The Military Mindset Behind Stop & Frisk [View all]

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When I was a soldier I was trained in, and witness to, large-scale policing of a populated area. Much like cops on a beat, soldiers in Afghanistan would patrol a certain area of operations and interact with the people there.

When my platoon would roll into a town, we would cordon off certain streets, we would stop and talk to anyone entering or leaving the town. We tried to get as much information as possible on the people living there and what Taliban activity, if any, there was in the area.

If this meant physically stopping someone, making them sit on the ground while we questioned them about what knowledge they had, so be it. That’s what we did, whether it was village elders, shop merchants, farmers, ect. Anyone we came into contact with was a potential source of intelligence.

NYC cops have essentially the same mindset. Find out as much information as possible about the area you’re patrolling. Stopping as many people as possible and questioning them makes logical sense if the objective is to gather as much human intelligence as possible.

Which is sound strategy, if you’re entirely willing to disregard the feelings and dignity [not to mention civil rights] of the people who’re tasked with protecting, treating them only as statistics to flash around during campaign season while simultaneously eroding whatever trust that community might have had in you.

This was the fatal flaw in the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, thinking you can subdue a populace and befriend it at the same time. The mindset of using average citizens as unwilling tools in the war on drugs or gangs or graffiti or other crime is sprang from the same mindset of using the military to roll into a foreign country with tanks and bombs and have the local populace throw their support behind you just because you call yourself the good guy.

http://thesterlingroad.com/2013/08/13/the-military-mindset-behind-stop-frisk/