What an odd way to put it, you make it sound like "It's all a thing of the past", after you went through so much effort to explain how nothing was supposedly wrong in the first place.

I really don't get why some US Americans insist on this "not being a problem at all", even when literally all metrics point to exactly that: It being a rather big problem.

I mean, don't you even realize how macabre it is to point out "They have more chance of mounting a legal challenge in the US!"? Granted: If they have the money to hire a good lawyer and their case gets them anything.

But having the chance to get some money is rarely a good replacement for losing a family member in often completely preventable incidents.

Compared to absolutely nothing at all in the EU ? That's what I'm pointing out. It's not a good solution, imho, but it's better than anything the EU countries provide for sure.

It means police at least have to be aware that if they use these tactics against the wrong person, they could get seriously convicted for that. In the EU, what is there for them to fear ? I mean if it ends up on national TV then they have a problem. Otherwise ...

They are not a US-only occurrence. But they very much are a US problem (and a relative rarity elsewhere).

>And it's not limited to the US.

No, like incarceration is not limited to the US. But the US has 25% of the world's prison population for just 4% of its total population.

Something occurring elsewhere doesn't mean anything. Most things will happen elsewhere too, even mass shootings.

But some places are the undisputed capitals of those things, by a far margin, and instead of putting one's head in the sand, people should acknowledge the problem.

>What IS different however, is that the odds of anyone actually successfully mounting a legal challenge to such an officer afterwards are WAY higher in the US.

LOL.

That is a truly extraordinary claim. The idea that "law enforcement gets away with everything" is a true meme (not the funny, internet kind), the default expectation in the US among its inhabitants, a stereotype that foreigners have of us, and unfortunately our reality. This is a fact that law enforcement officials both recognize and abuse. I want to say that the template of "cop does [horrible thing] while 3 independent sources record it, and [is given paid vacation/was relocated/had his case dismissed by the DA]" is so pervasive that you might be able to get a matching news story like that every week here. And god help anyone who did not have a recording of their encounter.

Really ? And not in the EU ? Because there recently was a reality series about the Dutch police on TV. Which included one particularly bad scene in Rotterdam. It looked like some obviously North Africans saw the police and turned around (but was it actually that they saw the police ? And was it really that they were criminals because ... read on). The police pursued them, tackled them and, frankly, violently forced them to confess to possession of stolen goods. They had zero proof, or even justification beyond that some goods were stolen (in a neighbourhood of tens of thousands of people).

Are you going to claim that wasn't just outright racism ? And whilst on some level I might agree with the assessment that odds were perhaps good those youth did steal (in general I mean, they're not known for respect of property law is what I mean. Nothing whatsoever against those individuals), but I find the odds of them having stolen specific the goods the police accused them off ... generously (for the police) ASSUMING these kids were indeed thieves, it seems to me that those odds could not possibly have been more than 5%. Not that the police clarify what specific goods they were looking for/accusing them of, nor where they were stolen from, and they were asking people they had just tackled and left tied up on the pavement for several minutes and beat several times. Hell, I doubt the police even knew for sure something had been stolen in the first place (because reporting stolen goods in the center of Rotterdam ... why would you bother ?)

Next time you hear about youth riots in Western European cities you might want to remember that this sort of thing is what the police constantly subjects these kids to.

This was put, with their full permission, on TV, as an example of what they do, intermingled with a sort of recruiting effort. And I'm just sitting there ... FUCK YOU RACIST ASSHOLES. But seriously, this behavior is what they're proud off, or at least what they want to show off.

And let's not kid ourselves here: police in Rotterdam are better behaved than, for example, police in Paris suburbs, if even 5% of the stories are true. So it gets worse, much worse than this in the EU.

While that story is a tragedy, the US police kills about 1200 persons/year - or about 40 adjusting for the size of the population of Belgium. A single case doesn't not make the attitudes equivalent.

Plus it'll be fun. They may even let you fire a few of the weapons.

Thinking about what that means for their attitude in the street ... not so much fun.

Why ? Because the agents think they're cool.

Ok, apparently MRAPs are armored vehicles. Yes they do have armored vehicles. That specific one ? Probably not, but the same general idea ? Yes. They often use them for riots and protests and such.

There was something on the news about buying new ones that are more bomb resistant.