[Lorric]

I don't read that as an intent to kill. Just weight reduction.
Maybe it's my non civilian background but I just didn['t read any malice into it.

There is no malice. I'm absolutely confident of it. He's already said as much anyway with his post about assumptions, but just the way the thread has gone says to me there is no malice, and I am a civilian, and am not comfortable with guns.

[jr2]

If I had malicious intent, I would not be posting on a game mod forum. There are plenty of nefarious sites out there that you could discuss such things on.

Ask Nuke, he probably trolls them for teh lulz and to piss off the NSA. 

As for my original intentions, you have to separate intending to kill someone because you are full of hate and ill will, and intending to kill someone because THEY are full of hate and ill will and are actively attempting to kill YOU.  There is a major difference between the two. And, if you must kill someone who is actively trying to kill you, I would kindly suggest that you not attempt to do so with the least force possible, unless you are CERTAIN of your success. Else you will quite likely find yourself in mortal danger.



One more thing. I like how it was automatically assumed that the officer in the OP is overreacting after he had a brush with death at the hands of a violent criminal bent on killing him.

I would like to say I believe that he simply had a reality check. Preparing for the worst does not make you deranged, although, deranged people sometimes do prepare for the worst.  I firmly believe that the officer made sensible adjustments to his routine, providing he still only responds with appropriate levels of force as per his training.   I would also like to say that anyone who paints this officer in a bad light because of the precautions he is taking may be applying stereotypes and may wish to carefully re-read the article without mentally referring to instances of police overreach and brutality.


Edit:

I was also assuming they had provisions for lack of power and water. You don't think so? They took the time to fortify the house, but not prepare for an assault which would almost definitely include cutting utilities? Unlikely.

What can the average gangbanger procure that will withstand extended "cutting attempts" cutting by what exactly? Oxy acetelene is substantially effective. Hydraulic cutters equally so. I'm no sure of the capabilities of the various agencies that would get involved / ATF, FBI, S.W.A.T etc, but unless the crims had ablative ceramics over some heavy duty stuff. They'd last hours at best. Short af an APC with ram taking out a back wall.

Bahahaha I just got that. I meant cutting off service utilities, like power and water.

Edit2: if anyone is wondering why police should have semi-auto rifles and shotguns with them on patrol, go back and watch the video I linked.

[Scotty]

The part we keep going back to doesn't seem to be sticking.  Militarizing police has the desired effect of greater likelihood of taking down a single heavily armed criminal, nor has that ever really been contested in this thread.  The rebuttal to that is the clear and definite trend that militarized police kill significantly more civilians.  This is unacceptable.

[jr2]

Well, I hadn't gotten to that yet, but I agree with you on militarized police forces.  HOWEVER, I disagree that simple semi-auto rifles and shotguns + body armor counts as "militarizing" -- I think it has far more to do with training.  I don' t know WHY police departments would be training their officers to use a more soldierly / aggressive stance, but that's the only thing I can think.  Equipment does not equal mindset.

So, you SHOULD be able to have ready access to a variety of weapons platforms to deal with threats, but if the threat is SO SEVERE that it requires a shoot-anything-that-moves team of professionals, then you need SWAT.

But that brings us to the unnecessary use of SWAT for drug raids etc.

The only time you should need SWAT is if there are known violent, hell-bent criminals that are well-equipped and either

A) they are putting civilian lives in jeopardy
or
B) they are in a place where civilian lives WON'T be put in jeopardy and you need to intercept them THERE, before they move to a location that WILL (put civilian lives in jeopardy).

-- of course, other situations for SWAT probably apply, but you get the idea.  This sending in the SWAT team every time you feel like it deal is NOT acceptable.

You might think my views a bit contradictory, but they're actually not. 

