
Why the US military usually punishes misconduct but police often close ranks - znpy
https://theconversation.com/why-the-us-military-usually-punishes-misconduct-but-police-often-close-ranks-127898
======
crazygringo
Having become very interested in police brutality for obvious reasons, I
recently finished _Danger, Duty, and Disillusion: the Worldview of Los Angeles
Police Officers_ [1] by Joan Barker, an academic book from 1999 that takes an
anthropologist's view to understanding the LAPD after the Rodney King riots,
and pretty much the only work I could find that tries to understand the police
officer mindset holistically.

It is utterly fascinating and I highly recommend it, but one of the most
interesting takeaways (consistent with this article) is that police officers
quickly become utterly _disillusioned_ with the integrity of the police
department as an _institution_. They complain about unfair recruitment and
promotion policies, injured officers who become "disposable", an emphasis on
quotas instead of applying the law consistently, on politicization of policing
priorities, and above all the city always settling cases against police
misconduct so that accused officers never get a chance to clear their name in
court, when innocent.

With this mindset, when they don't trust their own institution, the only
people they trust are fellow officers -- not captains, not management, not the
department, not the mayor. Which aligns with this article -- that Marines view
the Marines as a trustworthy _institution_ , while police _don 't_ see their
own police department in the same light.

Now obviously police misconduct and brutality _exist_ and are a huge problem.
But the book very much opened my eyes to the idea that it's not only the
behavior of police officers that needs better standards and accountability --
that treating police officers themselves better and more fairly may also be
just as necessary to achieve full transparency and accountability. What if the
"blue wall of silence" dissolved because police officers trusted their own
institution, rather than just each other?

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Danger-Duty-Disillusion-Worldview-
Off...](https://www.amazon.com/Danger-Duty-Disillusion-Worldview-
Officers/dp/1577660412)

~~~
snowwrestler
I think it's important to understand the extent to which this is a culture,
i.e. self-perpetuating in spite of outside influences.

While your comment explains the origin of this culture... it's generally not
as easy to change such a culture as it is to maintain it. Once a group of
people believe that the rest of the world does not understand them or is
against them, they are somewhat inoculated against efforts by the rest of the
world to change them.

New officers spend most of their time with older officers, not department
leadership, not the mayor, not journalists, not activists, etc. Older officers
teach younger officers how to act, and to some extent, what to believe. And,
they act collectively to punish new officers who fail to adhere to this
culture.

This is well-enough known to become a storytelling trope: a young idealistic
officer finds him- or herself facing not only criminals, but also the cultural
inertia of the disillusioned existing police force, as they try to do the
right thing.

In many contexts, we accept that organizations have to end, and be replaced,
to enact meaningful change. Companies go out business; political
administrations lose elections.

This is why the idea of "abolish the police" or "defund the police" might not
be as crazy as it sounds on its surface. It's not that we don't need people
who are paid to investigate crime and keep people safe... obviously we do. But
police forces _as they currently exist_ may have too much cultural inertia to
evolve the way they need to.

~~~
majormajor
To put in very common language here: there are times when refactoring would be
way more costly and difficult than rewriting.

~~~
maest
I suspect people here can comprehend the idea without requiring a tortured
programming-related metaphore.

~~~
hakfoo
I've actually heard the some other devs say they interpret the current calls
to action as "refactor the police".

Saying "defund" and "disband" has somewhat derailed the discussion with people
asking "does that mean when we call 911 it goes to voicemail?"

"Reform" is already a loaded word, as it's been associated with plenty of do-
nothing or make-the-situation-worse initiatives.

Refactor is a great choice, except for limited currency outside the
programming sector. It implies wholesale changes, an attempt to improve
quality, but also that the existing desired functionality is still being
honoured.

Indeed, it does bring up the appropriatre set of folloup questions-- can this
be refactored with reasonable cost constraints and chances of success?

~~~
charlieflowers
This is one of those rare cases where the right thing is to throw out the
current system and “re-write” it from scratch.

------
dogman144
Really good article, but misses a large part of why military self-enforces
well: integrity above all is a, or _the_ value that is stressed-stressed-
stressed.

The reasoning goes that while any UCMJ violation short of the big ones
(abandoning post, AWOL, murder, etc.) is recoverable from with regards to
career impact by a PCS (change bases you're stationed at), a new commander,
whatever, the ONLY thing that will really sink you is lying.

You can recover from all sorts of failures. What you will never recover from
is lying on a sworn statement about that failure.

Enforcement of UCMJ proves this out. Officers and Enlisted both follow this in
various ways from small infractions to things that involve UCMJ. The service
academies only have 1 non-crime that will really get you kicked out: honor
violations. Etc. etc.

The interesting background aspect is Army values get pounded into you from Day
0, and Integrity is one of them. Legitimate corrective action will go around
violating them from Basic Training all the way through the last day of your
career. Not a lot of other orgs take organizational value lists that are on
the proverbial office wall quite so seriously.

I'm almost positive the police do none of this approach, but also they don't
have a federal police force really to enforce it top-down like the Army does.

edit grammar

------
eiji
The military is a national organization with a hierarchy stretching from the
first-day-on-the-job cadet all the way into the White House. In the US, almost
every police department is it's own thing. I'm not aware of any national
organization. Usually the mayor is the top of the hierarchy. That means a
faceless bureaucracy, towns and states removed, will deal with individual
concerns in the military. Not a known person three miles from your house.

~~~
kanox
Creating a new federal body to specifically deal with use-of-force by law
enforcement could correct many issues by conducting investigates in a more
impartial manner.

