Lots of talk these past 2 weeks about "demilitarizing" police.
Can someone take a crack here at stating why this is a good idea? Seems like the goal is to weaken police so violent mobs can overwhelm and abuse them without consequence.
Either police have authority to use force, or they don't. We shouldn't be weakening them when they do need to use force. Militarized police would have put down these riots quickly, and people would have been more likely to peacefully protest than feel they could escalate to rioting/looting with no consequence.
When I think of demilitarizing police, I think of the North Hollywood Shootout of 1997. where a huge police contingent was outgunned by two dudes with heavy weaponry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout
After that and similar incidents, police decided they would be more prepared to deal with heavily violent or threatening situations, and I was all for that.