
‘Do Not Resist': A look at the normalization of warrior cops - jackgavigan
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/09/30/do-not-resist-a-chilling-look-at-the-normalization-of-warrior-cops/
======
byebyetech
In Los Angeles I see so many cops driving black mustang cars, a predator style
car. As if they enjoy their predator status and want to express and enforce
their masculinity on the community. Every time I see a cop car it makes me
nervous just by the sight of it.

I think its time we give them Pink colored bug beetle cars. That will remind
them they are here to protect the community, not be a hero in an action movie.

~~~
simlevesque
In Montreal, cops are ditching their uniform as a form of protest. They look
stupid but we are still afraid of them. They have incredibly eye-catching
pants, check it out:
[http://www.cjad.com/EI/sharedobjects/handlers/ir.ashx?p=ZgAv...](http://www.cjad.com/EI/sharedobjects/handlers/ir.ashx?p=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&w=590&mw=590)

~~~
GunboatDiplomat
OK, that's just silly. We can have police be approachable parts of the
community without silly pants.

------
joveian
"The striking thing about the footage is, again, the utter mundanity of the
raid. A family was just violently raided over an immeasurable amount of pot. A
man was arrested over that pot. The money he needed for his business was taken
from him. Yet there’s no shame or embarrassment from the officers. There’s no
panic that the whole thing was captured on video. That’s when it hits you.
They don’t think they’ve made a mistake. This is what they do."

------
torpfactory
Ultimately this type of behavior erodes all trust in law enforcement in the
communities where this kind of policing is practiced. A vicious cycle is
amplified whereby residents learn to put little trust in police and in turn
police decide to use more and more force, believing those (untrusting)
residents would use violence against them.

As a side note, why don't police approach dangerous criminals the way
radiological workers approach "hot" material. I'm not sure how "danger" should
be enumerated but I'd imagine it decreases with the square of the distance.
Unless there are other bystanders nearby who might be hurt, closing the
distance to suspects seems to be one of the more dangerous things an officer
could do. Seems like containing someone and letting them cool off is safer for
both parties.

~~~
dmd
Re your side note: That's how police forces almost everywhere in Europe are
trained.

------
dudul
The problem with US police is that they now want to behave like deployed
military troops without any of the risk. They want to play with all these
"cool toys", and pretend they are raiding some compound in Fallujah or
something, but they refuse to risk their life.

That's how they end up killing people who are fetching their ID in their
pocket, or people carrying a black book, or really just standing there. The
excuse is always the same: I feared for my life. And their superiors always
back them up: The officer thought he was in danger, police officers have the
right to use lethal force if they _think_ their life is in danger. I remember
reading an amazing post by a vet who joined the force, and he was totally
baffled to see that his new coworkers were _more_ agressive than his platoon
in Irak.

Guess what, real military troops accept the fact that sometimes they'll get
shot and die. They always make sure that the guy on the other side is actually
shooting at them before they open fire. And when they don't, they're punished.
Severely.

I know it's not a popular opinion in a country where cops are called heroes.
But I'd rather see 10 dead cops than a single innocent citizen shot. It sucks,
it's a lot to ask for, but it comes with the job. When you're a cop you _have_
to put the life of others before your own. Otherwise become an accountant.

~~~
rz2k
I get your point about the relative discipline of actual soldiers, but in Iraq
it seems likely that at least 100 noncombattants died for every soldier who
was killed.

~~~
GunboatDiplomat
Maybe. But those non-combatants were rarely killed by US troops in direct
combat. More commonly, they were killed by 1) insurgent fighters 2) IEDs 3) US
air strikes or other indirect fires.

------
fencepost
And how many members of that family will EVER call the police to report
anything short of a murder - if that - out of concern of being charged with it
because they were convenient?

I'll throw in a relevant quote from this week's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
article about the 20% decline in 911 calls over the year following news of a
beating by off-duty officers:
([http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/investigations/2016/09/29...](http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/investigations/2016/09/29/911-calls-
fell-black-milwaukee-neighborhoods-after-jude-beating-study-finds/90907882/))

"In the Jude study, researchers found data suggesting people withdraw from the
system after an incident of police violence. Papachristos said the study shows
that police violence and other misconduct hurts officers' ability to work with
communities and may result in a deepening of so-called "legal cynicism" — the
idea that police are either unable or unwilling to help — within communities.
That dynamic can perpetuate crime and distrust."

The Harvard study in question: "Police Violence and Citizen Crime Reporting in
the Black Community"
[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3114813-Jude-911-Cal...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3114813-Jude-911-Call-
Study.html)

edit: rearranging URLs

