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Comment by A4ET8a8uTh0 | Hacker News Reader

It depends. My town is small. Do I think my local PD needs tank, humvee and a chopper? No. It may be a little different in Chicago and budget should reflect that.

But. There is a big but here. The very human tendency is to forever increase a budget. I am virtually certain there is a lot of fat to be cut.

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My understanding is that there are federal grants that are responsible for the militarization of municipal police, largely put in place by corrupt politicians wanting to court the vote of military contractors and their employees in their district. Can't find a source for this ATM though.

edit: here's a pretty lengthy academic article on the matter, see page 1803. https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?...

https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/peace-officer/

> It depends. My town is small. Do I think my local PD needs tank, humvee and a chopper?

If common people couldn't buy assault firearms like ice cream, probably no. This widespread small penis complex is making NRA and their supporters rich at the expense of everyone else by pushing an escalation that turns into a wonderful excuse for police militarization.

I'm not from the US, but following closely both for interest and because there's a creeping desire to import this in some EU countries as well (guess from which political side...), and police over here is already violent enough even with no tanks and minimal racism involved.

You will find that a lot of suburbanites have a fair amount of guns and yet the suburbia does not seem to sugger from the same afflictions as inner cities. In short, I think you are wrong about the cause.

I agree that there is fat to be cut, as with a lot of the government. That said, hasn't it been pretty well documented that these areas that experience the riots have a drop in police presence after the fact and typically have worse conditions? I just think this will have insidious externalities that wouldn't help the way people intend it to.

I just picked out a few cities - Chicago [0], NYC [1], and Wichita [2] and it turns out that they all spend very similar amounts per FTE (105-120k). I tried to find the online budget for my hometown PD, but couldn't.

[0] https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/obm/supp_info...

[1] https://council.nyc.gov/budget/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2...

[2] https://www.wichita.gov/Finance/Operating%20Budget/Police%20...

Chicagoan here; we also don't need a tank or a humvee and probably don't need a chopper.

In a typical year, the police and fire helicopters spend more time doing search and rescue on the lake [0] and aerial coordination at actual fires than anything else. They're assets to the city.

[0] Chicago has just about the same amount of coastline as SF - from Mussel Rock Park all the way around to Brisbane is almost exactly the same distance as the Indiana state line to Evanston.

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