Police Homicides in the United States
granta.com
granta.com
In the first, a armed felon killed himself during after an eight hour standoff with the police.
In the second, a man attacked a clerk at a hotel. When police arrived, then man was lying on the floor, bleeding. Police immediately called for medics, but the man became unresponsive and died before fire/medical arrived.
These deaths are both counted as "arrest-related-deaths", which is to say, the actual moment of death was when the police were on scene, but in neither case did the police even use force. I didn't see a place in the article where these kind of situation was excluded. Did I miss something?
[Edit, after more digging into the BJS data, it does contain a homicide flag, which is on about 61% of the records. As long as the OP is filtering by this, it's a good start. But take stats on public police killing websites with a big grain of salt, since these kinds of non-force cases are still included in the top level stats for the sites I checked.]
As a counterpoint to the headline that might be little fear-inducing, my first reaction when reading it was: only so little? Things must be bad.
I mean: the perfect situation is when there are no homicides at all. But in a little less perfect imaginary world, in which bad people never get the chance to hurt innocents because police stops it, some bad people might still go down resisting arrest, at which point 100% of all homicides would be police-inflicted, and that would be good. Not perfect, but better than what we have.
Statistics are funny this way.
The real question is, how many of those killed by the police were killed in totally justifiable self-defense, and not just because of policemen being trigger-happy. Or, put another way, what's the probability that a person who is not resisting arrest to get "accidentally" killed by the police.
With the title in mind a third of strangers killed are killed by cops, shouldn’t they be better at not killing people?
Or maybe criminals are mostly nonviolent. Implementation details, anyway. What I was aiming at is: in a world where the only people killed are ones who absolutely deserve it, the statistics would likely show that close to 100% of homicides are committed by police.
> With the title in mind a third of strangers killed are killed by cops, shouldn’t they be better at not killing people?
Yes, of course.
What kind of dystopian nightmare is this?
> The real question is, how many of those killed by the police were killed in totally justifiable self-defense, and not just because of policemen being trigger-happy. Or, put another way, what's the probability that a person who is not resisting arrest to get "accidentally" killed by the police.
It's rarely an accident.
One in which, say, 3 of 3, is still 100%.
I know what you are arguing but it really is a distraction from what is a very serious issue in America.
If we want to talk about the serious issue in America, let's talk about the number of unjustified homicides committed by police versus by others. I and most people don't care one shred about situations where a criminal is pointing a gun at another person and gets shot, that's exactly what should happen, and in many or most police shootings that's the way it goes down. Those make up a big part of the number in this article.
FWIW I'm not disagreeing that abuses by police are a serious problem in America, I think they are, and we need to do something about that, and it goes much deeper than just when they kill. Using shoddy numbers to promote awareness is counterproductive, though, because anyone who doesn't already agree with the conclusion will immediately see what's wrong with the argument, and dig their heels in deeper. There are enough real statistics to talk about (BLM has done a great job promoting those, so I won't dig them up here) that we don't need to resort to misleading linkbait ones.
If you get past the they deserve it Puritan mentality, the ideal scenario is for police minimize death (of criminals and police officers) at all costs. Numerous other countries handle violent criminals in ways other than "kill them immediately"; the tendency of police officers to use immediate lethal violence can most likely be explained by the aforementioned Puritan "punishment" mentality, a strong culture of guns and violence encouraged constantly through the media (news, movies, and otherwise) and a myriad of other factors.
It must be horrible to be an American cop. All that training, the weapons, the body armour, the radio to immediately summon a whole squad of armed goons who may or may not even have a tank, and they regularly feel so terrified by women in pyjamas or pet doggos that they must immediately resort to lethal force.
In most other countries the police officer can encounter a citizen without drawn gun because the odds of the citizen wielding a gun or worse are miniscule.
In America even the drawn handgun might not be superior armament.
The NRA didn't cause any of that, although they do make hay of it for their own political and financial ends.
Some of us parse the rationale such that it seems obsolete: we no longer rely on a militia to defend the nation, we have a professional military for it.
> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State
Some of us, obviously, don't.
And now we're still arguing about the meaning of that damned comma...
The 2nd amendment then keeps the government from having a great justification for countless "protective" measures. Don't help me when I can help myself.
Can you give any examples of such measures, or evidence that the threat of violent revolution implied in the Second Amendment, versus the political power of the gun lobby and American gun culture, has ever been effective at limiting the US government or its rationale?
You can go to a wealthy white neighborhood in a hard-right place like Texas and there will be plenty of guns. But the cops won’t feel the need to dress up like soldiers and kill people for minor offenses.
Enforcing the kind of economic system where the poor have few ways to carve out a better life for themselves necessitates violence. Wage stagnation and an ever-increasing criminalization of poverty pushes more and more people into contact with the police. And austerity politics ensures that there is nothing to respond to any form of crisis with except the police.
The video of the cop executing an innocent civillian[1] and getting away with it kind of disproves this statement.
I agree that inequality and poverty are the issues, and I agree that there is a correlation between certain races and poverty, but I don't believe that the issue is just racism.
In this case, while not a traffic stop, the attempted arrest protocol was just stupid and it resulted in his death. That whole department needs to be reformed by the FBI. I hope his widow wins a huge settlement.
The argument that someone was reaching for a weapon or afraid for safety needs a higher burden of proof.
I‘d argue that they would if asked whether they should fear heart attacks more or less than guns on the street, but if you don‘t frame it that way they will probably tell you that of course guns are a real danger.
If my loved one was a police officer, I'd want them taking every precaution they could - so they get to come home tonight.
I should disclose that I own a number of firearms, many of them sidearms, and don't like the NRA very much, nor have I ever donated to them or been a member. I'm just curious as to how you see them as being the source to blame.
I am a fan of responsible firearm ownership, but not the NRA - by the way. I don't know if I'd blame them, but I'd agree that they contribute to the 'gun culture' that ends up with irresponsible people wanting to own firearms.
Hint: practically zero.
Making a correlation between concealed carry and shootings is beyond ridiculous — there is zero data supporting such conclusions.
There was a (now deleted) comment a few minutes ago about a police response resulting in someone being shot by the police, the commenter concluded that it was overall reasonable given the circumstances, since no one else got hurt. That looks like a rather low standard to hold police to, at least from my socialization...
... and I think it is pretty clear that the relation between police and (the other) people [1] is a societal dialogue. When the majority of people think it is ok for the police to shoot people over fairly minimal whateveractions or -inactions, then the police force will act in that direction. If the majority considers that unacceptable, then the police will try harder not shooting people. It is similar to guns methinks; if a majority actually felt that regular shootings are an issue that ought to be fixed, then ... duh... something would happen. Nothing happens, though. What does that say about the society this takes place in?
[1] A word that gets used here sometimes (in mostly American, Russian or 3rd world contexts) is civil[ists], which sounds kinda strange to me (from my perspective police is a civil institution, not a para-military institution that you can contrast with civil - more differences in the same vein).
If 0.00005% of the population decides to spend the last 20 minutes of their life going on a murder spree, there's not much you can do, at least in the context of America.
Guns are prolific in the US: between 2000 and 2010, 2,000,000 AR15s alone were manufactured for domestic use.
Deciding on a set of laws to control that number of firearms to end these arbitrary events is not simple, and perhaps not feasible with how many citizens regard firearm ownership a right. California has some of the strictest gun laws, but has been victim to more mass shootings than other states (of course depends on the definition of mass shooting).
America Uncovered (from Chris Chappel of China Uncensored) does a relatively good unbiased video on the topic https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hAtLnTyimT0
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/us/25shooters.html [2] https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/dec/17/how-ma...
On a societal scale just because there is a differential across different societies does not mean that one is wrong and the other is correct. They might just be different. For some people, for example, it is obvious that you can't compare median European culture to American culture (in as much as American and central Chinese culture do not compare, to cite another, perhaps more obvious and common example), for they are vastly different even if superficially similar and sharing some set of values.