Regular officers need access to weapons to respond to violent threats should the need arise, with the provision that they respond appropriately (and don't get me wrong, some deranged freak throwing 9 mil pistol rounds DOES NOT IN ANY WAY mean he (the responding officer) should have to limit himself to the same response (pistol fire), as ANY ONE of those rounds can end the life (literally or effectively) of ANYONE within the effective range of the weapon being used, so IF the officer thinks he can take the criminal down with a few well aimed 5.56 rounds (rifles are a HECK of a lot more accurate if you have room to bring them to bear), then he should be perfectly justified in doing so.

ON THE OTHER HAND, if, for some reason, the officer happily happens upon a position where he can bring a tazer to bear WITHOUT anyone else being threatened, then, with firearms as a backup choice, he should go for the non-lethal option, of course. 

AND, if he can cover the criminal AND no one is in immediate danger, he should wait for backup, as he would be in far less danger if he is covered by his fellow officers (both from civil lawsuits and from lethal response).

SWAT (overwhelming militarized force) response should be limited to special situations and should require judicial or some other civil oversight's approval, and if that makes response time unacceptable, then we need a special on-call set of judges / whatever civilian oversight gets put in charge of SWAT response that can be reached at a moment's notice.

My 2c.

So, in summary, you could probably cast me as "moderate" in my opinions on police response.  MRAP vehicles, full-auto .50 cal machine guns, that should be either SWAT only (and remember what I said about SWAT above), and/or require approval and a crap load of paperwork and authorization for use.

Semi-auto, less-than-hunting caliber rifles (not excluding the possibility of larger rounds, just pointing out that the dreaded tacticool AR-15 / M16 / M4 whatever you call the ArmaLite 5.56 semi-auto weapon fires, for all intents and purposes, a high-velocity .22 round!!) with fancy ease-of-use attachments (yeah, that's what hand grips, heat shields, recoil compensators / muzzle brakes, and rail systems to mount attachments amount to) shouldn't be treated as "militarization".  If anything, they would reduce the risk of collateral damage thanks to their higher accuracy (provided the user has the proper mindset and training, of course).

[Scotty]

I still disagree.  A patrol officer should not need anything more powerful than a sidearm for day to day operation.  If an officer encounters something against which a handgun will not carry the day, said officer should withdraw and call for backup - not hurry back to his or her trunk armory and re-engage.  Having anything else available for easy use promotes needlessly aggressive behavior.

A police officer on patrol's duty is not to kill a violent criminal, or to go looking for violent criminals to get into a confrontation with.

[MP-Ryan]

I work in law enforcement.  I live in Canada.  I read Popehat.

The whole notion of militarized police forces scares the crap out of me.  Doubly-so in places where there are not nationally-consistent, highly-trained, professional police forces whose primarily objective is de-escalation.  I regard Policeone with extreme skepticism as to both the accuracy and validity of some of the claims posted there.  The site, like many policing 'tactical' resources and primers, is heavily influence by groupthink.  Policeone exists to entrench the notion of 'tactical' needs into policing generally, and its a philosophy I highly disagree with.  Their premises are usually more force, greater force, faster force, more expensive force, overwhelming force, or why anything without force will likely fail.

In short, I reject the original premise of the thread based on its source material in the first place.  That said, the discussion on militarization of policing is interesting, but can be generally summed up in two words: it's bad.

[Mika]

MP-Ryan, out of curiosity, have you read any incident reports of Scandinavian or Finnish police firearms usage?

By their latest report, Finnish police seems to have fired about ten rounds last year, including warning shots. Finland has a population of roughly six million, are the Canadian statistics similar?

[MP-Ryan]

MP-Ryan, out of curiosity, have you read any incident reports of Scandinavian or Finnish police firearms usage?

By their latest report, Finnish police seems to have fired about ten rounds last year, including warning shots. Finland has a population of roughly six million, are the Canadian statistics similar?

I haven't looked at the Scandinavian numbers, nor have I looked in-depth here... but Canadian police do not fire "warning shots," and the number of rounds expended is above 10 in several single incidents I'm aware of from just the media reports alone, so I'm going to venture a guess that if those numbers you're quoting are accurate, no, the stats are nowhere near the same, even accounting for the fact that we have a population that's 5 times greater than Finland.

