
Law Enforcement’s “Warrior” Problem (2015) - infogulch
https://harvardlawreview.org/2015/04/law-enforcements-warrior-problem/
======
CommanderData
I don't think the problem is a select few American police officers, I feel its
too widespread to blame it on a few bad cops. Without to sound predudice I
think the problem IS cultural.

It seems to be something related to American egos that is accelerated 1000x
when moved into a position of authority like a police officer.

I'm in the UK, and yes we have our problems however it seems reasoning or
social skills of our officers are night and day and reflect behaviour observed
of society as a whole.

~~~
cal5k
I'm not sure it's entirely possible to dismiss cultural difference in the
opposite direction, however. The Police Activity channel on YouTube has tons
of unedited bodycam footage from officer-involved shootings and other events
across America:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXMYxKMh3prxnM_4kYZuB3g](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXMYxKMh3prxnM_4kYZuB3g)

I'd encourage you to watch the entire list of videos to get a sense for what
policing is like in parts of America, and what circumstances lead to the use
of deadly force. Some of them are difficult to watch, but it showcases both
good and bad examples of how to handle extremely dangerous situations.

It's not an enviable job - the number of videos that start out as a routine
traffic stop with the cop having amiable conversation, and then rapidly
escalate to a situation where the suspect is pulling a gun on the officer, is
truly mind-blowing.

~~~
gabaix
The US has the highest gun ownership (1.2 per capita), double the country next
on the list.

When police officers from Europe come to visit, the first thing that surprise
them is how tense the police is. They are constantly in fear of getting shot.

Reducing civilian gun ownership would help a lot to reduce violence, cops and
non cops alike.

~~~
luckylion
> The US has the highest gun ownership (1.2 per capita), double the country
> next on the list.

And, looking at the list [1], gun ownership does not seem to correlate highly
with crimes involving guns. Honduras is #55 according to Wikipedia, Canada is
#7. So why aren't Canadian cops constantly in fear for their life, but
Hondurans are? It does not seem to be the number of guns.

It'll still be a nice thing, I guess. But it's hard to do and takes decades to
have impact if you don't have a very compliant population.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country)

~~~
cameldrv
One issue is that in almost every other country, handgun ownership is much
more restricted. A police officer is much less likely to be surprised by
someone pulling out a hunting rifle or shotgun. You can't just carry one of
those around in your glove compartment or in a concealed holster.

~~~
cal5k
Those shootings almost _never_ involve CCW-holders. It's often people with
prior felony convictions who own firearms illegally.

In Canada there are lots of gang members who carry illegal handguns. We just
don't have the same degree of poverty as some parts of the US (even though our
GDP/capita is significantly lower).

~~~
cameldrv
There are just less handguns in Canada period. The U.S. has roughly one
handgun for every two people. In Canada it's about one handgun per 35 people.

------
ypeterholmes
This article misses the point. These types of "cultural" issues are important
but secondary- the issue is that the police are breaking laws and getting away
with it because of qualified immunity. They need to be held accountable,
otherwise is the culture really going to change?

~~~
chongli
I disagree. The warrior culture of policing sets the baseline for all
behaviour. Officers justify lawbreaking to one another out of solidarity. The
belief that “it’s a war out there and enemies can jump out at any moment”
underlies the concept that the law is secondary to officer survival.

When you create a proper guardian police force, officers become friendly and
respected community members; they become good neighbours. What then stops them
from committing crimes against members of the public is the same thing that
stops most family members from committing crimes against one another: a sense
of belonging, investment, and care for a community. The best example of this
style of policing that I can think of is the classic small town police in
small town dramas or sitcoms like Corner Gas [1]. Notice how the police
officers eat at the local diner which serves as a third place [2] for the
community.

Of course, the disappearance of third places from American social life is
another big factor in this complicated puzzle.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPrBAEqGwKE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPrBAEqGwKE)

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

