Good Cop/Bad Cop? Nope. All Good.

[The Grand Nudger]

The militarization of our police is a known known..and going concern.  I'm not going to argue militarization into existence.  I'll state it for the fact that it is and you and I can have a conversation about that, or not.

Militarization effects peoples interactions, and the average of outcomes. A good cop can be a good cop and because of systemic inadequacy, do a terrible thing. Put simply, the tools a person has in their hands describe the persona that they have assumed - it affects us psychologically. Aditionally, people are compelled to see a use for whatever tool they happen to be holding when a problem crops up that needs solving. If we fit a traffic cop out like he's about to breach Osama's bunker, he's gonna do that whether you put him in front of osama or an 80 year old mans trailer. We don't get to plead surprise when our uniformed personnel act the part we've given them.

If we allow our domestic policing to set up checkpoints for papers and seize property on suspicion..if we fail to hold them accountable for the outcomes of their actions, and while doing that give them the kind of gear you'd need for regime change in a foreign shithole...we're going to get exactly what we have. A band of jovial marauders immune to the rule of law. Scant few of them individually horrible people. An occupying force. Clearly distinct from their peers in method and outcome.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It's an internet known.

Without a definition we will most likely talk past each other. And, of course, it doesn't help your position that you can't define it. Buzz words are just "lazy writing."

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure Sama, police militarization is internet fake news.  

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Until you show otherwise, yes.

[bennyboy]

Until you show otherwise, yes.

Would these  be evidence?

[Rev. Rye]

And since Khem isn't bothering to actually define it, I'd say militarisation of police is the use of military equipment and tactics by police and other law enforcement officers.

Seriously, I'd say that the majority of cops are probably good (or at least mediocre) people. That said, there is a lot to be legitimately concerned about; militarisation of police and police brutality being among them. To deny either one strikes me as fundamentally unsound.

Then again, I guess a lot of our perception ends up coming down to our experiences. Some of us have had bedouins pop an egg in the radiator to buy them some time before they could get it fixed, some of us have been assaulted and had the people in charge not give a shit. Experiences like those may colour our views of the situation.

[The Grand Nudger]

They have to be pretty close to normal.  It's in light of that that we're forced to ask ourselves what there is about our country or system of law enforcement that turns individually decent people into agents of the worst outcomes.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Until you show otherwise, yes.

Would these  be evidence?

And those things are running around town all the time? Are those running traffic stops? Doing crossing guard duty? How many of them are on the streets?

I take you back to the Texas Tower mass shooting. The cops didn't have hard vehicles and had to borrow Brinks' armored cars to get shooting victims off the lawn below the tower. Better to have something and not need it than to need it and not have it.

[The Grand Nudger]

Are we being invaded Jim?  

-Depends, is there one tank or two?

Couldn't help myself, lol. OFC it's better to have something and not need it than the other way around. That doesn't change that the effect of this broad acquisition philosophy has been the militarization of the police force. The psychology to match follows. If what the police need to do their job are the tools (both physical and mental) of an occupying army, then they are an occupying army.

[The Valkyrie]

In the day he plays with children.

At night he goes into the the poor area of town and shoots dark people.

Life is about balance.