Since these societies do not compare, assuming measures to control issues transfer between societies is foolish. I.e. assuming that gun control would work in America based on gun control working in other places is nothing but a non-sequitur in my mind.
Again, and just to reiterate, I am not arguing for some set of regulation or another that (presumably) your society should enact or not. I merely observe differences and of course see things in a certain light and tend to rank and order things a certain way, after all, I know in which society I want to live, and I know in what society I would never want to live.
(clarification: when I write "America" I specifically mean the United States thereof)
We should get started asap.
Guns don't kill people, people kill people. I think focusing on mental health and inequality/poverty alleviation is a more viable option in our country than weapons removal.
Of course that could happen in parallel with policies that fit into current law and have a more immediate impact.
My point is that this isn't possible. There is _not_ popular support for these kind of changes, and if you think there is, I implore you to spend some time talking to people from the Midwest. There absolutely would be armed resistance to these kinds of changes, assuming an amendment could be passed(which it can't).
You've got to be practical and realistic with legislation. Would it be better if there were no guns? Maybe, but the reality is that millions of people in the US have guns, and millions of people will always have guns. We've got to learn to work around that.
Beyond some of the more obvious ones like our lawmakers know about (gun show loopholes, etc.), maybe something like requiring insurance, just like you have for your car.
There's a lot more regulation that can't be done but no willpower or even political power, seeing as that new terrible bill about concealed carry just got passed by the House.
No resolution in sight, at least for 2-4 years.
Needless to say 90% of US gun owners wouldn't make it in the military and thus would not be allowed to bear arms. Problem solved.
Most of the people committing gun violence in the US are in poverty. They use guns and other weapons to earn money(mostly in drugs and robbery) and to gain control of their lives.
_Most_ people with guns never use them illicitly, because they are never in a position where they feel the need. I want more people in our country to never feel the need, and I feel poverty alleviation would be a fantastic way to do that.
Where I live (Hungary) there is almost no gun violence. The few instances I'm aware of that do involve guns are things where violent groups are involved like organized crime or right-wing groups. In those cases I think that the police go in prepared for something different when they interact with people on a day to day basis.
When I moved here from the US it was a big adjustment. I would hear a loud bang and think someone had fired off a gun. Now I hear the same noise and realize it is fireworks or construction. When I'm out in the city I no longer have to worry about an armed confrontation and that's relaxing. In fact I didn't realize how much those things weighed on me in the US until I got away from it.
The proliferation of guns is the reason so many people get shot in the US and it's no surprise the police are a big part of it.
2) Why would you worry about a (remote) gun-shot that you heard? By the time you hear it, you will be already shot-or-not. If not - why worry?
If you're not shot now, you could still be shot later. So trying to assess the situation to find out whether more shots will be fired seems like a good idea.
When I lived in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix, the city installed a system that could track gunfire and pinpoint the location for police. I can say I've heard gunfire in every city I've mentioned and called it in to police in those places more than once.
I don't even know where to begin with 2. I was fishing with a friend on the Verde river in AZ. We were just below the Horseshoe dam. We were fishing for catfish at night. Someone a little further down river (couldn't see them through the bushes and such) started firing off guns. We immediately packed up and left. They were probably partying and shooting up into the air.
The idea that if you hear gunfire you should just ignore it unless you've been hit - well I have to believe you are just trolling.
I've been near the edge of war-zones. Once or twice, in them. But apparently I've missed out on the urban American experience.
1.) November just ended, and so deer hunting season. There's still black powder season ongoing, plus rabbit, coyote, and game bird seasons.
2.) There's a rifle range two miles away. Then there's a Sig Sauer training facility to the other side. It's pretty common to hear automatic weapons fire.
There is a massive correlation between (gun) crime and poverty. Regional inequality means that those who live in poverty have a pretty poor chance of improving their lives. To me, the problem stems less from guns and more from a poor quality of life for massive numbers of people in America.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_c...
