Joe Biden Presidency thread *Please read OP - Threadbanned Users Added 4/5/21*

That's fine, until a situation occurs where you need a bloody MRAP, and no amount of social workers will be able to make up the capabilities deficiency. Unless you use them as armor, but that seems to be a bit of a waste of assets.

There are perfectly reasonable points to be made that maybe the equipment is being used too freely in the US, but I don't see any reasonable points against their existence. Most every nation in the world has something similar in the inventory for domestic police purposes.

The trick is to keep police funding and at the same time increase the support structure so that those additional capabilities get added. The police can focus on law issues, and the social workers, behavioral health folks, and the like can take over those tasks less suited to a cop.

They are cheaper than getting purpose-built vehicles such as wildcats, but not particularly cheap compared to patrol cars.

There are over 3,000 counties in the US, so not even one per sheriff department. Or if you want, you can do a comparison of "Numbers of armored vehicles per thousand citizens", compare with France, Italy, Belgium or some place. That's before you take into account the sheer level of firepower the US citizens have. Do you recall the rolling firefight in Stockton a couple years ago? 11 police cruisers shot out of action, even one of the armored cars. Fortunately, the neighboring city also had one, so they were able to call that in to finish the event.

No, they don't need to overcome IEDs. They just need to be armored. It happens that these large armored vehicles which are made available to police are also handy against land mines.

Consider this Dutch Gendarmerie YPR. They have a good few of them. It's not really particularly well suited for police purposes, but it's what the Army was getting rid of. It is, however, armored, powerful, and has carrying capacity, so they just have to deal with the tracks problem.

Police forces in the US have to deal with problems on their own. Unlike Ireland, they are prohibited from calling the local Army base and asking them to come along with an armored vehicle, and the National Guard just takes too long. The Vegas shooting, LV Metro actually borrowed some APCs from a private owner a little further up the strip.

Correct, but they are also part of the National Police Corps and have a routine civilian law enforcement function, which the US National Guard does not. Gendarmes, Carabineri and the like are generally trained, full time police with civil authority. National Guard are warfighting troops called in in case of extreme emergency. Those blue YPRs aren't for defending the country, that's what the green replacement are for. They exist for law enforcement purposes.

Saying they are not really police because they administratively fall under the Army is like saying that the Sapeurs Pompiers of Paris aren't really a fire brigade because they are part of the Army and march carrying rifles. That a military department may be better suited for armored vehicle / firefight use is fair, but there is no equivalent organization in the US. The US situation isn't unique, German local police forces also buy their own equipment in addition to the federal police, you can see the 15-ton Sonderwagen 5 in Berlin or Hamburg for example. Even nice, peaceful Canada has a need. Calgary recently bought this 13-tonner because the previous armored vehicle was getting called out twice a day and was worn out. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-police-new-arv-purchase-1.5090813

The question is not "is there a need for such vehicles in modern policing". That has been answered worldwide with a resounding "yes". The question is actually "are they being used appropriately", regardless of whose badge is painted on the side. In US policing in particular, it is a very valid question, but saying that it is a poor expense to acquire and maintain them is unsupportable.

Your statement on logic is correct if there were not additional context available behind it. The German interior ministry six weeks ago ordered 55 Sonderwagen 5s (11-15 tons, depended on how kitted) with options for more, at a cost just shy of EUR100 million for both federal and state police forces (in addition to the already-acquired ones by local forces). Such an acquisition is not made without some form of rational assessment as to why the money should be spent, to include an study as to the utility of the previous Sonderwagen 4s (ten tons each) which have been in service for over thirty years. That sort of expense is not done on an unjustifiable whim.

Since we are agreed that there is no equivalent organization in the US to the paramilitary police forces such as the Gendarmes or Carabinieri, the options are that they go to non-paramilitary police forces or to military forces. For both legal and practical reasons, military is out.

And for those who do not have the money to move away?

I agree with you that social workers will be far more required than an armored vehicle. But if you need an armored vehicle, there are no viable alternative substitutes, and that is very much in the police force's wheelhouse. If all these other cities and countries around the world have figured out how to fund both police hardware and social support, the US should be able to do it as well.