

Show HN: Mapping the Militarization of Law Enforcement in the United States - michaelcolenso
http://colenso.org/

======
Gormo
The problem with using a per-capita dollar figure as a metric of police
militarization is that, when you look at the list of the actual items
provided, you discover that most of it is pretty innocuous stuff: flashlights,
first-aid kits, tool kits, hazmat suits, canteens, etc. The kind of stuff
that's available in any army/navy store in the country.

A lot of the counties that appear to receive a high dollar value of military
equipment are getting entirely this sort of stuff. Conversely, some of the
comparatively low-dollar-value counties have items like grenade launchers,
APCs, full-auto machine guns, etc. in their lists. This is the worrying stuff,
and the map doesn't offer a good way to distinguish it from the harmless
equipment.

~~~
michaelcolenso
I think that's a great point, and I agree that it's not the ideal metric for
illuminating the issue. However, I'd argue that, to a limited degree, even the
"harmless equipment" acquired by Law Enforcement agencies from the Department
of Defense serve to "Militarize" the police forces in a way that reinforces
conflict rather than cooperation.

If you let the cops dress up like soldiers, train like soldiers, and equip
them like soldiers to the extent that we currently do in the US, eventually
they start to believe they are in a war.

But yes, I do agree that the ratio of seemingly mundane items to the big
ticket MRAP's and APC's is skewed toward stuff you can get at REI or
OfficeMax, which sort of muffles the message. There's interestingness and
insight buried in this 1033 program data, I believe. This probably isn't quite
it, yet.

Thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate it.

~~~
Gormo
Sure, if they're wearing BDUs, army-style helmets, etc., it can be reinforcing
a culture that isn't appropriate to civic policing. Maybe some of that stuff
is part of this program, but even that's still buried among the flashlights
and first-aid kits.

Perhaps you could add to the dataset tags that identify whether an item is
e.g. "weaponry/armor", "military regalia", "general equipment", etc. and make
these available as map filters. Or, even more basically, a simple indication
of whether the item is also available for civilian purchase.

Some stuff might be a bit ambiguous too. For example, the entire acquisition
for the county I live in consisted of four "utility trucks". Are those MRAPs,
or are they just cheap vans that might as easily be used by the animal control
department as by the police?

------
policedemil
Cool stuff here! I started up a similar site at
[https://policedemilitarization.com](https://policedemilitarization.com) \--
perhaps we should collaborate or consolidate some of our efforts?

~~~
michaelcolenso
Thanks! The source is on GitHub if you want to have a go at anything in
there... [https://github.com/michaelcolenso/1033-Program-
Map](https://github.com/michaelcolenso/1033-Program-Map)

------
mejackreed
+1 for a normalized choropleth

~~~
michaelcolenso
Thanks! Considering I probably couldn't even spell choropleth a month or 2
ago, I'm pretty grateful for Mike Bostock and his proclivity for documentation
(for D3 and mapping concepts in general) by creating working examples.
[http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock](http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock) is my favorite
thing on the internets.

