Militarization of the police in the United States

[omon]

yes that is exactly what I'm saying, if i hit someone and ran and he died, i would be charged with murder, i have seen it happen. the cop got away with 4 tickets, and yes it does happen often, more often than reported, and i have firsthand experience with it. in separate incidents. and have seen such things happen too many times to brush it off as "bad apples" the whole tree is rotten, some apples are good, but it does not do much for overall result.

any comparison is possible, but not every makes sense, or reflect anything useful, in this case doctors mistakes, and police misconduct are not exactly the same thing.
medical errors can often be classified as accidents, or worst case, criminal negligence, but police misconduct is intent, even covering up for crimes of other cops is intent. but you really have to live here and deal with it to truly understand it.

[chanjyj]

Fast forward to 00:59. I can't believe it. Up-armoured vehicles like the Lenco BEAR I've seen but this!

[zraver]

After Vietnam the various departments all got M114's, after Desert Storm and the Cold war they got surplus hummers or Cadillac Gage's. Now after OIF/OEF they are getting surplus MRAP's.

[tuna]

After Vietnam the various departments all got M114's, after Desert Storm and the Cold war they got surplus hummers or Cadillac Gage's. Now after OIF/OEF they are getting surplus MRAP's.

The problem isn't getting this surplus equipment, which I think is a very good deal for all. The problem is that once they get this equipment, they want to use it. Simple human nature - give a guy a new hammer and he'll look for a nail. Beyond that, they need to justify having this equipment and the costs of upkeep. So they'll find justifications to use it so that they'll have it for the one time they do need it.

[chanjyj]

Tuna put it right - "justify cost of upkeep".

[zraver]

Tuna put it right - "justify cost of upkeep".

In a lot of areas that MRAP would be an ideal rescue vehicle for flood waters. But ya I see the threat in having so many armored vehicles in and amongst the citizens. However, they will never out number the total number of SWAT teams in the country so cutting the number of those teams will reduce the need for such vehicles.

[Doktor]

yes that is exactly what I'm saying, if i hit someone and ran and he died, i would be charged with murder, i have seen it happen. the cop got away with 4 tickets, and yes it does happen often, more often than reported, and i have firsthand experience with it. in separate incidents. and have seen such things happen too many times to brush it off as "bad apples" the whole tree is rotten, some apples are good, but it does not do much for overall result.

I am judging by what we have here. I'd characterize our LEOs' mistakes as negligence. And they face charges. Not always, but in most of the cases. Some are even weird for US context.
Last year off duty cop killed two people with his gun over what was reported an argument over a parking slot. The cop was with his daughter and felt threatened for his own and his daughter safety. He was sentenced for life. I believe he would be a free man in USA. Especially in Florida.
Another case is where an uninformed cop who was securing the PM, beaten a teen (the kid passed later) was also sentenced for a long time. His version of events was the kid was running so he pushed him, kid fell and hit the sidewalk with his head. As you can imagine there were other cops around who didn't call Emergency since their colleague told them the kid will be fine. They tried to cover up the thing, but the pressure for his actions was very high. The other cops are free.

any comparison is possible, but not every makes sense, or reflect anything useful, in this case doctors mistakes, and police misconduct are not exactly the same thing. medical errors can often be classified as accidents, or worst case, criminal negligence, but police misconduct is intent, even covering up for crimes of other cops is intent. but you really have to live here and deal with it to truly understand it.

You are starting with a premise that the officers are doing violations on purpose and with intention, I believe in 99% of the cases it's the situation gone out of control and blame lack of training for it. Again, I speak from what happens here.
Another thing is we don't have many full scale mil-type raids, so we don't see pets being shot, elders being put with the face on the floor, kids being cuffed...

[Monash]

Did a quick check and I do mean quick, so what follows in not statistically valid just a guestimate. Wiki lists the number of fatal Police shootings in the US for 2012 as 587. Likewise as previously stated one estimate I saw for the total number of LEO there was aprox 800,000. If you assume about a 1 to 6 to kill to injury rate, that puts the number of shootings at about 1 per 228 officers per year. Most would be "justifiable" some not.

As for Oman I read the article about your friend and nowhere did it suggest the driver was negligent in fact the article referred to a witness who apportioned some of the blame to your friend, nothing in it suggested "murder". Disregarding the fact that one small news article does not form the basis for any sensible analysis in this case it is the only thing I have so here goes.