So either give poor communities heaps of money or take away guns. Or just wait till they shoot themselves, which is current US approach to the problem.
We have 101 guns per 100 Residents[1]. Do you really think removing guns is a viable option at this point? What makes you think this wouldn't be met with violent resistance from people who want to defend their constitutional rights? Even if we _could_ remove all guns, wouldn't those in poverty just begin using knives, acids, and explosives like they do in other countries? Why not make people's lives better instead?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_c...
I'm just pointing out it's cheaper solution to resolving gun violence.
> Even if we _could_ remove all guns, wouldn't those in poverty just begin using knives, acids, and explosives like they do in other countries?
Mostly knifes I guess. But it's harder to kill a person accidentally with a knife then it is with a gun. Almost all gun death are accidental. Killer just wanted the victim to stop doing something or to punish him/her for some percieved transgression and it wasn't supposed to be capital punishment.
I'd love to see a set of worldwide correlations:
- homicide rate VS gun ownership (very little, apparently!)
- homicide rate VS income inequality
- homicide rate VS wealth inequality
The proliferation of guns make it harder to respond like that, but still a lot of the cases we see with gunfights involving the police in the US is cases where individuals or pairs of officers go after suspects alone without waiting for backup and without trying to contain and de-escalate.
De-escalating these conflicts costs more resources in the initial response, but tends to make most conflict end quickly.
Importantly it also gives criminals a very strong reason to avoid being pulling weapons at police - they can be confident police will not arm themselves first, and will not escalate a situation unnecessarily.
Do you really believe this in all situations? I don't. In a standoff between 5 cops and 15 criminals I'd rather see the cops kill them all than vice versa, since the cops didn't create the bad situation in the first place. We all weight lives based on their moral value and culpability in the situation.
Maybe that's an extreme example, but the way it happens more often is that a suspect pulls a gun, points it at a single cop, and the cop has to decide whether to kill the suspect or die him/herself. I'd always argue that in such a situation the cop should shoot.
Are you suggesting that shoot to wound is a better policy?
In the UK for example, police is more likely to respond with a factor of 4x-5x more officers than suspected criminals, and will avoid approaching until they know they have numerical and tactical superiority.
Of course, sometimes that fails - you can't predict every possible situation, but it's rare.
Success, surely? He protected his partner, who might have been harmed.
The way something like this would likely have gone down somewhere like the UK would be that the first responders would have called for reinforcement, and then kept their distance and waited. You don't engage someone armed unless there is immediate danger to others. She should never have been close enough to be in danger.
In the UK they may or may not call in a firearms team in such a case, but if they did, they'd be brought in as a precaution. More likely they'd close down the area around him and wait, and wear the guy down, and then see if they could get him to drop the weapon peacefully.
For comparison there was a case of a man robbing a house near me a while back unarmed, and the police brought in 20 officers, chased him until he climbed onto a roof. Then they simply waited for 4-5 hours until he accepted he had no way out.
So many of the cases I hear about from the US is down to impatience and seemingly some kind of belief that they need to stop things as quickly as possible rather than trying to stop things with as little conflict as possible.
I don't think it's necessarily so much punishment as fear that if they don't do something, things will escalate. But most of the time if you contain a threat and wait, the level of conflict will de-escalate. So much violence boils down to fear that the other side will be willing to use more violence. And that fear is pervasive through some groups of people. E.g. we see that in the insistence of keeping or carrying weapons.
One could also easily point to the much higher probability that a criminal has a gun in the United States, although I do not think that that alone is sufficient.
Its your own responsibility to protect yourself and your loved ones or other people who can't protect themselves, that's a fact, and it's high time the anti-gun crowd pulled their heads out of their ass, because a gun equalizes an otherwise unequal situation.
God made humans, Sam colt made them equal. I'm an atheist but the principle still stand. This goes for one of the most vulnerable classes of humans as well, women.
