"Cops and soldiers have decidedly different missions, and it’s dangerous to conflate them."

Everything wrong with modern day policing. Much more at the link.

The Agitator » Blog Archive » Do America’s Inner Cities Need a “Surge?”:

"...The problems accompanying the fact that there are entire communities who no longer trust the police charged with protecting them aren’t going to go away once we put more cops in the neighborhood. That will likely only make things worse. We first need a major overhaul in the way police interact with the communities they serve. Policing has become too reactionary, too aggressive, too us-versus-them. Bad cops are in the minority, but good cops cover for them. And far too many officers subscribe to a soldier’s mentality, and take too literally the idea that theyr’e fighting a “war” on drugs or crime. It’s a toxic state of mind that older officers will tell you (and have told me) is more and more common, even as violent crime and the number of officers killed in the line of duty have plummeted.

Incentives matter. Ideas matter. And all of this war rhetoric and anything-goes policies from elected officials has undoubtedly affected officer psychology, and poisoned the relationships between many police departments and their communities..."