Jophiel wrote:
There's no question that police forces are more militarized in their gear than "ten or twenty years ago". It's intentional. Saying that Sandy Hook was "normal equipment" is funny because it's only "normal equipment" because it was intentionally made so within the last decade. The federal government made a conscious effort to dump this stuff into the state and local police forces. Denying that they're more militarized is just blind and/or silly. What the consequences are from this and whether it's justified may be open for debate but the level of equipment in police forces over the lack decade isn't.
Sure. But the underlying narrative going on is about police abuse of black people (kinda why there are riots and protests going on), and how the equipment the police are using is somehow amplifying that perception. I'm just pointing out that this perception is false. This is the gear that police would use regardless of the situation. If it's a tactical situation, they use this gear. It's the same whether they're responding to a shooting in a school, armed bank robbery, terrorists holding hostages, searching for a bombing suspect, or responding to a protest that has gotten violent.
We can debate how they got the equipment, but ultimately that isn't the issue. The question is whether it's fair to blame the police for using that equipment in this case, and I honestly don't think it is. As I pointed out earlier, should we really care more about what the cops look like than what they do? And by any objective account, the Ferguson police have been remarkably restrained. Far more injuries have occurred as a result of the riots than the police response. So one could actually argue that the police are responding strongly enough. We could even make the case that all the cries about police over reaction are actually causing more injury because the police are being overly cautious and perhaps waiting too long to intervene in the violence going on around them.
I just think that some of the claims being made are pretty unfair. That's not to say I think the cops are perfect, but that also doesn't excuse what appears to be massive exaggeration of police violence and over reporting of the same. It's hard to watch the news reports and not get the sense that the reporters are salivating over the opportunity to find anything that they can paint as police abuse and put it on the air. And in that environment, the truth is usually the first casualty.