As a combat vet I have some major issues with the militarization of police, and their poor training/methods, so I got a bit ot. If we were to have a real conversation, I think we would be better served to talk of the pinkertonian origins of policing, or the CIA/FBI influence on it (eg. OccupyWall Street snipers), and the general lack of punishment of oath breakers, or the thin blue line.
Instead far too many use it to pivot to a session of anti-gun circlejerking.
western films? How about the real west,
where self defense was a way of life.
I'm not sure how the rest of your comment relates to my comment.
There are neighborhoods in the U.S. where your chance of being the victim of a violent crime in given year is 1 in 7.[2] That's for civilians. When we send police in to try and protect those victims it's hard to send them unarmed.
[0] - http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-dangerous-cities-in-... [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... [2] - http://abcnews.go.com/Business/worst-neighborhoods-violent-c...
The point is whether or not you 1) go in without backup, 2) seek to de-escalate rather than escalate with armed threats from the outset.
If you're likely to meet armed resistance, then the UK strategy of getting civilians away, contain while waiting for backup and then seek to wait out and de-escalate is even more applicable exactly because the risks are higher, and indeed UK police tends to stick to that even more firmly when they come across armed resistance, while the US approach seems to be the opposite of going in more aggressively when they see a weapon.
Similarly for most of social research; it assumes that the findings be taken in the context of other information we have about our actual world. In a perfect world, 100% of homicide deaths would be for those who "deserve" it (I don't think resisting arrest qualifies, but let's say they're killed in the course of stopping them from killing others on the spot), but the assumption of such statistics is that we don't live in such a world. It would still be interesting to know how many of those deaths were necessary, but I think that knowing what we know about the chance of the police being present during homicides, the number of perpetrators vs. number of victims etc.[1], one third seems like a high number. That it's low compared to what we'd expect in a spherical-cow world where the police have super-powers should not affect much how we view the data given what we know about the real world (although it's true that some additional data would clarify matters further).
[1]: For example, one of the few very clear cases of justified homicide is during mass shootings, vehicle-ramming and the like. The ratio of perpetrators to victims in those cases is usually much lower than 1:3.
This pull quote isn't related to your main point, but to digress a bit on it...
The state, having a presumed monopoly on the legitimate use of pre-emptive force, reacts this way to application of laws, no? For example - there is a law that says that I can't plant pink flowers or sell looseys or whatever. I violate that law. The progression of consequences subsequently goes like this:
o I get a fine. I don't pay it
o I get a fine on that fine. And a stern warning. I don't pay it.
o They send a note or an armed-or-not person to invite me to go spend a few days in a metal box. I do not go.
o They send armed persons to forcibly retrieve me to put me in that metal box. I resist.
o They apply overwhelming force to ... well, force me. I resist more.
o They kill me.
It does NOT matter what the law is (chewing bubble gum, paying taxes, open container, lemonade stand licensure, drinking a beer outside of 7-11), the sequence of escalation is largely the same.
How can we NOT expect cops to kill us? That's what the state is - that's what it does - that's its function when faced with non-compliance with whatever set of rules our elected representatives have put into place.
That's not what happens in most countries, though, so clearly it's not a problem with "the state", but with American law enforcement. Police can overpower one unarmed person, regardless of how strongly he resists, without killing him. Not only they can, but that's what they do in most places: you resist -- they take you by force, but they don't kill you.
Also, using violence to enforce the laws long predates the state (what we call "the state" today was largely created only in the 17th century). The role of the state is to reduce the number of people who can employ violence when enforcing the law (and, of course, to centralize the law itself), from your local lord and his soldiers, the church and its inquisitors, your local robber-baron and his Pinkertons, to those whose training and licensing is, at least hopefully, supervised and sanctioned by the general public.
Fair point. In the process of resisting, USians are a risk of shooting back.
But I can't say whether I agree or disagree with your election of the qualifier "most"
In my small (I say) set of adversarial encounters with law enforcement in Japan, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, there were more than one person on the law-enforcement side of the encounter that appeared more than willing to do terminal violence, should there be any sort of excuse to do so. And those are "nice" places! I don't know what I would have found if I'd actually gone somewhere rough...
