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heybeardo

The Ethics of Battlefield: Hardline

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Can someone explain to me what it means for police to become militarized and examples of how that is happening in the US? I realize I am completely ignorant on this subject and I would like to understand it more so that I can have a more well informed opinion.

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As for "why get upset about this instead of about pre-existing thing X"?, that strikes me as a disingenuous question usually asked by somebody who just doesn't want to talk about it at all. 

If you'd actually read my posts, you'd know that wasn't the case, and I don't appreciate the accusation!

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Most of these are reposts from Alternet, Tom's Dispatch, etc...

 

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/28/4_shocking_examples_of_police_militarization_in_americas_small_towns_partner/

edit: better sample quote!

A town with a murder count of two since 2009, Keene’s city officials surreptitiously accepted a $285,933 grant from the Department of Defense in 2012 to purchase a Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck, or BearCat.

 

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/13/radley_balko_once_a_town_gets_a_swat_team_you_want_to_use_it/

There are several levels of militarization. The rise of SWAT teams nationwide, the number of annual SWAT deployments in the U.S., has gone from a few hundred in the ’70s, to 30,000 per year in the early ’80s, to 50,000 in 2005. That’s 100, 150 times a day in this country you have these heavily armed police teams breaking into homes, and the vast majority of times it’s to enforce laws against consensual crimes.

 

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/28/%E2%80%9Cwe_called_for_help_and_they_killed_our_son%E2%80%9D_out_of_control_police_overreach_meets_extreme_secrecy/

If it seems to you that the police are becoming more violent, you may be right. In 2011, Los Angeles County police shot to death 54 people, some 70 percent more than in 2010. Between 2008 and 2013, the number of people shot by Massachusetts police increased every year. In 2012, police in New York City shot and killed 16 people, nine more the previous year and the most in 12 years. In 2012, Philadelphia police shot 52 people—the highest number in 10 years. 

 

 

about the cost in austerity obsessed anti-government times:

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/11/obscenely_high_police_salaries_wheres_the_political_outrage/

Consider the even more egregious case of Desert Hot Springs, Calif., a city of 27,000 profiled by the New York Times in December because of the shocking disconnect between the economic fortunes of its residents and the 39 members of its police force. The poverty rate in Desert Hot Springs is nearly 30 percent. The median household income, as of 2011, was $31,356 — while the average compensation package (including salary and benefits) for a police officer was $177,203. As the city careened toward bankruptcy, 66 percent of the $10.6 million budget signed into law in the spring of 2013 was appropriated for the police. 

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If you'd actually read my posts, you'd know that wasn't the case, and I don't appreciate the accusation!

 

Sorry if that offended. I did indeed write that before reading the remainder of the conversation, however I didn't intend it to be directed personally (I did try to soften it a bit with "usually"),

 

With regards to your specific question, there are a number of differences. Police militarization is, I think, a largely post-9/11 phenomenon.  So, it is a relatively recent concern because it is a recent occurence.

 

Also, (this is subjective, and off the top of my head) I think that Bad Boys, specifically, was something of a throwback even at the time it was created (Lethal Weapon being of the original period it was a throwback to). Most modern "big explosions" type movies are either about terrorists or super-villains. Depictions of police per se are mostly restricted to the smaller budgets and intimate action of TV procedurals.

 

A lot of it isn't even necessarily the execution, it's how you get there. If you just say "what if we had cops, but, you know, moreso?", you can end up with something like Crackdown, which is mostly ok. But the starting point here is "Cops are basically the same thing as soldier, right?" This only makes sense if your only criteria is "they both have guns."

 

A soldier's essential function is to kill. That's why we need to be careful how and where we deploy them, and the kinds of engagements we enter (from a political perspective). Ideally, soldiers don't exist at all. A policeman's essential function is to protect the citizenry. They're fundamentally different, and to suggest that they're the same is to make all sorts of weird assumptions about the role of the police. It's to just accept that SWAT teams breaking down doors and shooting dogs for no reason is a fit and proper role for the police, which is, in the local argot, gross, and the worst.

 

ZeustheCat: basically, it's about the growth of things like SWAT teams, and how they're becoming used for increasingly routine operations. For general trends, you can look at the growth of SWAT teams, basic examples in the wiki page sources here, like this one. Not to turn this too far into a general government abuse of power thing, but it's closely related to things like the abuse of civil asset forfeiture, as the war on drugs is often used as both the justification and revenue source to support this trend.

 

Edit: Whoops, just look at the previous post.

