
Obama orders review of US police use of military hardware - anigbrowl
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/23/us-usa-missouri-shooting-militarization-idUSKBN0GN0O920140823
======
po
I can only hope something good comes of this and it's not just "We reviewed it
and decided it's fine."

I really have no problem with state police having _access_ to some of this
kind of equipment. It's probably good for equipment to be distributed
throughout the country but it's obvious that there is a severe lack of
training and an really strong desire to break it out and parade around with it
like a bunch of teenagers with their first gun. I hear people talking about
how the police are the "thin blue line" between law and order but in this case
they are clearly a fat green line. This equipment should have gone to the
national guard.

If the police use military gear, it should be kept under lock and key and if
it is authorized for use, should trigger a bunch of additional reporting
requirements as an incentive not to use it.

~~~
freditup
I think people might have the wrong impression of the 1033 program. The
program makes sense - instead of wasting extra military equipment, give it to
local police who can use it. A lot of this equipment is very benign types of
things, stuff like shoes, first-aid kits, blankets, etc.

As far as I know, local police aren't getting attack helicopters or artillery
units. I don't think the equipment needs to be "kept under lock and key"
except for a very few things.

Edit: You can see a list of the most distributed stuff here:
[http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-
mine/2014/08/21/most-p...](http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-
mine/2014/08/21/most-popular-items-in-the-defense-departments-1033-program)

Or the full data here: [https://github.com/TheUpshot/Military-Surplus-
Gear](https://github.com/TheUpshot/Military-Surplus-Gear)

~~~
po
I get what you're saying. And by the raw numbers there's a lot of good stuff
in there too. But if you look through that list you see a lot of things like
"MINE RESISTANT VEHICLE" (probably an MRAP?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP_(armored_vehicle)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP_\(armored_vehicle\))
)that are totally inappropriate for the local police force to be rolling
around in. I'm not saying the 1033 program is a bad idea… I just think if you
give someone an armored assault vehicle, it should come with the requirement
that they only use it if the country is under attack or something very very
serious. Better yet, give it to the guard.

I used to live in NYC and have family that is NYC police and I know they deal
with some crazy stuff. They dress a bit more aggressively than most police
forces. I'm currently living in Japan where the image of the police is more
Norman Rockwell than Soldier. I'm also reminded of reading of a hospital that
switched from customizable scrubs where the nurses were picking their own
patterns to standard white uniforms and got behavioural change from both
patients and doctors. I wish I could find the link.

So.. in some sense I do think there is a bit of a problem with even a set of
boots coming from the military to the police. If you wear a respectable blue
uniform your mindset turns toward earning your community's respect. If you
wear jack boots, body armor and a military uniform, you look intimidating. I'm
sure that's what the police want, but it's not appropriate for most normal
police work and I believe it's the public's job to tell them so. Police are
civilians who have special privilege to enforce the laws of society. They
should be protected by the legal system, not body armor. If you need body
armor to handle a protest, call in the Guard.

~~~
freditup
We're probably mostly in agreement, even if we lean slightly different
directions on some of the issues. For example, I can't think of any legitimate
MRAP uses by local police either (although if anyone can point our a realistic
use case, I'd definitely like to hear it).

I completely agree that the police should be part of the community they work
in and not some military-like third-party authority force. And because of that
it presents an issue when the police look like a pseudo-military. However, I
don't think in most cases police look like this, although I might be wrong.

Body armor is a tough call. Just yesterday a Texas police chief was killed
making a routine traffic stop, and it's understandable why officers feel
constantly threatened. As far as I could find, about 65 police officers die in
the line of duty each year. My first reaction is that that is pretty low,
perhaps policing isn't as dangerous as one would think, but I'd need to look
into it a lot more before drawing any real conclusions. It's quite possible
the relatively low death toll is a result of more aggressive policing, but it
could also indicate that aggressive policing isn't needed.

------
ams6110
The so-called "North Hollywood Shootout" in 1997 was a big instigator of this.
Two heavily armed bank robbers were able to hold off the LAPD by virtue of
superior weapons and body armor.

There was a big public outcry and support for giving police the "tools they
needed" to be able to take on the better-armed criminals, gangs, and drug
dealers.

So now that the police have become essentially local armies in many
jurisdictions, people think they have gone too far.

What troubles me most is that neither Obama nor most legislators in congress
have the first clue or any experience in law enforcement. So anything that
happens is going to be driven by political concerns, not what makes the most
sense for effective and appropriate law enforcement.

