Rise of the Warrior Cop..... Liberty threatened

[_Kittens_and_Jesus]

The irony in this is that violent crime has been declining for decades, and is now 50% of what it was 20 years ago.

http://www.policymic.com/articles/23170 ... t-20-years

I think part of the problem is also the prison system. That's become Big Business, and must have customers.

But capitalism is good, whether is be your health on sale or the supposed safety of us all.

I wish these guys would read Snowcrash instead of pretending to read Atlas Shrugged. So many "Who is John Galt?" stickers.

[_Kittens_and_Jesus]

I hope the OP realizes that most cops are conservative....

[_EAllusion]

I wish these guys would read Snowcrash instead of pretending to read Atlas Shrugged. So many "Who is John Galt?" stickers.

I like to joke that anarcho-capitalism would be like Snowcrash, only with less cyberpunk. And while I like that joke, I recognize it as a joke. Stephenson's ideas about that society are only half-serious and are more correctly a parody of such a governmental structure. That said, almost no one are actually anarcho-capitalists, so whoever "these guys" are, they probably aren't apt for your suggestion.

If you are referring to people who want prisons to be privately owned, I guess there's a parallel to Snowcrash there, but not really. The government still controls the prison system when it is "privatized". It's more of a public-private arrangement where the work is contracted out by the government in a process that is prone to corruption, cronyism, and abuse. It's supposed to be more economically efficient than a state-run, no-bid system, but those benefits go out the window when contracts are awarded based on political connection or are achieved through inhumane conditions.

[_Analytics]

I hope the OP realizes that most cops are conservative....

One would hope. After all, he LOVES guns and wanted to be a cop. He sees the world as good vs. evil, and wants his side--the good side--to be better armed than the evil side. My liberal conscience would never allow me to put on war armor and break down somebody's door because they allegedly gambled or did drugs. But that is faq's dream job.

The fact of the matter is that if a country that guarantees the right of drug dealers to keep and bear arms is going to have a war on drugs, you should expect the government to make sure it is better armed than the people it is going to war against.

War is not the answer.

[_EAllusion]

One of the most hardline, "pro-cop," vocerious backers of the drug war is our current vice president Joe Biden. That includes its increasingly militaristic prosecution. If you consider yourself an opponent of the drug war, including conceptualizing it as a war, there aren't many politicians you could list ahead of Biden as having had a bigger role in getting us to our current state of affairs.

To continue the trend of quoting Balko,

Biden has sponsored more damaging drug war legislation than any Democrat in Congress. Hate the way federal prosecutors use RICO laws to take aim at drug offenders? Thank Biden. How about the abomination that is federal asset forfeiture laws? Thank Biden. Think federal prosecutors have too much power in drug cases? Thank Biden. Think the title of a “Drug Czar” is sanctimonious and silly? Thank Biden, who helped create the position (and still considers it an accomplishment worth boasting about). Tired of the ridiculous steroids hearings in Congress? Thank Biden, who led the effort to make steroids a Schedule 3 drug, and has been among the blowhardiest of the blowhards when it comes to sports and performance enhancing drugs. Biden voted in favor of using international development aid for drug control (think plan Columbia, plan Afghanistan, and other meddling anti-drug efforts that have only fostered loathing of America, backlash, and unintended consequences). Oh, and he was also the chief sponsor of 2004′s horrendous RAVE Act.

Biden, I'm told, is a Democrat.

Most cops are conservative, but let's not pretend this is conservative, Republican cops vs. their civil libertarian minded, liberal, Democrat opponents.

[_ldsfaqs]

Well, in the above example, anti-gambling laws that led to this man's death are much more commonly supported by conservatives than liberals. Supporting criminalization of gambling is social conservatism and clearly an example of taking away a citizen's power to decide what they can and can't do. Making an arrest of a man likely to pose no risk to the police whatsoever with a chaotic military raid is also something conservatives tend to support in greater numbers than liberals, even if there is a coalition of support between the two.

I don't agree at all..... We may have an interest in controlling gambling from a social/societal aspect, but we have nothing wrong with "personal" games, and we certainly wouldn't think we would need to use "force" unless it's not a simple personal game and organized crime is involved.

I'm not going to blame liberals for this either, because like I said, this is a system endemic problem, not an ideology problem.

[_ldsfaqs]

I hope the OP realizes that most cops are conservative....

Yes, and most cops are good cops..... It's the bad ones, primarily liberal that are the issue.
But again, the system endemic problem is not really liberal or conservative. However while a conservative may sometimes "personally" abuse their authority, they don't at all generally do so as a group.

Remember all the Law Enforcement that have been against Obama's proposed gun bans, etc.?

Also, if you know the news and check youtube, there are a LOT of liberal cops also.
Law Enforcement is like the Military. While it's true there are more conservatives in the Military, there are also liberals there, a good # of them.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I hope the OP realizes that most cops are conservative....

Would you mind providing a reference for that?

For example, I know there are a few cases where cops have confiscated weapons from law-abiding citizens simply because the cops didn't like them carrying (even though it's legal in their jurisdictions). Their actions are supported by their police chiefs and judicial systems.

- Doc

[_honorentheos]

Incidentally, I recently linked an old thread I wrote for Harmony that contained a Balko article on this subject from a little while back. It has a good discussion on why both political parties keep worsening the trend:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radley-ba ... tml?page=1

(The original article is link-sourced extensively)

In February of last year, ....

Great post, EA.

I do think there is a bit of a catch-22 from the libertarian side of this, though.

It's difficult not to see the rise in access to more military-like weapons being used in crimes slightly leading the shift from the old police revolver as a sidearm to the semi-automatic handgun. And the increase of military-style SWAT teams being similarly related to issues, or at least perceptions, of the police being out-gunned during confrontations.

The infamous North Hollywood Shoot-Out comes to mind as an example where the media played up how out-gunned the local police were when faced with body armor and automatic weapons. The media reporting focused less on the role of the SWAT team that was called in, overshadowing this with the descriptions of police acquiring assault rifles from a sporting goods store in order to fight back when their sidearms proved ineffective.

All of which creates in the minds of the public the need for a militarized police force to fight militarized criminals.

ETA: I see Analytics made a similar point above.