Cops need to stop dressing like they are mercs in Iraq circa 2004. Tactical vests, cargo pants with a shitload of shit hanging off them-the average (non SWAT) cop now looks like they are ready to go off on a patrol in a hostile village. I'm an Army vet, and cops dressing like that does intimidate me a little bit-I can't imagine that they present the image of a friendly ally to the average person.
Men should also grow their hair out and stop looking like they are in basic training or AIT.
Another Army vet here and totally agree. I remember looking at pictures of Ferguson and seeing how they were setting up their kit and thinking "what are you guys doing? getting ready for an ambush?" They look so absurd...the one picture of the guy on top of the MRAP with a sniper rifle was equally absurd. Beyond how they look, it's like they're at times forgetting these are citizens and not enemy combatants.
Edit1: Here's the picture I was talking about[1]. Looks like an M110? With some kind of compensator?
Edit2: That Tac light on the end of your sniper rifle just screams "I have no idea wtf I'm doing but imma sit here and look cool."
> Beyond how they look, it's like they're at times forgetting these are citizens and not enemy combatants.
This can't be stressed enough. What needs to be stopped is the false distinction of civilian vs non-civilian in police work and policy. That is strictly a military distinction in combat and does not apply to civilized enforcement of the law during normal circumstances. Cops are not above the law and are just civilians empowered to enforce the laws, nothing more.
I'd go further and say they need to do the same thing with their vehicles, like in Europe. Police officers and their cars are for public safety, and should be highly visible.
I think the intention in the US is that cop cars have to be less visible so that they can catch people committing "crimes" in order to fill quotas. The policy should be shifted to prevent or deter people from acting badly, and you can do that be just being more visible.
As a complete civilian, I'd say that police in all their gear do not look intimidating to me. Mostly it's the posture, the facial expression, the tone of voice that makes someone look friendly (or not). I look at them as I look at construction workers or garbage truckers: this is what they have to wear to do their job, not best-looking, not most comfortable. I can sympathize.
The posture and expression is a part of training often referred to as "Command Presence". I sympathize with the need to protect oneself on the job, but applying "Command Presence" to every situation also escalates problems which would have otherwise been non-issues.
Well I'd suggest that this actually started in 1971, when Richard Nixon started the Drug Wars. Since then the threshold for use of deadly force has been so lowered (hey every criminal could be a violent drug dealer connected to a violent drug network) because every civilian is a potential adversary.
Not very long hair though, after a couple inches it gets to be work to keep up and it's something perps can get a hold of. But yes, exactly, more than a buzz cut would be humanizing.
I see where you're going with that premise, but there's a particular character in The Wire that was one of David Simon's not-so-subtle devices to critique militarization of the police. A three-finger fade is wholly unnecessary.
US police services need to move to "policing by consent" (also often called "community policing"). The concept is that a police service is ineffective if they do not have the broad support of the local community, and the police service should adapt to service the community they have (not the community they'd want to have).
If a bunch of gangbangers "hate" cops then that's fine. But when the good law abiding citizens within a community lose faith in the police service, then that police service becomes ineffective since the community won't help with the police's core mission. Or to phase it another way, the police are an arm of the community, they aren't a law upon themselves (in the figurative sense).
A lot of other countries do this, and it works well.
It is a completely different mindset. All law abiding citizens are now allies in this "war" rather than potential law breakers. You actually have police respond to legitimate community concerns rather than trivial things only the police care about (e.g. DUIs might be a big community concern as opposed to prostitution stings).
Honestly the first thing the US absolutely needs is citizen oversight of police (and police complaints). As long as police police themselves, nothing constructive will happen.
I don't know if we'll ever achieve that here in the U.S. Most of these issues arise in heavily black and Hispanic neighborhoods with high crime. These folks have very little faith in the police and for good reason. The understanding that police are there to protect rich white people from poor black and Hispanic people has gotten less overt and less official since the 1960's, but it's still there to a degree, especially in the widespread practice of focusing resources on keeping violence in poor minority neighborhoods from spilling into higher income white neighborhoods.[1] And in any case historical practice has wiped out any trust that might exist between those communities and the police.
Here is the real question: how do you do community policing in the low-income black neighborhoods of Baltimore? How do you rebuild trust?
[1] As well as the practice of ignoring the deaths of gang members. Maybe they got themselves into their predicament, but you're not going to build trust among their friends and family by treating their deaths as inconsequential, especially given the prevalence of gang membership along a wide spectrum of involvement.
> Here is the real question: how do you do community policing in the low-income black neighborhoods of Baltimore? How do you rebuild trust?
You arrest and prosecute the perpetrators just as quickly and with just as much or more punishment than the "regular" public would get. And you keep doing that to any cop who breaks the law. You also get rid of (and prosecute) the "good" cops who don't report the bad ones.
IOW you show the community that you (the local government) means business when it comes to ending the problem.
> how do you do community policing in the low-income black neighborhoods of Baltimore? How do you rebuild trust?
Time.
Unfortunately trust is earned, and once it is lost it takes twice as long to win back. Baltimore might have issues between the police and community for tens of years to come, but if they start working closely with the community, and actually making changes based on community feedback you may see it turn around slowly.
It may also help to recruit from within the community, more black officers, and more locals in general. That will help sew the bonds of trust between the police and the community (rather than it feeling like us Vs. them).
In general the police need a much better attitude from the top upon down.
> The concept is that a police service is ineffective if they do not have the broad support of the local community
I suspect this has already been pre-co-opted in the United States. Journalists and community leaders and pastors and all sorts of others reflexively support, admire, and praise the police.
> A lot of other countries do this, and it works well.
They can do it because their culture(s) isn't so toxic.
That's part of the problem. You have a significant percentage of the population, who tend to live close together, that will not question police action. Other similar groups will not expect the police to cause anything but grief.
The expectation of unlimited trust is just as bad for police work as total distrust, because neither is well aligned to what is important: That the police are there to serve the community, not to serve some laws or some ideals. When policemen feel that they are better than other people, nothing good can come out of it.