Maybe the officer was negligent, maybe not. Perhaps he should have or will be charged with a criminal offense - I don't know. What I can say is that no evidence was presented in the article to suggest it was anything more than a tragic accident. Murder requires intent so if you want to claim this was murder prove there was some.

As for the rest you appear to have issues with law enforcement (or maybe just issues in general ). In any event you offer no evidence to support your claim that "all cops in the US are bad shots" . Instead all you do is refer to media reports about a few isolated instances out the hundreds of officer involved shootings in the US each year where you seem to think civilians would have done better. Presumably you think you would have done better, so to keep it simple - shooting at a paper target at the range where you can get your sight picture, take that deep breath, half exhale, and gently squeeze the trigger is NOT the same thing as shooting at another human being when your own life or someone else's is at risk and you have no time to think, only to respond as you've been trained. If you think at all its probably something along the line of "please don't let me f*&% this up!.

And as for your few isolated examples (out of the hundreds of officer involved shootings in the US each year) give me a detailed breakdown of each event step by step from beginning to end with distances, geometry of the engagement space, rates of movement, lighting and all the other variables spelled out and I'll offer an a semi educated opinion. But don't wave a few examples of what you consider to be poor performance under my nose as if that proves your point. I'm more than happy to accept a broad brush critique of the officers involved in those shootings from someone with a claim to expertise but not from anyone else.

As for the dancing I was being facetious. I'm not that good a dancer.

Oh and P.S. - in 20 years of duty I have never once perjured myself in the witness box or been cognisant of a colleague doing so. Aside from the fact that I regard myself as a professional those corny old concepts of honour and oaths and stuff keep getting in the way dam them.

[Monash]

In a lot of areas that MRAP would be an ideal rescue vehicle for flood waters. But ya I see the threat in having so many armored vehicles in and amongst the citizens. However, they will never out number the total number of SWAT teams in the country so cutting the number of those teams will reduce the need for such vehicles.

Lots of MRAPS going cheap now that the Afghanistan is winding down and it looks better giving them to local LEOS rather than having to admit they over ordered in the first place and wasted all those taxpayer dollars. Good point about using them for rescue vehicles, however given recent events in the US I can maybe see a even better use for them in rural firefighting. Conversion costs would be greater but you could move a lot of pumps, tools and men through dangerous fire zones with a fleet of converted MRAPS.

As for county SWAT Teams I can't see how they all need an armoured vehicle on standby. I mean how many sieges do you have over there in any one county at a time? Spread-em round, say one every two or three counties with the operating costs pooled. One phone call and whoevers garaging the thing delivers it to the CP/rally point.

[erik]

Lots of MRAPS going cheap now that the Afghanistan is winding down and it looks better giving them to local LEOS rather than having to admit they over ordered in the first place and wasted all those taxpayer dollars. Good point about using them for rescue vehicles, however given recent events in the US I can maybe see a even better use for them in rural firefighting. Conversion costs would be greater but you could move a lot of pumps, tools and men through dangerous fire zones with a fleet of converted MRAPS.

As for county SWAT Teams I can't see how they all need an armoured vehicle on standby. I mean how many sieges do you have over there in any one county at a time? Spread-em round, say one every two or three counties with the operating costs pooled. One phone call and whoevers garaging the thing delivers it to the CP/rally point.

That is how many areas/counties work. Hell, the State Police will actually use their SWAT team/vehicle in certain counties, towns, etc. etc. as the sole vehicle/team that is provided for free by the State police. But the larger cities and counties who have the funds have their own vehicles/teams.

A rural county near where I live in Michigan just got a MRAP that was in Afghanistan for free. It was going to be junked out otherwise. That department didn't have any kind of specialized armored vehicle so why turn down the MRAP for free?

Also these vehicles aren't used like candy. Many times, just regular vans or SUVs are used.


Edit: many of the Lenco bear vehicles you see we're provided by federal grants that were being given out during the post 9/11 security craze.

[omon]

As for Oman I read the article about your friend and nowhere did it suggest the driver was negligent .....maybe the officer was negligent, maybe not. Perhaps he should have or will be charged with a criminal offense - I don't know. What I can say is that no evidence was presented in the article to suggest it was anything more than a tragic accident. Murder requires intent so if you want to claim this was murder prove there was some.

