Blatant racism from fighting/killing "brown people" from Iraq/Afghanistan

What about combat medics? Are those trained to kill people or trained to save lives?

What he seems to be asking is whether its a good idea to employ ex-military guys as police. But I don't think any of the unjust police killings have been made by ex-military police officers. And ofc there are different types of police work and some of them will benefit from experience in a war. Like riot control.

As to this belonging on a gaming forum, meh, we've had many many other non gaming stuff. I'd say those continue for more pages than any gaming related ones. I don't remember many purely gaming-related discussions moving past 10 pages.

Don't ask, you're only confusing him.

ARE YOU SERIOUS!?

The clue is in their title.

Your logic is fundamentally flawed, both soldiers and police are human beings. Humans are, by nature, social creatures. They do not want to just randomly kill others for no good reason.

When a soldier has to kill someone, it is not out of joy or blood lust, it is not sport and it is definitely not fun. Soldiers are not cold blooded murderers or psychopaths, they are human beings who have feelings, mostly they feel guilt over what they have had to do. Once you kill another person a part of you also dies, you loose a bit of your humanity and yourself. To cope you tell yourself that it was justified, that it was "either him or me", but in the back of your mind you wrestle with the guilt. Was that other guy just a soldier like you, just doing a job like you? Did he have family? Did he like to fish or play cards? If we had met under different circumstances would he and I have played cards together and become friends?

This is why governments at war always try to paint the other side as monsters. Nazi's were shown throwing babies into a fire in Russian propaganda and American soldiers were portrayed as rapists in German propaganda. If you believe that someone is a monster that makes them easier to kill, because they are no longer "human" in you mind so there is little to no guilt afterwards.

In the same vein, when a cop has to shoot someone they have the same feelings of guilt and remorse. The police are not given the same form of cathartic propaganda, they need to see criminals as "suspects who are innocent until proven guilty" to be effective at their job. When I was in the Army one of my friends had been in an infantry during Operation Desert Storm in 1990. When his time was over he joined the police department. After 5 years as a cop he quit and rejoined the Army. He said it was because, in a lot of ways,being a cop is a much harder than being a soldier. The horrors he saw on his city's streets were worse than those he saw on the battlefield. When the war is over a soldier gets to come home and have chance for a normal life, as a cop something simple like taking his wife and kids out to dinner became extremely stressful. Walking into the restaurant he immediately looks for all exits and hiding places as well as sizing up every person in there and running them against his internal list of known criminals and suspects. The waitress taking the family's order matches the description of someone he's looking for; is it her? does she recognize him as a cop? is her murder suspect boyfriend in the kitchen going to come out and kill him before making an escape? When it was getting close to then of my term and I was looking at what I would do as a civilian I asked him about being a police officer and what advice he would give if I wanted to pursue that as a career, he looked at me said that he could sum it all up in one statement. "Nobody ever calls the cops because they are having a good day."

I grew up in the Los Angeles area of Southern California, and not the nice 90210 or OC areas you see on TV. I have seen good cops and I have seen bad cops. I have seen gang violence and the other effects of disfranchisement. I once saw a new story about a man in a high speed chase with the police. When they finally caught him he tried to fight the cops. The police formed a circle around him and tried to close in and arrest him, but he was violent. He had two tazers in him and a face full of pepper spray when he lunged forward and punched a cop in the face. That's when the cops all jumped on him, nit with their guns but with nightsticks. They pummeled him into submission, finally got the cuffs on him and arrested him. There were other people in his car during the chase and they thanked the cops for saving them from this guy. In a televised interview these people recounted how scared they were and how they begged him to stop but he wouldn't listen because "he was crazed." That driver's name was Rodney King. The whole confrontation was caught on tape by a guy who just got a new video camera. When the story first broke the news aired the footage of King resisting, shrugging off the tazers and attacking the cops. Later it became a story of "evil racist cops beating an innocent unarmed black man" and those parts of the video were never shown again, neither were the witness interviews by Kings friends who were in the car with him. These were cops doing the dirty job they have to do because nobody else will. Had they been soldiers they would have shot up the car first to stop it and simply shot the driver when he attacked, soldiers aren't issued taxers, pepper spray or nightsticks, they get an M-16, some grenades and a bayonet.

In the aftermath of the King incident there were various pundits and talking heads trying to paint the whole incident as a groups of out of control cops who conspired to pull over a random black person to beat. Even though this was in no way accurate it got higher ratings and became the "official" story in the minds of many people who didn't see the rest of the video or the initial interviews. The police were brought up on charges, went to court and were found innocent based on the full display of the facts, such as the full 20 minute video of the incident and a review of official police procedure of how to take down a drugged up suspect who is resisting arrest and punching the cops. Since these facts were kept from the public this was deemed a great injustice and riots broke out in the area. A truck driver was pulled out of the cab a beaten because he was white, that truck drive has permanent brain damage and suffers from it still today. Stores were broken into, looted and burned down. I actually sat on the roof of my house and watched the city burn around me. Eventually the police and national guard were brought in to stop the riots.

Cops and soldiers have different jobs and different sets of orders, these riots showed some of those differences. The police went in with riot shields and zip cuffs, the soldiers went in with M-16 rifles. There was an incident where a group of young men attempted a drive by shooting on a group of soldiers, unlike cops these soldiers returned fire with a vehicle mounted machine gun. A family friend of ours was a SWAT team member at the time and related a story to me of being ordered to checkout a warehouse building and to take a military unit as backup. The police truck and military truck pulled in together in front of the building and the lead officer gives the order "cover me" while he runs across the road to the warehouse door. In a police force Cover Me means to draw your weapons and watch for danger. In the military Cover Me means to lay down suppressive fire. The lead officer got about halfway across the road before he came running back because the soldiers were shooting out all the windows in the building.


Now, as to the question of whether or not soldiers should be allowed to join the police force. If I were to compile a list of worst jobs to have, those two would definitely be on it. There is a lot of carry over from one to the other but there are also stark differences. Whether or not a person can mentally make that transition from one to the other is something that needs to be assessed on an individual basis, there are some soldier who should not be allowed to serve as cops, but there are plenty who would excel at it. Part of becoming a police officer is to be evaluated, both mentally and physically. These evaluations are what determine who is or is not fit for police service, not inaccurate stereotypes by people who have never put their own life on the line by simply putting on a uniform.

No.

You are talking about the use of lethal force.

The use of lethal force is just as much governed by the military as it is by police.

Soldiers and Police...and Indians, and Cowboys, and Bikers, and Construction Workers.

I think the best thing for this thread is to become about how Door Kickers 2 can't come soon enough, and I do hope it also will be released on GOG.

There is another police game on the 'upcoming' that looks pretty cool too.

For a second I thought you mean't This, then I reread it.

You mean This Is the Police? It looks somewhat interesting, but the managerial part is a bit off-putting to me. I can't stand managerial strategies.

What I really want is to hear is official announcement of SWAT 5.

Good point. :P Think I'll pass on that one. XD

Wah, I like that kind of lenghty and insightful post based on experience (even more so in a "doomed to fail" thread like this).

Upvoted! ;)