~~~
sukilot
You are conflating TV with reality. In Minneapolis police just shot and killed
a BBQ owner who had been feeding them for free for years.

~~~
HarryHirsch
_a BBQ owner who had been feeding them for free for years_

That's concerning, isn't it? There are federal and state statutes about
bribery and gratuities, and the fact that police officers took him up on the
offer day by day is worrying for many reasons. And at the end of the day it
didn't even help him.

------
ivalm
I think this is the key point:

> Sue Rahr, a former sheriff [...], put it this way: “We do our recruits no
> favor if we train them to approach every situation as a war. To do so sets
> them up to create unnecessary resistance and risk of injury.”

If you treat everyone like they want to kill you, you telegraph that through
your actions and mannerisms, and induce the very escalation you are worried
about.

------
rland
There are a few issues. One thing that I don't see mentioned very often is
that a police officer is actually very rarely _necessary._ But they are called
in anyway. There is a kind of litigiousness to American culture. Two people
mad at each other? "Watch me call the cops." Someone nodding off near the
front door? Call the cops. Domestic dispute? Call the cops. The cops are not
really useful in any of these situations and, because of all of the problems
mentioned here, often escalate the situation and make things worse.

Cops frequently end up playing the role of social worker, mental health
counselor, relationship mediator, addiction counselor... and with their
incredibly violent and often racist attitudes the result is predictable.

I am glad that finally these issues are being addressed. They have been
festering for decades.

~~~
sukilot
Nothing wrong with having one number to call for help. The problem is when
only one kind of responder responds. That happens because we have too many
armed, bored police and too few of other kinds of social services.

------
bredren
A major problem I see is the idea of only one kind of social adjustment role:
the uniformed police officer.

There are situations where the warrior mindset are needed. We do need people
who can deal with extremely dangerous situations involving lethal force.

However, many, many situations need social workers more than they need
warriors. If anything the warrior could back up their unarmed counterpart.

Why aren’t there other roles with different capabilities that work in concert
with warriors?

I’m not sure it makes sense to only seek to retrain when probably a great
share of existing police officers could be replaced with more effective
counterparts with some of the same powers but completely different skills and
assignments.

It is teams of skilled specialists that solve difficult problems, why do we
have only one person to mend so much of society’s challenging circumstances?

~~~
pwned1
I’ve known a few officers and they usually refer to themselves as “social
workers in uniform.”

~~~
sophacles
They don't know what "social worker" means then - social workers have the task
of helping, not murdering, people. We should hold the cops to the standard
they hold us: if there is not proof of innocence, or if they have the wrong
pigmentation, or if they are near a citizen having a bad day, or the moon has
a phase, its justified and heroic to fuck their life, no questions.

~~~
bredren
It’s just not always like this. If this is all you’ve seen, or all you believe
current police do, then you aren’t seeing it all.

------
MattSteelblade
It should be noted in the title that this piece is from 2015.

~~~
kelnos
Given that, I'm curious to know if anything has changed in the last five
years, or if the article still accurately describes police training today. I
would guess that it does.

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VHRanger
Note that this is much more prevalent in the US than anywhere else.

Part of it might be gun prevalence, but the problem seems to be largely
cultural to me. Police Unions abhorrent behavior entrench it, too.

~~~
iratewizard
Where besides the US do you see gang violence making cities deadlier than a
warzone? The militarization of police seems to be a function of adapting to
the job they're responsible for.

~~~
brnt
No, it's a fight fire with fire mentality that causes militarization. From a
European perspective the lack of preventative measures could seem laughable if
it wasn't so serious. Mental health for starters. Gun availability obviously
too. Police here (OK, not all Police traditions do this here either) take
deescalation training far more than gun training. There's a few case studies
on French-Dutch comparisons in that regard that should be enlightening.

You don't need to win in a gunfight in order to win.

~~~
luckylion
> From a European perspective

I don't think there is a European perspective. We haven't had anything close
to the gang crime problem in the US in a long time, and when we did have it,
guns weren't a thing.

It's obvious that there are lots of issues, but "look, we don't have them
because we do X" doesn't work when we didn't have anything comparable in the
first place. I'm certain that we would see _very_ different policies if
London, Paris or Berlin had the murder rate of Chicago, and it wouldn't be
"let's spend more money on mental health".

~~~
danaris
Gang crime is only one small piece of why the police in the US are the way
they are.

It's not hard to find stories about police brutality and police corruption in
areas far from any gang activity (small towns in the midwest, for instance).
You can also find stories about police departments in similarly small towns
that have been able to obtain serious military-grade equipment that they
definitely don't need.

And even separate from all that, you have things like civil asset forfeiture,
where the police think it's totally reasonable and OK to just steal people's
stuff, without the people being even _suspected_ of any crime, and the law (in
many places) allows it.

This is all part of a culture that tells cops they are above the law, they
have the power, and everyone else just needs to bow down and accept that.

Then you combine that with the serious, organized efforts white supremacist
groups have gone to over the years to essentially take control of the police
force...

