Tag: police

By the Numbers: Police Militarization and the Other Dangers of Being a Cop

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How dangerous is policing today? Is it getting worse, and does it justify the kinds of armaments local police forces are using? The Pentagon is giving cops half a billion dollars a year of military equipment, under the auspices of keeping them and us safe, so the answer really does matter. I’ve been criticized by defenders of police … Continued

By the Numbers: How Many People Are Killed by Police?

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Update: Here is a more recent version of this analysis, with a lot more data. I’ve been getting this question a lot since my article in The Freeman about officer fatalities was published. I’m hesitant to write about it because there are so many ways to misinterpret this kind of information that it might do more harm than good. Nonetheless, … Continued

Where’s my SWAT team?

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In one of those, you’ve-got-to-be-shitting-me stories, Radley Balko, at the Agitator, reports that NASA has a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team at the Kennedy Space Center–in case, you know, we find ourselves sucked into an alternative sci-fi universe where NASA needs quasi-military tactical response teams. It’s reasonable, I suppose, for NASA to have security guards—but … Continued