Disarm American police. Nationwide. It's far past time.
Not an option. This isn't the UK, they'd get massacred in any confrontation with actual armed dangerous criminals.
And UK police have trained units to respond to actual, armed, dangerous criminals.
As pointed out, the problem isn't that bad guys have guns. It's that they're everywhere. To be able to disarm patrol officers, you'd have to disarm everybody else, too.
Trained response units would be somewhat difficult because of scale.
Comparison: there is 1.3 cops per square mile in the UK.
There is .2 cops per square mile in the US.
I guess you could cut out a ton of small towns but then you'd be right back into the Ferguson issue.
Really comes down to needing federal oversight and some draconian internal affairs.
This is somewhat misleading. The US probably has large, empty, unpatrolled areas as large as the UK itself. A square mile isn't all that big, but I'm pretty sure we don't need officers patrolling the top of Mt. Whitney.
Plus, we already have trained response units. They're called SWAT. Unfortunately, they are also becoming the standard response. With all things considered, it isn't scale, it isn't training, it isn't anything other than we arm them to the teeth, set them loose with a 'us vs them' mentality, and then refuse to hold them accountable. And proposing federal oversight is a joke. I still see politician wearing those silly Secret Service flag pins. You don't win elections being 'soft' on crime and you don't win elections by 'restricting' the police from 'making us safe'.
There is no one solution and anything positive would take years to enact and even more to make an impact.
Once, I accompanied an officer on a call. At one home, a teenage boy answered the door. That officer accused him of harboring a robbery suspect, and demanded that he let her inside. When he refused, the officer yanked him onto the porch by his throat and began punching him.
Another officer met us and told the boy to stand. He replied that he couldn’t. So the officer slammed him against the house and cuffed him. When the boy again said he couldn’t walk, the officer grabbed him by his ankles and dragged him to the car. It turned out the boy had been on crutches when he answered the door, and couldn’t walk.
Sigh
+3
HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
Disarm American police. Nationwide. It's far past time.
Not an option.
It's absolutely an option; put armed response officers in patrol cars and have them on standby as needed. America isn't the Wild West anymore, with asshole criminal gunslingers running around committing crimes in rampant excess. There are maybe a few areas in this country that need armed officers on notice at all times (big cities mainly), but for your simple day to day shit you don't need a bunch of Yippee Kaiy Yay Motherfucker blue fetishists running around with power trip fantasies.
Disarm the police.
+1
HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
Also cops receive plenty of training as is. They already know better. And they also (correctly) assume there is a different set of criminal justice standards that will be applied to them should they fuck up, even if their fuckup is caught on camera. More/standardized training isn't the answer; accountability and disarmament are.
You're assuming all police departments are equal, have the same training and standards for each department. They don't.
Even within major metropolitan areas, you can have different departments with wildly different standards. It's what let's places like Ferguson exist.
Reorganization on the local level with standardized training and hiring practices across the board would do wonders for any police department. Someone like Timothy Loehmann should have never been hired in light of his dismissal from the Independence police department. They exercised good judgement during their training process, identifying a lack of maturity and inability to follow orders and giving him the choice of resigning or being let go. The Cleveland police department hired him without reviewing his file and a 12-year-old paid the price.
Disarming the police does nothing to curtail poor training and poor hiring. Especially with how ubiquitous guns are in America. You'll never get a politician or a significant amount of the public to go along with it.
Citizen (I hate the term civilian used in relation to the police, they are not military) review boards would also go along way towards accountability.
The problem is that cops aren’t held accountable for their actions, and they know it. These officers violate rights with impunity. They know there’s a different criminal justice system for civilians and police.
Even when officers get caught, they know they’ll be investigated by their friends, and put on paid leave. My colleagues would laughingly refer to this as a free vacation. It isn’t a punishment.
You're assuming all police departments are equal, have the same training and standards for each department. They don't.
Even within major metropolitan areas, you can have different departments with wildly different standards. It's what let's places like Ferguson exist.
