
Exploring the Militarization of US Police Forces - vcolano
https://vcolano.github.io/Exploring-the-Militarization-of-US-Police-Forces/
======
samcheng
I encourage Americans to think about this militarization at their next Fourth
of July Parade.

Watching the Sheriff's Department marching, in formation, dressed in black,
with ARs, behind an MRAP, is, well, disquieting.

With whom are they going to war, exactly?

~~~
microcolonel
> With whom are they going to war, exactly?

The criminals who are attacking them in neighbourhoods you don't go to.

~~~
samcheng
This particular Sheriff's Department hasn't lost an officer in the line of
duty since 1998 (and that's a good thing):

[https://www.odmp.org/agency/3457-san-mateo-county-
sheriffs-o...](https://www.odmp.org/agency/3457-san-mateo-county-sheriffs-
office-california)

San Mateo county's violent crime rate is 2.1 per 1,000 people, well below the
US national average of about 3.7.

~~~
microcolonel
> This particular Sheriff's Department hasn't lost an officer in the line of
> duty since 1998 (and that's a good thing):

Great, here's to the next two decades of nobody being shot in a county where
the neighbourhood with the most violent crime still has housing prices higher
than 99.4%(!) of the country. The next time somebody is shooting at them, they
might have the armoured vehicle out; you should be happy for that. Armoured
vehicles are not a weapon of war, they are a common tool for protecting
business and life. Banks use armoured cars , VIPs use armoured cars. If you
were responding to a shootout, even if it's the first and last of your career,
you would want to arrive in an armoured car.

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microcolonel
I'm not sure about the other equipment, but I can say that police definitely
need designated marksman rifles(7.62x51mm NATO)and infantry rifles(5.56x45mm
NATO [typo'd as 6.65mm in the article]) as a matter of course.

Here in Toronto the other month, right across the street from my home, there
was a man having a mental breakdown in a park swinging a handgun around, and
they had five marksmen in range ready to take a shot if it got out of hand on
the ground, and rifles on the ground to make sure it doesn't get too far out
of hand.

Grenade launchers are fairly common equipment for a police force these days,
there are a large number of crowd control and tactical (visibility flares, IR
flares) devices which can be launched out of standard grenade launchers, since
the military has brought down the cost of this equipment, police forces seem
to standardize around it.

The border states having higher spending on weaponry and armour is intuitively
understandable, given how hot the border is. Per-landmass and per-police-
officer numbers might also be a more interesting stat to look at.

LA county makes regular use of their armoured vehicles, that I understand. So
unless you're arguing that police officers in LA county should just let
themselves get shot when people are shooting at them, I think it'd be hard to
imagine it being a bad thing that they have armoured vehicles.

Explosive Ordinance Disposal vehicles (and other equipment, such as X-ray
imaging devices, tracked robotic vehicles, projected water disruptors) make a
lot of sense. The New York Police Department has had a bomb squad since
1903(!). If you love the idea of bomb technicians being shredded into mists of
blood, flesh, and bone; or love going to funerals where there is no recovered
corpse, then sure, their lives are not worth even a couple hundred k per
capita, less than the average person in the general population in the U.S.
government's estimation.

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solotronics
6.65mm rifle should be 5.56mm

there is a 6.5mm round but its very specialized and not likely to be acquired
by police forces

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rrggrr
Police militarization is the not the non sequitur many believe it to be. The
top two spenders on military hardware are US border states fighting very well
armed drug gangs, and episodically its own well armed populace. Chicago is in
Cook County, infamous for its heavily armed street gangs, record shootings,
and close ties to Mexican drug cartels.

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akita
Unrelated to the content of your article, but something that I noticed:

The link to your GitHub profile page in the footer of the article is broken:
it points to
'[https://github.com/https://github.com/vcolano'](https://github.com/https://github.com/vcolano').

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i_feel_great
This does not appear to happen in other developed, western countries. Not to
the same extent at least. I have not seen it in New Zealand or Australia,
although there are criminals and drug dealers in both. I have not heard of
such a thing in the UK, France, Germany, Italy or Canada. Is this an American
thing?

~~~
pandaman
France and Italy, from what I know, have literal military [1,2] doing the job
the police does in the US. So no, it's not an American thing.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Gendarmerie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Gendarmerie)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carabinieri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carabinieri)

~~~
jsiepkes
The gendarmerie and the carabinieri are both national police services (like
the FBI). They also do things like port security.

I've seen gendarmerie, carabinieri but also local sherrifs offices; There is a
world of difference between the first two and the last in terms of discipline
and training. For example the first two don't make YouTube videos like these:
[https://youtu.be/CYunIrWDANU](https://youtu.be/CYunIrWDANU)

~~~
pandaman
I think you are slightly confused about FBI and city/county/state police
forces in the US and policing in Europe. French police is a national police
service like the FBI [1], Gendarmierie is a branch of military under command
of the same Ministry of Interior, which also controls the National Police.
It's an actual military, with military weapons, uniforms, barracks, chain of
command etc. etc. There is nothing like this in the US indeed. National Guard
is closest but it does not do law enforcement on regular basis.

Similarly in Italy. National Police [2] is separate from Carabinieri, who are
not even under the command of Ministry of Interior, but under the Ministry of
Defence, making them even more "militarized" (which makes sense, since they
also serve as MP).

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Police_(France)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Police_\(France\))

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polizia_di_Stato](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polizia_di_Stato)

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packetized
The 1033 program is a donation (permanent loan) from the DoD to the individual
requesting agencies; the spending involved as described by the author does not
actually represent money given by local agencies to the DoD, but rather value
written off by the Dod.

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fixxer
Good ol' Illinois in the top 10. Represent!

Cook County kinda sorta expected, but why Lake County? Waukegan really that
bad?

EDIT: [http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Waukegan-
Illinois.html](http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Waukegan-Illinois.html)
not that bad