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A soldier's essential function is to kill. That's why we need to be careful how and where we deploy them, and the kinds of engagements we enter (from a political perspective). Ideally, soldiers don't exist at all. A policeman's essential function is to protect the citizenry. They're fundamentally different, and to suggest that they're the same is to make all sorts of weird assumptions about the role of the police. It's to just accept that SWAT teams breaking down doors and shooting dogs for no reason is a fit and proper role for the police, which is, in the local argot, gross, and the worst.

 

I don't like picking out a single point and responding to it, but I partially disagree with you here.  I agree that police and soldiers are separate and distinct, but I don't agree that a soldier's function is to kill.  That sounds dangerously like the idea that soldiers are killers.  Obviously they are trained to use lethal force and are often called upon to do so, but that's like saying a knife's essential function is also to kill.  Even though they're both capable of it, it's not what they were meant for.  A soldier fills many roles, only one of which is to actually kill, and hopefully that's the last resort.  Unfortunately, it's also the role that makes them seem the most glamorous so that's what games and media show.

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Yeah, I chose that terminology for maximum rhetorical effect, and can understand some may feel there's a philosophical debate to be had there about the role of a soldier. The essential point that we can agree upon is that the function of a solider is very much distinct from the function of a policeman.

 

The most recent Crate and Crowbar podcast about this highlights the inherent absurdities of this game well, highlighting the difference between a soldier's role and policeman's with the flippant suggestion of completing paperwork QTEs after each match for each kill you get.

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Sorry if that offended. I did indeed write that before reading the remainder of the conversation, however I didn't intend it to be directed personally (I did try to soften it a bit with "usually"),

That's fair. I didn't really take offense, per se, because I didn't think you actually meant it. Just wanted to make sure. I AM SATISFIED WITH THE CURRENT STATE OF THINGS. U:

 

But the starting point here is "Cops are basically the same thing as soldier, right?" This only makes sense if your only criteria is "they both have guns."

I like this line of your post, though. It's a pretty succinct way of defining the entire issue present in Battlefield: Hardline.

 

I was already aware of this being the issue, for the record, I just wanted to know what it was that pushed this one over the edge. I think I've got my answer, anyway, after a few oages. I don't necessarily agree with all of it (though I do agree with a lot of it), but I can empathize wholeheartedly, as it were.

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Thank you for the very informative post feelthedarkness.

 

So I guess my next question would be: with the unnecessary increases in funding for the police force and all this crazy SWAT-type equipment they are getting, are there corresponding policy changes that explicitly give the police more freedom to use deadly force without repercussions or is the increase in aggression an unintended side effect of funding and equipment being beefed up?

 

On a personal, somewhat unrelated note, I have always had a (not necessarily justified) deep distrust of the police force and I think it is disgusting how prevalent these incidents involving police brutality have become. From old ladies getting tased to countless incidents of police shooting first and asking questions later, my faith in the effectiveness and fairness of our police force is very low. There is no guarantee that people joining the police force are upstanding citizens with just intentions and I feel like they go to great lengths to protect the interests of their officers to the detriment of the general populace. Also, I live in the jurisdiction of Joe Arpaio so seeing police departments ruthlessly defend their officers when they are accused of abusing their powers in horrible ways is something that I see too much of.

 

All that being said, I am still okay with this game being made and I don't have a problem separating it in my mind from the realities of the world we live in and I still just view it as a fun cops versus robbers game. I think it is perfectly fair for people to be offended by the themes in this game and I can't argue against how problematic they are but personally, the game being skinned this way doesn't bother me.

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Thank you for the very informative post feelthedarkness.

 

So I guess my next question would be: with the unnecessary increases in funding for the police force and all this crazy SWAT-type equipment they are getting, are there corresponding policy changes that explicitly give the police more freedom to use deadly force without repercussions or is the increase in aggression an unintended side effect of funding and equipment being beefed up?

 

On a personal, somewhat unrelated note, I have always had a (not necessarily justified) deep distrust of the police force and I think it is disgusting how prevalent these incidents involving police brutality have become. From old ladies getting tased to countless incidents of police shooting first and asking questions later, my faith in the effectiveness and fairness of our police force is very low. There is no guarantee that people joining the police force are upstanding citizens with just intentions and I feel like they go to great lengths to protect the interests of their officers to the detriment of the general populace. Also, I live in the jurisdiction of Joe Arpaio so seeing police departments ruthlessly defend their officers when they are accused of abusing their powers in horrible ways is something that I see too much of.