The killing is only possible by mistake at any stage of this process.
Even on the first one. They collected a fine from you and you have no money to buy yourself life saving medicine and you die. They killed you by taking away you last money at the moment your life depended on it.
Probability of killing you obviously increases as escalation progresses but never reaches 100%
I am probably more aware of this than most. In addition to the clinical example, it actually occurs (in the US) in family law a fair amount more than I see admitted in the public discourse.
> Probability of killing you obviously increases as escalation progresses but never reaches 100%
Well, yes. But uncertainty abounds on both sides. Neither of the counter-parties to the violent transaction know each other well enough to prevent a certain non-linear ratchety-ness to the escalation.
I am not for cop's killing civians ... but I don't see any other outcome to the environment (cultural context, and situational uncertainty) that we have (collectively) created.
I will admit that we might be wise to hire calmer officers of the law, but, on average, when they have come to "get me", I've found them pretty calm. (Some nicer and more accomodating than others - but usually mostly professional).
EDIT: Comments in this thread may make me appear as if I am some sort of bad-man or out-law. I tend to not think of myself that way - I don't rob, break-in, assault, rape, kidnap or murder. Or even take stuff that isn't mine. Or break or paint on other people's property. The US regulatory system is complex and one might get caught up in any number of ways. The other thing, though, is that I am curious, and often wonder: What would they do if a non-violent offender just says "no"? The direct consequenses are usually not very harsh, but there are some knock-on effects that do impair one's life. "Civil disobediance" (whatever that means) can be costly over time. (Maybe that's the point of it? IDK)
Yesterday's example:Graphic video shows Daniel Shaver sobbing and begging officer for his life before 2016 shooting
According to the police report, Brailsford was carrying an AR-15 rifle with the phrase “You’re F—ed” etched into the weapon. The police report also said the “shots were fired so rapidly that in watching the video at regular speed, one cannot count them.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/12/0...
How many like this should we see every year? How many don't have a nice video to release?
No, because every police killing is extra-judicial execution. Our laws don't put a capital punishment on resisting arrest, fleeing from police, reaching for a wallet, or being scary looking (i.e., black) (/s). They don't even prescribe capital punishment for most malicious acts and crimes. It's not up to police to serve as judge, jury and executioner.
Clearly the better outcome is that criminals are arrested by the police using the appropriate and necessary amount of force, and then sentenced in a court of law. Having the police metering out and executing death-sentences on the fly is not a good idea, regardless of how "bad" the perpetrator is.
Or are you imagining a world where crime always happen in the open where police is around, so police by shooting at exactly the right moment can prevent violence or murder?
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLEO/comments/2dgwkp/what_makes_a...
It’s not short but it’s well worth a read. I think he pretty much nails it. He also manages to be reasonably objective which can be tough for someone close to the subject matter.
To summarize crudely, through the lens of my own biases and in a way that doesn’t do it justice at all (no really, go read it in full):
- Police in Germany don’t have to shoot first or have twitchy trigger fingers because it’s so unlikely anyone will shoot at them. So they don’t.
- The problems in the US are systemic, deep rooted in the culture of the society not just the police, and gun availability doesn’t cause the deaths but does significantly exacerbate the problem.
I dare you to find a single article about something like this from Germany or even the EU.
Edit: things don’t have to be very common for people to have deep seated fears and want to try and avoid it (however much they might or might not be overreacting doing so).
I also never even thought about somebody having a gun whereas in the US I guess this fear is always there.
This is only my personal experience but after working with the MPs and now living in the US I think part of it is the competitiveness in the US. People want to win. That includes cops who want to win over their adversaries and not look like losers.
There was a video on how Germany and The Netherlands tackle cross-border crime. They ride in pairs, one German, one Dutch. What the Dutch officer highlighted was that the German officer was allowed to reach for his gun, hold it to his/her side and put it back without reporting he/she did so. This would not be allowed in The Netherlands and one would have to report that this was done. Reaching for your gun is a big thing here.
