In any case, the problems with policing in Europe aren't even close to those in the US, and i don't think any of then can be attributed to hving two policing entities with different scopes.
You just outlined it yourself, take away the military's own police and you have, in your words,
1. a police which polices regular peope
and
2. sometimes a gendermerie which is sometimes nominally a part of the army
You also go on to give several examples of this system being used in continental Europe. You could've added in Spain and Italy too.
I'm really not sure why you asked the question if you're going to answer it yourself.
If you're looking for a non-continental police force which does not follow that system then you only need compare with the UK or Ireland.
> In any case, the problems with policing in Europe aren't even close to those in the US, and i don't think any of then can be attributed to hving two policing entities with different scopes.
So you say. From[1]:
> Covell was among the 87 protesters wounded when police baton-charged the Diaz school in Genoa, beating people as they cowered in their sleeping bags and planting petrol bombs to justify the raid.
> Once arrested, protesters, including five Britons, were taken to a police barracks where they were beaten again, sprayed with asphyxiating gas, threatened with rape and forced to sing fascist-era songs.
> Despite the handing out of verdicts including convictions for grievous bodily harm and falsifying evidence in two major trials, Italy's tardy justice system has ensured final appeals are yet to be heard and most sentences have been timed out by the statute of limitations. "No one has ever been arrested or gone to jail," said Massimo Pastore, a lawyer who has represented Covell and other activists.
That's not even the half of it. Do you think this is an isolated incident? Can you divorce this from militarised policing?
Perhaps you'll disagree and then answer the questions again, that would be helpful.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/12/night-police-b...
This is how an armed, barricaded suspect is handled in France. Watch until the end, with captions. https://youtu.be/0Bx5PRqYAig
> The scale of police violence was astonishing and stomach-churning. Between November 2018 and June 2019, according to figures compiled by Médiapart, 860 protesters were injured by the police – 315 suffered head injuries; 24 lost the use of an eye; and five had hands torn off. In December 2018, an elderly woman who had no involvement in the protests was killed when police threw a grenade into her flat.
> Among these victims are not only protesters but also journalists and medics. Police have been filmed beating elderly and disabled people, as well as using tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets against peaceful protesters. The main source of injuries was ‘Flashball’ rubber bullets – a non-lethal weapon that has been banned in every EU country except France. More than 13,000 of these bullets were fired in the first three months of the protests. Another extreme weapon used by police was the GLI-F4 – a teargas grenade which contains explosives that maimed numerous protesters. The grenade was eventually banned by the French government in early 2020.
> Things got so bad that the UN called for a ‘full investigation’ into the police’s ‘excessive use of force’. Similarly, the Council of Europe’s human-rights commissioner called for an end to the use of Flashballs against protesters. Amnesty International denounced the ‘extremely heavy-handed’ policing deployed against peaceful protesters. Eventually, even the French government acknowledged it had a problem with police violence.
"you really don’t understand anything about the gendarmerie" is an interesting take for someone who ignores a paramilitary group that throws grenades at grannies, blinds people and tears off hands, and beats the elderly and disabled.
> To compare it with the American policing model is beyond ludicrous.
Au contraire, I don't remember the American police beating up the elderly and disabled - or creating disabled people - en masse, in such a short space of time. Maybe you do, but it wouldn't make the comparison ludicrous. Dismissing it, however…
[1] https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/06/02/do-french-lives-mat...
Edit: grenades at grannies, not grenades at grenades. The real mistake was giving the police grenades in the first place though.
First, the numbers are indeed atrocious. But they're the result of massive civil unrest which included mass civil disobedience, occasional looting and burning private property, and fighting with police ( so it wasn't just the police randomly shooting at people) which went on for months, which explains some of it.
Second, the numbers are for the police and gendermerie violence, (the latter helped because the civil unrest was massive, at the start it was mostly police). You can't just pin them all on the gendermerie because you have a preconceived notion they're the problem.
> Au contraire, I don't remember the American police beating up the elderly and disabled - or creating disabled people - en masse, in such a short space of time. Maybe you do, but it wouldn't make the comparison ludicrous
The model is different, and so are the consequences, which I wasn't talking about. US police are barely trained, suffer no consequences, and have military grade equipment. None of that applies even to the "militarised" (for you) gendermerie.
