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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
I don't get why people are fine with arming the police with military hardware like MRAPs.
Their whole job is to control the civilian population and people want to arm them with the means to drive into a house and start unloading on the residents within?
They're a right-wing paramilitary force; we should be limiting their reach instead of giving them armor and quad-damage power-ups.
The police force was supposed to be a strictly civilian force and they should never have access to things beyone what ordinary civilians can get. We've come so far away from that that the framers of the consitution would likely regard the modern police force as an invading army.
I don’t get why people are fine with arming the police with military hardware like MRAPs.
they should never have access to things beyone what ordinary civilians can get
Civilians in america can also buy several fully automatic and semiautomatic weapons in a large caliber. I usually see police using MRAPs as deployable cover during barricaded suspect situations. Most of the time they don't just show up and drive it through the building guns blazing, they use it as cover while giving commands, often holding down the area until the barricaded suspect gives up or a SWAT team can enter and try to arrest. Typically they attempt to use non lethal methods like flashbangs and bean bags unless the suspect becomes lethally violent like charging at officers with a knife or a rifle.
Police Owe Nothing To Man Whose Home They Blew Up, Appeals Court Says
Wisconsin police send armoured vehicle to collect fine from 75-year-old
Homeowner left to cover damages after Las Vegas SWAT raid goes awry
Not an MRAP, but explosives: Police tore through the wrong house. Now Austin won't pay for the damage.
And these are just the ones where they got the wrong house (other than the one where they drove an armored car to a guy's house to intimidate him). They're offensive weapons, and the cops use them as such.
is that to the wrong house or through the wrong house? not joking, legitimately asking i've seen a few civil cases against PDs
Any tool can be misused. I'd be curious what the percentage of wrong use cases of MRAPs is. There is a massive accountability issue with America's policing. We need to address the accountability issues, not just take all their tools away.
When a tradesman fucks up a job do you blame the tools they used or the company they work for?
We know what happens when we arm a police force with military weapons and no accountability.
I absolutely blame the cops and the people who gave them these deadly toys.
If a tradesman "fixed" my plumbing with C4 I'd blame the plumber and the guy who gave him the explosive.
I'd rather the right-wing paramilitary not have weapons of war.
So we just send the police to go deal with the military hardware that civilians have access to with nothing? We need more accountability for when and how they use their tools and weapons rather than just taking them away.
I really don't care if cops have to deal with that. It's their job.
If they don't want to do it, find another one. The world could use fewer armed right-wing meathead goons.
Or try de-escalation for a change.
To add:
If cops are afraid of civilians having this hardware, they're in the same boat as the rest of us. Maybe they'll have some incentive to lobby for laws that would keep all of us safe.
But instead they lobby for things like perpetuating the decades long "war on drugs," which is largely what this breach and clear shit is used for.
They want to wage war on civilians. And, really, just some civilians.
And they make a point to be the biggest baddest and scariest. Like mother fuckers you already have the monopoly on the legitimate use of force. You'd be terrifying bringing lever action rifles and revolvers against someone with a kalishnakov, because if shit goes down bad enough you can bring in the national guard or rope in a bunch of deputies, or just the fact that yall have the power to imprison people without governments getting mad
Or try de-escalation for a change>
Can't find that in the manual..
The police causes more death than the military. And until that changes, we are free to reduce the equipment and revise the training they should get.
There's no good reason for a plumber to have c4. And there is no good reason for police to have armored vehicles. It's not a building, it's just pipes, and it's not a warzone (before the police arrive), it's a city.
Oh yeah and we can absolutely expect police handle lethal encounters. It's a unique job with unique issues and if you can't handle that, get out. You don't get to cosplay military just because you feel too weak inside.
Murderous fascist dipships shpuldnt be given tools that are unacceptably dangerous (even when misused) to the community they're invading raping and looting, then.
No guns. No cars.
Im not against addressing accountability and putting a blunty on everyone within one degree close association of any cop, but the fact they steal city budget to pay for shit to kill us with is... Okay its not more insane than paying them to kill is, but its up there.
Police should not have anything the average person in the area couldn't get.
I don't give a shit about their lives. These are the tax dollars of the people who live here, and they should be spent protecting the lives of people who live here, not buying ever more baroque murder weapons.
They should not have the capacity to deploy lethal force. Their job is (supposedly) to subdue, not kill. If they were not onvaders, they shouldn't have fire arms.
You might need to dig deep, though, because the lower end starts at around $100,000, with prices reaching up to around $180,000. However, many people feel it’s a small price to pay for their family’s security.