This is part of the American police's self image too. I can find plaques for sale at the supermarket with inspirational sentences about the superiority of law enforcement above mere mortals.
I can only imagine how those products would fail to sell back home in Spain.
A grown man chases a bikini-clad 14 year old girl. He grabs her by the hair and hurls her to the ground. He pins her down, with his knee bearing his full weight down on her bare back. He draws his gun.
Does this make you uncomfortable? Can you picture this girl as your sister, or your daughter?
Think about the real world consequences of warrior policing. This doesn't sound like keeping the peace. It sounds like a child molester's rape fantasy. That girl will be scarred for life. She will fear the police. She will fear men. Is that what we want, as a society? Is this what liberty and pursuit of happiness are supposed to be?
Do we want to be the kind of people who make excuses about how she deserved it?
Depends. Did this actually happen? What has the girl done? Did she just kill someone? Has she just bitten someone's ear off? Context is everything... Maybe the police officer now has nightmares about ear-eating fourteen year old bikini clad girls, and can never have a proper releationship, due to this emotional scarring? If your sister or daughter went completely crazy, and had or was going to hurt herself and others, then of course you want someone to physically restrain her, before something worse happens...
So, yes - if she deserved it, then I absolutely want to be the kind of person who makes that excuse!
This is yet one more of the hidden costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars.
You have a large population of soldiers, many who come back home after their tours of duty, where they were in effect an occupying force. And then they get a job in law enforcement. They are used too a certain way of doing things in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they bring that culture home with them. Even for those who didn't serve, as the article notes, this "warrior culture" has bled into police forces everywhere.
In the military, they say "train as you fight." Well guess what they've been training to do? Hint: it's not the warm and cuddly community policing. When you're used to "fight or fight," in the military, and then you're put back in the civilian world, these issues come to the fore.
Not to be mean or unfair, but some of these soldiers who come back have PTSD and other mental issues (not their fault), but I've wondered how much of that also plays a role in police violence and the way police officers handle themselves in stressful situations.
The other part is the excessive hero worship, also driven by the War on Terror. The "support the troops" conversation stopper has extended to law enforcement and any other public-facing service job, to the point where it's impossible to have a civil debate about the military, police, teachers, or anyone, without offending someone just for bringing up the topic.
It doesn't extend to all public-facing government service jobs.
A friend of mine is a social worker with the county, dealing with people's aid - food stamps, welfare, etc. He has to deny people benefits multiple times every day. This morning, one of his co-workers denied food stamps to someone. That person went outside, got a rock, came back in, and hit the social worker in the head with it, sending her to the hospital.
Won't be seeing "Support our social workers!" stickers at the Wal-Mart anytime soon.
And law enforcement weren't "heroes" before 9/11???
Now, I'm probably older than you, old enough to have watched the first run of hagiographic Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. F.B.I. TV series that ran until 1974, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_F.B.I._(TV_series) ), but I assure this is nothing new. E.g. I can remember more than a few debates I had with co-workers in the '90s on the War on Drugs, I said we could have that, or a free nation, but they were so petrified by the prospect of their children doing drugs that they preferred they'd live in an eventual police state.
EDITED: added eventual, since this was in the context of where we were going, still a confirmed trend two decades later.
Sorry, but this trend seems to have started with changes in the War on Drugs in the '70s, and the popularization of SWAT teams. It was certainly very strong before 9/11.
The irony is that the only way to have had a shot at making the Afghan and Iraq campaigns successful would have been to use the old-fashioned beat-cop tactics: de-escalation, peace-keeping and what is now called "community outreach" (which used to just be "knowing folks").
I honestly have no idea what the numbers are, it's one of those things I've been meaning to research, but have never gotten around too. But from my experience, a large number of troops coming back from the war enter law enforcement.
But I also think (key word, think, it's a hypothesis, no current hard data to back this up at this point, see above paragraph on how I need to do this, but I've been too lazy/busy) this may be highly regional. In the sense that I live in a state with a large number of military bases/troops/persons who go into the military. They come back from their deployments, they go back home, they join the local PD. Some states have less of this than others.
Further, others have made this point, and I guess I was not as clear as I should have been, but in part, you only need one officer who's a vet to come into the department and he says, "When I was in Iraq, this is how we did it..." I don't think that's a huge influence, but I do think it's part of spreading the military culture that the original article is talking about.
Call it militarization of the police, hero worship, cargo-cult, whatever. I believe at the end of the day, the effect is the same, the GWoT has had negative impacts on how America has chosen to police itself.
Another effect here is the paramilitarization of police equipment. Surplus equipment - armored vehicles, assault rifles, body armor, etc - is given away to police forces, leftovers from our overseas wars. This is why you see police in masks and camo that make no sense in an urban environment.
Clothes help define our relationship to others. How much does it change the attitude of a policeman to be wearing body armor and riot gear rather than shirt sleeves?
Is that really true though? I'd always heard that our military was a lot less trigger happy about arresting people - usually surrounding a house and demanding that the residents come out rather than battering down the door and rushing in with guns drawn.
If police officers here in the UK started talking about having a Warrior midset there's be an outcry. It would be a major scadal that would put the credibility of the police force into crisis. (Brit here, so obviously I have no real right of a say in US internal affairs, but I visit the US from time to time).
I can see where it comes from, US officers are armed, and need to be so because they frequently face armed criminals. They have to deal with a different situation. The problem is that those members of the US public that are not armed and actualy have no intention of criminality, or if they do in a minor and non-threatening form, are being dealt with by armed police officers expecting to deal with armed violent thugs. That's a recipe for utter disaster.
There's no easy answer to this. It's right to support police that have to deal with life threatening situations daily. But equally the non-violent public do not deserve to face potential threats to their life and violent coercion in routine interactions with law enforcers.
You've never been to Police College in the UK. I have.
'Officer Safety Training' is all about banging in the concept of "There is no such thing as no threat. There is only a known threat and an unknown threat." It's even on posters around the college showing a police officer talking to an old lady carrying some shopping.
I'd describe it more as a siege mentality than warrior. However it leads to officers drawing batons in completely inappropriate situations and causing all sorts of problems for no reason.