It could also issue nation-wide guidelines such as making it impossible to
turn off body cameras.

~~~
GVIrish
I see this much like the Civil Rights Act. There was no way segregation was
going to be ended without significant legislation and enforcement from the
federal government. Bottom line is that the sort of large scale reform needed
to end systemic problems of police misconduct is going to be extremely
difficult to achieve via local reforms. Congress needs to end qualified
immunity, end civil asset forfeiture, increase federal oversight, and
potentially write new laws governing the use of body cams.

One idea I've seen from police reformers is a 'Missing Video Presumption' law.
The basic idea is that if the body cam (or vehicle cam) footage goes missing
and there is a conflicting account of events, the court will presume the video
would've corroborated the civilian's version of events. This would give an
extremely strong incentive to not turn off cameras or sabotage video as police
have done in a number of cases.

~~~
kanox
A lot of these policing issues seems to come from progressive localities so
I'm not sure it's even due to government unwillingness to solve the issues.

Most organizations are really extremely bad at dealing with internal abuses
which is why external watchdogs could work very well.

Mandatory body cams make a lot of sense but if you need to deal with the
opposition of 1000s local police unions it's not going to happen very quickly.

~~~
GVIrish
_> A lot of these policing issues seems to come from progressive localities so
I'm not sure it's even due to government unwillingness to solve the issues._

Part of the reason for this is that police unions fight vigorously against
reform and police unions are powerful in local politics. That's why some
police departments ended up getting disbanded by their municipalities to
restart from the ground up.

It seems like opposition to body cams in general isn't strong, but the real
fight will come when stronger laws are proposed for when body cams need to be
on, penalties for not having them on, and when footage must be released.

~~~
roenxi
> police unions fight vigorously against reform and police unions are powerful
> in local politics

Aren't the Democrats the notionally pro-union party? I think it has fallen out
of rhetorical favour in recent years, but I thought there was an association
between Democrats being in charge and strong local union presences.

~~~
dredmorbius
Yes.

Police unions are seen as an exception to the usual party alignment. The
Minneapolis police union and its president Bob Kroll supported Trump's
campaign:

[https://www.lawofficer.com/minneapolis-police-union-
touting-...](https://www.lawofficer.com/minneapolis-police-union-touting-
support-trump/) (2019)

------
chrisbennet
We give the police some slack because its a dangerous job. They are often paid
quite well because its dangerous.

But how dangerous is it?

1 Logging workers

2 Fishers and related fishing workers

3 Aircraft pilots and flight engineers

4 Roofers

5 Refuse and recyclable material collectors

6 Driver/sales workers and truck drivers

7 Farmers, ranchers and other agricultural managers

8 Structural iron and steel workers

9 First-line supervisors of construction trades and extraction workers

10 First-line supervisors of landscaping, lawn service and groundskeeping
workers

11 Electrical power-line installers and repairers

12 Grounds maintenance workers

13 Miscellaneous agricultural workers

14 Helpers, construction trades

15 First-line supervisors of mechanics, installers and repairers

16 Police and sheriff’s patrol officers

Source: [https://www.ajc.com/business/employment/these-are-the-
most-d...](https://www.ajc.com/business/employment/these-are-the-most-
dangerous-jobs-america/x2MOTeEYCgkt2zYCLfqfJJ/)

EDIT: Be nice to your fellow HNer's. Also, no one could pay me enough to be a
policeman.

~~~
willcipriano
>They are often paid quite well because its dangerous

2019 median pay for a police officer/detective: $65,170[0]

2019 median pay for high school teachers (often cited as underpaid):
$61,660[1]

[0][https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/mobile/police-
and...](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/mobile/police-and-
detectives.htm)

[1][https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-
library/mobil...](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-
library/mobile/high-school-teachers.htm)

~~~
jgeada
Being a police officer requires no qualifications and barely any training, and
low intelligence is notoriously preferred [0].

Being a teacher requires at least a bachelors degree. The two jobs shouldn't
even be comparable.

[0] [https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-
cops/st...](https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-
cops/story?id=95836)

~~~
willcipriano
That figure includes detectives, who do often have a degree[0], removing them
brings to total down to $63,150[1] for year round work.

[0][https://www.learnhowtobecome.org/detective/](https://www.learnhowtobecome.org/detective/)

[1][https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/mobile/police-
and...](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/mobile/police-and-
detectives.htm)

------
Melting_Harps
I take issue with this statement/argument based on the fact that there have
been several people in jail for releasing material to wikileaks that revealed
the grotesque amount of Human Rights violations, not least of which the video
showing how some soldiers will kill in cold blood: Collateral Murder.

This ended up seeing Manning get thrown in jail, be tortured for years in
isolation, as well as having attempted suicide several times while in jail
(again! after getting a communicated sentence by Obama)_the last time for
refusing to testify against others involved. And Assange has also had to
suffer a confined existence, been dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy and
placed in jail and still awaits trial while his health and mental health have
deteriorated, I'd say his near 8 year amount of torture as a direct result of
the Military trying to cover up misconduct showed the World just how perverse
both systems really are.

I'm not even going to get into things like the use of Contractors like Black
Water/Xe, or black-sites/rendition camps, and spies.

All I will say is read Jeremy Scahill's work, this pro-Military narrative
seems entirely jingoistic and akin to 9/11 ahead of the invasions of Iraq and
Afghanistan, I have vets in both wars in my family and have seen the
consequences first hand, to me and alarming as the tensions between the CCP
and the US are accelerating.

Just so its clear, I despise the CCP but War is not a solution or an option we
should accept.

~~~
astine
Chelsea Manning was not involved in the "collateral murder" leak.

~~~
Melting_Harps
> Chelsea Manning was not involved in the "collateral murder" leak.

True, he testified and said it was an unclassified video. You're right.
However, the ire of the State was such that you'd think it had been, and
that's the point. How can whistle-blowers like Manning or Snowden be treated
in this manner when all they're doing is exposing the material that should be
afforded to every citizen to scrutinize, and if I'm honest if we did we would
stop calling the US anything but yet another Empire with all the Human Right's
violations that they all commit. Moreover, he isn't alone: so many from
Binney, Drake etc... This is systemic Imperial decree that is masked as Law
when in reality we've been here before with the Pentagon papers and Daniel
Ellsberg.

