[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ame...
And here, it may seem strange but is actually logical that the thinking of real cops who don't shoot it out everyday seems to be driven by the images of TV cops who do.
This book is relevant here.
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...
Radley Balko is a writer who's covered the issue thoroughly: https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...
I just think it's pretty clear by now that the primary driving factor for police criminality becoming a political issue is that very many members of the socio-economic underclass now have internet-connected video cameras on them at all times.
That's not an accurate characterization. Suggested reading: https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...
I am even more dubious of the second claim you make. A US citizen has vastly better ability to attempt to exact justice for their own police force's actions than someone in northern Iraq or Afghanistan's tribal regions.
A deployed soldier may be more likely to succeed in hiding the evidence of crimes they commit. They'd better succeed, because that's the only way they'll escape punishment. The differences come into play when the rogue cop or soldier is actually caught. Military personnel are held to higher standards than civilians in many respects, while police continually demand to be held to lower ones.
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...
If they're regulated, next time they drag someone off a plane, they'll say "We were just following the handbook and were in accordance with federal regulations. Take it up with the FAA"
So no, no need to regulate the industry.
Also, the body you want to regulate them (the government) routinely does much, much worse to people.[0]
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...
There are a shocking number of no-knock raids which have resulted in death of not only officers and some offenders, but innocent people who's homes were raided based on wrong information and in some cases the police literally getting the address wrong.
To me, much of the root cause (it's not just black males per se; think of all the dogs shot mostly unnecessarily by police for instance -- https://puppycidedb.com/) is the over-aggressive militarization of the American police force. Which occurred for many reasons, but primarily was due to various moral panics such as the "war on drugs", and the need of our oversized military industry to dispose of excess military equipment. (See Balko's book on this: https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...)
Ultimately, the problem I can see with such policies is that the "war" paradigms too many police departments are obsessed with divide people between The Good Guys and The Enemy. The police force should be about community first (protect and serve etc.). But when the motif is more Good Guys vs. The Enemy, this probably does allow things like racial bias to play an oversized role. And when the motif is more War War War, it probably encourages hair-trigger responses.
In my opinion, American police violence (and we do IMHO have the most over-aggressive culture of any rich world nation I've seen) won't be fixed until this attitude changes. This is less a police officer issue (officers can be trained to any culture) and more of the type of culture encouraged at a legislative level.
Source: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...
http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...
"Perhaps no one was more victimized by the battlefield mentality that had set in at the NYPD than Walter and Rose Martin. The Brooklyn couple, both in their eighties, were wrongly raided more than fifty times between 2002 and 2010. The couple filed numerous complaints with the police department. They wrote letters to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly. They were ignored. In 2007 they at least got someone at the NYPD to try to wipe their address out of the department’s computer system. But the raids continued. It wasn’t until the couple went to the media in 2010 that the city finally looked into the problem. Back in 2002, someone had used the Martins’ address as a dummy address to test the department’s new computer system. When the new system was implemented, no one removed their address. So anytime NYPD cops in certain precincts used the system for a warrant and forgot to remove the dummy address to put in the correct one, the police would end up at the Martins’ door."[1]
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...
It would be convenient to keep the word "totalitarianism" forever connected with the very specific practices of Nazi Germany or, say, Stalin's USSR, and only those. Unfortunately the word and the practice existed way before and will continue to exist in the future. And there's not just a single form of it.
One can spend all his life between home, office, some cosy restaurant or cafe, friends house, and never understand anything that's going on in society at large, if he's so inclined. Especialy if he's on the upper echelon, e.g not a black, latino, native american, or "white trash", so he doesn't get to transparently see the structures of totalitarianism in a day by day basis.
From the militarization of police: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...
to cities built for exclusion and closing down of public space: http://www.amazon.com/City-Quartz-Excavating-Future-Angeles/...
to the privitazation of prisons (and the highest incarceration rate of the world by far, surpassing even Stalin's era Gulag percentages when it comes to blacks): http://www.amazon.com/Punishment-Sale-Private-Business-Incar...
to the dwindling middle-class (which is, when it exists, the real pillar of democracy): http://www.amazon.com/Servant-Economy-Americas-Sending-Middl...
Add mass surveillance, three-strike laws that resemble 19th century ethics, the concentrated control of mass media, constant external war, etc etc and you have quite a potent mix.
he talks about various aspects and how those incidents were relatively rare, and militarization has not been happening all that much because of outgunning, but rather government incentives for the War on Drugs and measures designed to have closer coordination between the military and police forces.
Makes for very depressing reading.
Police funding is now more often used to to acquire military weapons/hardware.
"Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces" is a highly recommended study of this problem.
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...