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can you read letters?? i thought my name cleary says Omon, not Oman. if you can't see that what else can't you see??

he left the scene of an accident, that is a felony. murder charges not always need intent. and leaving a scene of a fatal accidents can result in murder charges. it happened before.

also i never said ALL cops bad apples, i said most, but good apples can't save rotten tree, and link to police misconduct site is something you should look at. if you want breakdown.
and i'm pretty sure civilians would do better, a don't mean thugs and gangsters, but law abiding ccw), they are not nearly so trigger happy. since it would be their ass on the line, not their dept\pba, will sort this out. it has little to do with training, even thou ccw holders have plenty of it. and i have seen numerous times ccw embraced cops at the range. i got plenty of evidence to based my strong opinion on.

[omon]

You are starting with a premise that the officers are doing violations on purpose and with intention, ...

lol, i really don't care if they have intent or not, don't care the reason they do it, all i care that they do it. and quite a lot of it, site linked few pages before has pretty good number of facts.

[zraver]

Lots of MRAPS going cheap now that the Afghanistan is winding down and it looks better giving them to local LEOS rather than having to admit they over ordered in the first place and wasted all those taxpayer dollars. Good point about using them for rescue vehicles, however given recent events in the US I can maybe see a even better use for them in rural firefighting. Conversion costs would be greater but you could move a lot of pumps, tools and men through dangerous fire zones with a fleet of converted MRAPS.

An MRAP is a high risk of rollover platform.... I do not want them doing rural wildland fires, someone will take it off road, roll it and kill a bunch of people. They also have a really high ground pressure and tend to get stuck. Rollover risk plus easily stuck= bad idea for wildland fires.


As for your point about police shootings, shootings are rare events. Rather I wish we knew the injury rate per arrest and by type. Head, rib, and throat injuries in particular. That would be a much easier way to filter out bad apples. Combine an always on video, criminalize brady violations by police along with better data tracking and you can create an environment that is safer for good cops and incentives the exit of bad cops.

[Monash]

An MRAP is a high risk of rollover platform.... I do not want them doing rural wildland fires, someone will take it off road, roll it and kill a bunch of people. They also have a really high ground pressure and tend to get stuck. Rollover risk plus easily stuck= bad idea for wildland fires.

Correct me if I am wrong but believe MRAPs were designed with some degree of "off road" capability if only so they they can deal with river fordings and dirt tracks etc. I am aware they have a high center of gravity but as the picture below indicates so do our standard rural firefighting platforms over here.




Good driver training is the key to preventing rollovers. They still occur of course rarely from time to time but a high center of gravity doesn't discount a vehicle from service selection for firefighting duty -in fact given the terrain they work in it's almost a requirement. These vehicles do go "bush" but they do have limited off road capability for obstacle avoidance and the rest... Cheers

[Monash]

can you read letters?? i thought my name cleary says Omon, not Oman. if you can't see that what else can't you see??

he left the scene of an accident, that is a felony. murder charges not always need intent. and leaving a scene of a fatal accidents can result in murder charges. it happened before.

also i never said ALL cops bad apples, i said most, but good apples can't save rotten tree, and link to police misconduct site is something you should look at. if you want breakdown.
and i'm pretty sure civilians would do better, a don't mean thugs and gangsters, but law abiding ccw), they are not nearly so trigger happy. since it would be their ass on the line, not their dept\pba, will sort this out. it has little to do with training, even thou ccw holders have plenty of it. and i have seen numerous times ccw embraced cops at the range. i got plenty of evidence to based my strong opinion on.

My apologies for the misspelling of your name, no offense was intended. On the bright side at least I didn't call you Onan - a biblical reference with slightly unfortunate connotations if you can be bothered looking it up. :red: although I'm starting to think it might be appropriate.

I'll let the 800,000 LEO referred to earlier know that most of them are bad cops, poor shots and thugs who don't deserve to keep their jobs. Perhaps they'll all resign in shame - then you can start your crusade on Doctors, engineers and rogue plumbers etc as you work your way down the no doubt long list of professions that have incurred your ire.

....and for the last time at Law in the U.S. as in all western nations a charge of murder requires the mens rea of intent as in "I intend to stop wasting my time."