> Policing, especially in the United States, has developed a reputation for cruelty in the last decade or two.

Kris Kristofferson was writing songs about the petty cruelty of cops in 1970. Fuck tha Police was released almost 40 years ago. Richard Wright published a novel in 1941 about a man who was tortured into a false confession by police.

The technologies are new and powerful but that's not the issue. The issue is that police are themselves lawless scum who will use any tool at their disposal for whatever harm they feel like inflicting, to who they always inflict it on. We should stop giving them new tools, absolutely. But we also have to stop them.