In short, I don't think there are 'good guys' in this narrative of Police vs
Military and both need to be vastly reformed.

From the very inception of this country, its General who led the Revolution
stated that Government is a necessary evil, and should be regarded as such
with certain vanguards that protect the People from the eventual Tyranny (even
his own) that they all succumb to. Jefferson then went on to enshrine into the
Deceleration of Independence and his philosophy leading up to his presidency,
which was underwhelming by his standards of radical, and fringe Idealism he
had supported up until then.

~~~
Enginerrrd
Manning and Snowden should never be compared as whistleblowers. Snowden has so
much moral high ground in the form of responsible disclosure compared to
Manning that it does him a disservice to put him in the same sentence as
Manning.

~~~
Melting_Harps
> Manning and Snowden should never be compared as whistleblowers

I disagree entirely, and despite my preference with Ed as his involvement
encompasses Bitcoin, general cryptonerd stuff and the fact that I really
enjoyed the 1/2 of Permanent Record I read, I still think Manning has shown
great conviction under horrible circumstances and continues to Freedom Fight
under constant horrible duress and personal harm.

I don't have heroes, but if I did the two would hold equally high positions
given the efforts to inform the public at personal sacrifice to their careers
and Life.

------
rclayton
IMHO this article is nonsense. Even the Gallagher example contradicts the
premise. The SEALs that reported him basically risked their careers in doing
so.

The military may have laws/rules to report misconduct, but structurally, units
are incentivized to hide misconduct (e.g. “handle internally”) because they
don’t want the embarrassment. More importantly, failures by subordinates are
often seen as leadership problems (you can make an argument that in many cases
this is true) which mean officers and SNCOs are likely to sweep them under the
rug if they can.

I saw many, many cases of this in the USMC. DUIs turned into “wet and
reckless” because it involved a SNCO (an NCO or lower would have lost rank).
NCOs (rightfully) pressing charges against subordinates for misconduct, only
to be pressured by company/battalion leadership to accept “alternative
punishment” (which often amounted to nothing). A let’s not even talk about all
the case where there was sexual or physical abuse that went unreported despite
everyone knowing it was happening.

The only time the military is motivated to act on misconduct is when it can’t
hide it.

~~~
narag
_The military may have laws /rules to report misconduct, but structurally,
units are incentivized to hide misconduct_

The key word seems to be structurally. The US have this much copied feature of
decentralization. Every town elects his sheriff, judges, a lot of the
administration is local, then statal. Federal bodies are a far away, mistruted
entities. Police is local.

It made sense for a huge country developed at the rhythm of railroad. Law and
order must exist near the place where the crime is. I'm not so sure that it's
still the case with current connected world. Maybe the US still needs a level
more decentralization than most other countries. But if you look at other
countries where police is less corrupt and citizens trust them, it's usually
an entity dependent on central government, not the city council.

Making the investigative entity as far as possible from the investigated is
much better for imparciality. Also involving judges, not in the same branch.
Local police here has limited competences. Any serious crime goes to national
corps. Police needs to go to national academy and get certified for the whole
country.

In my country I would trust police much more than the military.

~~~
rclayton
That’s a fascinating idea, but in practice I think we Americans have
completely messed it up. Some U.S. states like Georgia centralize
investigative responsibilities (often when municipalities are too small to
budget these services). This strategy hasn’t lead to great results. The
Georgia Bureau of Investigation is notorious for falsely indicting and
imprisoning minorities. I suspect the same is probably true in other states.

We do still have the FBI and federal Dept of Justice that is supposed to
provide some semblance of oversight. However, as we have seen over the last 4
years, they are equally susceptible to political influence as local law
enforcement agencies.

~~~
narag
There is an interesting fact that's seldom overlooked over here. We have
_comunidades autónomas_ , that might be similar to states, only smaller.
They're relatively new, less than 50 y.o. and accumulates a disproportionate
number of corruption cases. Why is that?

Central government was developed around the statute of the public officer. In
the 1800s there was an unending flow of public officers in and out (the
"cesantías") caused by political parties putting their people in public jobs
and firing the others' people when every elections turnover. At a certain
moment a system of merit access was imposed to provide stability. If you were
under the line that divides technical from political, you're safe from firing.
Still it's possible that you want to cooperate for promotions but, at a
certain level, you just don't care.

 _Comunidades_ were developed from scratch, with a hight proportion of
"external" workers (that don't have the protections of the public officer
statute), with "merit points" distorting the exams (being the merit having
been working for years without exams because you're friends with someone) and
with very little judicial oversight.

TL;DR: to avoid local corruption, make the police come from as far above as
possible. To avoid central corruption, make technical lead not political and
involve judges not elected by politicians. Everything elected by politicians
gets corrupted.

------
yostrovs
Strangely, the word "union" doesn't appear in the article. Considering that it
is the police unions that create the system within which police officers are
protected, I believe their power and tactics need to be examined.

~~~
onefuncman
If you get rid of bad cops you don't have to do anything to fix the unions.

~~~
stronglikedan
But you have to fix the unions to get rid of bad cops, since the unions
_prevent_ bad cops from being gotten rid of.

------
john-shaffer
> “A soldier is reasoning agent,” a military court explained in the 1991 case
> U.S. v. Kinder, in which a soldier who killed a civilian was convicted of
> murder on the grounds that his superior’s order to do so was obviously
> illegal and should have been reported.

This reference appears to be completely wrong. The case it links to is an
appeal of drug dealing convictions.

The phrase "A soldier is a reasoning agent" appears in the 1973 case U.S. v.
Calley [1] appealing Calley's conviction for murder at My Lai.

[1] [https://casebook.icrc.org/case-study/united-states-united-
st...](https://casebook.icrc.org/case-study/united-states-united-states-v-
william-l-calley-jr)

------
elchin
Military, especially Navy SEALs, are a lot more trained than police are, so
their standards of behavior are higher. In US it takes 2-6 months to become a
cop. In Germany, for comparison, it's around 2-3 years.