I'm thankful firearms are not routinely issued as these same officers would just as quickly draw a gun and completely fuck a totally innocent situation into a major incident for no reason.
I had colleagues who were proud to be nicknamed Tackleberry. Not a good situation.
>> But equally the non-violent public do not deserve to face potential threats to their life and violent coercion in routine interactions with law enforcers.
It is really not "the public" at large, at least not in many cases. The police seems to be profiling and directing excessive force towards non-Caucasians, as it was so obvious in the shocking incident in Texas.
This case, which sort of crystallized the problem, all started with a typical overweight Walmart white-trash female attacking a group of noisy (?) children in the pool.
For the outsider, the US looks a very unpleasant place to be if you're not white. Not to mention the huge incarceration rate for minor offenses, and the proportion on non caucasians there.
I used to come to the US at least once a year, staying for up to 2-3 weeks on holiday. I haven't in a long time, and I will probably not anytime soon.
The police seems to be profiling and directing excessive force towards non-Caucasians
Law enforcement has always directed this kind of treatment towards non-whites in the US. What has changed is that there are now cameras everywhere so the officer's word isn't enough anymore and they have begun to subject middle and upper middle income white people to the same kind of treatment that used to be reserved for black and brown people.
For the outsider, the US looks a very unpleasant place to be if you're not white.
Racism isn't a US-only problem. There are incidents of European soccer fans making monkey noises when black players come onto the field. In some parts of Africa, there are issues with the government seizing land owned by whites.
It's not even always about race. Every Irishman with whom I have ever spoken has told me stories about how they and/or their (grand)parents were treated by other Europeans.
I don't know if it's possible to fix the underlying cause of these problems. Whenever people think in terms of "Us vs Them", they find justifications for doing all manner of terrible things to each other. It's just that police are the ones tasked with enforcing the laws of a society so when the laws reflect this conflict, so does the behavior of the police.
The incident in Texas in only shocking when one considers the slanted reporting that the media is doing. Those kids were trespassing, were violent with minors, and flatly refused to listen to police officers. The reporting of this is nothing more then a propaganda piece. We have large populations of minorities who feel entitled to behave badly without any consequence because the color of their skin.
The great advance of cameras being cheap and ubiquitous has effectively been countermoved by "Yeah, we saw the video, we investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong" or district attorneys that either decline to prosecute police abuse or treat grand juries in police-abuse cases completely differently than they would in any other case.
That's just a short term fix; we know what's really happening (although it's not always clear in videos, especially if conveniently edited like the Rodney King one), and the longer this goes on without resolution the nastier it gets for everyone.
Which, I suppose, can be a reinforcing cycle; in another sub-thread Army vet remarkEon said "it's like they're at times forgetting these are citizens and not enemy combatants." As the police continue to lose support from the populace, including the traditionally supportive right, more and more of us become enemy combatants in a sense even if the vast majority of us don't take action. And with the concealed carry sweep of most of the nation, we don't actually need the police so much.
IMO, the warrior problem leads to the no accountability problem you speak of. If you program officers to think and act a certain way, then you can't really punish them when they act on their training.
They feed on each other. No accountability means they can be bad actors. Being bad actors encourages them to lobby (directly or through spokesmen in political office or media) for a reduction of accountability.
It doesn't matter what attitudes change, the community relationship between police and citizens will not be repaired till at least my generation is dead (mid 30s) but more likely till at least three current generation of young people is dead. And that only if dramatic changes happen now. Otherwise things will continue to degrade and the police will continue to arrest and kill innocent people for committing crimes that are victim less and shouldn't be crimes at all.
The irony is, of course, that being a police officer is not even a very dangerous job. That leads me to conclude they're just a bunch of cowards with an inferiority complex out to hurt people to make themselves feel better. I'm sure cops exist who aren't like this but that doesn't disprove the fact that the majority are. Then you add their racism to the mix... Cowards will be cowards.
> That leads me to conclude they're just a bunch of cowards with an inferiority complex out to hurt people to make themselves feel better. I'm sure cops exist who aren't like this but that doesn't disprove the fact that the majority are. Then you add their racism to the mix... Cowards will be cowards.
Ah yes, let's demonize a large, heterogeneous group of people because they seem to be inappropriately making generalizations about a large, heterogeneous group of people....
Routine traffic stop. Pretty sure I've never heard of a developer being murdered during a pull request.
> That leads me to conclude they're just a bunch of cowards with an inferiority complex out to hurt people to make themselves feel better. I'm sure cops exist who aren't like this but that doesn't disprove the fact that the majority are. Then you add their racism to the mix... Cowards will be cowards.
Congratulations, I think this is the most bigoted and stereotyping post I have ever read on Hacker News. Ever.
Your single example means nothing. There are (at conservative estimate) around 750,000 law officers w/ arrest powers in the USA. 114 were killed in 2014. This is a 0.016% mortality rate -- and this number includes accidental deaths while on duty. This is about the same percentage as murders only in Chicago -- meaning the population of Chicago is, on average, in more danger just existing than any given police officer is while armed and on duty.
> Congratulations, I think this is the most bigoted and stereotyping post I have ever read on Hacker News. Ever.
DamnYuppie:
> We have large populations of minorities who feel entitled to behave badly without any consequence because the color of their skin.
I dunno. DamnYuppie may be winning. At least joesmo is bigoted against people because of their chosen profession. Unlike DamnYuppie who's bigoted against people for the color of their skin.
"Police officer" is in the top 10 most dangerous jobs in the US...but only barely. It's number 10 after fishing, logging, aircraft pilots and flight engineers, farmers and ranchers, mining, roofing, trash collection, truck driving, and stuntmen. (Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs.ht...). Remember to thank your garbageman.
I didn't say it was safer than programming. One example does not a dangerous job make. If you were threatened with death by police officers for using a public sidewalk or had any clue at all about what police do in this country you'd feel the same too. It's not bigotry, it's a war. Police versus people. You're just too stupid to see it. Or too white possibly.