In France there was unrest, people destroying property and fighting police occasionally as a part of it. Police responded hard after initially doing nothing. Again, it was initially police, and then the gendermerie was also sent to help. Violence was done by both of them.
The Gendarmerie Captain on scene then rushes to the man's mother, takes her in his arms and says "He's okay, he's okay. It was us. He's alive."
(I unfortunately don't understand much of the French language.)
Furthermore, i object to the claim that they are somehow an issue in policing. The article you've linked says just "police", so i doubt they're talking about the Carabinieri. In France, the Gendermerie ( countryside and small towns and cities) has a better reputation with regards to violence than the Police Nationale ( which only operate in cities); i can't think of a single high-profile police violence incident where the Gendermerie were involved. And when the Police Nationale were protesting due to overworking and unpaid overtime, the Gendermerie were the ones providing protection. Apparently the Spanish Guardia Civil also has a better reputation than regular Spanish police. In recent years the French army has started doing patrols in mainland France, among potentially high-profile targets ( airports, train stations, tourist hot spots)
So if anything, having two different branches of police seems beneficial in those specific cases.
And neither type of gendermerie has anything close to the equipment the US police has.
Why would police need grenades, of all things?
Does the US police use grenades?
> i can't think of a single high-profile police violence incident where the Gendermerie were involved.
Have the US police ever killed an unarmed protestor with their hands in the air using a grenade? From[1]:
> Statements from several eye witnesses show that Rémi, 21, had his hands in the air and was calling on gendarmes to stop firing when he was struck and killed by an offensive grenade. Their accounts also cast some doubts over the version of events given by the authorities about the student's death.
Perhaps you were just unaware.
[1] https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/270316/eco-protes...
Since they do the same work, do not share and duplicate the efforts it wild make sense to just merge them.
But that would require some people to let go kingdoms.
Having worked extensively with both, the way they are organized today is a pity.
In Italy there is a civil police force and a military one (named Carabinieri) and both of them carry guns. However, only when they have to raid the homes of high-risk people, e.g. mafia criminals or terrorists, SWAT-like units (named NOCS the police unit and GIS the Carabinieri unit) are deployed.
But yes, machine guns and rifles are only carried by units on special duties, normally anti-terrorism (and unfortunately Italy has a long history of internal terrorism).
In nearly 30 years of living in the US I can only ever recall seeing police officers patrolling with long guns twice: once when I visited the US capitol, and once at a big festival/parade thing in Bellevue, WA.
Seeing the officer in Bellevue patrolling with a long gun was actually quite unsettling. Even though all police in the US are armed and most have a long gun in their vehicle, they very rarely carry them in public. Even at sporting events, airports, etc.
Conversely, during the short period of time I spent in Germany and Austria I saw many police with long guns. (And that echoes my wife’s experiences in France and a couple other European countries.) They were primarily at airports and city centers, so it’s probably a terrorist thing. But it was very apparent—sort of how I imagine Brits feel when they visit a country with regularly armed police.
Rest assured that the small town cops in Europe don’t patrol with MP5s, but that the marines at local US embassy (which is a high value target) occasionally do…
(And the only capitol I visited in Europe was Austria.)
> Rest assured that the small town cops in Europe don’t patrol with MP5s
I understand this. And it wasn't part of my post :)
I confirm in France. I've seen group of policemen (or army?) in the (very crowded) Paris subway stations with dogs and "uzi" weapons.
Military police in English-speaking countries usually only have jurisdiction over military installations and military personnel; they do not perform civilian policing functions except in exceptional situations such as wartime or national emergencies. By contrast, gendarmerie are military police who perform civilian policing functions in normal circumstances.
There isn't necessarily a huge difference in practice between gendarmeries and ordinary civilian police forces; gendarmeries tend to have tougher recruitment standards, a more disciplined ethos, be more heavily armed, their members will have received military basic training which covers skill areas which most civilian police training does not, etc. However, even in countries with gendarmeries, the civilian police often have elite units which are on par with those of the gendarmerie; and, in France, much of the gendarmerie are assigned to policing small towns and rural areas which is often less challenging work than that of the civilian police in the big cities.
The speed/level of abuse of force stories has dropped substantially in the past 6 months; I suspect it's not because the people becoming quieter.