~~~
lotsofmangos
_Obama nor most legislators in congress have the first clue or any experience
in law enforcement_

He was a practicing civil rights attorney, taught constitutional law and was
president of Harvard Law Review.

You may not like him, but to say that someone who has that level of
professional legal experience doesn't have any experience in law enforcement,
would seem ridiculous.

~~~
harrystone
You know attorney and police officer are really different jobs, right?

~~~
lotsofmangos
They both have experience in law enforcement. Law enforcement thankfully still
includes the court process, not just arresting people.

~~~
jnbiche
>They both have experience in law enforcement

You realize that police don't think that, right? And other than those
attorneys working for Dept of Justice and other agencies with a law
enforcement mandate, I don't think many attorneys consider themselves "law
enforcement" either.

The local ambulance chaser or deed auditor hardly goes around calling himself
"law enforcement".

~~~
lotsofmangos
You seem to have confused experience with title.

It doesn't matter what someone calls themselves when asking what they have
experience in.

A deed auditor would tend to think that they have had some experience in the
enforcing of the area of law pertaining to deed auditing without ever needing
to title themselves as law enforcement.

------
datashovel
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution)

One aspect of the gun control debate is the conflict between gun control laws
and the right to rebel against unjust governments. Blackstone in his
Commentaries alluded to this right to rebel as the natural right of resistance
and self preservation, to be used only as a last resort, exercisable when "the
sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence
of oppression".[71] Some believe that the framers of the Bill of Rights sought
to balance not just political power, but also military power, between the
people, the states and the nation,[72] as Alexander Hamilton explained in
1788:

[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of
any magnitude[,] that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the
people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to
them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own
rights and those of their fellow-citizens.[72][73]

=======

If you accept above interpretation, why don't local police have nuclear
weapons? Also why aren't nuclear weapons sold to citizens who have a right to
"keep and bear arms"?

~~~
adventured
The nuclear arms argument is a classic fallacy bandied about frequently when
gun rights come up.

There can be no argument in favor of nuclear weapons used for individual, or
even small group or very localized, self-defense. In fact, I'd argue there can
never be a valid argument in favor of nuclear weapons for _self-defense_ (with
emphasis on self).

For defending a larger population base, the police have no reason to have
nuclear weapons because they are not in charge of national defense or national
security. That is left to the military, which does have nuclear weapons.

There can be no precise or selective targeting with nuclear weapons, in the
sense of shooting a bad guy and not shooting an unarmed civilian near by.
Nuclear weapons also do not function to defend against individual crime, which
is something a gun can defend against. In any act of attempting to defend
yourself from a localized attack by using a nuke, you will kill yourself and
countless civilians nearby. There's an exceptionally long list of reasons why
the floated nuclear weapons counter makes absolutely no sense.

Ultimately you can tell the nuclear arms argument is irrational, because if
you follow the logic behind it to the proper conclusion, no person ever has a
right to self-defense under any circumstances: because you should thus never
be allowed to wield any weapons, including a knife or baseball bat in self-
defense. It's the ultimate argument in ridiculousness: if you can't be allowed
to do X very extreme thing, then you can't be allowed to do X drastically less
extreme thing. A scale comparison would be, if I'm allowed to drive a car -
cars kill 30,000 people per year in the US - then why can't I 'drive' an
aircraft carrier.

~~~
datashovel
That makes sense. Now, the general point I think would be that at a smaller
scale we're hearing accounts of local police (or perhaps state police) riding
around in tanks shooting tear gas into groups of citizens.

Where are the accounts of organized groups of citizens riding around in tanks
firing tear gas at who they believe to be oppressive police force? Are those
available in the free market?