Reorganization on the local level with standardized training and hiring practices across the board would do wonders for any police department. Someone like Timothy Loehmann should have never been hired in light of his dismissal from the Independence police department. They exercised good judgement during their training process, identifying a lack of maturity and inability to follow orders and giving him the choice of resigning or being let go. The Cleveland police department hired him without reviewing his file and a 12-year-old paid the price.
Disarming the police does nothing to curtail poor training and poor hiring. Especially with how ubiquitous guns are in America. You'll never get a politician or a significant amount of the public to go along with it.
Citizen (I hate the term civilian used in relation to the police, they are not military) review boards would also go along way towards accountability.
Piggy-backing off of this, its interesting how you can get people to agree to things if they aren't heavily politicized, even the police. I know the county Sheriff's department back where I grew up in super conservative southern Indiana adopted police mounted cameras around a year or so ago. It was an initiative lead by a super conservative Sheriff who did it for pragmatic reasons (as mentioned in this thread it lowered complaints against police, is super useful as evidence, etc.). Having talked to a lot of people that work for that department recently, I bet that it would be near impossible for them to adapt now if they already hadn't done so, due to how much it is bashed in conservative media. Yet I haven't seen any of the officers I know complain about having them on a personal level.
Disarm American police. Nationwide. It's far past time.
Unfortunately not a very realistic proposition what with how prevalent - nay, ubiquitous - firearms are in this country.
But violent crime is on a steep decline. That is to say, non-police violent crime is, anyway.
Perhaps there could be a middle ground, where not all policemen need to be routinely armed with deadly weapons on all occasions from day one after they leave the academy.
Trained response units would be somewhat difficult because of scale.
Comparison: there is 1.3 cops per square mile in the UK.
There is .2 cops per square mile in the US.
I guess you could cut out a ton of small towns but then you'd be right back into the Ferguson issue.
Really comes down to needing federal oversight and some draconian internal affairs.
There are areas of the UK which are also sparsely populated. These tend to be the least violent places. Is there a big murder problem in the Dakota badlands?
Trained response units would be somewhat difficult because of scale.
Comparison: there is 1.3 cops per square mile in the UK.
There is .2 cops per square mile in the US.
I guess you could cut out a ton of small towns but then you'd be right back into the Ferguson issue.
Really comes down to needing federal oversight and some draconian internal affairs.
There are areas of the UK which are also sparsely populated. These tend to be the least violent places. Is there a big murder problem in the Dakota badlands?
I am strongly curious if the incidence of police brutality complaints tracks linearly with population or not. At a guess I would expect it doesn't. So it may be reasonable to arm the rural cops but once you get into suburbs/metro areas to rely on HTR teams.
There are areas of the UK which are also sparsely populated. These tend to be the least violent places. Is there a big murder problem in the Dakota badlands?
Alaska has major problems with violent crime because law enforcement is spread so thin.
There are areas of the UK which are also sparsely populated. These tend to be the least violent places. Is there a big murder problem in the Dakota badlands?
Alaska has major problems with violent crime because law enforcement is spread so thin.
There are areas of the UK which are also sparsely populated. These tend to be the least violent places. Is there a big murder problem in the Dakota badlands?
Alaska has major problems with violent crime because law enforcement is spread so thin.
Because of?
Largest state, one of the lowest populations. Probably a major factor.
You're assuming all police departments are equal, have the same training and standards for each department. They don't.
Even within major metropolitan areas, you can have different departments with wildly different standards. It's what let's places like Ferguson exist.
Reorganization on the local level with standardized training and hiring practices across the board would do wonders for any police department. Someone like Timothy Loehmann should have never been hired in light of his dismissal from the Independence police department. They exercised good judgement during their training process, identifying a lack of maturity and inability to follow orders and giving him the choice of resigning or being let go. The Cleveland police department hired him without reviewing his file and a 12-year-old paid the price.
Disarming the police does nothing to curtail poor training and poor hiring. Especially with how ubiquitous guns are in America. You'll never get a politician or a significant amount of the public to go along with it.
Citizen (I hate the term civilian used in relation to the police, they are not military) review boards would also go along way towards accountability.
Have you read the comments on some of these articles?
