海角大神

Mark Steyn, who was writing about the militarization of police long before the Ferguson tragedy, makes a key point:

After going into some detail into comparative statistics between聽police shootings in Western Europe and the United States 鈥� the short version is that theirs shoot their weapons a tiny fraction as frequently as ours do and that, even on a per shooting incident basis, they fire far less ammunition 鈥� Steyn responds to the most obvious rejoinder:

That鈥檚 quite right.

My dad was a military policeman and, for a time, a plainclothes officer in the Army鈥檚 Criminal Investigation Division and quite far from a bleeding heart liberal. He was appalled 30 years ago by the militarization of civilian policemen and could not believe the lack of professionalism that had pervaded police dealing with ordinary citizens. My own experience with police, which is almost exclusively in traffic situations and the like, is that Steyn鈥檚 vision of cops acting like occupying forces even in posh suburbs has already reached fruition. Police officers treating 鈥渃ivilians鈥� with friendly respect is the exception, not the rule, these days.

As I鈥檝e noted in previous posts over the years, the fact that policemen affect military-style uniforms and behavior patterns, including adopting the conceit that the ordinary citizens are 鈥渃ivilians鈥� and they themselves are not, is highly problematic.

Stephen Green reminds us that:

This should be an issue that unites liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. Alas, it鈥檚 mostly conservatives these days who act as if the police can do no wrong.

Just as the citizenry has gone too far in worshiping those who volunteer for service in our armed forces, we鈥檝e bent over backwards in justifying almost any action taken by police officers.聽They have a difficult and sometimes dangerous job.They are not, however, soldiers. Our communities are not war zones. We should not tolerate them acting otherwise.

James Joyner is editor of the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/.