I guess I'm trying to figure out where the line is supposed to be drawn in
terms of who gets what kinds of arms? I'm sure alot of folks would argue that
as soon as a local police force is given particular types of weapons, it's
perhaps assumed that citizens will have same or similar weapons available to
them to organize to protect themselves from oppressive government.

EDIT: Or more precisely, as soon as certain types of weapons are turned
against its own citizens, is it right that those citizens don't have the same
or similar weapons at their disposal to protect themselves?

~~~
staunch
Police militarization is an issue with or without the second amendment.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Meneze...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes)

One thing I think you're missing is that citizens only really need to have
modern weapons (not every weapon) to be in ultimate control. There are 1,000+
armed citizens for every police officer.

As for what the second amendment should mean, the supreme court has spent the
last 100 years hearing arguments in every direction. You might guess that your
"nukes" argument is about as old as nukes (and before that people just used
other examples).

If you want to learn more about it here's a good place to start Wikipedia'ing:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller)

~~~
datashovel
Agreed. This is a highly nuanced and multi-faceted space in general. Specific
to US and what Obama is proposing, how do you think they'll be framing the
question in order to understand what the right answers are?

~~~
staunch
Hopefully they'll look at the problem facing police and help them solve it
using more brains and less brawn.

Personally I look at this all through the lens of technology. George Holliday
using his new Sony Handycam to show the world the beating of Rodney King was
merely the initial trickle of justice. The torrent is coming and only
genuinely good police officers will survive it.

~~~
datashovel
Great observation. I agree. I'm excited to see how technology will continue to
transform this space in substantial ways.

------
rdl
I'd like to see _more_ work on police-specific weapons.

Weapon retention is a HUGE problem for the police. They open-carry pistols,
aren't terribly well armed, are easy to get to show up, and have to grapple
with suspects. This means more of them die by their own weapons (taken by
someone else) than by an attacker's own weapon!

Retention holsters (the level 3 stuff, like SERPA) are great, but this is the
one area where weapons with biometric or other authentication make sense.
Particularly for non-SWAT police, they'll probably carry the gun openly for an
entire career but never actually fire in self defense.

Police weapons having an integrated "guncam" and "gunradio" which start
recording and calling for help the instant they're removed from the holster
would be great, too.

~~~
erichurkman
Those would be awesome. What do you think about the ``smart weapon'' laws,
though? New Jersey, for example.

~~~
rdl
For civilian ownership, it's wrong to require the smart weapons; civilians
have an entirely different use case for weapons than police do.

------
pinaceae
strawman.

it is not about the gizmos, it is about training and education.

LEOs who do no respect basic rights of citizens and journalists.

LEOs who point their weapons at unarmed civilians, nilly willy, shouting
racist slurs.

LEOs who have no means of deescalation, run by pure panic and fear like beaten
dogs.

the gear doesn't matter. the triggerfinger does.

listening to the eyewitness statements the officer should get maximum
punishment, locked up for life. betrayal of every single principle of law
enforcement.

------
lotsofmangos
Should the review call for demilitarization of police forces, it will be
interesting to see how the federal government will actually go about getting
the stuff back.

I would imagine it would go about as well as the US army's current attempts to
get the 200 Apache helicopters back off the various state national guards.

~~~
msandford
I suspect the dynamic would be a bit different but you raise a good point.
Maybe just hire repo men? I've heard some incredible stories.
[http://www.salon.com/2009/06/06/lear_jet_repo_man/](http://www.salon.com/2009/06/06/lear_jet_repo_man/)

~~~
mikeash
That would truly be an example of an irresistible force meeting an immovable
object.

------
ck2
I am sure they will get on it right after they close gitmo six years ago.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
[http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136781/carol-
rosenber...](http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136781/carol-
rosenberg/why-obama-cant-close-guantanamo)

~~~
ck2
Except he is the Commander-in-Chief of the entire armed forces. And he gave an
order for gitmo, a military prison, to close. Which means everyone that shows
up to work there every day is in serious violation of an order from a
superior.

Everything else is just words. He ordered it closed, it should be covered in
dust and tumbleweeds by now with not a person to be found.