 

All that being said, I am still okay with this game being made and I don't have a problem separating it in my mind from the realities of the world we live in and I still just view it as a fun cops versus robbers game. I think it is perfectly fair for people to be offended by the themes in this game and I can't argue against how problematic they are but personally, the game being skinned this way doesn't bother me.

 

The obvious policy change is the Patriot Act, but many of the policy changes relate to court cases, in that police are getting a pass in the gray area between justified violence and police brutality.

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So I guess my next question would be: with the unnecessary increases in funding for the police force and all this crazy SWAT-type equipment they are getting, are there corresponding policy changes that explicitly give the police more freedom to use deadly force without repercussions or is the increase in aggression an unintended side effect of funding and equipment being beefed up?

It's a complicated series of causes and effects. Certainly, post-9/11 paranoia has produced a police force much more likely to resort to deadly force against any obstacle, even its own citizenry, but there are also several studies, both survey and laboratory, showing that police are drastically more likely to use the newest and most powerful part of their arsenal when confronted with any problem, rather than what policy or the situation demands. As dark as it is, it makes sense, in a way. Humans very rarely underreact when they feel threatened.

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The most recent Crate and Crowbar podcast about this highlights the inherent absurdities of this game well, highlighting the difference between a soldier's role and policeman's with the flippant suggestion of completing paperwork QTEs after each match for each kill you get.

 

My dad used to tell me stories about how when he was stationed in Germany guarding things, the Americans would either have the Flemish soldiers with them do the shooting or have the Flemish soldiers replenish their ammunition stores after an incursion because the paperwork involved in accounting for every bullet they shot was a nightmare. The paperwork QTEs would be pervasive if there was any realism with regards to that. But that's the military 30 or 40 years ago.

 

 

So I guess my next question would be: with the unnecessary increases in funding for the police force and all this crazy SWAT-type equipment they are getting, are there corresponding policy changes that explicitly give the police more freedom to use deadly force without repercussions or is the increase in aggression an unintended side effect of funding and equipment being beefed up?

 

I'm not very educated on the force side of things (beyond incidents like a SWAT team disfiguring a baby in a drug raid by throwing a flashbang into his crib), but I know that as police are given more invasive policies -- things like civil forfeiture and stingray surveillance -- they use them, generally operating in areas so grey they're basically legalized corruption. There are a lot of examples of bad policies ending in people being injured or killed if you just google phrases like no knock raid wrong house or and the cops in those cases generally don't have anything happen to them, if that's what you mean -- and they're not exactly rare, as you can see in this CATO institute map of botched paramilitary raids. There are also some pretty troubling instances of the FBI convincing people to take part in terrorist activities then arresting for it, if that's the kind of policy change you're looking for. These aren't necessarily new policies but they're policies that are being used more today than they were when they were originally put in place, arguably beyond the original intended scope.

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One thing about the militarization of police is that it's coming at a time when overall violent crime is around an all time low (so low some argue that it may be about as low as it can get statistically), and when officers killed in the line of duty is also near an all time low. The trends for both of those pre-date the massive push for militarization.  In some places, the homicide rate as committed by police far, far, far outpaces the homicide rate committed by the rest of the citizenry. 

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One thing about the militarization of police is that it's coming at a time when overall violent crime is around an all time low (so low some argue that it may be about as low as it can get statistically), and when officers killed in the line of duty is also near an all time low. The trends for both of those pre-date the massive push for militarization.  In some places, the homicide rate as committed by police far, far, far outpaces the homicide rate committed by the rest of the citizenry. 

 

This is an interesting point.  Perhaps this game has produced this kind of discussion because we are starting to see the military arms race making its way into the civilian world in a very real and troubling way.  Recently police departments and SWAT teams started purchasing surplus military equipment.  Think about how drones were once an incredibly uncomfortable topic, and now they are almost treated like they are a fact of life (At least in the US).  In my opinion this is largely because they became so prevalent not just in games but all entertainment.  This may be sacrilege of me to say but I feel like the "video games make you into a killer" people do have a point, even if it isn't the one they are making.  When you become so used to seeing paramilitary law enforcement in entertainment does it bother you as much when you see the same thing in the real world?  What is unnerving to me about this game is that it doesn't portray a future or even near future setting, this stuff has been happening for some time now and shows no signs of slowing.  I really think we are getting to a point in the world of video games where saying "its just a game" simply won't cut it any more.  After all if video games don't affect you in some way, then why do you play them?

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This may be sacrilege of me to say but I feel like the "video games make you into a killer" people do have a point, even if it isn't the one they are making.  When you become so used to seeing paramilitary law enforcement in entertainment does it bother you as much when you see the same thing in the real world?