The great thing about MRAPs is that if you miss a payment, there's nothing anyone can do about it.
With how much money some people spend on pickups now, I feel like an entry level MRAP for $100,000 would be much cooler.
Probably worse on gas mileage than a pickup though. ;p
It's downright affordable compared to the destroyer you haul out to the lake house you rent for family vacations.
I have very mixed feelings on this. As a person who has managed to keep hold of her sanity I'm appalled, but as an American it makes me feel a bit patriotic. America, just because it's a terrible idea to let you do it doesn't mean we aren't allowed to stop you.
Give unions machine guns again dammit.
regard them as an invading army
I do. You ever checked their ID's? Not one of them lives in the places they police.
Of course not. It's hard to shoot your neighbors
Actually it's really easy and you can maybe do it without gwtting out of bed, but you will and should be lynched afterwards.
Or at least not have groceries sold to you anymore.
Well yeah im good and it would be terrible if they used the general atomics x53 'planet cracker' on my neighborhood. Obviously. But they never would because theyre here to protect me! Its those other people, you know, the criminals...
Well they might hurt me. And the police need the general atomics x53 planet cracker to keep me safe.
They kinda make sense in america, it's a readily available off-road capable transport that can survive pretty much anything civilians throw at it (including the A in MRAP), and there's already a production line going. A civilian armored car would do the job too but I suspect there's lobbying/insider trading involved. That and their cops are paranoid as fuck and would rather overspend than risk getting a scratch.
People are fine with it for the same reason they ignore privacy violations. "I've got nothing to hide" = "I won't break any laws", therefore it's never their problem.
MRAPs for police departments are usually scraps thrown away by the military. They tend to he in terrible shape when the military ditches them, so the "free" armored vehicles end up costing a fuckton on money to repair and maintain.
A civilian armored car would do the job too but I suspect there’s lobbying/insider trading involved.
Police departments used to do that but someone noticed that while Police Departments were spending money on armored vehicles the military was throwing them away. It was a waste of money all around and so the LESO / 1033 Program was born out of the National Defense Authorization Act of 90/91 and then expanded and made permanent in 1997. (Remember that year, it's important).
The program actually makes good fiscal sense. Why waste equipment when one branch of Government no longer needs something while another one does.
A big impetus for police departments participating in the program that many people online today weren't alive for was the North Hollywood Shootout in 1997. A couple of Bank Robbers carrying full auto weapons and wearing body armor tore the shit out of the Hollywood PD because the Police Department didn't have the equipment or guns to deal with the problem.
In the end they had to use hunting rifles taken from a nearby civilian gunstore and a commandeered armored car. Every Cop in the country was scared shitless that it would happen to them because almost no departments were equipped for that level of violence. So they started grabbing surplus IFVs (MRAPs now) and other gear from the 1033 program.
As time went on and the "Warrior Cop" mentality took hold, primarily from Police Departments hiring untold numbers of returning Gulf War & GWOT Veterans, those Vets pushed to expand their departments use of the 1033 program so they could have access to most of the same gear they were already used to using.
That's how we got to where we are in 2025. Each individual step makes sense but the outcome of those cumulative decisions is increasingly problematic.
Thank you, that's very informative. I only knew about the hollywood shootout as a catalyst for changing their weapons
That and their cops are paranoid as fuck and would rather overspend than risk getting a scratch.
Police can get decommissioned military equipment on the cheap, so long as they can basically write a grant proposal justifying why they want it.
Because of things like the North Hollywood Shootout. People don't want a situation where the criminals have much better weapons than the police. It doesn't matter that that kind of a situation is incredibly rare. People are scared and want police to never be outgunned.
Of course, that results in a bad situation where the cops in say Fluffy Landing, Florida have an armoured personnel carrier and don't need one. And, they get to train SWAT tactics just in case, but they never need those skills. And eventually when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, so they use their APC for a regular arrest just because they want to justify having it, and they want to use their cool new toy.
It does vaguely make sense to have a SWAT team, especially in a big city in the USA. A sovereign state is basically defined by having a monopoly on the use of force within its own borders. If the bad guys (ACAB, but you know what I mean) can outgun the cops, then it can lead to chaos.
Also, politicians need to be seen as tough on crime to get elected. If you increase police funding, you're safe. If you cut police funding and there's some kind of incident, you can easily lose your next election.
In the US, there's no effective civilian control over police. Sure, theoretically the cops answer to the mayor or something. But, police unions are extremely powerful, and so mostly the cops get to do whatever they want.