Hell, a cop executed one of my Dad's old cats one night here in this small town. He allegedly thought it looked "rabid" (it was just ancient, maybe drooling, very, very slow-moving). Call animal control? Call a vet? To hell with that, he wanted to have some shootin' fun, and of course he got away with it, stopping the fearsome, waddling, threat-to-nobody beast in its tracks. In a residential neighborhood. Big man, that cop.
One reason the US has a policing problem is because of the reflexive and thoughtless defense people give them.
How many more Chicago Blacksites, 'accidental' deaths while in custody, and shooting and killing of unarmed citizens do people need to have happen before the cop apologists stop their hero worship excuse making?
Here in Vancouver we have a neighborhood where heavy drug users congregate. There is a heavy foot-patrol police presence, but arresting everyone using drugs is seen as an unworkable solution.
The police have taken to videotaping people who are heavily drugged and out of it. For instance, someone laying stoned in an alley with a needle hanging out of his arm. Of course medical services are summoned too.
The police then make the effort to track these people down to find them at a time when they are not intoxicated and show them the video of themselves... trying to wake them up to the truth and consequences of their addiction.
I don't know how effective this effort is, but I appreciate the police acting like decent human beings rather than bully thugs.
It seems like a no-brainer to me. Training police officers to think like warriors indicates that they're fighting in a war. We already have enough issues with gangs turning our streets into battlegrounds[1]. Why do we need police officers to compound the issue?
Many more cops these days are vets. Many more vet cops have seen combat. It's no surprise we have this militarization of local police forced underway. With increasingly tragic results. Soldiers are trained to advance and overpower by killing, wounding or inspiring enough fear to push the enemy back. I cannot imagine this is a good foundation to build a police officer on in all but the rarest of circumstances.
I'd be very interested to hear from experienced police officers about how accurately this description represents policing, how pervasive this point-of-view is (training or not), why it has arisen, and why it's necessary. I, and I suspect many here, know very little about the job.
Also, in broader society, my impression is that paranoid, angry outlooks are now often accepted as legitimate, 'real' and strong by at least part of a certain segment of our society, rather than being seen as weakness, out-of-control emotion and shameful judgment. For example, this perspective is embraced on a certain cable news channel, it's a hallmark of a certain political movement, and you can see some leaders competing to prove who is angrier and crazier. There's an underlying cultural debate here, also. Many people support this police behavior.
These guys could do worse than read some Terry Pratchett - his Sam Vimes character had a fine appreciation of the difference between a soldier and a policeman.
It also seems in some situations protestor are trying to be a warrior too how many people protesting these days wear masks now compared to 50 years ago?
I'd say it's a culture problem both police and the people they interact with both have a warrior attitude.
The problem is that in many of Americas inner cities there is a gang war going on. You'll never get ride of the warrior view when they are charged with keeping the peace in war zones.
you have "change the world", "python ninja", "rock star", etc.. in software engineering. Cops are people too, and what you see is just similar notions in their professional area. Cool Tazer instead of cool MacBook. Agile law enforcement with multiple refactoring... It is just bad luck if you happen to be the one being "refactored".
'Within law enforcement, few things are more venerated than the concept of the Warrior.'
Sure in some jurisdictions. But not all.
I work with LE in the field as a paramedic, and in the office as a SW Dev. Lots of agencies. Most of the LE folk have been super professional and very mindful of their public service role. Even in stressful situations.
From what I've seen, most cops are just regular people, not wanna-be soldiers.
All cops should be wearing cameras, but I don't think it will work out very well for the SJWs when all the interactions are clearly documented. Imagine if there was video of Michael Brown going for the officers gun, would they still riot?
> Imagine if there was video of Michael Brown going for the officers gun, would they still riot?
That's what causes the problem. Police apologists imagine circumstances that justify their abuse, and are absolutely certain that's what actually happened.
If there was a video, I wouldn't imagine. I'd watch and see what happened.
>If there was a video, I wouldn't imagine. I'd watch and see what happened.
Well you saw the video of him robbing the store and assaulting the clerk moments earlier but that doesn't bother you?
Edit since I can't reply:
At least you didn't say "Police murder innocent black child" so that is a start. His actions moments before make the cops story more likely to be true.
> Imagine if there was video of Michael Brown going for the officers gun, would they still riot?
You say this as if people are looking for an excuse to riot. No one wants a riot, it's bad for the participants, the police, the community, and the local economy. The only winners are looters.
Police are murderous thugs. Their pensions should be cut and department budgets gutted.
US police kill about three people a day, and shoot and harrass many more and all with hardly any consequences. They even openly operate 'blacksites' where people are detained without rights and tortured, sometimes even killed.
These are not the hallmarks of a free society, it is the symptoms of fascist military rule.
Cops need to stop dressing like they are mercs in Iraq circa 2004. Tactical vests, cargo pants with a shitload of shit hanging off them-the average (non SWAT) cop now looks like they are ready to go off on a patrol in a hostile village. I'm an Army vet, and cops dressing like that does intimidate me a little bit-I can't imagine that they present the image of a friendly ally to the average person. Men should also grow their hair out and stop looking like they are in basic training or AIT.
Another Army vet here and totally agree. I remember looking at pictures of Ferguson and seeing how they were setting up their kit and thinking "what are you guys doing? getting ready for an ambush?" They look so absurd...the one picture of the guy on top of the MRAP with a sniper rifle was equally absurd. Beyond how they look, it's like they're at times forgetting these are citizens and not enemy combatants.
Edit1: Here's the picture I was talking about[1]. Looks like an M110? With some kind of compensator?
Edit2: That Tac light on the end of your sniper rifle just screams "I have no idea wtf I'm doing but imma sit here and look cool."
[1] http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/0...
> Beyond how they look, it's like they're at times forgetting these are citizens and not enemy combatants.
This can't be stressed enough. What needs to be stopped is the false distinction of civilian vs non-civilian in police work and policy. That is strictly a military distinction in combat and does not apply to civilized enforcement of the law during normal circumstances. Cops are not above the law and are just civilians empowered to enforce the laws, nothing more.
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I also like the subdued flag patch and ACUPAT trousers. Really sells the hipster "Ramadi 2006" vintage look.
