Reminds me of the study that showed that you got very different types of people signing up to be police officers if your town's police recruiting brochure had pictures of a SWAT team versus pictures of a police officer doing community outreach at a school and shaking hands.

...without apparently controlling for the extent to which people _become_ "very different types of people" in agencies who advertise one way or the other.

Either way, it's beyond obvious in 2026 that SWAT teams are no longer necessary and are far, far more trouble than they're worth. Abolish them today.

It's probably indisputable at this point that inviting the citizen gravy seals to deal with real threats will probably result in fewer innocent victims than a professional SWAT force that professionally sometimes rescues hostages while also mostly being used to throw flashbangs at babies and terrorize people at 2am no-knocks over petty crimes.

My father has commented to me about the weird warrior/war-fighter phrasing that came into vogue in the late 90’s. He remembered as a young soldier in the early 80’s not hearing those terms at all, but during a stint in the National Guard in the years before 9/11 he started hearing that sort of phrasing all the time.

It stuck him as vaguely undemocratic or even slightly barbaric. More suited to some caste in the Middle Ages than a modern all volunteer force of citizens-soldiers.

People need to be bigger on efficacy. If it worked, we'd see evidence of it. No one's bringing that evidence forward and frankly its questionable if US officers are better than their international peers.

I don't think it's accidental the overlap between lack of accountability and the fact that warriors historically are a class, not a job.

Those who get to brand a thing rules a thing!

This quote comes to mind: "Ain't no Uzi's made in Harlem. Not one of us in here owns a poppy field. This thing is bigger than Nino Brown. This is big business. This is the American way."

And more relevant with each passing year. This is a meme that seems to have infected every law enforcement organization.

Look at some cities Animal Control officers - athletic guys, black uniform, black high boots - real Warriors-Stormtroopers protecting the defenseless community from that kitten.

As an urban farm nerd I've experienced this first hand in western Canada, "the chickens smell" indeed and??? "Our bylaws are so poorly written we can fine you $10,000 a day for your 6 urban chickens subjectively having a smell" ... Plus bylaw officers can enter property without a warrant, they've got more rights then the police! And yet they don't know how to determine if animals are kept in appropriate conditions/can't tell if animals in your care are healthy etc. It's like a montey python sketch IRL!

Yes, the days of Andy Griffith is long gone, at least in the US the country is slowly turning the local police into storm troopers.

But even back then, some groups of people were treated badly by the local police in some areas. Now it seems the bad treatment is has become "DEI" instead of good treatment expanding to everyone. :(

Ref for non-US people and the very young:

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

Those days never existed. In real life Andy Griffith would be an alcoholic who beats his wife and lynches black people who don't get out of Mayberry before the sun sets.

Cops have always been this way.

Source?

I have a close relative that’s a cop, he’s a really good person, father and husband. I’ve known several other cops and never knew a truly bad person.

There's an old report (like from the 1990s) on this that put the DV rates at 40%. That's probably high but it's the source for a lot of the "cops beat their wives" claims.

A fundamental problem with cops is the thin blue line is very real. The rise of cameras on cops shows pretty clearly that a decent number of cops bend over backwards to protect their own. I find it pretty easy to believe that cops won't arrest their fellow officers on a DV call.

Police unions fight HARD to stop any sort of accountability or tracking of misbehavior of cops.

That's what the ACAB sentiment is about. It's not that all cops beat their wives or make up reasons to pull over minorities. It's that the ones who don't do that still cover for the ones who do.

While I don't disagree with the sentiment, since you have a friend who's a cop I'm compelled to ask the uncomfortable question, is an otherwise good cop who protects bad cops still a good cop?

That’s a good question.

You know how all the people taking part in a robbery get charged with murder if just one of them kills someone?

I’d view it like that. A cop that covers up corruption for a partner is guilty of corruption. A cop that covers up a DUI carries a similar amount of guilt.

A cop that exercises ‘professional courtesy’ to overlook a minor traffic violation? Same negligible amount of guilt.

I think it seems about right.

The problem for people like that is that they're working in a system that rewards and mandates bad behavior. You want your traffic tickets to stick so you can make quota? Ticket more black and poor people. They won't contest the tickets as much. Drug arrest and conviction quota? Find people who can't afford an attorney, they'll get an overworked PD and likely take a fast plea bargain.

Good people are responsive to the incentives we've created for them also.

They're still beating their wives and killing black guys for no good reason only except now they're also treating everyone else like shit too.

Progress(TM)

I think it should be pointed out that we have the police we have because enough of the population is ok with it -- because they operate with the assumption that the cops exist to harass "others" but not themselves.

If the entire citizenry said "no more!" to this nonsense we could have better policing all around.