Yeah the state of ohio having a swat team and even some armored vehicles is somewhat reasonable. Ohio State University's police department on the other hand should not have an Mine Resistant Armored Personnel carrier.
But also, if it gets to the point that we need to bust out the automatic weapons and shit, maybe an elected member of the state government should be approving and leading.
I mostly agree. The one thing I'll say is that police departments weren't specifically ordering MRAPs. It's more that the military had a lot of spares that were otherwise going to be mothballed or destroyed. In some ways it's efficient to reuse military materials like that. But, there are obviously downsides too.
this is such propaganda. barely anything here is accurate.
politicians demand accountability? bullshit.
lead investigation? if there's one at all, it's the cops themselves.
lack of training? no, the cops investigate themselves and find no wrongdoing, or it's standard protocol
this comic strip should just be three panels:
police shoots someone, politicians raise funds for police, police shoots someone with newer toys
I think the absurdity is that is what they present to the public and it's so flipping transparent.
If America's cities were all occupational juntas, practically speaking what would be different? Extrajudicial killings? Public officials and journalists being threatened? Dissent brutally quelled? Top-down class war?
As someone who has travelled to developing countries:
The US is well on the path to this kind of place, but it definitely isn't there yet. The mainstream press is a bit cowardly, but there are still independent journalists who are digging into stories and they're not being disappeared or murdered. There's a fair amount of self-censorship, especially at big tech companies, but that's more about keeping advertisers happy than keeping the government happy. There's virtually no true Internet censorship or legal speech. The US supreme court is highly biased, but many lower courts are doing fine, and plenty of judges are ruling against the president. The ICE crackdowns are awful, and they are grabbing people off the street and throwing them into unmarked vans while wearing masks. But... at least they're still more or less focusing on illegal immigrants. There have been military and police in the streets, but the haven't been killing protesters, and when a guy recently threw a sandwich at a cop they tried to put him away for assault, but the grand jury laughed at them and they weren't able to move ahead with that case.
Things are getting worse and worse in the US, and I wouldn't want to have to live there, but it's still a long way from an authoritarian state.
It can always get worse. I found the US bad enough to leave five years ago. The UK is on the same path, but it seems like nowhere is truly resistant to the larger problems.
Smaller countries seem to be handling it better. New Zealand, for example, seems to still be relatively responsive to the desires of the people. NZ doesn't have that much power because it's so small, so it can get bossed around in some ways, but it does seem like it's not becoming authoritarian in the same way as other places.
Many people are just scared all the time. No one's smart when they're scared. The body doesn't let you. They think the police will protect them.
Right wing media is largely to blame. And segregation and under funded education, public spaces. And suburbs + car culture isolating everyone.
Pretty much every right wing idea is bad.
I know its a problematic imperfect solution, but this is what conservatorship is for.
*training to more effectively violate people's rights, brutalized, them off camera, and reframe killings to generate less bad PR.
Lol, you could only wish. The money gets spent on two-five consultants who come up with a powerpoint that could have been made by preteens given an assignment of 'name ways to deescalate a conflict.' I remember when there was a training about cops and dogs, because someone 'important' finally had their dog shot by a cop. The training was almost literally what you would come up with if you did a quick search on dog behaviors and copy/pasted the worst seo slop article into a powerpoint format.
It’s less that they buy a tank with the money and more that the government is giving them money specifically to exchange for a tank, and the money could not otherwise have been spent.
Yeah, these armored vehicles are being given away for almost free. No appreciable amount of training money is going toward armored vehicle purchases. There are certainly things to criticize here, but the meme is attacking a false reality. (Furthermore, the armored vehicle pictured is mislabeled as a tank for some reason)
money specifically to exchange for a tank, and the money could not otherwise have been spent.
So don't buy a fucking tank and don't spend the money...jeez that should be a fucking no-brainer.
Then da boyz revolt because they wanted to ride in something rugged with wheels and then someone runs against you or petitions the local mayor, usurps you, uses the money, and you end up with tanks and less power to monitor their use. You can’t offhandedly dismiss two of the keys to power
Those aren't tanks and Police Departments get them for little or no money as the US Military declares them surplus. It's a federal program called LESO / 1033 and it's been around since the '90s.
Hey, they also get more training that teaches them that their instincts are never wrong and if they feel scared that means they're in mortal danger and that it's better to kill than risk any danger whatsoever
But the cops are heroes who protect us or something. Who else will demand answers about my one hitter and ignore the clear signs of forceful entry when my home was invaded.