On case – vs hire for racial diversity

On case – vs milit police bad

Alt cause – guns in the U.S.

Must solve saturation of guns in the U.S. to solve trigger-prone police

http://www.vox.com/2014/11/26/7292963/gun-control-police-shootings, note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16]

The death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, reveals many things about America. One of them that has not yet received adequate attention is that there is a strong case for a form of gun control that is much stricter than anything that's remotely plausible in the context of American politics.//// This is true if you think Ferguson Police officer Darren Wilson should have been found guilty of a crime. But in many ways it's even more true if you think he's innocent of any wrongdoing. A system in which legal police shootings of unarmed civilians are a common occurrence is a system that has some serious flaws.//// In this case, the drawback is a straightforward consequence of America's approach to firearms. A well-armed citizenry required an even-better-armed constabulary. Widespread gun ownership creates a systematic climate of fear on the part of the police. The result is a quantity of police shootings that, regardless of the facts of any particular case, is just staggeringly high. Young black men, in particular, are paying the price for America's gun culture.//// Police killings in international context//// I've seen this chart from the Economist many times since Brown's death. But I think it's been misinterpreted.////

Ferguson is in many ways all about race and racism. But this chart reveals an important sense in which it's not about that at all. If you know anything about the UK or Germany, you'll know that these are not even remotely societies who've eliminated the problem of racism. If anything, having struggled with it for less time than the United States, they're even worse than we are. Where they outperform us is in drastically reducing the civilian death toll without ending racism or entrenched poverty or any of the St. Louis area's other problems.//// A well-armed population leads to police shootings of the unarmed in two ways. One is that police officers have to be constantly vigilant about the possibility that they are facing a gun-wielding suspect. Cleveland police officers shot and killed a 12 year-old boyrecently, because they not-entirely-unreasonably thought his toy gun was a real gun.//// The other, more relevant to the Michael Brown case, is that when civilians are well-armed, police have to be as well. That turns every encounter into a potentially lethal situation. The officer always has to worry that if he doesn't reach for and use his own gun, the suspect will. In his grand jury testimony, Wilson pointedly claims that at one point Brown put his right hand "under his shirt into his waistband" — i.e., made a motion that could be plausibly construed as reaching for a gun.

Alt cause – media/culture

Alt cause – masculinized culture/media fuels militarization of police

HILL and BERGER 2009 (Stephen, associate prof International Relatkions @ University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, specializing in paramilitary policing and conflict resolution, and Randall, professor criminal justice @ Univ. of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, “A Paramilitary Policing Juggernaut”, Social Justice, V.36 No. 1, p.31, note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16]

Finally, an apparent hyper-masculine aesthetic within civilian police organizations makes the paramilitary style of policing particularly attractive. Images of SWAT officers clad in military uniforms, while toting machine guns and assault rifles, have appeared countless times on magazine covers, in movies, television programs, and on police department websites. Such images can only contribute to a "war? rior" mindset and culture within PPUs and police forces in general (Weber, 1999).

Alt cause – pmc’s

Alt cause – PMC’s will militarize the police (doing so in the squo)

HILL and BERGER 2009 (Stephen, associate prof International Relatkions @ University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, specializing in paramilitary policing and conflict resolution, and Randall, professor criminal justice @ Univ. of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, “A Paramilitary Policing Juggernaut”, Social Justice, V.36 No. 1, p.30-31, note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16]

Compounding this state of affairs are the interests of a network of private military firms, security contractors, and gun manufacturers. For example, the now infamous security company, Blackwater (renamed Xe in 2009), has trained civilian police officers in the more technical aspects of urban warfare (Scahill, 2007; Chalmers and Williams, 2007) and organized competitions such as the World SWAT Chal? lenge of 2004 at its firearms training center in North Carolina (Singer, 2004). Gun manufacturers like Heckler and Koch have been known to market their submachine guns at reduced prices to police forces as weapons utilized from the "Gulf War to the Drug War" (Kraska, 1999: 152). The proclivity toward militarism in the police may also be a self-interested response to funding opportunities. Since the U.S. government allocates approximately $12 billion per year to agencies fighting the "War on Drugs" (not including amounts spent by state and local government), there can be little surprise that police forces tend to seek their fair share. Federal grants from the Department of Homeland Security have also enabled state and local police departments to strengthen the capabilities of existing PPUs or to establish new ones (Chalmers and Williams, 2007; Savage, 2007).

