Are police getting too military?

[nomadpete]

Something I notice is how our civilian police are looking more and more like military operatives. I think this hampers their connection with the communities that they are employed to protect.

 

Are we getting too americanised?

 

Should our coppers carry assault rifles like in USA?

 

What think you?

 

 

[onetrack]

Yes, I believe we are blindly following the U.S. and making our Police look very threatening. Mind you, a lot of security service companies are pretty good at making their employees look very intimidating, too.

[nomadpete]

The curious thing about security guards in Aus... is they have no power to detain or arrest or touch an alleged offender. At least that's what I was told. A friend did security for a while and he said he had to bluff. Basically he was legally only allowed to ask them nicely to wait here whilst he phoned the police.

The exact opposite to what we see in usa.

[old man emu]

So many points tocomment upon.

 

I believe that the American influence has not been introduced by police. In my opinion the generations which have come after the Boomers have had their attitudes towards Society molded by what American entertainment media has poured onto them. There is definitely a failure to acknowledge that the exercise of one's Rights as granted by Society has to be balanced by the acceptance of one's Responsibilities towards Society. It is that abandonment of Responsibilities that has lead to Society reducing many previously granted Rights.

 

Should our police regularly carry long arms? Definitely not, for the simple reason that using high powered firearms requires a lot of skill to avoid 'collateral damage'. Gaining those skills takes long and frequent training to do which would markedly reduce the number of police available for the day-to-day duties involved in keeping the Peace. Competency with firearms cannot be obtained through a one day per year revision session on a range under virtually stress-free conditions. I agree that a small police unit of police regularly trained and disciplined in the use of these more powerful firearms is required for those operations aimed at the arrest of person reasonably expected to be prepared to use firearms to avoid arrest. These are planned operations in which each participant has a defined role within the team.

 

Arrest by persons other than Police. I've explained before that anyone can arrest an offender in the act of, or immediately following the commission of an offence. Obviously a security guard would not want to do it because such an action is likely to result in loss of time by the employer if the security guard is required to attend Court as a witness. From my expereince, security guards are mostly just full of piss and wind. 

 

The Media. Once again the Media make matters worse by publicising situations when specialist armed police are in action, even if that action is simply patrolling on foot at New Years Eve events. One heavily armed police constable wearing body armour gives a false image when the majority of police are getting atound in cargo pants and shirts. When you see those bulky vests that regular police wear, they are not wearing body armour. The vests were introduced becasue police were carrying too much equipment on their waists and this was causing lower back injury. The introduction of vests was a Work, Health and Safety measure.

[Litespeed]

Police should be called a service not force, they are here to serve society.

 

The use of black uniforms in some states is silly, its hot and sends the wrong image.

 

The use of body cams in all interactions should be mandatory and a offense of office not to use it.  Most critical incidents magically fail to get camera vision, this leads to a lack of trust in policing.

 

Police should never be in charge of investigating police, its a massive conflict of interest.

 

Police should never be  allowed to hide their identity , they quite often do when policing protests, public order etc, this allows thuggish behaviour and zero accountability.  Only speacial ops police should have such needs and then must wear clearly visible badge numbers.

 

We are not like the usa or uk yet but its a slippery slope some right wing pollies would love to follow.

[Jerry_Atrick]

I hope you're not conflating UK police with US police. Most here are still unarmed and there is hot debate about whether or not they should be as a matter of routine be given tasers

[nomadpete]

3 hours ago, Litespeed said:

The use of body cams in all interactions should be mandatory and a offense of office not to use it. 

I totally agree.. That helps to even out the playing field for both sides of the thin blue line. I think it should improve public trust, too.

 

I note that in US, the feds have prohibited the ICE from wearing body cameras. Are civilians permitted to wear body cameras?

Edited 11 hours ago by nomadpete

[red750]

I have read that ICE agents do have bodycams but the images are not released so they cannot compromise their use as evidence in a trial. The video of the Minnesota murder were shot on the agent's phone camera.

[red750]

Apparently he posted it on his social media account as if he was proud of murdering her.

[nomadpete]

Seems that body cameras have not beed issued to all agents. If there was any body cam footage, it is being witheld.

 

Quote from Fox News (USA):-

 

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - Bystander videos showed an ICE agent shooting and killing a driver in south Minneapolis. It is not clear whether the ICE agent had a body-worn camera that recorded what happened right before the shooting. 

,...................

Body-worn camera footage from a similar incident there led to the dismissal of charges against a woman who was shot by a border patrol agent.

The woman was charged with trying to ram federal agents with her vehicle. DHS called her a "domestic terrorist." But the woman's attorney said the U.S. Attorney's Office dropped the charges after reviewing body-camera footage of the incident.

"And they're still labeling her a domestic terrorist, even though the charges have all been dropped by the attorney's office," Christopher Parente told the FOX 9 Investigators. "So in this case, I would tell everybody what I told them in our case. I would be very suspect of any press release that is put out right now by DHS."

[nomadpete]

9 hours ago, nomadpete said:

I note that in US, the feds have prohibited the ICE from wearing body cameras.

With apologies, I take that statement back. It came from a unverifiable source. I should have checked before posting.

[old man emu]

There are more than enough recordings of the incident made by independent witnesses that any body-cam video would be redundant. 

 

The problem is that a Federal Authority is ignoring the sovereignty of a State, something that is unconstitutional. But we are talking about the Trump Federal Government.