Law Enforcement's "Warrior" Problem (2015)(harvardlawreview.org) |
Law Enforcement's "Warrior" Problem (2015)(harvardlawreview.org) |
Either way, it's beyond obvious in 2026 that SWAT teams are no longer necessary and are far, far more trouble than they're worth. Abolish them today.
Worth reading together with the OP article.
It stuck him as vaguely undemocratic or even slightly barbaric. More suited to some caste in the Middle Ages than a modern all volunteer force of citizens-soldiers.
I don't think it's accidental the overlap between lack of accountability and the fact that warriors historically are a class, not a job.
This quote comes to mind: "Ain't no Uzi's made in Harlem. Not one of us in here owns a poppy field. This thing is bigger than Nino Brown. This is big business. This is the American way."
But even back then, some groups of people were treated badly by the local police in some areas. Now it seems the bad treatment is has become "DEI" instead of good treatment expanding to everyone. :(
Ref for non-US people and the very young:
Cops have always been this way.
I have a close relative that’s a cop, he’s a really good person, father and husband. I’ve known several other cops and never knew a truly bad person.
Progress(TM)
[0] https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/origins-m...
[1] https://nleomf.org/slave-patrols-an-early-form-of-american-p...
If the entire citizenry said "no more!" to this nonsense we could have better policing all around.
jeez must they be grateful to all that stupidity their ( practically ) grand- daddies established among the rest of the world!
#HerrenRasseViaSabotageForTheWin #Austria #SouthAfrica #USA #USA #USA
- modern 911, which rewards reactive, rather than proactive, policing
- the ever expanding mission of police officers. there's only one uniformed police officer class. experts and police all want specialization, just like in the medical field.
from a police chief:
> We’re asking cops to do too much in this country. We are. Every societal failure, we put it off on the cops to solve. Not enough mental health funding, let the cops handle it…. Here in Dallas we got a loose dog problem; let’s have the cops chase loose dogs. Schools fail, let’s give it to the cops … That’s too much to ask. Policing was never meant to solve all those problems
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/law-and-social-inqui...
warrior versus guardian isn't really actionable - what are you going to do, pass a law that says that training materials have to say guardian? versus, pass a law that appropriates funding for specialized workforces, that's par for the course in municipalities.
I think a large amount of the danger American police face is due to how easily a single arrest can ruin your productive life. One facing the loss of their home, pets, job, important documents, sentimental items might not see the difference between losing everything, and losing everything and taking the guy who's taking it from you, with you.
If we had an actual system based on reform rather than punishment, I think the danger police would be in would be greatly reduced.
You also have things like qualified immunity and general protections for police against being sued for an unlawful arrest. An officer can incorrectly arrest you and you could lose everything and be simply shit out of luck.
If there's no repercussions for bad cops, there's no justice. If there's no justice, why would one play nicely with the law, therefore police are in danger.
I don't think it's that complicated. Rather, I think that a lot of cops think they're in more danger than they really are. The vast, vast majority of people aren't going to gun them down for a traffic stop or for providing a warning about something. The situations where they're likely to get shot are exceedingly rare. By treating policing as some tremendously dangerous job we're completely ignoring the actual statistics, which show that firefighters and construction workers are far more routinely in physical danger.
The police then get carte blanche to walk around treating everyone like some dangerous creature ready to explode at the slightest provocation when most of us are just trying to get by and are pretty accepting of the benign law enforcement interactions we get.
What actually happens is that American police is basically unaccountable. It must be really egregious and on multiple camera for them to face any scrutiny. And even then it is easy for them to engineer situation where it is actually ok for them to kill or be violent. Meanwhile, non-cop is supposed to have perfect self control, perfect awareness of situation and be able to follow mutually exclusive instructions yelled at him from multiple cops simultaneously.
Unaccountable groups of people always end up behaving badly. Be it priests, isolated cults or cops.
Also weapons are relatively cheaper today than decades ago.
assuming everyone has a gun and is willing to use it, raises the stakes of every encounter. so instead of a police encounter starting at a very low risk level (casual conversation), it starts a very close to deadly force risk.
This causes both sides to be a lot more tense, with a lot less room for mistakes. It also makes any encounter feel very risky.
I don't think people having a gun prevents police from starting an encounter at a casual level. But the assumption everyone is out to harm them, and has the means to do so, does.
The bigger issue that comes to mind and that you can actually look in to is the practice of teaching police departments about “Killology”. This is (or was) a kind of seminar that taught departments this mindset of “everyone that an officer interacts with is a potential threat”. Add this to the “super criminal” bs that was popular in the 80s/90s, the constant right-wing fearmongering about dangerous criminals in blue cities, and the militarization of police, and it feels more like they’ve been primed for violence from the power structure more-so than any actual threat from the public.
its also the effective range for most people snap drawing a pistol in a use of force situation.
But US Cops always escalate instead. They want the fight, they aren't looking for safety.
See also: Game wardens during hunting season vs game wardens during fishing season.
Do you have a reliable citation for this claim? [0] I disbelieve that this has been happening in any substantial way in the US. I expect that at very best, they've stayed roughly as restrictive as they have been for quite a long time.
> US cops have to assume that everyone is armed.
Weird. In San Francisco, California (a city of roughly 800->900k), the regular CompStat reports [1] have this to say about the number of incidents of firearm violence (whether fatal or non-fatal) in the city:
* 2022 -> 185 incidents
* 2023 -> 162 incidents
* 2024 -> 132 incidents
* 2025 -> 101 incidents
For fun, you can slap this pretty fucking shitty Power BI dashboard [2] around to compare those numbers to the number of times cops have either threatened to shoot or have shot someone each year.
Weirdly, I'm having great difficulty finding the city's officer injury reports. In the absence of those reports, I'll assume that policing still doesn't crack the top ten most hazardous jobs in the US, and that it's still roughly as hazardous as being a groundskeeper or professional athlete.
[0] If your supporting evidence is "spooooky ghost guns", I'll laugh my way out the door.
[1] <https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...>
[2] <https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/your-sfpd/published-repor...>
- a land border with a large continent that has a lot of guns and violence and criminality
- millions and millions of existing guns, the criminal holdings of which would not decrease following a change in the law
- subcultures that glorify violence and teach it as a path in life, particularly how to be a man and what sort of man to be attracted to
That's a curious perception indeed, given that guns predominantly flow from the US to Mexico and not the other way around, and guns in Mexico are of mostly US origin.
A fundamental problem with cops is the thin blue line is very real. The rise of cameras on cops shows pretty clearly that a decent number of cops bend over backwards to protect their own. I find it pretty easy to believe that cops won't arrest their fellow officers on a DV call.
Police unions fight HARD to stop any sort of accountability or tracking of misbehavior of cops.
You know how all the people taking part in a robbery get charged with murder if just one of them kills someone?
I’d view it like that. A cop that covers up corruption for a partner is guilty of corruption. A cop that covers up a DUI carries a similar amount of guilt.
A cop that exercises ‘professional courtesy’ to overlook a minor traffic violation? Same negligible amount of guilt.
I think it seems about right.
Good people are responsive to the incentives we've created for them also.