web pages.

flashbangs are warranted when there is a high threat profile. The problem is that a 'raid' doesn't rise to the level of 'high threat profile.' The problem isn't the police tactics, it's a problem of bad risk management. Police have been considering all manner of crimes 'raid worthy.' If SWAT was going after known dangerous and armed gang members or they were in a hostage situation, flashbangs might be the right tactic; it would depend on the threat profile and pre-raid intelligence. SpecOps operators rarely just blast into a room. Oftentimes there are eyes on the target, including surveillance to determine the threat profile. Cops could have very easily just staked out the house and grabbed the guy when he walked outside. But that isn't as 'sexy' and suiting up in full battle rattle and rappelling from the roof tossing flashbangs, and kicking in doors.

While the drug war is a big prt of this, the larger problem is the lack of meaningful and audited protocols for various situations.

Going after a guy with weed should require a much different approach than taking down a meth lab. Though, a flashbang in a meth lab would be a sight to see.

>At least 50 Americans have been seriously injured, maimed or killed by flashbangs since 2000

I was surprised to see this statistic included. It really makes this issue seem less significant and does not help the argument being made. This means a little over 3 people per year injured or worse. Probably less than 1 death per year. By comparison, vending machines alone kill over a dozen people each year. Was this supposed to say, "we located over 50 people", and not intended to be put forward as a statistic?

ProPublica is quietly doing the best journalism of the past few years.

I don't even know what to say after reading that article.

How can this be even remotely acceptable to anyone?

I mean they are using them in cases where they know for a fact it is not a dangerous situation - an elderly woman selling beer? They used it TWICE? Really?

I wonder how many people were like me, in that they thought the Counterstrike version of a flashbang was representative of the real thing?

I never really considered how they worked until now.

Outcome of arms vendors needing new markets.

First, the Albequerque incident was cold blooded murder and the indictment is very appropriate.

Second, flash bang use is already dramatically declining so this sory is about three years to late. But nice effort.

I'm not sure if this belongs on this site. This is .. utterly political.

Reading that article leads me astray and I have to question the sanity of the persons involved, both on the acting side (police) and the justification side (spokesman, random "Yeah, criminals are dangerous and all" crap).

This is the prime example of a cultural clash, of an article that is relevant for the US of A only (I hope there's a debate over there and people that think this usage is okay are somehow considered sane, locally).

For a foreigner like me this is tragic. Every single example in that article was bullshit. Inexcusable and mind-blowingly stupid. I'm aware of the fact that I might be deluded and that the 'real world' - over there - looks different. But seriously, what do we have in common if this is acceptable and 'best practice'?

I don't mean to question your basis for your assessment because your comment is otherwise wonderful and agreeable, but why it is that every time an article is written that impugns a government's use of a particular technology, it is regarded as "utterly political?"

Even if this article weren't about flashbangs, whose particulars are examined in the article from a perspective consistent with the norms of this website, the drug war, as a exercise of prohibition policy, is largely on-topic here per se because it represents a pain-point (and according to a majority of people, at least in the USA, a failure) which many entrepreneurs and statesmen are actively seeking to fix via innovation.

This article seems utterly on-topic to me.

I think my main concern was and is:

Given this article, the discussion cannot avoid politics. If we're assuming that political discussions might be sensitive and largely depending on your upbringing/local environment etc. etc. this leads to potential conflicts.

Technical (or commercial) posts are usually easier to digest and discuss. Posts like this seem to offer no sane way to handle them, or at least I don't see a way to do that myself.

The alternative is ignoring and being ignorant to nonviolent citizens of a foreign country being killed and burned by military grade technology.

You don't have to actually go into the comments section on these things. But besides technical knowledge what are you going to contribute to the non controversial posts? Yes, lambas are great, and a half dozen posts agreeing on that, after an article about good lambda usage?

I think the issue is that there are two conflicting populations on Hacker News: hackers/geeks/nerds in the traditional sense (who are here to talk about cool technology and such, and because the place is called "Hacker News") and entrepreneurs (who are here to talk about economics and politics and such, and because the place is run by a company that funds entrepreneurs).

