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[Kagus]

Or maybe some drug lord just wanted to put a lime in their drink, and hijacking a lime shipment was the most logical course of action they could come up with to that end.

You can't really expect someone who invests in a personal underground lake with gold-plated beluga whales to be the most rational kind of individual.

[SalmonGod]

Should also be pointed out that if soldiers are so much proof of an innate human reluctance to kill and that you have to be a psychopath to easily overcome that reluctance, then police look REALLY BAD as a result of that narrative. 

[wierd]

Should also be pointed out that if soldiers are so much proof of an innate human reluctance to kill and that you have to be a psychopath to easily overcome that reluctance, then police look REALLY BAD as a result of that narrative.

Positions of power with a low bar to admission are magnets for psychopaths and sociopaths.  Unlike the military, which has a rigid "top down" hierarchical structure (and a strong requirement for obedience despite personal objection, and many mechanisms to weed out the unreliable), the "thin blue line" enables sociopathy to fester at all ranks in the civilian police forces.

[Egan_BW]

One of the bigger problems with the police IMO is that they're trained in the same reflex shooting as soldiers are. It's hard for almost anyone to kill deliberately, and easy to kill as a trained reflex. And we demand that police officers be ready to kill people in their duties, so naturally they have to be trained to kill. But once you have a reflex like that, it's not something you can turn off, so the fact that police carry handguns and need to be constantly ready to use them naturally interferes with their ability to perform duties that aren't shooting people.

...And that's why I believe that normal officers shouldn't carry a pistol.

[Loud Whispers]

Or maybe some drug lord just wanted to put a lime in their drink, and hijacking a lime shipment was the most logical course of action they could come up with to that end.

You can't really expect someone who invests in a personal underground lake with gold-plated beluga whales to be the most rational kind of individual.

Yeah but kidnapping people fleeing poverty for ransom money seems like a business endeavour doomed to failure

[nenjin]

One of the bigger problems with the police IMO is that they're trained in the same reflex shooting as soldiers are. It's hard for almost anyone to kill deliberately, and easy to kill as a trained reflex. And we demand that police officers be ready to kill people in their duties, so naturally they have to be trained to kill. But once you have a reflex like that, it's not something you can turn off, so the fact that police carry handguns and need to be constantly ready to use them naturally interferes with their ability to perform duties that aren't shooting people.

...And that's why I believe that normal officers shouldn't carry a pistol.

Police culture today emphasizes them getting home safely at night above all else. And that's been combined with the Junior Antiterrorism Taskforce mindset, where they believe they're in an episode of 24 at any given moment. Put those two together and it's not hard to understand how police can respond to a call and literally walk in the door shooting, and walk out saying they didn't have a choice. When the value of a citizen's life is put below that of a police officer, they can justify anything.

It's why I find the lionization of police difficult to stomach. As a society Americans are basically cheerleaders for the police. What started as acknowledging their vital and important and dangerous service to their communities has basically become putting them on an entire 'nother tier of society, where their lives are worth more than your's and that's A-OK.

It's gone from Protect and Serve to Execute and Survive.

[Kagus]

...And that's why I believe that normal officers shouldn't carry a pistol.

Or at the very least, be trained to use it in ways other than warzone standard. Not having it there in the first place does also prevent fear and stress related to its being there (and thus being a threat if someone else manages to grab it), but hey, options.

Or maybe some drug lord just wanted to put a lime in their drink, and hijacking a lime shipment was the most logical course of action they could come up with to that end.

You can't really expect someone who invests in a personal underground lake with gold-plated beluga whales to be the most rational kind of individual.

Yeah but kidnapping people fleeing poverty for ransom money seems like a business endeavour doomed to failure

Nah, see, this is all an elaborate plan on the part of the victims... Drug cartels are obviously the "bad people", so if they are hostile towards someone and using them as hostages, then those other people must logically be "good people". Then the cartel ransoms them back to the US (or more likely gets brutally blown to bits in a heavy-handed rescue op, because we don't negotiate with Mexicansterrorists), because the US is where good people come from, and now the victims are given entrance to the country with full citizenship!

It's a foolproof system!

[wierd]

Hmm...  Most of these people are fleeing South America, due to combinations of corrupt govt and economic implosion. (which is why they are not good targets for ransom FROM FAMILIES), but perhaps the corruption of the governments they are fleeing is involved in this? (A government with no workforce is gutted; we are already talking about countries with "in your face" levels of corrupt behavior at all levels here-- Could these governments have made payments to "repatriate" their "lost human capital"?) 

Also, cocoa leaves don't grow or harvest themselves. These are people that could effectively disappear, and nobody would have the resources to track them down or liberate them. They are thus perfect targets for capture and forced labor. (sadly.)

[Loud Whispers]

It's why I find the lionization of police difficult to stomach. As a society Americans are basically cheerleaders for the police. What started as acknowledging their vital and important and dangerous service to their communities has basically become putting them on an entire 'nother tier of society, where their lives are worth more than your's and that's A-OK.

It's gone from Protect and Serve to Execute and Survive.