It’s not just equipment and training – squo police are militarized via special operations consultants

HILL and BERGER 2009 (Stephen, associate prof International Relatkions @ University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, specializing in paramilitary policing and conflict resolution, and Randall, professor criminal justice @ Univ. of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, “A Paramilitary Policing Juggernaut”, Social Justice, V.36 No. 1, p.29-30, note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16]

Given this proclivity toward militarism, it is not surprising that police agencies have been keen recipients of equipment and training from the U.S. military (after the weakening of the PCA) and private companies. Between 1995 and 1997 alone, the Department of Defense (DoD) donated 1.2 million pieces of military hardware to domestic police departments, including M-16 assault rifles, grenade launchers, and armored personnel carriers (Balko, 2006). Sometimes, this cooperation can go beyond training and equipping, as in the case of the "Waco Compound" in Texas, when military special operations consultants were brought in to aid in the planning of the initial and final raids (Kraska, 1999: 143).

1033 Program defense

1033 program is not excessive, does not grant all requests etc

BERMAN associate editor @ the Atlantic 2014 (Russell, “Pentagon Fires Back at Critics of “Police Militarization” Program”, The Wire (subset of the Atlantic), Aug 19, http://www.thewire.com/politics/2014/08/pentagon-fires-back-at-critics-of-police-militarization-program/378791/, note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16]

The Pentagon on Tuesday mounted a vigorous defense of the surplus military equipment transfer program that has drawn criticism following the police crackdown in Ferguson, Missouri.//// The Defense Department's chief spokesman, John Kirby, told reporters during a briefing that the 1033 program was not "some program run amok," despite images of heavily armored officers in Ferguson that have fed concerns about the "militarization" of local law enforcement.//// Congress created the program in 1990 to allow police departments to apply for free transfers of excess military equipment as local authorities sought to beef up security to combat drug gangs. Transfers have increased as the Pentagon wound down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.//// While a House proposal seeks to boost accountability and limit the kind of equipment that the military can give to local law enforcement, Kirby said there were already safeguards in place and that the Pentagon had the authority to stop future transfers to police departments.

We don’t push equipment on anybody. This is excess equipment the taxpayers have paid for and we're not using anymore. And it is made available to law enforcement agencies, if they want it and if they qualify for it."

Kirby also said that not all requests were granted.

Just because they ask for a helicopter doesn’t mean that they get a helicopter."

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is seeking more information on the transfer program, a day after President Obama said the issue merited a second look in the wake of the Ferguson protests.

I think it's probably useful for us to review how the funding has gone, how local law enforcement has used grant dollars, to make sure that what they’re purchasing is stuff that they actually need, because there is a big difference between our military and our local law enforcement and we don't want those lines blurred. That would be contrary to our traditions. And I think that there will be some bipartisan interest in reexamining some of those programs."

Despite the move, however, Kirby insisted the Defense Department was not "militarizing" police departments and that the program as a whole was "useful" and "served a purpose."//// "Let’s be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater here," Kirby said

On case – vs predictive policing

Predictive policing does not solve crime and does not resolve bias

The Economist 2013 (from the print edition, “Predictive policing: Don’t even think about it”, http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21582042-it-getting-easier-foresee-wrongdoing-and-spot-likely-wrongdoers-dont-even-think-about-it) [LK]

Predicting and forestalling crime does not solve its root causes. Positioning police in hotspots discourages opportunistic wrongdoing, but may encourage other criminals to move to less likely areas. And while data-crunching may make it easier to identify high-risk offenders—about half of American states use some form of statistical analysis to decide when to parole prisoners—there is little that it can do to change their motivation.// Misuse and overuse of data can amplify biases. It matters, for example, whether software crunches reports of crimes or arrests; if the latter, police activity risks creating a vicious circle. And report-based systems may favour rich neighbourhoods which turn to the police more readily rather than poor ones where crime is rife. Crimes such as burglary and car theft are more consistently reported than drug dealing or gang-related violence.//

On case – vs training

Enhanced training of police would have at best minimal solvency for targeting of communities of color

VITALE professor sociology @ Brooklyn College 2014 (Alex, associate professor, auhor of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics, senior advisor to the Police reform Organizing Project, serves on the New York State Advisory Committee to the US Civil Right Commission, “We Don’t Just Need Nicer Cops. We Need Fewer Cops”, The Nation, Dec 4, http://www.thenation.com/article/we-dont-just-need-nicer-cops-we-need-fewer-cops/, note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16]

 Enhanced Training//// Training of police officers is notoriously inadequate and at times laughable. Officers are subjected to paramilitary drilling and discipline, lectured on paperwork and legal procedure, taught how to drive and shoot a gun, and then let loose on the public, where their colleagues quickly tell them to forget everything they learned in the academy. So, yes, training improvements are needed, but their effect on communities of color are unlikely to be significantly beneficial.//// While inadequate training and supervision may have played a role in some recent high-profile incidents, the fact remains that the massive criminalization of communities of color is being carried out using “proper procedures.” The tens of thousands of arrests for low-level drug possession, trespassing, jumping subway turnstiles and dozens of other “broken window” offenses are generally carried out consistent with police policy, if not strict legal standards. Eric Garner may have been killed by improper arrest procedures and use of force, but he was also killed because the police were following orders to arrest people for selling loose cigarettes.

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