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.
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.
If you turn up in an armoured tank, you have just escalated the 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.
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).
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.
What cops really need is better and more substantive training, not equipment to hide behind.
I'm not saying that you should give them armoured troop carriers though. You want them to feel safe, not invincible.
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.
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.
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.
When I went to high school in this general area (15+ years ago) they used run-of-the-mill SUVs just fine.
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.
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.
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´m not sure I articulated that all that clearly, sorry...
An uparmored Humvee, on the other hand, is problematic.
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-...