~~~
dalke
In Dennis Smith's memoir, "Report from Engine Co. 82", he wrote that in South
Bronx people would call the fire department instead of the police, because
they didn't trust the police.

~~~
aoeuasdf1
That's very interesting, I might consider doing this in the future when
needed.

------
mc32
Nowadays cops are a lot less likely to tussle and mix it up. It's all a sort
of antiseptic interaction where commands are shouted from afar.

It used to be cops were willing to take a punch and punch back at someone who
didn't cooperate. If that happens now it's resisting arrest, assaulting an
officer, etc.

Not sure if it's a legacy of needles and aids which lead police to avoid any
physical contact with a suspect or perp. It's a change that has led to much
less "give" on the part of cops.

~~~
mrestko
I think the general public is unaware of how dangerous physical altercations
are. The antisepsis of staged fight scenes on TV make it seem like any well-
trained person can recover from a tussle and be back to normal by the next
scene. In the real world, it only takes seconds for a struggle to turn fatal,
even discarding the presence of any other weapons.

In the case of a police officer carrying a gun, all physical fights have to be
assumed to be fights to the death. If the officer gets knocked out, there is
now a loaded weapon on the table that is no longer under the control of the
officer.

(Edited to fix typos.)

~~~
jwatte
Police work is much less dangerous than many civilian jobs, yet the police are
paid to assume risk. I think the balance is off, and society as a whole is
suffering, because civilians who generally are nonviolent are much less
capable of taking on that risk than the tainted police officers who are paid
to do so.

~~~
to3m
Ahem... "police work is much less dangerous than many _other_ civilian jobs".

~~~
gaius
The police ARE civilians. That they imagine themselves to be a branch of the
military is the very problem!

~~~
mc32
They are civilians... however, colloquially "civilian" can refer to a non-
insider, someone outside the profession.

A group of boxers might say "yeah, civilians wouldn't understand why we love
the sport".

In other words, it's not always used in the strict sense of military vs non-
military.

~~~
gaius
_it 's not always used in the strict sense of military vs non-military_

When people with machine guns and armoured vehicles, etc refer to others as
"civilians", I think it's clear what sense it is used in.

------
brohee
One point that I don't see discussed often, is the background of police
officers. How many are Iraq vets that apply in America's streets the exact
same methods that made Iraq hell on earth... And why could anyone think
applying occupation tactics to domestic law enforcement was remotely a good
idea...

~~~
bryanlarsen
I've heard the opposite hypothesis. Previously police departments had a much
higher percentage of vets. After having experienced the horrors of war, they
had no need nor no desire to play soldier on the street. Also they would have
calibrated their us versus them response. The criminals they encounter on the
street are the same people they were defending and fighting with at war.

~~~
justinpombrio
.

~~~
daveFNbuck
They don't explain the same conclusion. One predicts that police departments
with more vets will tend to be less militarized, the other predicts that
police departments with more vets will tend to be more militarized. These
could be easily distinguished by gathering data, and it would be very helpful
to know which, if either, is true.

