Its completely fair that officers have access to the current equipment that they do in the US considering the general population in areas being armed, be it legally or illegally.
rare cases (most often on a state level) Bradley's (These were seen after the Boston Marathon bombing and people really had a fit about this).
Weren't these property of the national guard? Again though, In the event of a bombing, to secure an area, what better thing to use than a machine designed to literally shrug off taliban RPG's?
I see no issue with police officers carrying rifles, high grade armour, and one or more sidearms. Anything above .300 blackout for a long arm (unless its a marksmans rifle, in which case, .338 lapua magnum) would be excessive in my opinion but again I'm not a law enforcement officer so I don't know if such weapons are truly necessary.
Here in the UK, our armed police mainly operate with 9mm handguns, 9mm "Carbine-Ized" Sub machine guns (Locked on semi) and Rifle calibre 5.56/.223 carbines locked in semi are the mains. A few constabularies and specialist wings, such as the Metropolitan police's SCO19 and other counter terrorism units, are issued fully automatic SMG's and Carbines. They use armoured Mercedes sprinter vans for raids and typically patrol in BMW, Ford, or Vauxhaul Saloon vehicles. "Special purpose" weapons such as Shotguns designed to fire numerous different lethal and non-lethal cartridges and baton guns are also heavily in use. A general rule of thumb with police shotguns however is the shotguns designated to shoot non lethal cartridges are designated with a bright orange or yellow colour, whilst the lethals remain black. This is to make sure that a non-lethal load is never put into a lethal shotgun and forgotten about, or vice versa.
Typically, counter terror response duties are carried out by police officers, or in more extreme cases, we have a special SAS Wing operating in london via helicopter. This is the closest thing to actual USA Styled militarised police we have, and thats solely because the SAS is part of the military.
Of course, the odds of police encountering armed resistance via an automatic firearm is rare, and our armed police officers are trained to handle these situations very well.
Unfortunately, in the US, that'd be completely different. The chances of a beat cop coming across an armed resisting suspect is significant enough to justify Departments being given access to surplus military equipment.
So yes, I agree with the militarisation of police given that departments are actually being given something useful and aren't just impulse buying military armoured vehicles, weapons and gear, only to do a sneaky backdoor deal to a cartel later on.