Another US school shooter - Portland, this time

[Berkut]

Are you serious or is that a troll?

Completely serious.

What I don't like is that there is zero public discourse on this. The police get more and more militarized gear, and nobody ever, at any point, asks anyone what it is for, why it is needed, or what justification there is for it.

Who gets to decide if the local police need assault rifles, and night vision gear and maybe an APC? Nobody asked me. Nobody asks anybody - it is just done, the police are all proud of their new para-military toys, and everyone is all "Man, that is so cool, the cops get AR-15s! And flash bangs!". But why?

Why do they need an AR-15 in every car? Is that the right way to spend our resources? Do we really need some more snipers on the police force? Is THAT the right way to spend those funds?

When you give someone a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. So you get these situations where someone says "Hey, if there is another Columbine around here, would we have a SWAT team capable of handling it? No? OK, lets get one!" So they do that, and they get a SWAT team at a more local level.

So now you have this SWAT team trained to handle a radical situation. Wonderful.

And they sit around and train and be all bad ass and we all feel "safer".

But hell, you've spent all this money on them and their armor and training and sub-machine guns. Seems a shame not to find some utility for them when they aren't stopping Eric Klebolds, right? So that warrant we would normally serve with regular cops? Why not use the SWAT team? It would be safer, right? Better armed, better trained, for those .01% of the situations where a search warrant goes bad? So lets use them!

So now we have an excessive amount of militarization being used in 100% of the time, to handle a case that might happen 0.01% of the time. And if we have a SWAT team, and the feds are offering to pay for training one or two of them as snipers, WTH? Why not, lets have a sniper element on our SWAT team! How cool is that!

"Land of the free, home of the brave". If we want liberty, at some point the "home of the brave" has to apply to people other than the military - it has to apply to just the regular citizens and even the regular police. At some point, we have to be willing to NOT trade some marginal, and often imaginary, increase in security for our free society. The police are the most immediate and closest link  between citizens and the state - the lowest level where the states supposed monopoly on violence intersects with those that monopoly serves. Militarizing them is a bad, bad idea, IMO, and doing so ought to be justified with a clear need and an open dialogue, neither of which exists now.

No matter how cool the toys and gear might be...

[Berkut]

I'd like to run over Seedy's jeep with Ohio State's MRAP.

I get a kick out of the freakouts on Facebook whenever one of my friends posts that their local PD got one of those as a hand me down from the Army.  "And what exactly do they think they need *these* for???"

I think the militarization of the police is ridiculous. We should be freaking out.

What is bizarre is that over the last 30 years, violent crime has dropped considerably, but we keep arming our cops with heavier and heavier weapons, putting them in body armor, using SWAT teams for routine search warrants, and creating this culture where the police see themselves as practically at war with the citizens. It is Orwellian.

And for what? What problem is being solved by all this? It is done under the auspices of "Homeland Security", but the local university getting a SWAT team isn't going to prevent a terrorist attack. Turning the police into a para-military organization doesn't serve any purpose I can think of, other than selling more toys, weapons, and bullshit military gear.

In the US, this seems counter-balanced by an increase in deep distrust aimed at the cops, and bizzare legislation like the one where you can shoot cops wrongfully entering your house without being punished.

It is all very odd and bizzare to an outsider.

It is odd and bizarre behavior to insiders as well, at least to those who think beyond "Hey, the cops are getting new sniper rifles! How fucking cool is that? I wonder how they chamber those rounds?"

[derspiess]

And what's the deal with those FEMA camps?

[11B4V]

Why do they need an AR-15 in every car? Is that the right way to spend our resources? Do we really need some more snipers on the police force? Is THAT the right way to spend those funds?

When you give someone a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. So you get these situations where someone says "Hey, if there is another Columbine around here, would we have a SWAT team capable of handling it? No? OK, lets get one!" So they do that, and they get a SWAT team at a more local level.

