Policing IX: Arms and Weapons

I think I have just a couple more posts on this overall topic. Today I want to talk a bit about the offensive and defensive weapons police use. This will not be a comprehensive or detailed discussion, but perhaps is an outline of a basis on which such a discussion could proceed.

The process of dumping military-style hardware into community police forces has been discussed by many reporters and commentators across a wide range of political perspectives, so for brevity I will limit my comments. From what I can tell, there is a general consensus this practice is inappropriate and should be curtailed. The problem is, of course, if your tools are all made to quell urban combatants in foreign countries, then the challenges you face in police can appear to look like urban combat. There is some truth in the saying "If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

In the contexts of protests like those we have seen across the country in the past months, it is worth mentioning that it is not only offensive weapons that tend to escalate a conflict. Defensive weapons can have that affect also. I can't offer a solution here -- we all have a right to protect ourselves. On the other hand, showing up in full body armor with gas masks and nightsticks does send a message about where you expect the night to go (this applies to protestors as well). In some cases, it seems to me, deploying with overt and excessive defensive gear reinforces an adversarial stance and could even suggest a target for violence -- but this is not a line of thought one should carry too far. I would never suggest police forces should divest themselves of that sort of riot gear, but I would urge them to be thoughtful in its deployment.

In addition to guns, Police also have at their disposal a variety of less-lethal weapons. A few years ago, we called these "non-lethal" -- the change in nomenclature is, I think, useful. In a brief discussion, it's not worth detailing the risks of each type of weapon. Although not every situation can be de-escalated, it should be sufficient to note that choosing a less-lethal weapon is only descalatory if the conflict has already progressed to the level of immediately lethal force. As I've noted a few times, we are in a bad place if every signal we can send is escalatory in nature. (And I should say many police are good at sending these de-escalatory signals, but some are not and these less-lethal tools can enable that more escalatory response)

Lastly, one thought on guns themselves. Sam Harris (and others, I suspect) points out that since police in the US generally carry guns, suspected criminals can reach for the gun and every encounter that police go into carries the seeds of being a lethal encounter. He then adds that, because of the widespread availability of guns in the US, police have no choice but to carry guns. I'm not sure I fully agree with every step in that chain of logic, but for argument let's say that it is true. Though it's a technical band-aid of sorts, there is an obvious solution to the objection in the form of smart guns which would prevent a criminal from easily using an officer's gun against them. Though they are not sold in large numbers and are maybe not as technically mature as other guns, that would almost certainly change rapidly if police forces widely adopted the technology. For that reason, I regard as specious the argument that police must regard every encounter as potentially lethal because of the guns they themselves carry. (Not being a police officer, I cannot say how much this fear influences thinking, I am merely saying if it is a substantial source of concern, it seems fixable and thus should be fixed.)