Well your police were never legally obliged to protect, while who they serve is another matter entirely

Hmm...  Most of these people are fleeing South America, due to combinations of corrupt govt and economic implosion. (which is why they are not good targets for ransom FROM FAMILIES), but perhaps the corruption of the governments they are fleeing is involved in this? (A government with no workforce is gutted; we are already talking about countries with "in your face" levels of corrupt behavior at all levels here-- Could these governments have made payments to "repatriate" their "lost human capital"?) 
Also, cocoa leaves don't grow or harvest themselves. These are people that could effectively disappear, and nobody would have the resources to track them down or liberate them. They are thus perfect targets for capture and forced labor. (sadly.)

I doubt any government would bother to pay someone else to bring back nobodies, could be that they get put into human trafficking now that I think about it

[Kagus]

I was going to say something about you probably meaning coca leaves, but considering the state of the chocolate industry, a little human trafficking and slave labor wouldn't be that far off.

[SalmonGod]

Everything being said is my point.  No matter which approach you take, it puts all the discussion about military violence in a difficult spot.

If human beings are naturally very reluctant to kill each other and there is debate as to how successfully the rank and file of an organization can be trained to kill, even in self-defense, then the rate at which police are killing people in the United States should prove that in the modern day, they can be.

Or the alternative to that is we say that there is something extraordinary about civilian law enforcement that has caused it to be populated by an inordinate ratio of psychopaths with a low inhibition to killing.

[wierd]

But you dont pick the leaves off those, you pick the mature pods.

(Yes, meant coca.)

@salmon god

Yes.  I lamplit that.  Our most recent high profile serial killer, (one Dennis Rader) became a dog catcher for much the same set of reasons. (Inability to actually excel at a leadership role, coupled with a strong desire to be "in charge", stemming from an innate sense of superiority resulting from his psychopathy.) -- He was an absolute terror in that role too, for the sole purpose of tormenting the dog's owners for personal gratification reasons.

The police forces have a surprisingly low barrier to entry, and the a-fore mentioned "deification" of the police forces, makes them a good target for such minded individuals.  (See also, eric cartman's "Respect muh AUTHORITAI!" mantra, coupled to how incompetent he actually is. Similar mentality, with ironically similar lack of concern for others.)

[Loud Whispers]

Everything being said is my point.  No matter which approach you take, it puts all the discussion about military violence in a difficult spot.

If human beings are naturally very reluctant to kill each other and there is debate as to how successfully the rank and file of an organization can be trained to kill, even in self-defense, then the rate at which police are killing people in the United States should prove that in the modern day, they can be.

Or the alternative to that is we say that there is something extraordinary about civilian law enforcement that has caused it to be populated by an inordinate ratio of psychopaths with a low inhibition to killing.

Bit of both innit

[nenjin]

Or the alternative to that is we say that there is something extraordinary about civilian law enforcement that has caused it to be populated by an inordinate ratio of psychopaths with a low inhibition to killing.

There's been a lot of research on the difficulty of retaining quality officers through the 90s and early 2000's, and the subsequent drop in recruiting standards to compensate. Then you add in 9/11, and increased law enforcement budgets, further militarization of police culture on home soil as it suddenly felt like it could have terrorists running through the streets.....

It all adds up. You end up with people motivated to be police for the wrong reasons and they're not weeded out by better applicants.

We failed to put the brakes on the whole train post 9/11 for a lot of reasons (but mainly being labeled unpatriotic, disgracing the memory of fallen police officers or even being a sympathizer to Al-Qaeda's goals. "Do you want terrorists to blow up more buildings? WE NEED MORE POLICE!!11), and now it's become the de facto mindset of the country. And not even the stacked bodies of the last 5 years of police unlawfully killing people has changed course. Police are well aware they're being watched and scrutinized, but it's only seemed to have impacted police culture in that they just quietly say it's under investigation rather than trying to defend their officers in public. We still have a bunch of shitty, unprepared, trigger-happy cops on the streets who, at the end of the day, would rather be alive and wrong than right and dead, and who are in such a goddamn hurry to react and respond that they don't even take a minute to establish what the situation is at the scene before they've drawn their guns and are ready to fire on the first person they see.

Put like that you can't really blame them as people.....but they shouldn't be police officers, because they're reacting like scared, untrained civilians. Christ that last killing where they literally walked in to a bar and shot a security guard that had disabled the actual shooter......just unfucking believable.

[SalmonGod]

I'm not sure how much of it can be blamed on 9/11.  I see the handling of protest as a pretty good thermometer for law enforcement culture.  The Battle in Seattle pre-dates 9/11, but is widely regarded among activists as setting the tone for the 21st century.  Echelon was also widely known as a far-reaching internet surveillance project long before 9/11.

Airport security and counter-terrorism apparatus may not have developed the way it did without 9/11.  But in regards to the general atmosphere of authoritarianism in law enforcement and how those energies have been directed, I think that stuff was already in the works, and 9/11 only provided a convenient pretext to speed up the process without as much backlash. 

Edit: Especially makes sense if you believe the stuff about political axis re-orienting around the issue of globalism, and notice that a lot of the controversial aspects of security culture and policing are angled around related issues like race and immigration.  Globalism controversy was heating up to a low simmer by at least the mid-90's.