------
Clubber
The drug war is what gives these type of police the justification for their
actions. The drug war will be our undoing.

~~~
jonathankoren
Yup. It starts with the very term "war".

We have military hardware and military guns. We have an institution of filled
with arrogance and the instillation of fear ("Contempt of cop" is a real
thing.) Even in this article, they talk about how the sheriff's swat team has
a logo featuring a human skull. Not exactly in the "protect and serve"
department, but more much more "I'm gonna fuck someone up" department. Civil
forfeiture. Targeting communities for fines. Broken windows policing. A
privatized prison system. Policing as a money maker.

This is contemporary police culture, and it is dysfunctional.

I've said this multiple times, but the older I get, the more I see the wisdom
in NWA[0].

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tke_27wbW-0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tke_27wbW-0)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Some are wearing T-shirts with the tactical team’s logo. It’s a human skull
imposed over two crossed AR-15s.

Have they realized they're the baddies[1]?

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU)

------
uhtred
Give everyone: 1\. Food 2\. Clean, safe and warm shelter, doesn't need to be
fancy 3\. A little money to spend (just a little! There still needs to be
incentive to go out and work!) 4\. Free and good quality education

And legalise drugs.

No more need for warrior cops.

------
acaciapalm
What pisses me off most about this is that people say the cops need these
tools, etc. Well, how come the cops suck so much at their jobs?! No, I'm
serious. My local PD is in the midst of a crime wave. They take many hours to
respond, never actually catch anyone, catch the wrong people, act like idiots.

------
cryoshon
this is the reality in our black communities. night raids, arbitrary
detention, brutality, denigration. the police fight a war against the poor.

if they behave like an occupying army, they should not be so offended when
they are fought like an occupying army. the black communities will continue to
be oppressed, and so there will be more incidents like the slaughter in
dallas. everyone will say "oh, the humanity" or similar, but nothing will
change until public policy tightens the leash on the cops.

until we start taking officer safety more seriously and hobble their ability
to abuse the public, we should expect continued violence against the police.
to improve officer safety, the police need to be stripped of their weapons,
armor, and legal leeway to abuse. it's simple: violence begets violence.
rather than doubling down, pull back. unless the lives of police don't
matter-- then by all means, let the police try continuing with the shootings
until the morale of the black community improves.

under the best circumstances, the black community won't trust the police for
another generation or two, provided that the police stop doing damage now. we
need to aim for the children of their children being able to trust the
institutions that are there for their benefit... or we could keep
beating/shooting/stealing from/raiding them for another 20 years, and cause
peace to be that much farther off.

------
delegate
That's why I'm leaning more and more towards the idea that paying taxes is
immoral and wrong in our current system.

And that is because a good chunk of the taxes we pay go towards arming young
people and sending them to kill other young people - military/war/defence.

Another chunk goes towards arming your own people against your own people,
thus making dissent and protest hard and dangerous.

And another chunk goes towards maintaining big and powerful institutions, like
the IRS, threatening us with violence if we don't pay up.

Centralised taxation systems should be replaced with citizen crowdfunding, in
which everyone can choose where his tax money goes.

I'm curious if we'd still be spending as much on police and military if we
could choose how we spend our taxes.

~~~
pdkl95
There are many parts of government that I disagree with, including many that I
consider immoral. That's why it's important to participate in the political
process. Government and law can be changed; it's a slow process and it
requires a _lot_ of work, but it's possible.

Picking and choosing where your taxes go a terrible idea, because government
isn't à la carte[1]. Everybody has their own opinion on what they don't want
to pay for, such as the religious fanatics that don't want to cover certain
medical items (e.g. some types of birth control). The "market" is not a law of
nature that fixes everything, so you're really advocating for a failed
government where nothing is properly funded.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSQCH1qyIDo#t=170](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSQCH1qyIDo#t=170)

~~~
delegate
> Picking and choosing where your taxes go a terrible idea, because government
> isn't à la carte

And why not ? Our current system stems from a different age, when there were
no technological means of communication and collaboration similar to what we
have today. Democracy (majority wins, regardless of competence) was the best
tech people could come up with in those circumstances.

But this is no longer the case.

If we could start over, how would we build SocietyOS today ?

Laws ? Why not write them in a special programming language, which can then be
executed against facts from reality (coming from sensors and human input) - no
judges, lawyers and lawmakers - input facts, click and get the judgement.

Use collaboration and communication tools like Github to write the laws. Let
citizens submit pull requests.

Let citizens have the "Society" app on their phones and let them up/down vote
serious things too, not just pictures of cats.

Log the public opinion and gather feedback in real time.

Use advanced reputation systems, in which people's opinions have different
weights in various domains. And so on.

Many many ways in which we can use today's technology to create a 'better',
'fairer' society - we just have to let go of the old system.

I think this will inevitably happen 'naturally' some time in the future, but
the weight of the 'old' makes it very difficult to move forward now..