There are areas of the UK which are also sparsely populated. These tend to be the least violent places. Is there a big murder problem in the Dakota badlands?
Alaska has major problems with violent crime because law enforcement is spread so thin.
Because of?
Largest state, one of the lowest populations. Probably a major factor.
Alaska probably has the largest Native American % of any state, I'm betting: 14.8%. (Wikipedia) Not to imply that Native Americans cause more violent crime, but the complex issues regarding their culture and poverty and crime are well-known.
I'm also not sure saying Alaska's law enforcement is sparse is that reasonable, given that Alaska's population is sparse. I don't know that doubling the number of police officers patrolling unpopulated snowbanks would achieve anything other than frostbite. For example, this data indicates that Anchorage has a significantly above average violent crime rate, and I'm unsure it has anything to do with Alaska's population sparsity: http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Anchorage-Alaska.html
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
There are areas of the UK which are also sparsely populated. These tend to be the least violent places. Is there a big murder problem in the Dakota badlands?
Alaska has major problems with violent crime because law enforcement is spread so thin.
Because of?
Well, without setting up a second and more densely populated Alaska it's hard to prove causation, I grant you. But it's pretty reasonable to think that a 2 day + law enforcement response time is at least partly responsible. There was a good if depressing article a while back about this problem, I think in the NYT.
Disarm American police. Nationwide. It's far past time.
Not an option.
It's absolutely an option; put armed response officers in patrol cars and have them on standby as needed. America isn't the Wild West anymore, with asshole criminal gunslingers running around committing crimes in rampant excess. There are maybe a few areas in this country that need armed officers on notice at all times (big cities mainly), but for your simple day to day shit you don't need a bunch of Yippee Kaiy Yay Motherfucker blue fetishists running around with power trip fantasies.
Disarm the police.
Unlike the UK a significant proportion of the population are already armed and criminals will be armed from small time crooks to criminal organizations. Arresting organized crime is going to be much harder since they are armed and in some cases armed to the teeth. Arms gangs pose a threat already with access to weapons like uzis, rather than settling for glocks like police do. Gun crime is much higher here since it isn't so restricted with the populace. Hell, kids can get access to guns these days because gun control is a joke. It'd be slaughter any time a cop tries to arrest anyone armed and willing to shoot. Armed criminal + unarmed cop = dead cop.The police armed for a reason. Unfortunately they've been abusing that trust to see everyone as a threat rather than situations that are appropriate. It'd also be impossible to do politically. We can't get stricter gun control for civilians, what makes you think it'd be easier to do that to the police?
edit: If I remember right you were against gun control laws that would do this to the populace, which even the harshest pro-gun control supporter in the thread didn't consider an option, why is it your opinion is the complete opposite with police?
You can't descalate the issue without the side with responsibility taking the first step, constantly going "well but the criminals..." forgets about all of the normal people who day-by-day are being scared into buying weapons because they've lost confidence in the police (either that they will do their job or that doing their job includes robbing/murdering citizens). De-arming patrolmen at the very least would be a huge step to diffuse the gun culture and lack of distrust in police in the country. Sometimes you have to do stuff you don't want to in the short term so long term things end up better.
Disarm American police. Nationwide. It's far past time.
Not an option. This isn't the UK, they'd get massacred in any confrontation with actual armed dangerous criminals.
this seems unlikely to me
they'd still have their ridiculous GI JOE swat teams
it's not like the police departments would be unarmed, just patrol cars (hell let them keep the shotgun locked up in the car, just require a good fucking reason to unrack it)
You can't descalate the issue without the side with responsibility taking the first step, constantly going "well but the criminals..." forgets about all of the normal people who day-by-day are being scared into buying weapons because they've lost confidence in the police (either that they will do their job or that doing their job includes robbing/murdering citizens). De-arming patrolmen at the very least would be a huge step to diffuse the gun culture and lack of distrust in police in the country. Sometimes you have to do stuff you don't want to in the short term so long term things end up better.
In the short term this will render the police the underdog to the armed criminals. Once criminals realize the police are unarmed crime will skyrocket because what do they have to fear?