Yeah, the biggest "gang crime problem" here is the gang in blue.

~~~
luckylion
> This is all part of a culture that tells cops they are above the law, they
> have the power, and everyone else just needs to bow down and accept that.

Certainly, I agree with that. And the US culture is very different from
European cultures (which is not a surprise, given how quickly the country
changes and how young it is). Comparing it to Europe where we're sitting on a
very different (and much more stable still) culture with very different
traditions, a completely different approach to individualism vs collectivism
etc, isn't helpful, and you won't get anywhere if you dismiss 99% of the
difference and then say (yes, I'm exaggerating, and no, I don't mean you
specifically but people who like to point to Europe in comparison) "well,
clearly, it's because the citizens don't have guns and the police wear
friendlier uniforms".

~~~
brnt
Its not very different, it just went overboard with parts of protestant
ethics. And you can quite literally see the price of this. However, seeing and
analyzing your own problems and wrong views is always harder than seeing
others. Especially when you consider some of the ideas that lead to those
outcomes as somehow fundamental cornerstones (right to guns for instance, but
also the ethics of eye for an eye).

American isn't changing faster or slower than any other place either, it just
is favoring certain ethics that are counterproductive to a peaceful society.
Reminds me of certain other fundamentalist places in the world. It of course
makes sense it would turn out this way, many early settlers went across the
Atlantic precisely to be able to practice their fundamentalist versions of
protestantism. Some of that carries of into this I am sure.

Seriously, take up some literature on deescalation tactics for police, and in
particular evidence based effectiveness of such methods in comparisionto other
tactics.

~~~
luckylion
> Its not very different, it just went overboard with parts of protestant
> ethics.

That's a small part of it, yes. But mostly, it's very individualistic, and
it's very different from European cultures in that regard which will obviously
result in very large differences in results.

> American isn't changing faster or slower than any other place either

Errr, yes it is. The demographic make-up of America has been determined by
waves of immigration, that changes culture. And it has been happening _much_
faster than in other places. You're rewriting history and I don't understand
your motives.

~~~
brnt
You should read up on Protestantism in Europe. Netherlands in particular if
you want to understand American Protestantism. So many settled east(ern
Europe) as well as west. Those story don't get the same footlight as American
ones, but if you dig a little, it's there. It's really not different.

Migration is similarly not exclusive to America. Tons happens in Europe too,
we're humans after all! Moreover, country and language borders tend to create
different spaces for local differentiation, which is something that is much
rarer in the US due to the fact that Americans (almost) all speak English.
It's no accident you will find most variance in places people do _not_ speak
English (Cajun culture, Spanish-American culture) or a very different English
(South<>North, poor neighborhoods/cities vs affluent areas).

Step outside of the Anglosphere!

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slickrick216
Has anyone considered a PTSD epidemic among the LE community. These people are
sent out day after day to possibly hostile situations. Usually it’s not good
news they come across due to the nature of the job. Some of them have likely
seen colleagues be seriously injured or killed. As these protests have shown
they face widespread hostility even when they haven’t actually done anything
themselves individually. Cross that with the usual mix of mental issues
present in a population and it seems to me like you have a situation where
people forced to the edge snap. Like other roles in society they can’t
complain about what’s wrong with them or they risk losing their careers and
family’s financial security. Empathy cuts both ways, yes government injustice
isn’t right but if we don’t understand people’s circumstances we blind
ourselves to a possible solution.

~~~
dredmorbius
As much as I see the present situation as intolerable and inexcusable, I
suspect chronic stress likely plays a role.

------
m0zg
Very good, adult take. Calm, balanced, and not anti-police.

~~~
vore
Don't dismiss people being angry and upset at police right now like this. It's
extremely disrespectful towards the very real problems they face.

~~~
zozbot234
I'm not seeing anything dismissive in OP's remark. Opposing police brutality
is not the same thing as being anti-police.

~~~
dredmorbius
In context with earlier comments, it's a credible interpretation:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23412122](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23412122)

~~~
m0zg
Yes, I am pro-police, and anti-looting. That categorically doesn't mean what
you think it means though. I support racial justice. I support police reform,
demilitarization, and pushing back against police unions. I think unjustified
police brutality, like in the case of George Floyd, should be prosecuted, and
it undermines the respect many people have for the police profession. This
respect is a _requirement_ for the police to be effective. I also think
Chauvin should have been fired in disgrace years ago.

My suggestion was in regards to the rather extreme and unjustified comments
the public officials were making (and continue to make) towards the police. I
hope it is obvious to everyone that without police NYC will be utterly fucked
within 24 hours. I stand by those suggestions. If push comes to shove they
should go on strike. The vast majority of them are good men and women, and
they deserve to be respected.

In other words, I'm not 15 years old, I see nuance, and I want some real,
lasting solutions to these issues. Sue me.