~~~
pdkl95
> And why not ?

Because you are advocating for the government to fail due to under funding. Do
you not realize that _every_ piece of government has some group that wishes it
didn't exist? You are advocating for the de-funding of everything.

Living with other people requires compromise. We cannot _all_ have the
government we want, because most of those governments are contradictory.
Instead, the goal should be to guarantee the ability to _change_ government.

> regardless of competence

That's a feature, not a bug, because there isn't (and never will be) agreement
on the definition of "competence". In the past, for example, tests of
"competence" were used to disenfranchise people.

> best tech

You cannot define this either.

> Why not write them in a special programming language

I would love to have laws written in a strict, machine-checkable grammar.
"Legalease" already approaches this idea, with many defined terms and standard
formats for some things. There is a lot of room for improvement, of course.

> executed against facts from reality ... no judges, lawyers and lawmakers

You should _really_ hang out with lawyers more, because this sentence is
wildly detached from reality. You're pretending that "facts" and the
interpretation of how the law applies to them are (or ever could be) some sort
of automatic process. A large part of trials is deciding _what the facts are_
, as there is often disagreement about that.

> coming from sensors

Sensors fail. It requires _interpretation_ and _argument_ to decide how to
handle those situations.

> input facts, click and get the judgement.

Automatic judgment of law is terrifying. Consider that from the perspective of
people that _don 't_ have your level of privilege. Minority groups regularly
have to fight democratically created prejudices, and human judgment - judges,
juries, etc - that has the option to _not_ apply the law is an important
safety mechanism.

> Use collaboration and communication tools like Github to write the laws.

Sounds great. When are you introducing these tools to your local government?
Also... "collaboration and communication" to decide how to run society is
called _politics_. I strongly recommend participating in that process; just
remember that you may have to do a lot of remedial work before everybody else
is ready for tools like git.

> Log the public opinion and gather feedback in real time.

I'd love to have that. If you know of a way to do that which isn't trivially
broken _and_ doesn't allow coercion by employers or other people in positions
of power, do share it. It would solve a _lot_ of problems. Right now, we
already try to do this in the voting process; adding in the internet or a
phone "app" is guaranteed to create problems. For an explanation of why, see
this[1] talk by Andrew Appel (CS prof at Princeton).

\--

I suspect you're suffering from a tech-focused variation of the Just World
Fallacy[2]. Reality just doesn't work that cleanly, even when you use
computers. In fact, computers have a nasty tendency to amplify and automate
mistakes and prejudices, just like they can amplify and automate useful work.

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-
world_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis)

~~~
witty_username
> Automatic judgment of law is terrifying. Consider that from the perspective
> of people that don't have your level of privilege. Minority groups regularly
> have to fight democratically created prejudices, and human judgment -
> judges, juries, etc - that has the option to not apply the law is an
> important safety mechanism.

In other words, are you saying the system might be prejudiced?

But even so, as long as it's less prejudiced than humans (notoriously bad),
it'll be better.

~~~
pdkl95
> In other words, are you saying the system might be prejudiced?

Every system has prejudices and biases.

> But even so, as long as it's less prejudiced than humans (notoriously bad),
> it'll be better.

I'll take a system that has less prejudice, but first show that it actually is
less prejudiced in practice.

Non-human systems "bake in" and automate the biases of the creator of the
system, and it is _very_ hard to create a system that isn't full of
preconceptions, misunderstandings, and _bad data_.

------
eternalban
These are all from different countries. Just a quick image search. Would a
visitor from another planet be entirely wrong to deduce that local regime
propaganda aside, _all_ governments have assumed a paramilitarized posture
towards their citizens?