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I'd go further and say they need to do the same thing with their vehicles, like in Europe. Police officers and their cars are for public safety, and should be highly visible.
Here's a typical Swedish police car: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/autopia/images/2008/12/15/...
I think the intention in the US is that cop cars have to be less visible so that they can catch people committing "crimes" in order to fill quotas. The policy should be shifted to prevent or deter people from acting badly, and you can do that be just being more visible.
Lose the neon yellow, and you aren't far off from what an american police car looks like.
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As a complete civilian, I'd say that police in all their gear do not look intimidating to me. Mostly it's the posture, the facial expression, the tone of voice that makes someone look friendly (or not). I look at them as I look at construction workers or garbage truckers: this is what they have to wear to do their job, not best-looking, not most comfortable. I can sympathize.
How is all this gear useful is another question.
The posture and expression is a part of training often referred to as "Command Presence". I sympathize with the need to protect oneself on the job, but applying "Command Presence" to every situation also escalates problems which would have otherwise been non-issues.
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They don't have to wear all that gear to do their job.
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With all that glorification of military and war since 2001 it's no wonder cops want to jump on the bandwagon.
Well I'd suggest that this actually started in 1971, when Richard Nixon started the Drug Wars. Since then the threshold for use of deadly force has been so lowered (hey every criminal could be a violent drug dealer connected to a violent drug network) because every civilian is a potential adversary.
Not very long hair though, after a couple inches it gets to be work to keep up and it's something perps can get a hold of. But yes, exactly, more than a buzz cut would be humanizing.
When you equip men for war, they start to think of themselves as soldiers.
At one time, we at least used to pretend that cops were public servants. We need to go back to that.
Vests are rather practical. The classic bat belt tends to give officers back problems.
Generally agree, but the short-cut hair makes a great deal of sense if you don't want a suspect pulling on your scalp.
De-escalation is more effective than the slight tactical advantage.
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Yet female cops get by just fine without high and tights.
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I see where you're going with that premise, but there's a particular character in The Wire that was one of David Simon's not-so-subtle devices to critique militarization of the police. A three-finger fade is wholly unnecessary.
US police services need to move to "policing by consent" (also often called "community policing"). The concept is that a police service is ineffective if they do not have the broad support of the local community, and the police service should adapt to service the community they have (not the community they'd want to have).
If a bunch of gangbangers "hate" cops then that's fine. But when the good law abiding citizens within a community lose faith in the police service, then that police service becomes ineffective since the community won't help with the police's core mission. Or to phase it another way, the police are an arm of the community, they aren't a law upon themselves (in the figurative sense).
A lot of other countries do this, and it works well.
It is a completely different mindset. All law abiding citizens are now allies in this "war" rather than potential law breakers. You actually have police respond to legitimate community concerns rather than trivial things only the police care about (e.g. DUIs might be a big community concern as opposed to prostitution stings).
Honestly the first thing the US absolutely needs is citizen oversight of police (and police complaints). As long as police police themselves, nothing constructive will happen.
I don't know if we'll ever achieve that here in the U.S. Most of these issues arise in heavily black and Hispanic neighborhoods with high crime. These folks have very little faith in the police and for good reason. The understanding that police are there to protect rich white people from poor black and Hispanic people has gotten less overt and less official since the 1960's, but it's still there to a degree, especially in the widespread practice of focusing resources on keeping violence in poor minority neighborhoods from spilling into higher income white neighborhoods.[1] And in any case historical practice has wiped out any trust that might exist between those communities and the police.
Here is the real question: how do you do community policing in the low-income black neighborhoods of Baltimore? How do you rebuild trust?
[1] As well as the practice of ignoring the deaths of gang members. Maybe they got themselves into their predicament, but you're not going to build trust among their friends and family by treating their deaths as inconsequential, especially given the prevalence of gang membership along a wide spectrum of involvement.
> Here is the real question: how do you do community policing in the low-income black neighborhoods of Baltimore? How do you rebuild trust?
You arrest and prosecute the perpetrators just as quickly and with just as much or more punishment than the "regular" public would get. And you keep doing that to any cop who breaks the law. You also get rid of (and prosecute) the "good" cops who don't report the bad ones.
IOW you show the community that you (the local government) means business when it comes to ending the problem.
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> how do you do community policing in the low-income black neighborhoods of Baltimore? How do you rebuild trust?
Time.
Unfortunately trust is earned, and once it is lost it takes twice as long to win back. Baltimore might have issues between the police and community for tens of years to come, but if they start working closely with the community, and actually making changes based on community feedback you may see it turn around slowly.
It may also help to recruit from within the community, more black officers, and more locals in general. That will help sew the bonds of trust between the police and the community (rather than it feeling like us Vs. them).
In general the police need a much better attitude from the top upon down.
Camden is touting their experiment with it as a success.
I don't know how true that is or if Camden is typical enough that the experience would generalize.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/us/politics/obama-to-limit...
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> The concept is that a police service is ineffective if they do not have the broad support of the local community
I suspect this has already been pre-co-opted in the United States. Journalists and community leaders and pastors and all sorts of others reflexively support, admire, and praise the police.
> A lot of other countries do this, and it works well.
They can do it because their culture(s) isn't so toxic.
That's part of the problem. You have a significant percentage of the population, who tend to live close together, that will not question police action. Other similar groups will not expect the police to cause anything but grief.
The expectation of unlimited trust is just as bad for police work as total distrust, because neither is well aligned to what is important: That the police are there to serve the community, not to serve some laws or some ideals. When policemen feel that they are better than other people, nothing good can come out of it.
This is part of the American police's self image too. I can find plaques for sale at the supermarket with inspirational sentences about the superiority of law enforcement above mere mortals.
I can only imagine how those products would fail to sell back home in Spain.
A grown man chases a bikini-clad 14 year old girl. He grabs her by the hair and hurls her to the ground. He pins her down, with his knee bearing his full weight down on her bare back. He draws his gun.
Does this make you uncomfortable? Can you picture this girl as your sister, or your daughter?