0
MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
You can't descalate the issue without the side with responsibility taking the first step, constantly going "well but the criminals..." forgets about all of the normal people who day-by-day are being scared into buying weapons because they've lost confidence in the police (either that they will do their job or that doing their job includes robbing/murdering citizens). De-arming patrolmen at the very least would be a huge step to diffuse the gun culture and lack of distrust in police in the country. Sometimes you have to do stuff you don't want to in the short term so long term things end up better.
This logic doesn't actually hold up.
Mexico, South America and Africa would like a word with you in regards to armed criminal activity vs citizen and police armament. Hint, the first group has more weapons by a factor of like 100.
Most people haven't 'lost confidence' in the police because they aren't a minority group that would even notice. The minority groups who do take part in violence with guns don't often use legally obtained firearms.
Somehow the cops not having guns will not magically make them decide, 'You know, I don't need this totally smuggled/stolen gun to do X!' because I somehow doubt that's even part of the thought process that goes into making those kinds of decisions.
The people who legally buy guns.. Well, that's just some weird American fetish most times, and they'll buy guns regardless. Either because they just like guns or because DA GUBMENT so either way. There will always be those guns. Half the logic of owning a weapon goes back to deifying a 225 year old piece of paper. So like, ya. Good luck with that.
0
JohnnyCacheStarting DefensePlace at the tableRegistered Userregular
You can't descalate the issue without the side with responsibility taking the first step, constantly going "well but the criminals..." forgets about all of the normal people who day-by-day are being scared into buying weapons because they've lost confidence in the police (either that they will do their job or that doing their job includes robbing/murdering citizens). De-arming patrolmen at the very least would be a huge step to diffuse the gun culture and lack of distrust in police in the country. Sometimes you have to do stuff you don't want to in the short term so long term things end up better.
In the short term this will render the police the underdog to the armed criminals. Once criminals realize the police are unarmed crime will skyrocket because what do they have to fear?
This isn't really how "hardened" or "Career" or "armed" criminals think. Your ability to beat up or shoot ONE COP is not the key equation. What keeps cops from getting fucked up on the daily is mostly that they've called in the address or license plate or what have you before they knock on the door/get out of the car. Attacking a cop is like killing an ant: It releases pheromones that call more cops and make their mandibles and stingers spasm uncontrollably. They aren't knights errant or duelists, their true protection is their office itself and their arms are by definition for asymmetric use most of the time.
You can't descalate the issue without the side with responsibility taking the first step, constantly going "well but the criminals..." forgets about all of the normal people who day-by-day are being scared into buying weapons because they've lost confidence in the police (either that they will do their job or that doing their job includes robbing/murdering citizens). De-arming patrolmen at the very least would be a huge step to diffuse the gun culture and lack of distrust in police in the country. Sometimes you have to do stuff you don't want to in the short term so long term things end up better.
In the short term this will render the police the underdog to the armed criminals. Once criminals realize the police are unarmed crime will skyrocket because what do they have to fear?
This isn't really how "hardened" or "Career" or "armed" criminals think. Your ability to beat up or shoot ONE COP is not the key equation. What keeps cops from getting fucked up on the daily is mostly that they've called in the address or license plate or what have you before they knock on the door/get out of the car. Attacking a cop is like killing an ant: It releases pheromones that call more cops and make their mandibles and stingers spasm uncontrollably. They aren't knights errant or duelists, their true protection is their office itself and their arms are by definition for asymmetric use most of the time.
Which they can only do if they have to firepower to enforce it. Calling more cops won't do any good when they can't defend themselves from getting shot to death. That's what'll happen when they lose their monopoly on violence.
If you're calling in more cops for a firearm situation then they bring firearms. Cops on patrol or speed traps or whatever generally don't need to have arms except as a tool to intimidate. If the cops are too scared without their blankies then you could just have them to keep their firearms in the trunk instead of holstered on their person at all times so if shit gets real they still have something available to respond with.
Posts
Not an option. This isn't the UK, they'd get massacred in any confrontation with actual armed dangerous criminals.