[Ghostavo]

This may be of some interest.

[Lorric]

This may be of some interest.

Very interesting. More than just a map showing incidents, you can click on all the little icons to learn about each particular incident.

[InsaneBaron]

Well, I hadn't gotten to that yet, but I agree with you on militarized police forces.  HOWEVER, I disagree that simple semi-auto rifles and shotguns + body armor counts as "militarizing" -- I think it has far more to do with training.  I don' t know WHY police departments would be training their officers to use a more soldierly / aggressive stance, but that's the only thing I can think.  Equipment does not equal mindset.
{etc}

I pretty much agree here.

Now, I've seen a lot of reasonable arguments here against equipping policemen with military-level weapons. But what about military-grade protection?

For instance, imagine that a sizable percentage of the police were equipped with Kevlar vests. (Which might be impractical to wear all the time, but could be stored in the car). That kind of protection would decrease police casualties and increase their ability to engage armed criminals. However, as a non-aggressive piece of equipment, it doesn't seem that it would increase the threat of civilian casualties.

[Grizzly]

Wouldn't that entice criminals to switch to more expensive weapons specifically designed to take down armored vests, which as a result decreases the net effectiveness of the SWAT?

[MP-Ryan]

I can't speak for any other country, but all police officers (and the majority of other law enforcement) in Canada are both issued and wear kevlar, yours truly included.  They're only really useful against pistols and shotgun pellets, though these are by far the most common things people shoot at police with.  The ballistic plate armour for rifle rounds is too heavy and unwieldy to be practical for daily wear.

There aren't really weapons - or ammunition, Hollywood notwithstanding - designed to take down armoured vests.  Most standard rifle calibres (which are reasonably cheap, seeing as they're the most common hunting firearns) will penetrate Level 2A kevlar, though it may slow the velocity somewhat.

The nonsense you see on TV of special vests being thrown on in certain situations is exactly that.  I'm not aware of any actual professional police forces in the US with uniformed officers that don't wear kevlar.  Maybe some of the tiny community police departments?

[Beskargam]

Interestingly enough, Cracked also had an article on police militarization yesterday.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-reasons-police-are-starting-to-look-like-supervillains/

I can't say Cracked is a prime source of information, but it was an interesting read as to why police have become more militarized. Mainly as a result of post 9/11 mentality and federal grants

[InsaneBaron]

I can't speak for any other country, but all police officers (and the majority of other law enforcement) in Canada are both issued and wear kevlar, yours truly included.  They're only really useful against pistols and shotgun pellets, though these are by far the most common things people shoot at police with.  The ballistic plate armour for rifle rounds is too heavy and unwieldy to be practical for daily wear.

There aren't really weapons - or ammunition, Hollywood notwithstanding - designed to take down armoured vests.  Most standard rifle calibres (which are reasonably cheap, seeing as they're the most common hunting firearns) will penetrate Level 2A kevlar, though it may slow the velocity somewhat.

The nonsense you see on TV of special vests being thrown on in certain situations is exactly that.  I'm not aware of any actual professional police forces in the US with uniformed officers that don't wear kevlar.  Maybe some of the tiny community police departments?

Very interesting, especially coming from a police officer. It seems the popular impression of police equipment in the US is pretty inaccurate (like you said, probably Hollywood's fault).

[MP-Ryan]

Just so I'm not misrepresenting myself by omission, I'm not a police officer, actually; I do federal law enf in Canada for a department that deals with different types of law than typical policing (though still criminal offences), which shall remain nameless for the purposes of my internet postings.

[Beskargam]

I've got the opposite reaction. I'm surprised that US people didn't know this. I thought it was common knowledge.

[Aardwolf]

(whereas I live under a rock and don't know anything about what is or is not common knowledge) What is this "popular impression of police equipment", and how does it differ from MP-Ryan's description?

[InsaneBaron]

Well, basically, it seems that if you don't actually research this stuff, you get several misconceptions about Kevlar, in particular that it's A. less-used and B. more resilient than it really is. I can't speak for people outside the US.