Think about the real world consequences of warrior policing. This doesn't sound like keeping the peace. It sounds like a child molester's rape fantasy. That girl will be scarred for life. She will fear the police. She will fear men. Is that what we want, as a society? Is this what liberty and pursuit of happiness are supposed to be?
Do we want to be the kind of people who make excuses about how she deserved it?
Depends. Did this actually happen? What has the girl done? Did she just kill someone? Has she just bitten someone's ear off? Context is everything... Maybe the police officer now has nightmares about ear-eating fourteen year old bikini clad girls, and can never have a proper releationship, due to this emotional scarring? If your sister or daughter went completely crazy, and had or was going to hurt herself and others, then of course you want someone to physically restrain her, before something worse happens...
So, yes - if she deserved it, then I absolutely want to be the kind of person who makes that excuse!
This is yet one more of the hidden costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars.
You have a large population of soldiers, many who come back home after their tours of duty, where they were in effect an occupying force. And then they get a job in law enforcement. They are used too a certain way of doing things in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they bring that culture home with them. Even for those who didn't serve, as the article notes, this "warrior culture" has bled into police forces everywhere.
In the military, they say "train as you fight." Well guess what they've been training to do? Hint: it's not the warm and cuddly community policing. When you're used to "fight or fight," in the military, and then you're put back in the civilian world, these issues come to the fore.
Not to be mean or unfair, but some of these soldiers who come back have PTSD and other mental issues (not their fault), but I've wondered how much of that also plays a role in police violence and the way police officers handle themselves in stressful situations.
The other part is the excessive hero worship, also driven by the War on Terror. The "support the troops" conversation stopper has extended to law enforcement and any other public-facing service job, to the point where it's impossible to have a civil debate about the military, police, teachers, or anyone, without offending someone just for bringing up the topic.
It doesn't extend to all public-facing government service jobs.
A friend of mine is a social worker with the county, dealing with people's aid - food stamps, welfare, etc. He has to deny people benefits multiple times every day. This morning, one of his co-workers denied food stamps to someone. That person went outside, got a rock, came back in, and hit the social worker in the head with it, sending her to the hospital.
Won't be seeing "Support our social workers!" stickers at the Wal-Mart anytime soon.
And law enforcement weren't "heroes" before 9/11???
Now, I'm probably older than you, old enough to have watched the first run of hagiographic Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. F.B.I. TV series that ran until 1974, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_F.B.I._(TV_series) ), but I assure this is nothing new. E.g. I can remember more than a few debates I had with co-workers in the '90s on the War on Drugs, I said we could have that, or a free nation, but they were so petrified by the prospect of their children doing drugs that they preferred they'd live in an eventual police state.
EDITED: added eventual, since this was in the context of where we were going, still a confirmed trend two decades later.
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Sorry, but this trend seems to have started with changes in the War on Drugs in the '70s, and the popularization of SWAT teams. It was certainly very strong before 9/11.
Sure, it started (slowly I would add) with the War on Drugs, but I do very much believe it escalated with 9/11, GWoT.
If nothing else, look at where all the gear that the police use is coming from? It's surplus from the wars [0].
[0]http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-polic...
The irony is that the only way to have had a shot at making the Afghan and Iraq campaigns successful would have been to use the old-fashioned beat-cop tactics: de-escalation, peace-keeping and what is now called "community outreach" (which used to just be "knowing folks").
Bill Lind has written extensively on this topic.
The vast majority of these police have no military background. It's cargo-cult behavior, not experience.
I honestly have no idea what the numbers are, it's one of those things I've been meaning to research, but have never gotten around too. But from my experience, a large number of troops coming back from the war enter law enforcement.
But I also think (key word, think, it's a hypothesis, no current hard data to back this up at this point, see above paragraph on how I need to do this, but I've been too lazy/busy) this may be highly regional. In the sense that I live in a state with a large number of military bases/troops/persons who go into the military. They come back from their deployments, they go back home, they join the local PD. Some states have less of this than others.
Further, others have made this point, and I guess I was not as clear as I should have been, but in part, you only need one officer who's a vet to come into the department and he says, "When I was in Iraq, this is how we did it..." I don't think that's a huge influence, but I do think it's part of spreading the military culture that the original article is talking about.
Call it militarization of the police, hero worship, cargo-cult, whatever. I believe at the end of the day, the effect is the same, the GWoT has had negative impacts on how America has chosen to police itself.
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Another effect here is the paramilitarization of police equipment. Surplus equipment - armored vehicles, assault rifles, body armor, etc - is given away to police forces, leftovers from our overseas wars. This is why you see police in masks and camo that make no sense in an urban environment.
Clothes help define our relationship to others. How much does it change the attitude of a policeman to be wearing body armor and riot gear rather than shirt sleeves?
Is that really true though? I'd always heard that our military was a lot less trigger happy about arresting people - usually surrounding a house and demanding that the residents come out rather than battering down the door and rushing in with guns drawn.
If police officers here in the UK started talking about having a Warrior midset there's be an outcry. It would be a major scadal that would put the credibility of the police force into crisis. (Brit here, so obviously I have no real right of a say in US internal affairs, but I visit the US from time to time).
I can see where it comes from, US officers are armed, and need to be so because they frequently face armed criminals. They have to deal with a different situation. The problem is that those members of the US public that are not armed and actualy have no intention of criminality, or if they do in a minor and non-threatening form, are being dealt with by armed police officers expecting to deal with armed violent thugs. That's a recipe for utter disaster.
There's no easy answer to this. It's right to support police that have to deal with life threatening situations daily. But equally the non-violent public do not deserve to face potential threats to their life and violent coercion in routine interactions with law enforcers.
You've never been to Police College in the UK. I have.
'Officer Safety Training' is all about banging in the concept of "There is no such thing as no threat. There is only a known threat and an unknown threat." It's even on posters around the college showing a police officer talking to an old lady carrying some shopping.
I'd describe it more as a siege mentality than warrior. However it leads to officers drawing batons in completely inappropriate situations and causing all sorts of problems for no reason.
I'm thankful firearms are not routinely issued as these same officers would just as quickly draw a gun and completely fuck a totally innocent situation into a major incident for no reason.
