Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

> 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-...

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.

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.

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

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