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sc94597 on 08 July 2016
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SvennoJ said:
sc94597 said:

Do you realize how much is spent on police force pensions and benefits, and the militarization thereof (buying tanks and hellicopters in small suburban municaplities)? What does low taxes have to do with anything. It is mismanagement of the taxes they have. 

I was under the impression that the police force was strained due to always ongoing budget cuts, hence the shortcuts on training etc.
Yet if you say it's used to buy expensive toys instead of more feet on the ground, that's actually worse :(

Yep, it's been an ongoing problem since 9/11. They get federal funds to buy all of these toys, but some of the bill is from the states and cities as well. Pretty much nobody likes it except the police themselves. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-police-departments.html

" Inside the municipal garage of this small lakefront city, parked next to the hefty orange snowplow, sits an even larger truck, this one painted in desert khaki. Weighing 30 tons and built to withstand land mines, the armored combat vehicle is one of hundreds showing up across the country, in police departments big and small."

"During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft."

"The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units. Police SWAT teams are now deployed tens of thousands of times each year, increasingly for routine jobs.Masked, heavily armed police officers in Louisiana raided a nightclub in 2006 as part of a liquor inspection. In Florida in 2010, officers in SWAT gear and with guns drawn carried out raids on barbershops that mostly led only to charges of “barbering without a license.”"

"A quiet city of about 25,000 people, Neenah has a violent crime rate that is far below the national average. Neenah has not had a homicide in more than five years."