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Comment by chokolad | Hacker News Reader

> Flashbangs, fully automatic rifles, armored vehicles, tanks--those are some military weapons that have no place in a police force, IMO.

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.

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Serious question. We have guns in the US. Lots of them. Leaving the politics of that aside. What do you expect police to use when they need to approach a barricaded person or extract someone in the line of fire?

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?

There are all kinds of extreme and extremely implausible situations which could be used to justify extreme firepower, but it is not a good idea to use a military force as a police service. Ergo, we must accept that the right call will sometimes be "back away and negotiate".

Is an active shooter a "back away and negotiate" situation? What about when rioters are throwing 5lb chunks of concrete at firefighters/police like they did in baltimore this past week?

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.

I can't possibly imagine an instance in which the police arriving in an armored vehicle would deescalate a situation, and I believe deescalation ought to be the aim of police showing up at disturbances. Especially at protests and anti-police riots, like what happened in Baltimore this past week. Rolling around with military gear is antagonistic toward the people who already believe you exist only to oppress them. Perhaps that is not the best move to make.

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