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>>miles+(OP)
I don’t think the police need MRAPs. That’s a bit over the top. However, it does seem they need some sort of up-armored police cars given how many of them have been destroyed in the rioting. SWAT maybe has some use for military equipment, but only for bona-fide SWAT situations (hostages/bombs/active shooter.) But rolling out MRAPs for general policing is a bad policy. It’s one step removed from deploying tanks and it’s a bad look and probably counterproductive.

>>briand+Ra
Sure, maybe there is limited use in some of this equipment. But my small city police department recently got a grant for 450 high powered assault rifles and armored vests, on top of the hundreds they already had. There are only 700 officers including things like traffic enforcement.

Of course the police union lobbied for more.

They have armored trucks and undercover vehicles. They have mobile towers to survey. They have closed circuit cameras at every major intersection. They have Stingrays. They have purchased LRADs which can permanently deafen. They have helicopters, tear gas cannons for hundreds of officers, batons.

And they trot it out for peaceful protests. The police did not come equipped to protect, they came equipped to escalate and occupy.

Hell, they even manage to bust a lot of the equipment out at concerts and festivals. I stopped going to a local outdoor concert series when they decided to gate a park off and start pat downs and metal detecting everyone who entered.

>>dashun+9e
I live close to a small town in the Bay Area, called Los Gatos. Quaint, expensive, beautiful place.

It was Big Truck Day at the library and a lot of government employees were showing their vehicles. Fire trucks, trash compactors, a huge bulldozer, and there was a police car and a handful of officers around.

A little girl came and pointed at a rifle and asked the officer, “what is this for?”

He said, “to protect myself”, paused and caught his breath and said “and to protect you”.

This happened a couple years ago. I still think about his pause, the afterthought on why he needs the truck, the rifle and the gear.

>>inerte+5h
Wow, anecdotal but very telling. I tend to think that most cops are "good people", but that doesn't mean that the majority also doesn't go around envisioning their job primarily as a combat deployment to a war zone, and only secondarily as an exercise in protecting and strengthening their communities.

The bellicose see war everywhere...