Conclusion: "We find a positive and statistically significant relationship between 1033 transfers and fatalities from officer-involved shootings across all models."
Moreover, they used clever methods to determine that the causal arrow runs in the direction they hypothesized, showing that it wasn't that cops in violent communities got more military stuff and were thus involved in more violence -- rather, getting military goods made the cops more violent.
This story is from Boing Boing and admittedly left leaning source which is nonetheless highly factual. Quantifying the additional killings commited by cops when they get military weapons / Boing Boing:
This may all sound academic and indeed 1033 transfers are not the only thing going on that makes cops more violent. The complex phenomenon is describe by journalist Radley Balko in his book Rise of the warrior cop . If you are still not emotionally hooked or wavering on the fence not wanting to impugn the character police officers, then a look at his video and its introduction Conditioned Response.may change your mind.
'via Blog this'
