warrior cop – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Stories filed under: "warrior cop"

Drone Company Wants To Sell Cops A Drone That Can Break Windows, Negotiate With Criminals

from the did-we-mention-it-breaks-windows dept

A drone manufacturer really really wants cops to start inviting drones to their raiding parties. This will bring “+ whatever” to all raiding party stats, apparently. BRINC Drones is here to help… and welcomes users to question the life choices made by company execs that led to the implementation of this splash page:

If these cops don’t really look like cops to you, you’re not alone. And by “you,” I also mean BRINC Drones, which apparently wants to attract the warriors-in-a-war-zone mindset far too common in law enforcement. BRINC has a new drone — one that presents itself as warlike as its target audience.

Drones are definitely an integral part of the surveillance market. BRINC wants to make them an integral part of the “drug raids and standoffs with reluctant arrestees” market. Sure, anyone can smash a window. But how cool would it be if a drone could do it?

The LEMUR is built by BRINC Drones to help police locate, isolate, and communicate with suspects. It has an encrypted cellphone link for two-way communication and can right itself if it crashes upside down. But it’s that remarkable glass smasher that sets it apart from the many other police drones we’ve seen.

BRINC says the 5-inch blade has tungsten teeth and can spin at up to 30,000 RPM. It’s enough to break tempered, automotive, and most residential glass. It’s an add-on feature to the drone, but it can be quickly attached with three thumb screws.

Whatever tactical gains might be made by a two-way communication device for negotiations will presumably be undone by the Black Mirror-esque destruction of windows by a remotely controlled flying nuisance. Assuming the suspect isn’t able to, I don’t know, throw a coat over the drone, negotiations will proceed between the human person and the bug-like drone sitting on the ground in front of them.

And let’s not underplay the window-smashing. Cops do love them some broken windows. Break a window, justify your policing, as the old “broken windows” philosophy goes. “Command presence” is the term often deployed to excuse the physical destruction that precedes physical violence by police officers. Disorient and disarm. That’s why cops smash all the doors and windows they can when raiding houses.

But if you give cops a specialized tool that is cheap to buy and cheap to replace, it will swiftly move from a last resort to Plan A. Case in point: flashbang grenades. These are not harmless weapons. They are war weapons designed to disorient lethal forces. Instead of being used in only the most desperate of situations, they’re used as bog standard raid initiators. That’s how they end up in the beds of toddlers, resulting in severe burns — something the involved cops claimed was an innocent mistake. How could they have know the house might have contained children, they said stepping over a multitude of children’s toys scattered across the lawn of the house they were raiding.

This drone will become as common as a flashbang grenade if they’re cheap enough to obtain. The difference between a severely burned toddler and a flayed toddler is something the courts will get to sort out. And no matter how the court decision goes for cops, no one can put the skin back on injured toddlers. “By any means necessary,” say drug warriors, forgetting the Constitution and a bunch of other state-level safeguards are in place to supposedly prevent the ends from justifying the means.

But there’s even more here. And the “more” is inadvertently hilarious. BRINC claims its drone can open doors. But that’s only true if by “open” you mean “make incrementally more open.” Check out the drone “opening” a door in this BRINC promotional video.

LOL.

It gets funnier when you add physics to the mix. BRINC promises cops a warlike machine. Science says theses drones can be swiftly turned from aggressors to victims simply by allowing the drones to operate in the advertised manner.

Viewers of Battlebots know if a whirling blade comes into contact with a stationary object, at least SOME of the energy is absorbed by the blade. A 2.4-pound drone would be knocked reeling from a 30,000 rpm collision. The video doesn’t actually show that moment of impact, but the fact it hits the floor upside down suggests there’s no fancy electronics or damping to keep it stable.

Sure, we can laugh at this now. And we can hope our local law enforcement officials aren’t so taken in by a presentation that keeps its boots slick with saliva. But tech will keep moving forward and BRINC’s fantasies will edge closer to reality.