This is a shallow piece, if ever there was one. Sure the word "warrior" and its connotations are dangerous, but that barely skims the surface of the problem. Why are police given military ranks? Corporals and sergeants and captains. Hell, some are majors and colonels too. Why are their uniforms styled to look martial at all? Has anyone considered that perhaps they shouldn't be armed like soldiers? There doesn't need to be an assault rifle in the trunk of each squad car (isn't this the point of having SWAT? why bother if everyone is SWAT?). Can we even safely call them officers? We call the command structure of the army and navy "officers", but we also use that term for those who aren't military, so maybe it's safe.

to me, the most interesting, actionable police-ology has been reforming two trends:

- modern 911, which rewards reactive, rather than proactive, policing

- the ever expanding mission of police officers. there's only one uniformed police officer class. experts and police all want specialization, just like in the medical field.

from a police chief:

> We’re asking cops to do too much in this country. We are. Every societal failure, we put it off on the cops to solve. Not enough mental health funding, let the cops handle it…. Here in Dallas we got a loose dog problem; let’s have the cops chase loose dogs. Schools fail, let’s give it to the cops … That’s too much to ask. Policing was never meant to solve all those problems

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/law-and-social-inqui...

warrior versus guardian isn't really actionable - what are you going to do, pass a law that says that training materials have to say guardian? versus, pass a law that appropriates funding for specialized workforces, that's par for the course in municipalities.

why not? if its a professional force. plenty of other countries people use as models have military and police linked together, imo we're (USA) just missing the punishment part. Need to court martial police more :). Whole point of police is internal force application right. Can't really enforce any laws without use of force.

I think a lot of the questions you pose have some interesting psychology behind them. Other countries don't have this same level of policing, but also have different prison systems.

I think a large amount of the danger American police face is due to how easily a single arrest can ruin your productive life. One facing the loss of their home, pets, job, important documents, sentimental items might not see the difference between losing everything, and losing everything and taking the guy who's taking it from you, with you.

If we had an actual system based on reform rather than punishment, I think the danger police would be in would be greatly reduced.

You also have things like qualified immunity and general protections for police against being sued for an unlawful arrest. An officer can incorrectly arrest you and you could lose everything and be simply shit out of luck.

If there's no repercussions for bad cops, there's no justice. If there's no justice, why would one play nicely with the law, therefore police are in danger.

> I think a large amount of the danger American police face is due to how easily a single arrest can ruin your productive life. One facing the loss of their home, pets, job, important documents, sentimental items might not see the difference between losing everything, and losing everything and taking the guy who's taking it from you, with you.

I don't think it's that complicated. Rather, I think that a lot of cops think they're in more danger than they really are. The vast, vast majority of people aren't going to gun them down for a traffic stop or for providing a warning about something. The situations where they're likely to get shot are exceedingly rare. By treating policing as some tremendously dangerous job we're completely ignoring the actual statistics, which show that firefighters and construction workers are far more routinely in physical danger.

The police then get carte blanche to walk around treating everyone like some dangerous creature ready to explode at the slightest provocation when most of us are just trying to get by and are pretty accepting of the benign law enforcement interactions we get.

Isn't it maybe because of the gun use here? in other countries is not like anybody can shoot you, even a civilians here feels like sometimes people get mad and just shoot each other

> even a civilians here feels like sometimes people get mad and just shoot each other

Outside of Florida, with its incredibly relaxed "stand your ground" laws, this isn't really an issue in most of the US. When civilians do go around shooting people like that, they usually get arrested and imprisoned. In Florida, especially if you're a retired cop, you can shoot people for talking on their phone in a movie theater, though. So maybe avoid that state if you value your life.

If you've ever walked up to your neighbor and politely asked them to do or not do something then by that logic you're putting yourself at immense physical risk. I think the vast majority of people, even gun owners, are generally civil and don't wish other people harm.

Given that gun owners skew conservative and the Republican party seems to currently exist to harm people conservatives don't like (e.g. trans people). I'd say that the majority of gun owners defiitely wish other people harm, if they didn't then they wouldn't have voted for the guy who ran on a platform of causing other people harm.

The biggest danger American police are traffic accidents. Mostly because they spent a lot of time on the streets and accidents happen. They don't get shot at all that much.

What actually happens is that American police is basically unaccountable. It must be really egregious and on multiple camera for them to face any scrutiny. And even then it is easy for them to engineer situation where it is actually ok for them to kill or be violent. Meanwhile, non-cop is supposed to have perfect self control, perfect awareness of situation and be able to follow mutually exclusive instructions yelled at him from multiple cops simultaneously.

Unaccountable groups of people always end up behaving badly. Be it priests, isolated cults or cops.

this right here, our issue is mostly the accountability. Accountable people are much less likely to apply force when not needed. Trying to remember some citations, but there's really interesting data out there on citizen involved shootings v police ones. and I suspect the accountability is key.

semantic reinterpretation on Austrian overload. knock your favorite downer down with at least 3 bottles of wine and you'll feel only slightly behind ... an IVY LEAGUE AFICIONADO got something to say. what's the shape of his intent? levels down, I mean, not the superficial that he modestly commands ...

the fear to lose control due to incompetence .... is that how all those former and current self-driving/self-flying/self-digging engineers and founders feel?

jeez must they be grateful to all that stupidity their ( practically ) grand- daddies established among the rest of the world!

