Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

> This is a vague claim made by the anti policing activists

Probably a conclusion people come to when they compare US police looking more like the US military every day, while their local police doesn't go in that direction at all. At least that's true for me as a person living in Spain but sometimes seeing the really crazy equipment US police seems to have.

> Whatever that means

Look, if you're not even willing to understand the argument, your refutation of it is toothless at best, worthless at worst.

Not to mention, your own claim is vague and without evidence. In point of fact, there's plenty of evidence to the counter. There are ample studies to choose from, but from just this year: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/police-budget-crime-...

Having semiautomatic rifles or armored vehicles isn’t militarization. Private citizens can get those too. Police forces don’t have M1 Abrams tanks or F35s or nuclear carriers. This claim that the police are problematic is an entirely emotional activist response to a few incidents. That sentiment then led to hyperbolic claims like militarization.

Doesn't the police in the US frequently end up with hardware the military used to use? I've seen bunch of pictures/videos of police using Humvees and similar stuff, which I thought was originally made for military use, not domestic policing.

It also seems like in 2015 there was limits added that made it so "the military was restricted from transferring some weapons, such as grenade launchers, weaponized vehicles, and bayonets to police". Why was that restriction needed if the police isn't becoming more and more like the military?

Are you willing to understand the argument? What does militarization mean? Because I’ve seen no evidence of police responding to a crime scene with an Apache helicopter or a howitzer. It’s remarkable that completely obviously false claims of militarization are accepted here.

As for your link: the claim made by the “study” is false since it is ignoring virtually every obvious confounding factor to claim that the number of police officers doesn’t affect crime rates. Per capita police count is a measure of how effectively a city can respond to crime. If they can’t respond that means there aren’t consequences. When there aren’t consequences you end up with the disaster of public safety you see in west coast cities like SF, Portland, and Seattle.

> This claim that the police are problematic is an entirely emotional activist response to a few incidents.

Really? Do you realize that the amount of civil asset forfeiture has exceeded burglaries? The militarization of police is absolutely a huge problem. As is mass-incarceration for non-violent crimes, over-criminalization, no-knock raids, etc. They just raided a dudes house for a squirrel.

And no, I don't advocate for the idiocy in CA where they legalized violent crime as a petty response to having their budgets threatened.

Them receiving surplus military gear is one aspect.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/06/1...

You seeing no evidence of it firsthand != A refutation. It's a globally decried phenomenon unique to the American Police Forces.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-9-11-helped-to-milita...

https://apbweb.com/2023/10/the-use-of-military-assets-by-u-s...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/05/why-are-some-u...

The driving force behind it is this LESO; established to facilitate the "1033 Program", which transfers excess weapons, equipment, and vehicles from the United States Armed Forces to civilian law enforcement agencies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Enforcement_Support_Office

From 1997 until 2014, $5.1 billion in military hardware was transferred from the DoD to local American law enforcement agencies. 1/3rd of the equipment was brand-new.

They have Bazookas, Grenade Launchers, Predator drones, and mine resistant vehicles up to and including Armored Personnel Carriers. None of these are available to private citizens.

Obama went so far as to say the following when trying to reign in the 1033 program in 2015

"We've seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like it's an occupying force as opposed to a force that's part of the community that's protecting them and serving them ... So we're going to prohibit equipment made for the battlefield that is not appropriate for local police departments."

I don't pay nearly enough attention or care about police quality outcomes to comment on whether trends have been a disaster, but critiques of militarization are definitely not something that arose out of BLM. A huge amount was coming from Radley Balko and reason.com over 15 years ago. It was a major libertarian talking point for a long time. As soon as Iraq surplus donation programs started giving free MRAPs and full plate personal armor to police, it was making people uneasy. Early justification for beefing up police armament largely came out of the North Hollywood bank robbery shootout in what? 1998? We didn't want police being outgunned by common criminals, but it's never been clear they need to deal with paramilitary insurgencies that exist in active theaters of combat. Nobody was ever putting IEDs in the streets to blow up squad cars in the United States as far as I can remember.

> It was a major libertarian talking point for a long time.

It’s amazing how the main voices of the libertarian right have changed over the last 25 years.

This gives this 2020 post about Queensryche's "Empire" a different perspective.

https://livinglifefearless.co/2020/features/queensryches-emp...

> None of these are available to private citizens.

Private citizens can actually buy mine resistant vehicles. We can even buy main battle tanks - though the turret needs to be disabled without a Destructive Device permit.

With a Destructive Device permit, you can also buy a grenade launcher.

We don't sell predator drones to local police departments. Police use the same commercial drones any other private citizen can buy - though cities often restrict whether non-police can fly them.

Humvees (HMMWV) aren't anything special. They were sold new for a while on the US civilian market. It's just another truck. The military surplus ones didn't come with weapons. Lots of other countries also sell off military surplus trucks, I've seen regular people in Europe driving comparable vehicles like a Unimog.