I had colleagues who were proud to be nicknamed Tackleberry. Not a good situation.
>> But equally the non-violent public do not deserve to face potential threats to their life and violent coercion in routine interactions with law enforcers.
It is really not "the public" at large, at least not in many cases. The police seems to be profiling and directing excessive force towards non-Caucasians, as it was so obvious in the shocking incident in Texas.
This case, which sort of crystallized the problem, all started with a typical overweight Walmart white-trash female attacking a group of noisy (?) children in the pool.
For the outsider, the US looks a very unpleasant place to be if you're not white. Not to mention the huge incarceration rate for minor offenses, and the proportion on non caucasians there.
I used to come to the US at least once a year, staying for up to 2-3 weeks on holiday. I haven't in a long time, and I will probably not anytime soon.
It's increasingly becoming a sad and scary place.
The police seems to be profiling and directing excessive force towards non-Caucasians
Law enforcement has always directed this kind of treatment towards non-whites in the US. What has changed is that there are now cameras everywhere so the officer's word isn't enough anymore and they have begun to subject middle and upper middle income white people to the same kind of treatment that used to be reserved for black and brown people.
For the outsider, the US looks a very unpleasant place to be if you're not white.
Racism isn't a US-only problem. There are incidents of European soccer fans making monkey noises when black players come onto the field. In some parts of Africa, there are issues with the government seizing land owned by whites.
It's not even always about race. Every Irishman with whom I have ever spoken has told me stories about how they and/or their (grand)parents were treated by other Europeans.
I don't know if it's possible to fix the underlying cause of these problems. Whenever people think in terms of "Us vs Them", they find justifications for doing all manner of terrible things to each other. It's just that police are the ones tasked with enforcing the laws of a society so when the laws reflect this conflict, so does the behavior of the police.
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The incident in Texas in only shocking when one considers the slanted reporting that the media is doing. Those kids were trespassing, were violent with minors, and flatly refused to listen to police officers. The reporting of this is nothing more then a propaganda piece. We have large populations of minorities who feel entitled to behave badly without any consequence because the color of their skin.
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Judging from the outside, US law enforcement has a "no accountability" problem, not a warrior one.
That's the big issue.
The great advance of cameras being cheap and ubiquitous has effectively been countermoved by "Yeah, we saw the video, we investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong" or district attorneys that either decline to prosecute police abuse or treat grand juries in police-abuse cases completely differently than they would in any other case.
That's just a short term fix; we know what's really happening (although it's not always clear in videos, especially if conveniently edited like the Rodney King one), and the longer this goes on without resolution the nastier it gets for everyone.
Which, I suppose, can be a reinforcing cycle; in another sub-thread Army vet remarkEon said "it's like they're at times forgetting these are citizens and not enemy combatants." As the police continue to lose support from the populace, including the traditionally supportive right, more and more of us become enemy combatants in a sense even if the vast majority of us don't take action. And with the concealed carry sweep of most of the nation, we don't actually need the police so much.
IMO, the warrior problem leads to the no accountability problem you speak of. If you program officers to think and act a certain way, then you can't really punish them when they act on their training.
They feed on each other. No accountability means they can be bad actors. Being bad actors encourages them to lobby (directly or through spokesmen in political office or media) for a reduction of accountability.
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It doesn't matter what attitudes change, the community relationship between police and citizens will not be repaired till at least my generation is dead (mid 30s) but more likely till at least three current generation of young people is dead. And that only if dramatic changes happen now. Otherwise things will continue to degrade and the police will continue to arrest and kill innocent people for committing crimes that are victim less and shouldn't be crimes at all.
The irony is, of course, that being a police officer is not even a very dangerous job. That leads me to conclude they're just a bunch of cowards with an inferiority complex out to hurt people to make themselves feel better. I'm sure cops exist who aren't like this but that doesn't disprove the fact that the majority are. Then you add their racism to the mix... Cowards will be cowards.
> That leads me to conclude they're just a bunch of cowards with an inferiority complex out to hurt people to make themselves feel better. I'm sure cops exist who aren't like this but that doesn't disprove the fact that the majority are. Then you add their racism to the mix... Cowards will be cowards.
Ah yes, let's demonize a large, heterogeneous group of people because they seem to be inappropriately making generalizations about a large, heterogeneous group of people....
> The irony is, of course, that being a police officer is not even a very dangerous job.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/10/us/mississippi-police-officers...
Routine traffic stop. Pretty sure I've never heard of a developer being murdered during a pull request.
> That leads me to conclude they're just a bunch of cowards with an inferiority complex out to hurt people to make themselves feel better. I'm sure cops exist who aren't like this but that doesn't disprove the fact that the majority are. Then you add their racism to the mix... Cowards will be cowards.
Congratulations, I think this is the most bigoted and stereotyping post I have ever read on Hacker News. Ever.
Your single example means nothing. There are (at conservative estimate) around 750,000 law officers w/ arrest powers in the USA. 114 were killed in 2014. This is a 0.016% mortality rate -- and this number includes accidental deaths while on duty. This is about the same percentage as murders only in Chicago -- meaning the population of Chicago is, on average, in more danger just existing than any given police officer is while armed and on duty.
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> Congratulations, I think this is the most bigoted and stereotyping post I have ever read on Hacker News. Ever.
DamnYuppie:
> We have large populations of minorities who feel entitled to behave badly without any consequence because the color of their skin.
I dunno. DamnYuppie may be winning. At least joesmo is bigoted against people because of their chosen profession. Unlike DamnYuppie who's bigoted against people for the color of their skin.
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Being a taxi driver is actually more dangerous than being a police officer.
http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-dangerous-jobs/
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"Police officer" is in the top 10 most dangerous jobs in the US...but only barely. It's number 10 after fishing, logging, aircraft pilots and flight engineers, farmers and ranchers, mining, roofing, trash collection, truck driving, and stuntmen. (Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs.ht...). Remember to thank your garbageman.