But what we have to ask ourselves (and hope our government agencies will consider) is how much this actually might subtract from the deadly human costs of police-citizen interactions. Sending a drone smashing through a window hardly sounds like de-escalation, even if the end result is a walkie-talkie hitching a ride on a modded tech toy. There’s still a lot of intrinsic value in human interactions. Putting a flying buffer between law enforcement and those they’re attempting to “save” sounds like a recipe for more violence, rather than less. The physical approach of dystopia through a recently shattered window is hardly calming, especially for those already on edge.

Filed Under: breaking windows, drones, law enforcement, lemur, police, warrior cop
Companies: brinc drones

Research Paper Shows Militarized SWAT Teams Don't Make Cops — Or The Public — Any Safer

from the treating-citizens-like-enemy-combatants-is-never-a-good-idea dept

A study has been released confirming what many have suspected: militarization of law enforcement doesn’t make communities safer, has zero effect on officer safety, and is rarely deployed as advertised when agencies make pitches for the acquisition of military gear.

The most frequent recipient of military tools and training are SWAT teams. Professor Jonathan Mummolo’s research — published by the National Academy of Sciences — gained unprecedented access to SWAT deployment numbers, thanks to a public records request and a Maryland state law requiring documentation of every SWAT raid performed. (That law was allowed to expire by legislators who apparently felt it provided too much transparency and accountability.)

With these numbers, Mummolo was able to compare SWAT deployments to other stats, as well as see just how often SWAT teams were deployed to handle dangerous situations like robberies, shootings, hostage-taking, etc. What he discovered was, sadly, unsurprising. Police officials talk about the necessity of SWAT teams and military gear using references to barricaded suspects, terrorist attacks, active shooters…. pretty much anything but what they actually use them for. From the paper [PDF]:

[R]oughly 90% of SWAT deployments in that state over 5 fiscal years were conducted to serve search warrants. Previous work has shown that the use of SWAT teams to serve warrants, a practice which escalated as a result of the war on drugs, is an extremely disruptive event in the lives of citizens and often involves percussive grenades, battering rams, substantial property damage, and in rare cases deadly altercations stemming from citizens’ mistaken belief that they are experiencing a home invasion. […] less than 5% of deployments involved a “barricade” scenario, which typically involves an armed suspect refusing to surrender to police. Violence to people and animals is rare, and gun shots are fired 1.2% of the time—roughly 100 deployments during this period. While the data suggest that indiscriminate violence is less common than some anecdotal reports suggest, they also show that the vast majority of SWAT deployments occur in connection with non-emergency scenarios, predominately to serve search warrants.

Similarly unsurprising is data showing SWAT teams are deployed far more often in areas with a higher concentration of African American residents. Mummolo’s research shows a 10% increase in African American population resulted in a 10.5% increase in SWAT deployments.

All the gear obtained by police agencies to make officers safer doesn’t seem to have an effect on officer safety. The data shows negligible effects on officer injuries or deaths. Despite being touted as essential tools to combat a supposed increase in criminal firepower, SWAT teams and their military gear spend more time serving warrants than facing dangerous situations. Maryland SWAT stats — compared against other data reported by law enforcement agencies — results in this conclusion:

[T]here is no evidence that acquiring a SWAT team lowers crime or promotes officer safety.

Surveys conducted by Mummolo show SWAT teams — and police militarization in general — have a negative effect on public perception. SWAT teams make the places they’re frequently deployed seem less safe, even if crime stats don’t back that up. Dressing up in military gear increases distrust of the law enforcement agency — something especially pronounced in African American respondents.

Mummolo’s conclusion, based on stats supplied by law enforcement agencies, is devastating. And it’s likely to be ignored by every law enforcement agency in Maryland.

Given the concentration of deployments in communities of color, where trust in law enforcement and government at large is already depressed, the routine use of militarized police tactics by local agencies threatens to increase the historic tensions between marginalized groups and the state with no detectable public safety benefit. While SWAT teams arguably remain a necessary tool for violent emergency situations, restricting their use to those rare events may improve perceptions of police with little or no safety loss.

SWAT teams arose out of a need for elite response units to send to especially dangerous situations. It’s quickly devolved into nothing more than a sideshow for warrant service — an excuse to treat citizens like enemy combatants while needlessly escalating situations until they can justify the absurdly overblown tactics and weaponry being deployed.

Filed Under: militarized police, police, public safety, safety, swat teams, warrior cop