So now you have this SWAT team trained to handle a radical situation. Wonderful.

Well your kind of all over the map, but I'll address the above.

Reason for carrying a Patrol Rifle:

1. There's nothing like showing up to an active shooter scene and discovering all you have is your sidearm and maybe a shotgun. Remember #1.

2. The local agency's (remember I'm federal, we have heavier hardware) Mason Kitsap counties, Bremerton PD, Tacoma PD, etc, all carry patrol rifles. Semi auto versions of the M-4's.

3. You cant wait on SWAT to assemble in an active shooter situation.What you will have is a disaster and a bunch of dead people for sure. Most if not all departments, their patrol officers will arrive on scene and go immediately towards the shooter to neutralize him. Whether you have back up or not. This very important, because if the shooter is shooting at you, he's not actively shooting at the populace.

4. SWAT is mainly used now for barricaded suspects, hostage situations, high risk warrant arrests and the like. Wouldnt you like a few trained snipers in overwatch. I would.

5. The supposed miltarization  of local police forces is in response not so much to the threat of a terrorist attack (alquida bands running around), but what the general capability of the local populace is. Police don't match force for force. i.e. If the suspect has a knife you dont confront him with an ASP and pepper spray. They exceed it and the top of the force continuum is firearms (deadly force). You get a shots fired call, you have no idea if the suspect has a pistol, .22, assault rifle, hunting rifle (which are more scary IMO), Barret .50, body armor, etc , you get the point.

6. We dont just train and prepare for what happens 97% of the time, It's that 3% of the time that if you dont plan for, that gets cops killed.

Apologies if anything sounded smarmy, not meant to be.

[garbon]

6. We dont just train and prepare for what happens 97% of the time, It's that 3% of the time that if you dont plan for, that gets cops killed.

Of course on the flip-side when we set up dynamic of all citizens ("civilians"?) as potential enemy combatants, that's what gets ordinary folk killed unnecessarily.

[Valmy]

5. The supposed miltarization  of local police forces is in response not so much to the threat of a terrorist attack (alquida bands running around), but what the general capability of the local populace is.

That is not factually true.  There is no way the local police departments would be spending money on this stuff as a matter of necessity or policy.  They are pretty much all but forced to do so as the unintended consequence of certain federal policies. 

[garbon]

5. The supposed miltarization  of local police forces is in response not so much to the threat of a terrorist attack (alquida bands running around), but what the general capability of the local populace is.

That is not factually true.  There is no way the local police departments would be spending money on this stuff as a matter of necessity or policy.  They are pretty much all but forced to do so as the unintended consequence of certain federal policies. 

Are you saying that most of us don't keep rocket launchers under our beds?

[11B4V]

6. We dont just train and prepare for what happens 97% of the time, It's that 3% of the time that if you dont plan for, that gets cops killed.

Of course on the flip-side when we set up dynamic of all citizens ("civilians"?) as potential enemy combatants, that's what gets ordinary folk killed unnecessarily.

That's a horse shit statement.

[crazy canuck]

If you or I make a mistake on the job we get a stern talking to.

When cops make a mistake - they deserve to die?!?

That's why you double-check the address.  You bust into my house with guns drawn, I may not have enough time to figure out what is going on before I start shooting.  Particularly if you do a shitty job announcing yourself.

That is the problem with American gun laws.  They allow people to have guns who are prepared to shoot first and ask questions later.

[11B4V]

5. The supposed miltarization  of local police forces is in response not so much to the threat of a terrorist attack (alquida bands running around), but what the general capability of the local populace is.

That is not factually true.  There is no way the local police departments would be spending money on this stuff as a matter of necessity or policy.  They are pretty much all but forced to do so as the unintended consequence of certain federal policies.

You all are hopeless.

[crazy canuck]

5. The supposed miltarization  of local police forces is in response not so much to the threat of a terrorist attack (alquida bands running around), but what the general capability of the local populace is.