And UK police have trained units to respond to actual, armed, dangerous criminals.
As pointed out, the problem isn't that bad guys have guns. It's that they're everywhere. To be able to disarm patrol officers, you'd have to disarm everybody else, too.
Do not engage the Watermelons.
I'd argue that being armed isn't the problem, it's the patchwork training and lack of standardization that is the real problem.
Do not engage the Watermelons.
Trained response units would be somewhat difficult because of scale.
Comparison: there is 1.3 cops per square mile in the UK.
There is .2 cops per square mile in the US.
I guess you could cut out a ton of small towns but then you'd be right back into the Ferguson issue.
Really comes down to needing federal oversight and some draconian internal affairs.
This is somewhat misleading. The US probably has large, empty, unpatrolled areas as large as the UK itself. A square mile isn't all that big, but I'm pretty sure we don't need officers patrolling the top of Mt. Whitney.
Plus, we already have trained response units. They're called SWAT. Unfortunately, they are also becoming the standard response. With all things considered, it isn't scale, it isn't training, it isn't anything other than we arm them to the teeth, set them loose with a 'us vs them' mentality, and then refuse to hold them accountable. And proposing federal oversight is a joke. I still see politician wearing those silly Secret Service flag pins. You don't win elections being 'soft' on crime and you don't win elections by 'restricting' the police from 'making us safe'.
There is no one solution and anything positive would take years to enact and even more to make an impact.
Do not engage the Watermelons.
Ya , STandardization and training are a must, because it's not like you can take away a choke hold.
Sigh
It's absolutely an option; put armed response officers in patrol cars and have them on standby as needed. America isn't the Wild West anymore, with asshole criminal gunslingers running around committing crimes in rampant excess. There are maybe a few areas in this country that need armed officers on notice at all times (big cities mainly), but for your simple day to day shit you don't need a bunch of Yippee Kaiy Yay Motherfucker blue fetishists running around with power trip fantasies.
Disarm the police.
Even within major metropolitan areas, you can have different departments with wildly different standards. It's what let's places like Ferguson exist.
Reorganization on the local level with standardized training and hiring practices across the board would do wonders for any police department. Someone like Timothy Loehmann should have never been hired in light of his dismissal from the Independence police department. They exercised good judgement during their training process, identifying a lack of maturity and inability to follow orders and giving him the choice of resigning or being let go. The Cleveland police department hired him without reviewing his file and a 12-year-old paid the price.
Disarming the police does nothing to curtail poor training and poor hiring. Especially with how ubiquitous guns are in America. You'll never get a politician or a significant amount of the public to go along with it.
Citizen (I hate the term civilian used in relation to the police, they are not military) review boards would also go along way towards accountability.
The US is huge. There is literally not enough cops to cover a lot of it as is.
No shit.
Piggy-backing off of this, its interesting how you can get people to agree to things if they aren't heavily politicized, even the police. I know the county Sheriff's department back where I grew up in super conservative southern Indiana adopted police mounted cameras around a year or so ago. It was an initiative lead by a super conservative Sheriff who did it for pragmatic reasons (as mentioned in this thread it lowered complaints against police, is super useful as evidence, etc.). Having talked to a lot of people that work for that department recently, I bet that it would be near impossible for them to adapt now if they already hadn't done so, due to how much it is bashed in conservative media. Yet I haven't seen any of the officers I know complain about having them on a personal level.
I'm pretty sure it's generally wherever the cops are.
But violent crime is on a steep decline. That is to say, non-police violent crime is, anyway.
Perhaps there could be a middle ground, where not all policemen need to be routinely armed with deadly weapons on all occasions from day one after they leave the academy.
There are areas of the UK which are also sparsely populated. These tend to be the least violent places. Is there a big murder problem in the Dakota badlands?
I am strongly curious if the incidence of police brutality complaints tracks linearly with population or not. At a guess I would expect it doesn't. So it may be reasonable to arm the rural cops but once you get into suburbs/metro areas to rely on HTR teams.
Go on....
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Alaska has major problems with violent crime because law enforcement is spread so thin.
