Yeah, too many people seem to accept the idea that law enforcement officers are not civilians. In my view, which seems to be the correct legal definition, anyone that is not a member of the military is a civilian.
What's the real difference between the government stationing armed soldiers in your town to maintain the peace, and stationing armed police in your town to maintain the peace? The former became unfashionable so it was replaced with the later. Such soldiers were renamed for "PR" but the situation is functionally equivalent. Officially there are some differences, like police being accountable to civilian courts instead of military courts... but I think it is now generally acknowledged that civilian courts have a double standard for police. So this distinction is more theoretical than practical.
In my view, it's fair to consider anybody who carries a gun for the state as a soldier, in an informal sense.
The difference in US law falls under the Posse Comitatus Act[1] (which has been repeatedly expanded over the last 150 years): the government, by law, cannot use military forces for domestic law enforcement.
I'm no particular fan of the US military (much less the police), but the practical and historical distinctions between the two are substantial: one is the professional military of a country, and the other is a professionalization of antebellum slave catching posses.
I think the comment you are replying to is making a slightly different point: what's the point of Posse Comitatus when heavily armed, trigger happy, indemnified government employees can do the exact same thing by just wearing blue instead of camo?
That limits what the federal government can do with the US military. Governors have more lattiude with using state-level military (i.e. national guard units) in their own states.
> What's the real difference between the government stationing armed soldiers in your town to maintain the peace, and stationing armed police in your town to maintain the peace?
One's subject to military tribunals[1], while the other is subject to regular courts, which from all evidence seem to be incredibly biased in their favour.
Can't forget rules of engagement. I've seen multiple (as-claimed-on-the-internet) soldiers complain about cop-malfeasance with respect to the situations in which gunfire is allowed to occur. They opine that if cops were trained like they were, shootings would look very different, be much rarer, and be much more defensible to the average joe.
> multiple (as-claimed-on-the-internet) soldiers complain about cop-malfeasance with respect to the situations in which gunfire is allowed to occur.
Soldiers tooting their own horns; this self-aggrandizement is not to be taken seriously. There is evidence that police with military backgrounds are more likely to be involved in shootings. Police who are combat veterans are even more likely to be involved in shootings. Soldier training does not make good police.
>>They opine that if cops were trained like they were
>There is evidence that police with military backgrounds are more likely to be involved in shootings.
Ah, but that's not the claim being made. You've quite adroitly shown proof that former soldiers make shooty LEOs. I'm relating that soldiers suggest that if all cops were trained as soldiers were with respect to not firing their weapons until some situational conditions were met, shootings would fall.
I'd imagine that the sort of soldier who comes home and seeks out the experience of being a cop, immersed in "killology" [0] as they are (a philosophy that suggests firing your weapons), would indeed become the sort of cop to wind up being involved in a shooting.
...and I'm aware that "killology"'s founder and chief proselytizer is a former soldier. Note, however, that he does not advise cops that they must be strictly bound by any RoE before being willing to fire their weapons; he advises quite the opposite.
There is simply no evidence that American military training would produce better police than extant American police. Nothing other than the self-aggrandizing claims of people who claim to be veterans on the internet. Claims that usually go unchallenged, and repeated uncritically (as above), because this country has a culture of soldier worship.
Besides the evidence to the contrary which I have already posted, I think you need to be more skeptical of the claims American soldiers make about their conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan. Talk about rules of engagement is cheap, what matters is the actual execution of those rules. American soldiers were made to behave as police in those countries, and in neither case were they good at it.
American police are bad enough already, the last thing they need is even more military training.
You haven't presented evidence to the contrary, you've presented evidence that former soldiers make shooty LEOs. You should re-read the above comment chain, regarding what's being claimed and why, or admit that you're not here to argue a point but grind an axe. Sure, I have no evidence that training cops like soldiers regarding not firing their weapons until some situational conditions were met would reduce shootings, and I'm neither a cop, a soldier, nor an American. That said, there certainly seems to be evidence that training cops to view civilians as enemy combatants, and to be quick to shoot them, encourages cops to shoot people. I mean, it's called "killology" (I just can't get over that). It seems to me that if cops were trained to not fire their weapons until some situational conditions were met, it might discourage cops from shooting people. Maybe I'm being ridiculous!
"RoE, or specific claims about the implementation and efficacy of RoE, is/are bullshit" is a different point, which I'm totally willing to concede. Again, maybe I'm being ridiculous, but I figure reality of American policing is that it'd be easier to hoodwink cops into something approaching military discipline than, like, de-escalation training, actually barring crazies from the profession rather than allowing them to get jobs a few counties over, and handing back the Pentagon-surplus APCs.
> So-called “signature strikes”, targeting people whose behavior is assessed to be similar enough to those of terrorists to mark them for death, will continue, according to senior US officials.
> Human-rights groups have long denounced the practice – whose criteria can be as vague as killing “military-aged males” in regions where terrorists operate – as anonymous killing.
Looks like your article refers to aerial strikes. How on earth did you read "gunfire" and think "Predator drone"?
Not that the American military doesn't indiscriminately kill people, but you're free to look up RoE for ground troops and discussions thereof yourself.