That is not factually true.  There is no way the local police departments would be spending money on this stuff as a matter of necessity or policy.  They are pretty much all but forced to do so as the unintended consequence of certain federal policies.

You all are hopeless.

I am pretty sure Berkut hasnt lost hope that sanity will prevail.

[11B4V]

If you or I make a mistake on the job we get a stern talking to.

When cops make a mistake - they deserve to die?!?

That's why you double-check the address.  You bust into my house with guns drawn, I may not have enough time to figure out what is going on before I start shooting.  Particularly if you do a shitty job announcing yourself.

It's all bravado, until your either full of holes bleeding on the the floor or peeing yourself.

[Malthus]

If you or I make a mistake on the job we get a stern talking to.

When cops make a mistake - they deserve to die?!?

That's why you double-check the address.  You bust into my house with guns drawn, I may not have enough time to figure out what is going on before I start shooting.  Particularly if you do a shitty job announcing yourself.

That is the problem with American gun laws.  They allow people to have guns who are prepared to shoot first and ask questions later.

... and so, it is not surprising that the average cops have powerful rifles. They may be faced at any moment with derspiess, armed and ready to 'protect his property'.

It seems a bit of a vicious circle.

[crazy canuck]

If you or I make a mistake on the job we get a stern talking to.

When cops make a mistake - they deserve to die?!?

That's why you double-check the address.  You bust into my house with guns drawn, I may not have enough time to figure out what is going on before I start shooting.  Particularly if you do a shitty job announcing yourself.

That is the problem with American gun laws.  They allow people to have guns who are prepared to shoot first and ask questions later.

... and so, it is not surprising that the average cops have powerful rifles. They may be faced at any moment with derspiess, armed and ready to 'protect his property'.

It seems a bit of a vicious circle.

Agreed.  The US appears to be losing an internal war of mutual assured destruction.

[Berkut]

Of course it is the 3% (or even sub 1%) that is the issue, and of course you have to train for that.

The problem is that we are not talking about 3% or 1%, we are talking about 0.01%. The odds of an "active shooter situation" where the need for snipers and machine guns is necessary are ridiculously remote. But we arm the cops as if it is likely, and they are so armed and so trained 100% of the time. So we create a culture of the police being this para-military organization, and we justify it by the need to be able to handle extreme situations that are simply not at all likely to actually occur.

Do they actually happen? Sure. We are a country of 300 million people, lots of bizarre shit is going to happen.

Who gets to decide what the right level of preparation for outlier situations ought to be, understanding that those decisions impact ALL situations? That those decisions impact the very culture that the police are there to protect to begin with?

If a police officer responding to some situation is not adequately trained, armed, or supported, it is the case that they may very well be killed as a result. Or they may allow others to be killed because of their inability to handle the circumstances.

But that is a trade off we have to make at times - that is what I mean by "land of the free, home of the brave". We as citizens have to, at some point, accept that in fact the police will NOT be able to protect us from every extreme corner case because we choose to live in a society where security is not the sole driving force behind our choices, that freedom and liberty are critical decisions as well, and a culture where our police are seen as partners and fellow citizens rather than healvily armed and armored para-military forces are part and parcel to that free society.

This goes beyond choices like how to arm the police - it also goes to choices about how we let the police protect us versus our own rights to privacy and freedom from undue process. We could all be more secure if we are willing to be less free.

My problem with the militarization of the police in the post-9/11 world is that it doesn't seem like that choice is being made by Americans in general, it is being made behind closed doors under the veil of "security", without input from those who are being told they must sacrifice their liberty to do so, and deal with a police force that seems less and less connected to the people it is serving.

To put it bluntly, I am willing to trade the lives of citizens and even police officers for maintaining the free and open society that I think defines America. We seem perfectly happy, we even celebrate, the "price of freedom" when it means dead soldiers in Afghanistan, but that price must be paid by not just soldiers, but by everyone in our society.