Because of?
Largest state, one of the lowest populations. Probably a major factor.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Have you read the comments on some of these articles?
I'm not so sure this would help.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Alaska probably has the largest Native American % of any state, I'm betting: 14.8%. (Wikipedia) Not to imply that Native Americans cause more violent crime, but the complex issues regarding their culture and poverty and crime are well-known.
I'm also not sure saying Alaska's law enforcement is sparse is that reasonable, given that Alaska's population is sparse. I don't know that doubling the number of police officers patrolling unpopulated snowbanks would achieve anything other than frostbite. For example, this data indicates that Anchorage has a significantly above average violent crime rate, and I'm unsure it has anything to do with Alaska's population sparsity: http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Anchorage-Alaska.html
It should also be noted that Alaska's "violent crime" distribution is probably uneven. It ranks rather low in murder (T20th with California, as per http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state) but very high in rape (http://justice.uaa.alaska.edu/forum/20/4winter2004/a_rapes.html). Not sure the presence of armed LEOs has anything to say about this.
Well, without setting up a second and more densely populated Alaska it's hard to prove causation, I grant you. But it's pretty reasonable to think that a 2 day + law enforcement response time is at least partly responsible. There was a good if depressing article a while back about this problem, I think in the NYT.
Unlike the UK a significant proportion of the population are already armed and criminals will be armed from small time crooks to criminal organizations. Arresting organized crime is going to be much harder since they are armed and in some cases armed to the teeth. Arms gangs pose a threat already with access to weapons like uzis, rather than settling for glocks like police do. Gun crime is much higher here since it isn't so restricted with the populace. Hell, kids can get access to guns these days because gun control is a joke. It'd be slaughter any time a cop tries to arrest anyone armed and willing to shoot. Armed criminal + unarmed cop = dead cop.The police armed for a reason. Unfortunately they've been abusing that trust to see everyone as a threat rather than situations that are appropriate. It'd also be impossible to do politically. We can't get stricter gun control for civilians, what makes you think it'd be easier to do that to the police?
edit: If I remember right you were against gun control laws that would do this to the populace, which even the harshest pro-gun control supporter in the thread didn't consider an option, why is it your opinion is the complete opposite with police?
this seems unlikely to me
they'd still have their ridiculous GI JOE swat teams
it's not like the police departments would be unarmed, just patrol cars (hell let them keep the shotgun locked up in the car, just require a good fucking reason to unrack it)
In the short term this will render the police the underdog to the armed criminals. Once criminals realize the police are unarmed crime will skyrocket because what do they have to fear?
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
This logic doesn't actually hold up.
Mexico, South America and Africa would like a word with you in regards to armed criminal activity vs citizen and police armament. Hint, the first group has more weapons by a factor of like 100.
Most people haven't 'lost confidence' in the police because they aren't a minority group that would even notice. The minority groups who do take part in violence with guns don't often use legally obtained firearms.
Somehow the cops not having guns will not magically make them decide, 'You know, I don't need this totally smuggled/stolen gun to do X!' because I somehow doubt that's even part of the thought process that goes into making those kinds of decisions.
The people who legally buy guns.. Well, that's just some weird American fetish most times, and they'll buy guns regardless. Either because they just like guns or because DA GUBMENT so either way. There will always be those guns. Half the logic of owning a weapon goes back to deifying a 225 year old piece of paper. So like, ya. Good luck with that.
This isn't really how "hardened" or "Career" or "armed" criminals think. Your ability to beat up or shoot ONE COP is not the key equation. What keeps cops from getting fucked up on the daily is mostly that they've called in the address or license plate or what have you before they knock on the door/get out of the car. Attacking a cop is like killing an ant: It releases pheromones that call more cops and make their mandibles and stingers spasm uncontrollably. They aren't knights errant or duelists, their true protection is their office itself and their arms are by definition for asymmetric use most of the time.
I host a podcast about movies.
Which they can only do if they have to firepower to enforce it. Calling more cops won't do any good when they can't defend themselves from getting shot to death. That's what'll happen when they lose their monopoly on violence.