#HerrenRasseViaSabotageForTheWin #Austria #SouthAfrica #USA #USA #USA

This is a price the US pays for the right to keep and bear arms. US cops have to assume that everyone is armed. That leads to a paranoid style of policing. As gun laws have become less restrictive, cops have armed and armored up.

That doesn't explain the first ~230 years of US history though, where police weren't this way and we had the same Constitution.

It’s possible it’s a bit of an “arms” race, the police are more aggro but so are the public. At least in public perception back before the 70s its was perceived that by and large there was “respect for authority” but that’s eroded over the decades for various reasons among them court cases asserting more rights for individuals where cops can’t just up and arrest willy nilly. But also movements like “sovereign citizen” leaks in places enough to affect behavior elsewhere.

Also weapons are relatively cheaper today than decades ago.

There's an insane number of police shootings where it turns out the person was looking at an insanely large sentence and they "weren't going back to jail." From that perspective it's not even clear they're acting irrationally -- if the penalty for third-striking for stealing a TV and murder is the same then some criminals are going to make it worth their while.

I suspect this fear of guns largly explains the additional risks police face.

assuming everyone has a gun and is willing to use it, raises the stakes of every encounter. so instead of a police encounter starting at a very low risk level (casual conversation), it starts a very close to deadly force risk.

This causes both sides to be a lot more tense, with a lot less room for mistakes. It also makes any encounter feel very risky.

I don't think people having a gun prevents police from starting an encounter at a casual level. But the assumption everyone is out to harm them, and has the means to do so, does.

Plausible sounding theory, but in reality what kills cops is traffic accidents. Even there it's not people running them over. Cops are seldom charged with DUI where other dangerous behavior on the roads.

There’s not much to back this up, at least that you’ve included as reference.

The bigger issue that comes to mind and that you can actually look in to is the practice of teaching police departments about “Killology”. This is (or was) a kind of seminar that taught departments this mindset of “everyone that an officer interacts with is a potential threat”. Add this to the “super criminal” bs that was popular in the 80s/90s, the constant right-wing fearmongering about dangerous criminals in blue cities, and the militarization of police, and it feels more like they’ve been primed for violence from the power structure more-so than any actual threat from the public.

At the range nearly all casual police interactions like traffic stop happen happen at (<20ft), a knife has to be treated just as deadly as a gun. So even if you remove the guns you'll still have to treat everyone as a deadly threat under such a model.

20 feet is approximately the distance a person can rush forward, and have a decent chance of engaging in a weapon retention challenge.

its also the effective range for most people snap drawing a pistol in a use of force situation.

If everyone is really armed, that's the single biggest reason why standard doctrine should be de-escalation first.

But US Cops always escalate instead. They want the fight, they aren't looking for safety.

>If everyone is really armed, that's the single biggest reason why standard doctrine should be de-escalation first.

See also: Game wardens during hunting season vs game wardens during fishing season.

> As gun laws have become less restrictive...

Do you have a reliable citation for this claim? [0] I disbelieve that this has been happening in any substantial way in the US. I expect that at very best, they've stayed roughly as restrictive as they have been for quite a long time.

> US cops have to assume that everyone is armed.

Weird. In San Francisco, California (a city of roughly 800->900k), the regular CompStat reports [1] have this to say about the number of incidents of firearm violence (whether fatal or non-fatal) in the city:

* 2022 -> 185 incidents

* 2023 -> 162 incidents

* 2024 -> 132 incidents

* 2025 -> 101 incidents

For fun, you can slap this pretty fucking shitty Power BI dashboard [2] around to compare those numbers to the number of times cops have either threatened to shoot or have shot someone each year.

Weirdly, I'm having great difficulty finding the city's officer injury reports. In the absence of those reports, I'll assume that policing still doesn't crack the top ten most hazardous jobs in the US, and that it's still roughly as hazardous as being a groundskeeper or professional athlete.

[0] If your supporting evidence is "spooooky ghost guns", I'll laugh my way out the door.

[1] <https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...>

[2] <https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/your-sfpd/published-repor...>

It's pretty clear to me that gun laws have become less restrictive. Stand your ground laws and open carry have become more commeon and more normalized. Tactical rifles (i.e. semi-automatic variants of military rifles like the AR) are less restricted since the "assault weapons" bans expired or were overturned. Perhaps even more importantly, ARs have become a much more prominant part of gun culture. Openly carrying guns at protests has become more normalized (although it did exist before; e.g. many Black Panther demonstrations).

Even if the right changed, the main actual causes of police caution would remain:

- a land border with a large continent that has a lot of guns and violence and criminality

- millions and millions of existing guns, the criminal holdings of which would not decrease following a change in the law

- subcultures that glorify violence and teach it as a path in life, particularly how to be a man and what sort of man to be attracted to

> a land border with a large continent that has a lot of guns and violence and criminality

That's a curious perception indeed, given that guns predominantly flow from the US to Mexico and not the other way around, and guns in Mexico are of mostly US origin.