No

The police don't need military grade equipment to deal with the vast majority of crimes and having more people with access to military equipment will lead to bigger and worse conflicts breaking out such as if police get stolen from or if police are corrupt.

Police officers tend to use too much force when dealing with complications, some even target people of color. I believe our police officers should not carry military-grade weapons while conducting business around citizens.

Instead of getting rid of them completely they should be surveyed and tested on their mental capabilities, to root out anyone who isn't capable of putting racial bias aside and putting justice first. All cops must be held accountable for their actions and others must learn from their mistakes as well.

Police officers tend to use too much force when dealing with complications, some even target people of color. I believe our police officers should not carry military-grade weapons while conducting business around citizens.

In a poll constructed by kff.org, 7 in 10 African American citizens have experienced discrimination or police mistreatment in their lifetime.

It it is not safe for police to have military guns because even with regular weapons people are getting "accidently" killed.

Police killed around 1200 people last year, making an average of almost 100 people a month, and this is all because of the way they use their equipment. Police need to not think with their finger on the trigger but think with their actual mind instead of just shooting because they think it's the right thing to do. More then half the cops that do these things don't even get into that much trouble, suspended at most and it shows how much power they have when it comes to these things, giving them better or more deadly weapons will just increase the death rate by an even bigger amount.

Police are funded too much money and don't do enough. More than often cops are racist and abuse their power. Police forces are needed but should be more carefully chosen for the job as it is to protect people and they tend to do the opposite.

I believe that such dangerous weapons might give too much power to policemen, and some could abuse it and overall resulting in the deaths of more innocent people.

If the police get more military weapons like RPGs, assault rifles, and more they would have more force for situations than need because most people possess handguns and not military grade weapons. and even then the local police don't need it but, SWAT and other bigger agencies can have it to deal with bigger issues not the cops.

"In a free society, citizens should be able to easily distinguish between civilian law enforcement tasked with keeping the peace in our communities and the armed forces tasked with protecting our country from foreign adversaries."

Giving the police more weapons and tools to enact violence against civilians will just further encourage them to abuse their power. If the government wants to tackle crime, they should make a better social safety net that actually meets the standards of other developed nations and pass policies to decrease poverty. Basically target the root causes of crime, over policing has shown to not to lower crime rates.

Local police departments should never have access to military weapons. Giving ordinary people the access to grade military weapons is like giving a kid a gun and telling them when and where to use it. It's just not as safe, these sort of weapons should be held in the grasp of the government military.

Police need better training on how to handle issues without using force. While some situations do require a needed amount of force, many don't. With proper training, civilian-police relationships could be greatly improved and there would not be such a divide in support of the existence and function of the police force.

With the number of police brutality cases we have already, if we give them military grade weapons I don't see those numbers decreasing. Regardless of the thousands of "good cops", there is a mass amount of "bad cops". If you get one cop having a bad day and give them military grade weapons, think of the number of people they could hurt instantly with nobody able to stop them.

This especially goes for the use of it towards people of color who have been disproptionately affected by police brutality for decades.

Yes, police should use military-grade weapons in the right situations. They have to be specially trained to use the military-grade weapons.

Military-grade equipment is specifically used for the military, not the police. If the police were to use military-grade equipment then that would escalate the injustices minorities and other citizens face due to police brutality. In other words, it would add more fuel to the fire.

Civilians should not have to fear those who claim to protect them. Plus, police aren't robots, they make mistakes and have biases.

Throughout the 20s there have been cops that have become more corrupt or became so scared that they failed to protect or serve anybody in the U.S.A.

I agree that police departments should not hold the power of military-grade weapons because they would cause too much trouble with it and more people would die almost everyday if they wielded that type of power and people will not be able to live a normal life with them have that type of power.

The modern day american police force consists of many cops unfit for duty, it's said that most cops get 1 hour of police training per year. This is intolerable and should be obvious how this breeds corruption in our public law enforcement agencies.

I would say the weapons that the police already apply are within a well standard. It just people need to understand officers have a job to do and if they have a hard case and it leads to bad circumstances doesn't mean give them military level weapons. As then people would probably debate de-funding the police even more now that their weapon system is higher and can cause more damage

Officers are fine with the equipment they have right now, Maybe just give them more weapons to use in case of an extremely dangerous situation.

Police officers tend to use too much force when dealing with complicated situations, some even target people of color. Police officers should not carry military-grade weapons while conducting business around citizens.

Statistically polices do abuse their power, so giving them this power of having military weapons is dangerous.

Defunding the police would create an image that law enforcement is corrupt and that’s not good in the eyes of citizens.

The police were militarized to combat terrorism yet they have used these tools to kill and attack countless Americans, they obviously cannot be trusted with these tools and them being funded to such an extent takes away money that can be used to help better our communities. Most crime is done out of poverty, if our communities and schools have the resources to properly provide help to most individuals, crime will begin to decrease. As for the more violent and hateful crimes, police tend to allow those crimes to go unpunished, so what does it matter.

Recently, two officers were fired after paralyzing a veteran from the neck down in the back of a police van. All caught on video, it is seen as officers drag the man around the detention center and mocked him for not being able to move. The man is Randy Cox, and he had pleaded for help because he was unable to move.
You can read more about this situation on the CBS News website. This is just one example.

129 billion dollars are spent every year on police departments. I'm in college with 18k debt and no income. I'm also 18. Do the math. Spend that money on better things.

If someone with military grade equipment were to rob a bank that you or your children were in and police showed up with Glock 17s with 9mm rounds that would bounce right off any sort of body armor what would anyone be able to do. But if police showed up with a firming squad of high caliber automatic rifles I have a feeling the situation would be much more favorable.

I believe cops should be surveyed to be testified if they are discriminating type cop and fire them because cops shoot innocent people.

Police should never acquire military equipment, the equipment is only fit for the military therefore they are the only ones that should have the equipment. When the equipment gets old they can sell it to the private sector to civilians or reuse what they can for example armor and glass.

The police even though they are not the military should still have training because things do happen in the U.S. not just in other countries.

In a free society, citizens should be able to easily distinguish between civilian law enforcement tasked with keeping the peace in our communities and the armed forces tasked with protecting our country from foreign adversaries.

My position is YES demilitarize and defund the police. I believe that the big issue with the police and criminals is this arms race that we see going on, especially in my home town of Atlanta. At this point it doesnt matter who started the arms race, criminals or police, the outcome is painfully obvious. The question as to who should take the first step in throwing down arms I think is rather obvious. It should the centralized, uniformed, and regimented constabulary not the spontaneous, sparse, and unorganized criminals. We can vote for a police chief we can not vote for a mob boss.

Spending…  Read more on police is pretty consistent across most cities and counties to be steadily going up at a small to large incline. However we see crime rates fluctuate like a mountain range. The only thing that seems to be correlated in any way to an increase in police spending is is the violence of crime. If we want to see a radical peace that we have never seen, we must try radical policy that we have never seen.

Criminals can become very dangerous and some have the ability to get their hands on dangerous equipment, and if police officers are going to risk their lives every day for us then they deserve to have the appropriate equipment to protect us and themselves.