 

Normalization has a lot to do with these things becoming okay and commonplace, so it's not wrong to say what you do about "video games make you a killer," but in this case it would be more accurate to say media makes you a killer. You make a fair point about the fact that if people see the police as a paramilitary unit doing brave, heroic things in movies, on TV, and in video games, they're more likely to be okay with the police rolling down the street in a decommissioned military vehicle.

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I don't know why, but for some reason this game bugs me where something more insidious like Payday 2 does not.

 

Maybe I'm giving Payday 2 a pass because I actually enjoyed playing it whereas Hardline is just a goddamn mess.

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I don't know why, but for some reason this game bugs me where something more insidious like Payday 2 does not.

 

Maybe I'm giving Payday 2 a pass because I actually enjoyed playing it whereas Hardline is just a goddamn mess.

 

Yeah, the fact that I have watched a friend play it and watched gameplay videos, but both look like hilarious Battlefield 4 mods, does not help arguments for a serious and systemic take on the issue.

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I think there's something to be said about the increasing verisimilitude of games and their potential residual effects on players at large.

 

There's been a lot of pushback against Mortal Kombat X, and I agree--the increased fidelity has brought what was once a cartoony, obviously fantastical game too close to reality. As someone who readily plays competitive online shooters, I wholeheartedly believe that Call of Duty is probably detrimental to kids under a certain age.

 

I recently finished Batman: Arkham Origins. The game tasks you with beating the snot out of dozens of police officers, and only vaguely hints at their corruptness as justification. But it's nearly impossible to understand why that bugs me more than murdering law enforcement in GTA.

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Good point. Perhaps there's something going on in terms of associations made with other forms of more culturally established televisual media?

 

For example, I find myself linking the Payday games to the wild fantasy shootouts of Heat ("this is a work of fiction, no-one is really getting hurt, it's supposed to be over-the-top and impossible, and everything worked out mostly ok in the end"). The tone of Hardline's first trailer reminded me more of a percieved trend in US TV police procedural (and serialised drama in general) towards a pessimistic realism ("this is essentially real life, which, for the purposes of the show, is aggressively selfcentered and futile").

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I couldn't play Payday. I don't see the connection between that and Heat or Bad Boys because Payday is just slaughter. The number of dead police is absolutely staggering. Attracting more than a couple of cops that don't know what you're up to should be a fail state in these games.

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Yeah, the fact that I have watched a friend play it and watched gameplay videos, but both look like hilarious Battlefield 4 mods, does not help arguments for a serious and systemic take on the issue.

Wait, has anyone actually argued for that position? That's baffling.

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Good point. Perhaps there's something going on in terms of associations made with other forms of more culturally established televisual media?

 

For example, I find myself linking the Payday games to the wild fantasy shootouts of Heat ("this is a work of fiction, no-one is really getting hurt, it's supposed to be over-the-top and impossible, and everything worked out mostly ok in the end"). The tone of Hardline's first trailer reminded me more of a percieved trend in US TV police procedural (and serialised drama in general) towards a pessimistic realism ("this is essentially real life, which, for the purposes of the show, is aggressively selfcentered and futile").

 

That sort of deadly serious tone is the way Battlefield has always felt to me (since BF2, I never played 1942) which is why I was never interested in the Bad Company games.

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1942 played it straight, but was inherently preposterous. Plus, it was 2002 and didn't look as real as games do today. It was about parachuting into a battlefield, blowing up some Panzer tank, stealing the newly-spawned German fighter and carrying out strafing runs until some lucky bastard shot you out of the sky.

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I picked up Payday 2 during the Steam sale and while I'm playing it I can't get this topic out of my mind.  It's not exactly the same because you only play from the criminal side and the police are exaggerated quite heavily (including having Sam Fisher type units that can cloak and take you out with one hit).  But at it's core its a literal cops vs robbers game where you kill hundreds upon hundreds of (admittedly very stupid) cops.  A couple people have mentioned Payday before in this thread, mostly citing how it presents itself more like a movie than anything to be taken seriously, which is accurate.  The gameplay itself is mostly fun (I have issues with it I won't get into here) but I find the theme to be somewhat troubling on my conscience.  I don't know where I'm going with this thought.

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During the sale I watched a gameplay video of Payday 2 when deciding whether or not to buy it or Insurgency. After watching gameplay, My reaction was "I don't want to do that. These dudes are creepy." Then when I watched the Insurgency video I was like "This looks like fun." I don't know what that says about me.

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