~~~
GVIrish
Not only that, but to join the military is to join a way of life. In the
military your conduct is still governed by military regulations after you go
home for the day. You can't just quit the military if you want a new job. You
can be punished in your career for wrongdoing by one of your dependents. Your
career can suffer for doing things in your off time that aren't illegal
(adultery for example).

Not to say the military is perfect by any stretch. You still have your portion
of GI's committing crimes and scandals at various levels of organization. And
you still have problems someone of a higher rank can get away with stuff
because of their power over subordinates. But by and large the military has
much stronger mechanisms to maintain and enforce accountability than the
average police department.

------
shrubble
Was it the low-level soldiers or the higher-ups who created the plans for
torture at Abu Ghraib who were publicly shamed, humiliated and then jailed?

~~~
hef19898
The higher ups created it, the average soldier was sacrificed for it. Doesn't
change the fact, that the military has apparently better internal controls,
better training and better rules of engagements. Even for some sorts of police
work. The US military. Quite telling if you ask me.

~~~
idoubtit
> the military has apparently better internal controls

Source?

The video "Collateral Murder" which made Wikileaks famous is one of the many
proofs of that the US military doesn't apply much control on their
engagements. The army had a video of the helicopter crew that shot unarmed
civilians, including reporters and children. The crew obviously had fun
killing them. They used offensive words and gamer slang. And the army lied to
the press in order to protect the murderers.

You may also read the many NGO reports about misconducts, torture, and
civilian killings in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan… The internal controls almost
never do anything unless a high level of media pressure applies.

The US army may have internal controls when the victims are Americans
(bullying, etc), but apart from this... some lives are more equals than
others.

~~~
austincheney
One video is a poor qualifier of an organization comprising millions of people
over the past 25 years.

------
squarefoot
When I was in the military I was taught about esprit de corps, loyalty,
camaraderie etc. but they stressed that any order that goes against humanity
must not be followed. Fortunately I never had to test that on my own ass,
however I'm sure that the Police protecting their bad apples has nothing to do
with that. Loyalty and esprit de corps must never ever go beyond the law,
otherwise they become essentially like the mafia's code of silence, that is, a
crime that covers other crimes. If I see a cop doing that, I cease to consider
him as a cop as he just became a criminal wrapped in uniform.

~~~
glenstein
I have frequently seen police compared unfavorably to the military in recent
weeks. I have never served, but everything I've seen about how the military
handles use of force and how it handles incidents of violent misconduct
suggest a standard that police units, at their worst, do _not_ adhere to.

------
scarface74
What I find so strange is that while I am no supporter of the military complex
in the US, all of my ire is directed at the civilian oversight and not the
military itself.

The military generals wanted to close bases that it didn’t need and that they
thought was wasteful - the government wouldn’t close them because of the job
loss.

The military leaders have said one of the biggest threats to our democracy is
our ballooning national debt - I can’t find a quote from a general but you
will find plenty of pro-military sites that agree. But yet the civilian
government ignores the threat.

The military has plenty of weapon programs that it would love to mothball. But
again, Senators are worried about job loss and they keep making weapons and
selling them to foreign governments.

The government can spend billions on weapons that the military doesn’t need
and private contractors but won’t equip soldiers with what they need.

There have been plenty of stories about how the civilian government has
recently put soldiers health in danger for photo ops and exposing them to
Covid unnecessarily. ([https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/magazine/navy-
captain-cro...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/magazine/navy-captain-
crozier-positive-coronavirus.html))

~~~
user_0x
This also goes for global warming etc. The military is a really interesting
institution when it comes to politics in the US, and undoubtedly anywhere
really.

~~~
scarface74
I can’t really say that I disagree with anything on a meta level in recent
history that the military has done or that military generals have said that
wasn’t a direct result of incompetence, greed, or just wrong headed ideology
by the civilian government.

~~~
user_0x
as it should be in a civilian society.

~~~
scarface74
True. But why can’t we say the same about the police?

------
VLM
It doesn't seem to actually explain anything. I was in the military and have
some cop friends so maybe I can explain the divergent sociology:

Post police academy, AFAIK police never experience collective punishment. In
the army its normal if someone loses a weapon to have everyone doing a few
pushups. When you saw your squadmate without a rifle, why didn't you ask them
wtf they're doing? From large to small scale cops experience punishment alone
and military suffers as a group. Small crime breeds large crime and (pardon
the pun) military simply self-polices more than cops as a leadership style.

I can't blame cops too much as they have to deal with demographics where
saving face is important and one cop dropping another cop for pushups because
they lost their summons-writing pen is impractical. Which brings up
sociological difference where the enemy for cops is 40% to 100% of their daily
interactions and is up close and personal, so screw these guys I'm breaking
bad, whereas 100% of human interactions in the military is with buddies and
the bad guys don't speak our language and the firefights are at 25 or more
yards in a very abstract sense. Essentially cops spend most of their time with
people who hate them so "getting even" makes more sense, whereas military
spends nearly 100% of their time with friends and why would you want to screw
over your buddy?

The military bakes corporate style reorganization into the cake, you can
expect a PCS move around the world every two or so years, its very unusual to
have TV or Movie style old timers who've been in the unit forever. Even in the
Reserves if you are in long enough to get E-5 or E-6 you're almost certainly
going to have to move to get that next promotion and higher level leadership
always rotates even in the reserves. Noobs don't even know HOW to be corrupt
for the first quarter of their time on station. Its a valuable learning
experience and filters out people who can't learn quickly on the job, which
for military is good. Cops on the other hand will have some old sgt who's been
sitting on the same desk for 25 years and the good ole boys network of
questionable activities formed decades ago and ...