Being part of the first group, it's a bit strange to me to see this sort of article on a site that's called "Hacker News", and I agree with the parent commenter that the article feels out-of-place here. Perhaps if it had some nifty technical details on flash bangs and their effects on humans (more concrete references to PTSD diagnoses, descriptions of temperatures attained by flashbangs and the physical effects of those temperatures on humans, even some possible elaboration on potential blindness caused by flashbangs) - in other words, things that hook into scientific basis (which makes nerds squee) rather than emotion/"ethics" (which doesn't make nerds squee) - would improve this.

On the other hand, I realize that my demographic is not the only one worth considering (regardless of whether I want it to be the only one worth considering). It's disappointing that articles with a dearth of technical description seem to be becoming the norm even here, but at the same time I realize that it's not disappointing to all of HN's users, so the best I can do is move on to a hopefully-better article (or stop using the site and find a place that actually lives up to my own expectations of something called "Hacker News").

Take, for example, this article regarding the hypothetical effects of extreme magnetism on humans[0], which was posted on HN yesterday and was well-received, relatively speaking. Unlike this article, it focuses on scientifically-tangible effects, and even revolves around a Futurama reference to boot; in other words, it actually appeals to the hacker/geek/nerd demographic described above. Had this article been written more similarly to this one (though probably without the humor involved, given the more serious tone and subject), it probably wouldn't be subject to derision as being "utterly political", and would instead be more universally appreciated by both demographics of this site (since it appeals to the interests of both those demographics).

The article's perspective may be "consistent with the norms of this website", as you say; my point (and presumably that of the parent commenter) is that it's only consistent with - at best - half of the norms and expectations. It covers an interesting subject (for the entrepreneurs, at least); it just needs to do so with more technical detail.

That all said, us nerds do post plenty of purely-technical articles with seemingly-boring subjects (made exciting by the technicality itself, to us at least), so I suppose it's only fair that a purely-non-technical article slips through every once in awhile.

[0]: https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/how-strong...

The sentiment you've expressed here seems common on HackerNews, and I commend you for taking the time to lay it out with such clarity and detail.

I disagree with you in part. I don't think that the two groups you've painted are discrete, much less distinct. Of the descriptions you've given, I fit much more clearly in the former (I spend far more time digging around old Github repos and fantasizing about Arduino projects to try with my soon-to-be-born child).

However, the technical detail of this article is not lost on me. The authors have gone to painstaking lengths to template the picture of a flashbang incident and fill it in with instances (shown in aside#injuries). They have produced an informative graphic map showing a specific technical detail of the policy implementation in Little Rock (the exact locations and a demographic element).

The prose itself is replete with other technical details, such as the types of injuries suffered and how they were treated and the specific legislation being considered in light of these events.

These details may not describe anything electronic or even futuristic, but they are technical in the sense that they're measurable and require illumination via intense study in order to understand and present.

Just like an interpreter optimization or a new design pattern, the various calls to action need to be sufficiently compelling as to motivate a critical mass to call for change, and so supporters (and perhaps opponents) have gathered around them.

I'm increasingly convinced that "technical" and "political" are just words that we use to couch "familiar" and "controversial."

I do agree that more technical details of how flashbangs work (especially what, if any, tactical advantages they actually confer and how we know that) are desirable.

The US has a tendency to export its bad ideas along with its good ones, so readers elsewhere might still have reason to be concerned about what happens there. These weapons are already used by some police in other places, like in Canada where a protesting student was seriously injured [1]. French police used flash bangs in the recent hostage situation in a grocery store [2].

[1]: http://rabble.ca/news/2012/03/police-violence-rise-montreal

[2]: http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/jan/09/charlie-he...

Using them in a raid against a terrorist who had taken hostages is completely reasonable.

Throwing them into a crowd of people is not.

Like any dangerous tool, if you use it carelessly bad things will happen.

French police also killed a protester with a concussion grenade last year: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29820623

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