Resolved: Demilitarization of the United States Police

"violence begets violence and the state is inherently impotent to regulate itself. Change can only come when Americans"- currently jaded by and disenchanted with political engagement"- stop tolerating authority through force and develop a more skeptical attitude toward government while actively holding it accountable." Thanks Con, I agree with this statement. Unfortunately for you it supports my position. It's inherently hypocritical to say that citizens should stop tolerating rule by force and then argue that the police should have more force to use. If we don't want to tolerate rule by force, than we need to roll back how much force that the government (police) have and are able to use. This argument by con weighs in my favor. "Before I begin my official argumentation, let me make my stance clear. My stance is to maintain the status quo in terms of the police's "militarization". I am NOT rooting for neither MORE or LESS militarization." Cool story bro, I'm arguing for less militarization. "This shows that the color of a uniform can change an attitude. This might seemcontradictory at first. HOWEVER, this does NOT mean that we don't need paramilitary uniforms. Those khaki uniforms are still, by definition, "paramilitary". And as I have proven above, by NOT donning such uniforms we run a higher risk of injuries for both officers and citizens." Okay I drop all my arguments about the uniform. I didn't expect my opponent to read the source, otherwise I would have shown sources harder to find those rebuttals in. "Swatting has nothing to do with this debate. Whether or not a city has a small or large SWAT team, if someone calls 911 and says they see a bomb at their school, THAT CITY WILL SEND A SWAT TEAM. NO MATTER WHAT. PERIOD. This is for the general safety of the people, since we cannot risk the possibility of it being a real bomb. The size and militarization of the SWAT team is irrelevant." This is untrue. The amount of SWAT teams and how much resources they do have is very important. Right now because of the over abundance of SWAT teams and personnel they're able to do random drug busts often getting the locations wrong and hurting and even killing innocent people and on a few occasions even killing children, in one instance even throwing a flash bomb into a crib and permanently harming a child and nearly killing the baby. With less resources SWAT teams will only be able to respond to the most credible threats and calls. A random twelve year old will not be able to call a SWAT team on a rival and put him through a traumatic experience. With less SWAT teams they'll be forced to do their due diligence and only respond to the word threats. This demilitarization (lessening of paramilitary SWAT team, and resources) would lead to less wrongful SWATs, less dead innocent babies and less wrong addresses and traumatizing average citizens. "On the other hand, police vehicles such as MRAPS have actually SAVED lives. The USA TODAY states: "Belmar [police chief of Ferguson PD] noted that during the protests, his officers used heavy-armored equipment to help retrieve a gunshot victim. The county chief also noted that there were five shootings in a six-block area near where the protests occurred where the vehicles aided in rescue, and there were several incidents where police and armored vehicles were struck by gunfire during the unrest."" That's nice, but as my study I shared indicated. It's the presence of militarized police that causes the riots to start. So without starting the riots, they wouldn't need the MRAPS, to save people from the riot they started. My argument that police cause riots has been dropped.