The military is highly paid; civilians don't understand that when I got out (a
quarter century ago) the current pay rate for me would be just under
$3K/month, but that's not before tax like civilians, that's after getting
housing, food, insurance, essentially all I have to pay for $3K/mo would be
bar bill and car expenses. Cops on the other hand get paid approximately as
much as public school teachers aka F-all not much in a pyramid scheme where
people scream about the top of the pyramid making $100K but realize the top of
the pyramid is incredibly small (like pro sports salaries) and the base of the
pyramid is an immense number of people making $50K/yr or often far less.
Speaking of pyramids, in the military every 5-yr experience E-4 makes the same
$3K/mo after all expenses are paid, whereas with both cops and teachers its a
pyramid where everyone has to compete to get up to that $100K/yr contract,
there's a different attitude when you're competing vs when you all get the
same paycheck.

Edited to add another important sociological point: Cops usually work alone or
in a very small group like two people. Two people can keep a secret, even
three. The smallest "working group" I can think of in the military would be
special forces teams with at least 4 people, but the rank and file work in
groups who can't keep secrets. You can't expect to catch a cop who works alone
or with a buddy, so things get worse and worse until they make the news in a
big way; whereas the first time someone screws up in the military they
generally get caught and kicked out so things rarely get worse over time.

Note that outsiders think the military to cop pipeline is smooth. It CERTAINLY
is NOT, and my buddies complain a lot about the sociological differences
mentioned above along with others. Outsiders think they just wear a different
uniform, but its really a wild cultural shift to go from military to being a
cop. Maybe its the smallest shift to go from MP to civie police compared to
other vocations, but its still a big shift in an absolute sense.

~~~
alistairSH
_Essentially cops spend most of their time with people who hate them_

How much of policing is actually responding to violent crime vs traffic
infractions or minor spats between neighbors?

That the general populace is afraid of cops is largely of the cops own doing.
If they weren't power-hungry thugs, even when executing traffic enforcement,
they wouldn't have this problem.

~~~
VLM
I probably failed to be clear enough, sorry.

Imagine walking up to a group of people at work as your job.

If you're a cop, 99% certain someone in that group, if not the entire group,
is VERY unhappy to meet you. Doesn't matter if you're shooting a bank robber
in progress or handing out speeding tickets or infinite domestic violence
cases, nobody likes you. Most folks can take being universally hated for an
entire career plus or minus alcoholism and such, but a microscopic minority
will fight back leading to massive unrest and social problems.

If you're in the military, with microscopic career field exceptions, every
group you walk up to is your buddies you work and party with, who wanna hang
out and have fun with you.

One job field is going to have occasional fatal anger issues, and the other
job field is going to have DUI/party-hard issues.

~~~
TheCondor
Well they are certainly working hard to make it 99% certain that a member of
every group hates them... It isn’t anywhere near that bad though; people come
to the police for help. There are suburban and small town police that probably
go days without actually interacting with civilians in an official capacity
regularly. Maybe some sort of rotation system at the state or county level
would help.

A stark difference is respect. The command of it, the teaching of it, really
everything. OCS tends to not fuck around when drilling proper bearing in to
potential officers. Enlisted salute officers, period. know them or not? It
doesn't matter, they are an officer and you show that respect. Police arm
themselves to demand that respect and authority, granted they are sometimes in
hostile situations and need that but generally they really don’t.

I’m disgusted that unarmed people end up dead at the rate they do during
interactions with the police. I will ask why we as a society didn’t care that
much until now, it’s a deep culture that formed. Another gigantic difference
between police and military is that there are safety valves and “turning on
the military” to solve an issue is a major fuck deal, it’s a war fighting
machine. The police are sort of like society’s janitor; they get called when a
home owner doesn’t want a homeless camp in the park near their home. The
police, generally, don’t have that many tools for dealing with homeless,
mentally unstable, drug addicted, and otherwise marginalized people. There is
supposed to be a crime to lock people up, we don’t fund mental hospitals, etc.
if you watch some of the videos it looks like they’ve become very good at
fabricating crimes to justify force and arrest which are effectively the only
tools they readily have.

~~~
alistairSH
_Police arm themselves to demand that respect and authority, granted they are
sometimes in hostile situations and need that but generally they really
don’t._

I've often thought that police should leave their firearms locked in the trunk
(or locked in a safe installed in the center console area). If they're chasing
a violent criminal, get it. Making a traffic stop, wellness check, or
something else, leave it in the car.

------
dx87
I think another reason could be the wide latitude you have in the military to
punish someone without any official paperwork. If someone did something wrong,
you could punish them with physical exercise, cleaning duties, taking away
weekend liberty, etc., all without any paperwork. When you don't have to worry
that you're going to ruin someone's career every time you punish them, it's a
lot easier to keep them in line.

~~~
082349872349872
I was thinking the opposite: the US military has "up or out", where one has to
advance to stay in, tending to weed out bad apples in the officer corps. As
far as I am aware, police have nothing similar (and furthermore, don't
rotate). So my assessment is that it's much easier to get along to go along in
US police forces than in their military.

~~~
LanceH
The big problem with up or out is that officers eventually become politicians
(literally connected to politicians) with the pseudo-immunitiy that
politicians seem to enjoy. Prosecutors just choose not to prosecute, or they
just retire in lieu of what should be jail time.