Should anyone here serve on a jury panel in America, do not forget you can vote not guilty if you believe the officers acted improperly or the punishment of trial/detention/seizure far outweighs the original non-crime. Jury nullification is a strong force of good which legally cannot be brought up in the courtroom itself, but is important for cases like these.
This isn't really true.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/25/nyregion/nypd-police-covi...
https://abc7chicago.com/amp/chicago-police-covid-vaccine-man...
https://abc7news.com/amp/san-francisco-vaccine-mandate-sfpd-...
Would you mind explaining which country in the EU you believe has this model that you describe?
> The Guardia Civil (Civil Guard) is a gendarmerie force and therefore, has a military status
> The Policía Nacional or Cuerpo Nacional de Policía (the National Police Corps, or CNP) has a civilian status
Italy[2]:
> The two main police forces in the country are the Carabinieri, the national gendarmerie, and the Polizia di Stato, the civil national police.
France[3]:
> There are two national police forces called "Police nationale" and "Gendarmerie nationale".
Need I go on? There are more, as the other comments show.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_Spain
> I've never even seen an armored police vehicle.
What would your personal experience have to do with the actual structure of policing in several European countries?
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/police-raid-homes-busin...
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/5/20/the-child-victi...
You're missing the issue. The big problem in the story is that the Government still sees people responsibly disclosing vulnerabilities as threats.
The actual military police only police servicemen and have no authority over civilians, you will only find them in army towns.
How were you misled into not knowing that all these major powers have gendarmerie?
You have military police which is for the military.
You have police or polices for the civils. There may be one or two, they work the same and have the same prerogatives and way of working. The difference is in the colour of the uniform and some ego battles in the top management.
The reason is that when you raid someone they can get scared and do stupid things like try to attack the officer, try to escape, use a knife, etc. so you need to overwhelm the subject with force and end the encounter as soon as possible. I am not saying that they are shooting the subject , they didn't shoot anyone in 10 years from what I know, they are deterring him from trying to do anything stupid. If 2 skinny cops knock on the door the subject might attack the cops or try to run, if 7 big, armed officers enter the room while the criminal is half asleep then he is not trying anything and he is captured in a safe manner for everyone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paramilitary_organizat...
For The Netherlands, this includes two: KMar (who also secure airport like Schiphol) and DSI. It does not include for example regional AT (arrestatieteam, the equiv of a SWAT team).
Every time a Dutch police officer uses their gun on the field (so exercise is excluded), there's an internal investigation, by default. If that'd happen in USA, you'd have a huge dept. of internal affairs, lol.
The police in America are well beyond the line of "citizen" police, you have the continental European model of two police forces, civil and military, and it's hard to see that there's much civil, it's more like ordinarily armed military force and a ready-for-war military force. It hasn't helped produce liberty or better enforcement in Europe, I can't see why Americans have allowed it to become their model.
This discussion about no-knock warrants/raids[1] has a similar feel, an offence against common law, liberty, and above all, good sense.
> I was in my boxer shorts when I heard my mother‐ in‐ law scream. It was a loud, fearful scream. I ran to the window, where I saw three or four men dressed in black with high‐ caliber rifles in my yard approaching my house.
> I then heard an explosion, which was the sound of my door being blown open, followed by immediate gun fire. There were loud noises, the sounds of boots, and then more gunfire.
> I hit the floor and began to yell, “I’m upstairs; please don’t shoot!” The men in black had me walk downstairs backwards, in my boxer shorts, with my hands in the air. I still can see two high‐ caliber rifles pointed at me. At the bottom of the stairs, they bound my hands, pulled me across the living room, and forced me to kneel on the floor in front of my broken door. I thought it was a home invasion. I was fearful that I was about to be executed.
> I could see my mother‐ in‐ law bound, lying face down on the kitchen floor. Payton, my older dog, was lying dead in a pool of his own blood on the other side of the living room. I soon learned that my younger dog, Chase, was dead in a back room, where he had been shot from behind as he ran away. There were perhaps a dozen men in black, just standing around in my living room. I asked for a warrant. They said that they did not have it with them, but one was en route.
> For most of the nearly four‐ hour ordeal, I was being interrogated, half‐ dressed in my living room and then in my kitchen. It was surreal.
If it can happen to a mayor it can happen to anyone.
[1] https://www.cato.org/policy-report/november/december-2008/sh...
Edit: formatting