Nowadays, the police looks fearsome and threatening with their high tech automatic gear and offensive stance. They are not approachable. Why does policing require these military style weapons?
Maybe it's "toys", maybe it's "budget" (the more expensive the equipment the higher their overall budget), but whatever it is, it's costly for taxpayers and dangerous for anyone the police interact with.
Asking why monitoring eg Ferguson demonstrations require the same military gear as rolling through Fallujah makes you a dirty hippie, and probably a communist.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/08/14/ferguson-and-...
I think they should be more-or-less limited to a standard patrol officer's gear, plus specific proven tactical setups, for specific situations, like sniper rifles when hostages are taken.
Not sure what the etiquette of HN in replying to deep message threads is so I'll try it here. We'll see if it sticks
As far as I understand police officers on the streets do not routinely carry flashbangs nor drive armored vehicles. They do have an AR-15 style rifles in the patrol cars, but those are not fully-automatic though they do look like military M4/M16. Flashbangs and APCs are SWAT team toys.
A Bearcat/MRAP is the perfect tool. Its big (hides officers visually), armored, and relatively cheap to buy & maintain vs outfitting patrol cars with armor. It has zero offensive capability unless you count sitting someone on top of it with a rife.
I can understand (and I agree) with not wanting them to use armored vehicles in certain situations (non-violent protests, non violent drug raids, etc) but do you really not want them to have the capability at all?
I can't be in the minority here thinking that armored vehicles have a use case and that we should dictate those use cases by policy. Removing them all removes the ability to stop those shit hits the fan scenarios in a timely manner.
There's not much call for a soldier to be sent into battle with a taser, or for a police officer to be on duty with a SAW.
That's actually not true in either case. Military weapons are designed (or at least, selected) for cost-effective lethality -- even the heavy-spending US weighs logistical concerns heavily.
And police weapons are, for the most part, not designed for minimal lethality (TASERs are designed intentionally as less-lethal weapons, but they aren't cops main weapons.)
Everything is designed for cost-effectiveness in this age of economic rationalism. Military weapons, police weapons, this keyboard I'm typing on... being cost-effective is not a hallmark of being military.
TASERS ... aren't cops main weapons
In some parts of the US. Which is the problem being discussed here: that police in the US reach first for the lethal solution. Police in the UK don't often carry firearms at all. Police here in Australia carry firearms, but they're a weapon of last resort, not their 'main weapon'.