------
fmajid
The US Armed Forces' record on prosecuting sexual assault is abysmal. You have
travesties like this:

[https://www.stripes.com/news/emails-show-general-warned-
agai...](https://www.stripes.com/news/emails-show-general-warned-against-
reversing-wilkerson-verdict-1.238114)

~~~
austincheney
Prosecution of sexual assaults in general is abysmal.

------
seemslegit
The military is made up from officers and enlisted personnel with the former
selected and cultivated for higher personal characteristics. The police otoh
while referring to themselves as officers is almost entirely enlisted-class
material.

~~~
VLM
Not since the 60s. On paper its possible in theory during an era of low
application numbers to become an officer in an obscure location with various
waivers if you're lucky, but in practice the requirements to actually get
hired as a P.O. are the same as military OCS.

You pretty much need a clean and successful record with a bachelors degree for
both paths.

Degree inflation is a real thing, similar to how receptionists in 2020 need a
degree in "something" whereas in the old days high school was enough. Boomer
generation cops could get hired with a mere high school diploma but that was
50 years ago.

~~~
NovemberWhiskey
> _On paper its possible in theory during an era of low application numbers to
> become an officer in an obscure location with various waivers if you 're
> lucky, but in practice the requirements to actually get hired as a P.O. are
> the same as military OCS._

Today, the published requirement to apply to the NYPD is 60 college credits
(i.e. a two-year associate's degree). The LAPD only requires high-school
graduation.

On the other hand, Army OCS requires a four-year bachelor's degree.

------
graycat
Okay, here I saw no mention of the relevant points in

"Executive Order on Safe Policing for Safe Communities"

June 16, 2020

at

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-
or...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-safe-
policing-safe-communities/)

So, in short, "money talks"!

Yes, it's the money the DoJ has long been giving to local police departments
to help them "protect and serve" and in general be _pretty_.

So, we get to set up a company, say, Local Police Audits, Inc. and a company
Audits and Approvals, Inc. The second works to make sure the DOJ thinks they
are pretty and, then, works to make sure the first is pretty; and then the
first works to make sure the police departments, e.g., in Minneapolis,
Atlanta, NYC, Baltimore, etc. are pretty, get a coveted, official pretty
prize.

And if a police department does not get a pretty prize? Then the DoJ "will
make them an offer they can't refuse" \-- get a pretty prize or lose your DoJ
money.

The Blue Line, police contracts, and police unions aside, this offer will be
meaningful to the local mayor, town council, and maybe the local newspapers,
voters, taxpayers, chief of police, the state governor, and even the
mainstream media (MSM).

It's all right there in that executive order.

------
fchu
Given how police as an institution is failing, I wonder if there is a way to
"reboot the system" (#RebootThePolice?) in a way that prevent bad culture to
reproduce within.

Like building a new corps of police ("NeoPolice") alongside existing police
with same responsibilities, but with a more stringent process on recruiting,
training, internal culture, values, etc. And have it slowly supplement the
old, dysfunctional police.

Some rationale: \- When something is really broken, non amount of repair can
fix it, you need a new thing. Shifting some policing responsibilities to other
institutions (eg Defund the Police) might reduce the negative impact of a
failing institution, but doesn't fix it. \- We need a transition plan if we
defund/abolish the police, and so far there is none to replace the police core
responsibilities (around the use of force) \- New competition drives
innovation, and having a new police force can shine the line on how much
better our experience of the product can be, driving further change.

It'll require strong, sustained leadership to build those institutions from
scratch which will be difficult, given how police is mostly a local
institution and the resulting outcome can vary greatly.

(For the curious, check how Brazil transitioned to a new currency to stop
inertial inflation:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidade_real_de_valor](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidade_real_de_valor)
Similar mindset, albeit for a completely different domain)

~~~
pdonis
_> Given how police as an institution is failing_

I don't think we can consider "police" as a single institution, or in
isolation. The character of the police in a particular locality depends on the
local government of that locality. If the police are corrupt, it is because
the local government is corrupt. That is going to vary widely from locality to
locality, and fixing it cannot be a matter of simply changing the police
alone; it has to be a matter of changing the local government.

------
frogpelt
How many government organizations (especially unionized ones) get rid of or
otherwise deal with bad performers?

Instead of pointing out the military as the rule and police officers as the
exception, maybe we should consider that the military is the exception.

Teachers, federal employees, and government employees at all levels of local
government are known for being able to keep their jobs long after they should
have been fired or disciplined.

The egregiousness of bad policing is that many times they are breaking laws.
But honestly, there are gray areas. The police are allowed to hit some people.
They have to shoot some people. So it's not a huge leap to assume that some of
them will overstep their bounds. And when they do, the union will back them,
and their colleagues will back them. And we'll hear how underpaid they are
(just like teachers).

And they keep their jobs, just like bad teachers.

------
mchusma
I've come to believe public sector unions in their current form just shouldn't
exist, as they exacerbate these kinds of problems. It is the Union's job to
protect members, and the only group who is by design trying to make this
happen.

I can't see the benefit to having an organization whose role it is to fight
the public (citizens) in order to improve the lives of a group granted a
monopoly over a function (e.g. use of force/policing). With private company
unions, there is at least market pressures that solve some issues.

(I am not against all forms of representatation for workers, and think unions
should exist but be more like "hollywood agents", and sell their services to
individuals. The power to strike always still exists if you can convince the
individuals it is a good idea.)

------
nicwolff
It's the culture – but that starts with the leadership. These videos are
messages to the entire fleet from the head of all US Naval operations, three
weeks ago and then yesterday. The first is a call to humbly listen, and the
follow-up presents the voices of sailors, to be heard:

[https://www.dvidshub.net/video/754884/cno-message-sailors-
ju...](https://www.dvidshub.net/video/754884/cno-message-sailors-june-3-2020)

[https://www.dvidshub.net/video/757420/starts-with-
us](https://www.dvidshub.net/video/757420/starts-with-us)

Have you seen anything like that from police officials?

