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I kinda feel like I'm being motte-and-baileyed here. (I'm not accusing you of doing it on purpose, I just think we're deep enough in the weeds that we're losing sight of the goalposts.)
When we got onto the topic of whether cops need to be "intimidating", we were debating the usefulness of things like balaclavas and the imperious, short-tempered, bully-like demeanor that cops typically adopt when dealing with suspects. You now seem to be redefining "intimidating" such that by definition, a cop who can make a credible threat of following through on a threat of violence is "intimidating". Which, fair enough, but in that sense it's trivially true that they need to be "intimidating"; that's not the question. The question is what traits and behaviors make cops' threats seem believable, and whether that necessarily includes dressing up like Stormtroopers or a generally unpleasant attitude. I don't think it does.
And as I said in one of my previous comments, how threatening and intimidating a police officer needs to be is heavily dependent on the community being policed, the concentration of criminals within that community, what kind of crimes said criminals are committing and how violent said criminals are. It would be overkill for a cop in the Hamptons to walk around with a bulletproof vest and an AR-15, but if some stockbroker shoots his wife in their summer home in a drunken rage, when a police officer shows up, he must be intimidating enough that the stockbroker agrees to come quietly. But when you're dealing with MS-13, a violent gang who feel no qualms about beheading their enemies with machetes, one guy in a squad car with a Beretta isn't going to cut it - yes, you actually do need facemasks, assault rifles and a "generally unpleasant attitude". Nothing else is likely to be effective.
Now, is the nature of the problem ICE is ostensibly addressing closer to the former scenario or the latter? I don't know, probably the former - maybe they really can enforce immigration law with Berettas and a smile. But we were discussing the question of whether cops, in general, need to be at least somewhat scary and intimidating in order to be effective in their jobs, and you were quite explicitly arguing that they don't. That's the point I was addressing, not the question of how intimidating ICE specifically needs to be in order to be effective.
I think what I meant to say is that I don't think there's a better royal road to being "scary and intimidating" in the necessary sense than simply reliably following through on threats when called to do so, thus creating common knowledge that police threats are credible. Trying to make cops appear threatening in ways not directly related to spreading factual knowledge of "if you commit a crime they will inevitably arrest you; if you resist arrest they will reliably shoot you" will fall on a spectrum from gilding the lily to actively counterproductive.
(I will also add that I don't particularly object to big guns and bulletproof vests, per se. What I object to is law enforcement leaning into the image that they're trigger-happy and unaccountable, as the imagery of masked goons and unmarked vans does. Visible proof that you have real firepower to bring to bear as needed - I think that kind of "intimidation" can be very much appropriate. Notably the latter is about showing that lawful threats can and will be carried out if needed; while the former is about giving a menacing impression that if you cross these guys, you might end up on the receiving end of extrajudicial violence, so don't test our patience.)
As to the second half of your comment: I don't really have a problem with police officers "leaning in" to the image that they're trigger-happy and unaccountable. I have a problem with them actually being trigger-happy and unaccountable. If police officers aren't trigger-happy and unaccountable, but hardened criminals think they are, that might motivate criminals to behave better when the police show up. A great deal of effective police work involves strategic deception of this type: polygraph tests do not actually detect when someone's lying, but police officers are in no hurry to disabuse the widespread misconception that they do, as it demonstrably makes people more honest if they believe they'll be caught out if they lie. Likewise, there's a widespread misconception that undercover cops are legally required to identify themselves if directly asked if they are police officers: there is no such legal requirement, but it can only help the police if criminals think there is.
I understand the point you're making, that if a criminal thinks that the police will gun him down even if he drops his weapon and agrees to come quietly, then there's no incentive for him to surrender, so he might as well go out guns blazing. I agree that conveying that impression would be counterproductive. But on the margin, if criminals think that police officers can punch them in the face or Tase them (but not kill them) and face no professional repercussions, that might well incentivise them to be on their best behaviour when the police do show up. Even if, in point of fact, police officers will face repercussions for unwarranted use of force.
That's a fair spin. I think some of my remaining discomfort with this state of affairs goes back to the sense that ICE's scary-goons stylings are escalating tensions - I feel like playing these sorts of games is how you get a low-trust, high-crime society where even people who obey the law don't really respect it. The word among the populace being "If you commit crimes you'll fall into the hands of a bunch of violent bastards" maybe mostly works as a brute-force way to deter crime if nothing else does, but it seems strictly inferior in terms of social stability and well-being, when compared to a society where the police are genuinely viewed as admirable, aspirational, pro-social figures the way firefighters are. Fight fire with fire and the world goes up in smoke, etc. etc. Building a climate of fear is inferior to building an actually orderly society.
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My impression is that hardened criminals have a wider range of interactions with the police than pretty much anyone else. So the only way to convince a hardened criminal that you're trigger-happy and unaccountable is to actually be so.
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Of course if there was widespread common knowledge that police officers will arrest you if you commit a crime, and shoot you if you fail to comply, criminals would rationally understand that it's in their best interest to simply come quietly, and individual police officers being scary and intimidating on an interpersonal level would be unnecessary.
But criminals, as a group, are not renowned for their rationality and forward planning skills. Criminals fall into two categories: those smart enough to correctly think they can commit a crime and get away with it, and those dumb enough to erroneously think they can do so. With few exceptions, criminals are an overwhelmingly stupid group, often mentally ill, disproportionately likely to suffer from alcohol- and/or drug-induced psychosis. Of course a rational person would understand it's in his best interest to put his hands up and come quietly - but then, a rational person also wouldn't have thought that squirting lemon juice on his face would be an effective countermeasure against CCTV cameras before robbing a bank. A rational person wouldn't have murdered his wife in a drunken rage in the first place.
So given that police officers spend a great deal of their time trying to force irrational, stupid people into compliance who don't understand the game theory you're describing, if they want to get them to comply, appealing to their rationality and common sense (or lack thereof) isn't going to cut it. This means that you need to appeal to their lizard brain through shouting and intimidation. This is true everywhere there are stupid, irrational criminals, not just the US.
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