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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

I liked Trevor Noah's take on this: "This isn't a black problem, this is a US police problem. Why is the US police shooting people who are already subdued? Why are people getting shot in the back?"

To support his claim, he shows both a video of police killing black people and a video of police killing white people. Each time the perp was already on the ground and immobilized. Then shot.

At this point I'm terrified of ever interacting with the US police in any way for any reason.Starting to think it's time to vote with my feet and move to a different country again.

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If you are terrified of ever interacting with the police, I would recommend that you go and meet some of them. The super majority of them are just normal people trying to do good for a community.

Your fear, I think, has far more to do with an availability bias of these relatively few stories getting plastered everywhere. You're much more likely to be killed in a gang or drug related shooting than you are by a cop.

While most of my interactions with police have been fine, I have been subject to, and been witness to, several that were less-than-professional.

- I've been hassled and cursed at by an officer.

- I've watched a friend who was doing nothing wrong be roughed up by an officer.

- I've had police give false evidence against me on a traffic citation.

- As a child being physically bullied, a friend and I went to a cop for help. When we told the cop that these other kids were trying to beat us up, the reply was "you'd better watch out, they'll probably hit you again".

So while it's true that not all cops are bad, my personal experience shows me that the bad seeds aren't all that rare.

Terrified is probably a strong word and I'm sure media bias has a strong influence on my perception.

But I definitely don't feel safe about interacting with the police. From all the advice on how a cop is never your friend and you shouldn't talk to them, to all the deaths all over the internet ... how else am I supposed to feel?

I'm sure all of them are upstanding citizens and perfectly awesome when off duty. I'm sure most of them are amazing when on duty. But the overall climate and police procedures or whatever it is, sure make them seem thuggy. I believe a lot of it is because they have to be thuggy in order to stay safe.

But it doesn't make me feel safe.

I appreciate your honest perspective. The statistics indicate that you're much less likely to be assaulted by the police than ordinary citizens, whatever your race.

> I believe a lot of it is because they have to be thuggy in order to stay safe.

Perhaps then we should be focusing our attention on improving the environments they work in? For example, cracking down on violent crimes, perhaps especially those that target police?

I don't know why you seem to be getting downvoted - this seems to me to be the most important question. Perhaps one of the downvoters can provide some explanation. In particular, why is it wrong (and, I assume, perceived as racist) to ask whether the problem can be described as "those in power are abusing that power"?

Ultimately, it can be traced back to the war on drugs, as can many of our societal ills.

> (and, I assume, perceived as racist)

Funnily Trevor Noah is both black and recently immigrated from South Africa. Doesn't get more african-american than that.

This statement doesn't make any sense to me?

A fair bit of his early stand up concerns the complexities of being a mixed race child in South Africa and then the extra layers of complexity that occur when transplanted into the US.

From watching that I think he'd disagree with your conclusion.

I don't understand why, when they do shoot, it's often five or more times. Why not just once or twice, then get out of the way?

Actually, if we assume that force really was appropriate, then what they're doing is correct.

Real life firearms are NOTHING like those on TV. First, your chances of actually hitting something from any non-trivial distance isn't that great. Even 10 yards is far from a sure hit, and just hitting doesn't necessarily count for much.

Second, the fact that the bad guy took a hit doesn't mean he's going down. In fact, he almost certainly will not. Anything less than a headshot destroying the brain (sorry to be graphic) may well have them still shooting back at you, even if the wound will ultimately prove fatal. Even severing the femoral artery or aorta isn't going to have the bad guy dropping in his tracks.

And in such a situation, your goal is to stop the threat. As you can see, ensuring that the treat is stopped requires a lot more than a double-tap.

In the St. Paul case he fired 5 rounds from just outside the window of the car. Literally just a couple feet away from the guy, not 10 yards. In the Baton Rouge case the guy was on the ground with the cops on top of him.

In the UK they manage to subdue dangerous suspects without unloading the entire clip.

Because they are carrying 9mm when they should be carrying .45

This is true, but a very, very small sub-set of people being shot. IIRC, greater than 80% of people shot by police have a weapon and are actively resisting.

Since the U.S. does not collect any statistics on police shootings, it's hard to see how you could know that.

Evidently from, "... news reports, public records, Internet databases, and original reporting"[1]

Going by their data, of the 258 Black people shot by police in 2015, 188 were armed with a deadly weapon, 20 with a vehicle, 5 wth a toy weapon, and 45 either unarmed or unknown.

If you accept toy weapons and vehicles as being armed, that is 82%, which is what I remember hearing.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...

What you are pointing out is that there seem to be a huge problem with the quality of the police force in at least parts of the USA. I might be naive, but I refuse to believe that the US is such a violent country that the number of people killed by the police is justified. What the US deserve is a police force that is better trained, less militaristic and skilled in deescalating confrontation. It might be a bit more expensive, but it should be worth it.

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