------
mafm
Acoording to ethics class during basic training in the Australian army, the
key difference between soldiers and civilians is that military personnel are
under a legal obligation to follow all _lawful_ orders. The class highlighted
that police are (by definition) civilian because police are only obligated to
obey _reasonable_ orders.

So a soldier refusing to carry out a lawful order that would result in near-
certain death is guilty of a _crime_. A cop refusing to carry out the same
order is entirely within their rights.

And then there was also a lot of discussion of the difference between lawful
and unlawful orders, My Lai, Nazi Germany, etc.

Some Australian police recently refused to deal with people who had covid-19,
because they argued it was unreasonably dangerous.

At least in theory, military personnel are held to a much higher ethical
standard than civilian police.

~~~
k__
A lawful order doesn't have to be reasonable? Why?

~~~
VLM
This is pretty basic military law that a lawful order has a valid military
purpose and is a clear and specific (and its generally documented in writing
although verbal lawful orders do exist).

Reasonable is in the sense of proportionate such as "reasonable force". Would
a reasonable person do X Y or Z to reach a lawful goal?

If you're guarding a nuclear bunker and there are signs everywhere about
deadly force authorized and someone tries to break in, its a lawful order to
shoot them although if they're a pizza deliveryman it may not be a reasonable
order; although lets be realistic pizza deliverymen don't normally break into
nuclear bunkers, so its perfectly reasonable to shoot a deliveryman-
impersonator commando.

A very off the cuff and unfair comparison is the people who decide
acceptability of lawful orders are skilled knowledgeable bureaucrat lawyer
types implementing the details of written laws and regs and higher level
orders, whereas the people who decide reasonableness of orders are usually on
the knowledge level of jury members. Or lawful orders are in the arena of
goals, whereas reasonable orders are in the arena of how to do it.

------
otikik
The article links one study baking the "blue wall of silence" claim, but
provides only personal anecdotes backing the "US military usually punishes
misconduct" claim. In fact, the last part of the article seems to imply the
opposite (due to the influence of the current administration).

I think a more appropriate title would have been "When facing misconduct,
Police often close ranks. How does the US military handle it?"

------
mattlondon
Because in the military, the "enemy" are the terrorists/belligerent nation
etc. Complaints from terrorists/enemy nations etc as they are in a battle
situation are obviously disregarded. The army serve the public, and fight the
enemy.

For the police, the "enemy" is the public who are complaining about what the
police are doing. It is them Vs us.

To quote George W Bush, you are either with us or against us.

------
redm
I think they are more similar than not. The military does have mechanisms to
investigate and punish misconduct, but so do the police, internal affairs
departments. I believe the difference is internal vs. external initiation of
claims. I don't see the military being very open to criticism from non-
military personnel, in other words, they close ranks too. I think its more to
do with tribalism.

------
jeffdavis
Does the quantity and quality of training play a role?

I don't just mean telling recruits to behave well over and over, although
maybe that helps, too.

I suspect that training in general makes people behave a little better. If you
are proud of your abilities, in your element, and confident that you are in
control, I would like to think that results in a better outcome.

~~~
digsy
My experience of the non-US military is that soldiers have a lot more
accountability.

You are told the rules, standards are high and you are held accountable by
your peers and superiors. Infractions are punished and squads are self-
policing as you can be punished if one of your squad is caught breaking the
rules. IE people are always looking over your shoulder and you are looking
over theirs.

And the US military seems very similar. Yes mistakes are made and crimes are
committed but overall standards are high.

Most cops I see in the US operate on their own (so no squad policing) and
standards dont seem to be very high compared to non-US cops I know.

------
tehjoker
This article is basically undone by the existence of this headline:

"Trump authorizes sanctions against International Criminal Court officials"

[https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/11/politics/icc-executive-
order/...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/11/politics/icc-executive-
order/index.html)

"The latest move comes months after the ICC authorized a probe into alleged
war crimes committed in Afghanistan by US and Afghan forces as well as alleged
war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Taliban. It also
follows a push by the court's Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to investigate
potential crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinians -- a prospect
about which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said they were "gravely
concerned.""

...

"The ICC prosecutor Bensouda sought authorization in November 2017 to open an
investigation into crimes connected to the conflict in Afghanistan. According
to documents from the time, Bensouda's office determined that there was "a
reasonable basis to believe" that members of the Afghan National Security
Forces, the US armed forces and the CIA had committed "war crimes," including
torture and rape. "

------
rafiki6
Great article and I think it talks about a lot of fundamental reasons, but not
the primary "why". The way most police organizations are setup is already
contentious with the population, where as the way that the military is setup
is contentious with other countries and their militaries rather than the
immediate population. That already means police are provided perverse
incentives. How do you measure the success of a police department? It's a
common issue in all security circles. Considering that most if not all police
departments are usually receiving funding at a regional or local level, where
the government can't just print money to keep their existence going, you now
have an organization that needs to justify it's existence by making arrests,
giving out tickets and essentially maintaining the reason for their existence.
The military really doesn't have that problem. The strength of the military is
usually directly tied to the existence of the established order. It is
military's that over throw governments and bring in new ones.

The military also has little to no interactions with the population. They are
almost entirely focused on foreign populations and enemies. When abu ghraib
happened, the military acted swiftly. It was a major PR nightmare for the US.
The government needed the population's support for the war. So they cleaned
up.

And that is really what the major differences are.

TLDR;

Military -> little interaction with populace, existence tied to government,
needs populations support to do War which is major measure of success

Police -> funded without unlimited money, needs to justify their existence,
direct interaction with populace, naturally in contention with population

------
GuB-42
Does it mean the US should get a military police?

Such an organization is called "gendarmerie" and it is seen in many countries
like France, Italy, Spain, Argentina,... usually alongside the civilian police
force.