[http://media.presstv.com/photo/20160325/1bd21648-c58b-4d39-a...](http://media.presstv.com/photo/20160325/1bd21648-c58b-4d39-a3a8-6bb2bcde34c0.jpg)

[http://media.presstv.com/photo/20160323/f17b570b-68b6-4d7d-9...](http://media.presstv.com/photo/20160323/f17b570b-68b6-4d7d-93b9-176787213a53.jpg)

[http://media.presstv.com/photo/20150519/76bdc4b0-98ca-42b1-b...](http://media.presstv.com/photo/20150519/76bdc4b0-98ca-42b1-b08d-9d410b1eb493.jpg)

[http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200704/r137524_467947.jpg](http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200704/r137524_467947.jpg)

[http://worldnews.indywatch.org/archiver/worldnews.indywatch....](http://worldnews.indywatch.org/archiver/worldnews.indywatch.org/resources/timemachine/tftppull.freethoughtllc.netdna-
cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/riot-police.jpg)

~~~
uhtred
We don't know the context these photos were taken in though. Might have been
during riots, or a terrorist alert. I'd personally want the cops to look like
that if there was a nutter on the loose with a machine gun.

~~~
eternalban
Context is a fair point. Interestingly enough, they are _all_ beating the
"terrorist" drums at your local regime.

> I'd personally want the cops to look like that if there was a nutter on the
> loose with a machine gun.

Here is the point: Physical protection of police personnel does not invariably
require 'psychological intimidation' aesthetics.

Your "lone nutter" is by your description already nuts and has already crossed
the line, so what's the point of dressing up in storm trooper outfits?

------
B1FF_PSUVM
It's been a few years that Terry Gilliam's Brazil movie got upgraded to
'mostly documentary' status. At the time, 1985, it seemed only a dark comedy /
cautionary tale.

(Well, the caution against ugly tech seems to have worked. Architecture and
policing, not so much.)

------
lifeisstillgood
Oh I _get_ it now. The warrior cop is the new Klu Klux Klan. Violently
suppressing the ability of the (poor/black/?) to succeed in America

It is the civil forfeiture thing with the lawnmowers that was a light bulb
moment for me.

------
jbmorgado
The author might be right about some things, but he is also clearly
exaggerating toward his narrative in some others.

It wasn't the _" Ferguson Protests"_ as the author is trying to put it, it was
the _" Ferguson Riots"_, there was looting, violence amongst the people and
destruction of public property all around, you can't expect the police to show
up in their blue uniform armed only with a baton in those cases.

~~~
dalke
Ferguson involved both protests and riots. More people were involved in the
former than the latter.

Quoting M. L. King's "The Other America":

> These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they
> have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get
> attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the
> unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear
> that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or
> fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and
> justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of
> white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than
> about justice and humanity. -
> [http://www.gphistorical.org/mlk/mlkspeech/](http://www.gphistorical.org/mlk/mlkspeech/)

I can expect the police to not yell out "Bring it, all you fucking animals!
Bring it!".

~~~
GunboatDiplomat
Well, let's be honest, justice and humanity is only possible in an atmosphere
of respect for law and relative tranquillity. Justice has seldom been found at
the head of a mob.

~~~
musha68k
You are not wrong in general but for cases like these maybe try to see it more
as a "thrown exception" where as per the MLK quote above, the base "promises
of freedom and justice have not been met".

~~~
GunboatDiplomat
It's not a simple problem, true. But I stand by my belief that riots are
simply going to provoke a more powerful backlash in opposition to the rioters.

~~~
dalke
The Stonewall riots seem to have lead to long-term success. What better
alternative would you have suggested than to riot?

The Zoot Suit Riots had the opposite effect from what you describe. Some of
the police joined in on the riot against young Latino males, and there wasn't
a powerful backlash against the rioters.

The riots in Romania in 1989 provoked a more powerful backlash. The government
eventually lost.

That makes it sound like things aren't as simple as you describe.