I didn't say it was safer than programming. One example does not a dangerous job make. If you were threatened with death by police officers for using a public sidewalk or had any clue at all about what police do in this country you'd feel the same too. It's not bigotry, it's a war. Police versus people. You're just too stupid to see it. Or too white possibly.
"Pretty sure I've never heard of a developer being murdered during a pull request."
Pretty sure developer isn't the line for "very dangerous job".
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Given how they slaughter dogs when given a chance, sometimes even when the dogs are running away, your thesis looks awfully good.
Hell, a cop executed one of my Dad's old cats one night here in this small town. He allegedly thought it looked "rabid" (it was just ancient, maybe drooling, very, very slow-moving). Call animal control? Call a vet? To hell with that, he wanted to have some shootin' fun, and of course he got away with it, stopping the fearsome, waddling, threat-to-nobody beast in its tracks. In a residential neighborhood. Big man, that cop.
One reason the US has a policing problem is because of the reflexive and thoughtless defense people give them.
How many more Chicago Blacksites, 'accidental' deaths while in custody, and shooting and killing of unarmed citizens do people need to have happen before the cop apologists stop their hero worship excuse making?
Radley Balko has been highlighting this for years.
This has a good set of links to articles and reviews of his book - http://www.theagitator.com/2013/08/05/all-things-warrior-cop...
This article hits it squarely on the head. Police today are a reflection of the paranoid, intermittently terrified culture we've built.
Here in Vancouver we have a neighborhood where heavy drug users congregate. There is a heavy foot-patrol police presence, but arresting everyone using drugs is seen as an unworkable solution.
The police have taken to videotaping people who are heavily drugged and out of it. For instance, someone laying stoned in an alley with a needle hanging out of his arm. Of course medical services are summoned too.
The police then make the effort to track these people down to find them at a time when they are not intoxicated and show them the video of themselves... trying to wake them up to the truth and consequences of their addiction.
I don't know how effective this effort is, but I appreciate the police acting like decent human beings rather than bully thugs.
It seems like a no-brainer to me. Training police officers to think like warriors indicates that they're fighting in a war. We already have enough issues with gangs turning our streets into battlegrounds[1]. Why do we need police officers to compound the issue?
[1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/22/how-chicago...
Warriors go to war.
If the police are warriors, if they are going to war, who are their enemies?
The answer no one speaks aloud is "We are".
Gangs mostly. This is why cops in cities with gang problems act like soldiers and cops in suburbia are mostly polite meter maids.
Many more cops these days are vets. Many more vet cops have seen combat. It's no surprise we have this militarization of local police forced underway. With increasingly tragic results. Soldiers are trained to advance and overpower by killing, wounding or inspiring enough fear to push the enemy back. I cannot imagine this is a good foundation to build a police officer on in all but the rarest of circumstances.
I'd be very interested to hear from experienced police officers about how accurately this description represents policing, how pervasive this point-of-view is (training or not), why it has arisen, and why it's necessary. I, and I suspect many here, know very little about the job.
Also, in broader society, my impression is that paranoid, angry outlooks are now often accepted as legitimate, 'real' and strong by at least part of a certain segment of our society, rather than being seen as weakness, out-of-control emotion and shameful judgment. For example, this perspective is embraced on a certain cable news channel, it's a hallmark of a certain political movement, and you can see some leaders competing to prove who is angrier and crazier. There's an underlying cultural debate here, also. Many people support this police behavior.
Horrifying.
These guys could do worse than read some Terry Pratchett - his Sam Vimes character had a fine appreciation of the difference between a soldier and a policeman.
The difference between a baton and a sword.
I really like the way commentary is noted in the gutters of the article and referenced from the text. That's a very cool trick.
And on mobile it's also very nice - footnote icons that expand blockquote-style text when clicked and turn into "close" buttons to collapse it.
It also seems in some situations protestor are trying to be a warrior too how many people protesting these days wear masks now compared to 50 years ago?
I'd say it's a culture problem both police and the people they interact with both have a warrior attitude.
The problem is that in many of Americas inner cities there is a gang war going on. You'll never get ride of the warrior view when they are charged with keeping the peace in war zones.
When you're a warrior, you're at war with someone ...
you have "change the world", "python ninja", "rock star", etc.. in software engineering. Cops are people too, and what you see is just similar notions in their professional area. Cool Tazer instead of cool MacBook. Agile law enforcement with multiple refactoring... It is just bad luck if you happen to be the one being "refactored".
'Within law enforcement, few things are more venerated than the concept of the Warrior.'
Sure in some jurisdictions. But not all.
I work with LE in the field as a paramedic, and in the office as a SW Dev. Lots of agencies. Most of the LE folk have been super professional and very mindful of their public service role. Even in stressful situations.
From what I've seen, most cops are just regular people, not wanna-be soldiers.
All cops should be wearing cameras, but I don't think it will work out very well for the SJWs when all the interactions are clearly documented. Imagine if there was video of Michael Brown going for the officers gun, would they still riot?
> Imagine if there was video of Michael Brown going for the officers gun, would they still riot?
That's what causes the problem. Police apologists imagine circumstances that justify their abuse, and are absolutely certain that's what actually happened.
If there was a video, I wouldn't imagine. I'd watch and see what happened.
>If there was a video, I wouldn't imagine. I'd watch and see what happened.
Well you saw the video of him robbing the store and assaulting the clerk moments earlier but that doesn't bother you?
Edit since I can't reply:
At least you didn't say "Police murder innocent black child" so that is a start. His actions moments before make the cops story more likely to be true.
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> Imagine if there was video of Michael Brown going for the officers gun, would they still riot?
You say this as if people are looking for an excuse to riot. No one wants a riot, it's bad for the participants, the police, the community, and the local economy. The only winners are looters.
Actually it was out of towners that trashed that neighborhood not residents. They had a good excuse to make a mess and steal some stuff.
Police are murderous thugs. Their pensions should be cut and department budgets gutted.
US police kill about three people a day, and shoot and harrass many more and all with hardly any consequences. They even openly operate 'blacksites' where people are detained without rights and tortured, sometimes even killed.
These are not the hallmarks of a free society, it is the symptoms of fascist military rule.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/10/the-counted-5...