~~~
pas
This seems like a simple case of local prosecutors and juries not doing their
work. The officers were acquitted in the Rodney King trial too. (And that's
why currently people are bending backwards trying to argue against Quantified
Immunity - in civil suits! These cases should never even reach that level.
These should be criminal cases, and the police/city/county/state/country
should automatically compensate the wrongly harmed.)

The federal level should step in and charge/indict officers. There might be
obvious constitutional issues though. So the next best thing could be an
oversight system that is actively against bias (racial, ethnic, and
occupational in case of somehow the local system consistently siding with
local police). Of course it's unlikely that such a law could survive for long
and still be effective, so this probably some other solution is needed -
maybe/probably something like tying federal funds to implementing better
state-level oversight, etc.

------
coronadisaster
Did anything happen to the soldiers (and their officer) shown killing
civilians in Wikileaks' Collateral Murder video [0]? What about whoever
ordered that drone strike on a wedding [1]?

0\.
[https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/](https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/)

1\. [https://www.newsweek.com/wedding-became-funeral-us-still-
sil...](https://www.newsweek.com/wedding-became-funeral-us-still-silent-one-
year-deadly-yemen-drone-strike-291403)

~~~
NovemberWhiskey
On [0]: as far as I know, the U.S. armed forces instigated an internal review
immediately after the events in the video. The review determined that the use
of force was consistent with the prevailing rules of engagement, and so there
wasn't any disciplinary action.

~~~
coronadisaster
Does that sound right to you?

~~~
NovemberWhiskey
I really don't know. I think it's a bit more nuanced than some of the
commentary around it suggests, particularly stuff that was based on the
original Wikileaks selective cut.

------
awal2
You know an organization is corrupt AF when someone can use it to make the US
military look like a bastion of accountability.

------
hosh
Interesting. Following that line of reasoning, I wonder how that played out
with Chelsea Manning's court martial.

------
RNCTX
False.

Colin Powell made his entire career on being the person willing to help cover
up the My Lai massacre.

------
m3kw9
One is the interfacing the public. When you are interfacing with the public,
you have an incentive to look your best. The easiest way is to not admitting
fault, and the police have plenty of power to do that unfortunately. Military
to the public is as a whole, so internally they don’t have these powerful
forces acting on them.

------
cobbal
So what you're saying is that we need more militarization of the police?

------
TrackerFF
Military careers are very short, sans being an officer

Police careers tend to be life-long.

~~~
dogman144
Culture of silence comes from the top, or more realistically mid-career people
who have bought into the system. Your proverbial E4 (junior enlisted with some
clout) is the same as a early but motivated patrolman, and those are the
parties that do the locker room harassment. But their direction and latitude
to behave that way comes from that former party.

With that in mind...

The police leadership that condones the integrity violations required to stay
silent are peers to the E6-8's/O4s-O5s who are in the military for 7-14 years
and are vectoring towards a career. While bad apples exist in those parties,
and those parties have enough influence to create culture of silence, it's
never sustainable.

So, life-long careers exist in both for parties with influence enough to do a
wall of silence, both have similar danger to the job, but the military has a
fraction of these ethical shortcomings police are experiencing.

------
guscost
Another difference: The US Army doesn’t have a fucking _union_. These are
public-sector employees who are authorized to use deadly force, and they have
union representation. How is even a single person OK with that?

------
alecco
Not a single mention of police unions.

------
7532yahoogmail
Great read and better distinction

------
bladegash
I'll probably be down voted, but this article seems incredibly out of touch
with reality. I was a Marine and a Federal civilian for 11+ years, but this is
solely my opinion/based on my own experiences. I am also generally proud of my
service and have a great deal of respect for current/former service members.
Hopefully I don't offend any of you - my angst is directed towards the cherry-
picking and misrepresentation of facts in this article.

That being said, at least in my experience, it is, and always has been, very
much culturally ingrained that you handle problems internally and you do not
rat on friends. There is an implicit trust that exists for those in combat-
oriented roles, that others will watch your back and you'll watch theirs. That
doesn't stop at combat situations. Trust me, the forms of reprisal taken
against people in the military who rat on others is far worse than simply
ending your career.

I find it a bit ridiculous we are now holding up the military justice system
as some kind of panacea or institution that has it right. Just a few years
ago, we were castigating the military for it's handling of sexual assault. One
of the key issues? Sexual assault reporting being handled at the unit-level,
unit commanders being disincentivized from escalating reports (e.g., it
reflecting poorly on the unit commander when sexual assault takes place in
their unit), and as a result, sweeping the issues under the rug. Now we are
holding up military culture as being at risk of the "camouflage wall of
silence" rising?

The Eddie Gallagher case is another great example. The article conveniently
fails to mention that one of the key reasons Gallagher was able to walk away
was due to an SF soldier covering his ass. One of the Government's key
witnesses, who had already been given immunity, decided to change his story
and take the blame for the killing the boy Gallagher was accused of murdering.
Kind of throws off a murder charge when someone else says they're the ones who
committed it. Less explicit, is the fact that Gallagher bragged about
averaging three kills per day, including four women, over 80 days. You're
telling me that, through the course of this guy's service, this was the only
time he messed up?

The SEALs that finally did report Gallagher will never work in any kind of a
special operations, law enforcement, government, or any other field where
their skill-sets can be used. That may not seem like much, but it's akin to
someone becoming a doctor and losing their license to practice. People outside
of these communities don't realize just how small these circles are and how
pervasive their former/current members are elsewhere in the
industry/government. Word travels and stuff like what they did is not
forgotten. Look no further than the Navy Times article from 2019 titled, "What
motivated fellow SEALs to dime out Eddie Gallagher?". For the uninitiated,
"dime out" is synonymous with "rat out".

There are many reasons law enforcement recruits heavily from prior military
service members (e.g., prior training, physical fitness, etc.), but a big one
is because they're already at least partially vetted as being a good "culture"
fit.

------
pragmatic
Unions.