Unfortunately the video is in Dutch: https://youtu.be/v4TyJUEMPVU (4:40)
If you need a translation of certain parts, just ask.
Yes, he is correct about attitudes regarding individuality. According to the Geert Hofstede indexes the US is the most individualistic country in the world by a lot. As an American who has lived outside the US for years it isn't this individualism that is to blame.
The actual behavioral culprit is thoughts on security. The US is a generally safe place and the wealthiest nation in the world, but the attitudes on security here are more similar to those of third-world countries I have live in. Americans have a cultural fear of injury whether that injury is a physical harm, disrespect, or an injustice. This was one of the huge selling points when Trump was campaigning for President. He really capitalized on people's fear of terrorism and ISIS. No matter how remote and irrational those things are these were real fears people had.
These security fears are such a huge deal to American culture that it explains our use of military and politics to such an extent that the US always scores relatively low on the Transparency International Index considering the actual low corruption and efficiency of government services.
That being said some important points are highlighted in terms of a lack of accountability of the police in the US.
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...
The Guardian's list of people killed by police in 2015 and 2016 identifies approximately 1100/y. [1]
And the Bureau of Justice Statistics released preliminary findings (for June to August 2015) from a redesigned Arrest-Related Deaths program that extrapolated an estimated 1200 arrest-related homicides per year. [2]
1: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/...
If your issue is with the "final" 1,500 number (increased from 1,250), you'll find that it's well-supported in both the blog post:
>>> Keep in mind that the Bureau of Justice Statistics report itself excludes many jurisdictions in the United States that openly refuse to share any data with the FBI. The true number of homicides committed by police is therefore even higher. Though not a true estimate, my best guess of the number of police homicides in the United States is about 1,500 per year.
And the paper:
>>> As mentioned in Banks et al. (2015), these list intersection counts only include jurisdictions that reported any data (about 70%). As such, these numbers should be interpreted as estimates of the number of people killed by police in the reporting jurisdictions. If the reporting jurisdictions are missing from the dataset not because there were truly no killings in those areas during this period, but instead because they chose not to report homicides by police, the true number of police homicides could be 30% higher than we have suggested here.
Note that 1500 represents a 20% increase over 1250, which is lower than the 30% maximum estimate presented in the paper.
That's a rather large assumption that needs to be justified.
A = the number of jurisdiction-reported homicides
B = the number of media-reported homicides
M = the number of homicides on both lists
N = AB / M
Now, if jurisdiction-reported homicides are unreported by a factor of X, we can derive a more accurate figure for A by multiplying A by X. We also multiply M by X, because adding cases to list A also adds a similar ratio (on average) to the matches between both lists. And the estimate doesn't change.
N = (XA * B) / XM = AB / M
This assumes, of course, that homicides in the jurisdictions that don't report to the FBI or BJS are still reported by the media. That may not be true but if it's not true, it must be proven false.
When did this dystopia begin? It wasn’t too long ago right? What can I do to prevent this? There isn’t an organized dissent group. Idk what it really that I want.
You're getting hung up on the name.
"Black Lives Matter is an international activist movement...that campaigns against violence and systemic racism towards black people... The U.S. population's perception of Black Lives Matter varies considerably by race... former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, meanwhile, has accused it of racism." [1]
I totally agree that many people have a distorted view of the movement but to me that’s a reflection of problems with our culture more than problems with the movement.
This is why BLM should _not_ handle this situation. They think they're the only ones that cops are jerks to. The issue isn't racism, it's the inability of our police force to self-police and remove the bad apples.
> many people have a distorted view of the movement
It literally says that it has "campaigns against violence and systemic racism towards black people." Its focus is not police reform for everyone.
It is the way it is in America, because - as a whole - they don't care that much about gun violence.
It's mostly blacks and Latinos getting killed and they are still minorities. And the poor white Americans that also fall victim to police and other gun violence just don't have much political influence.
Honest question: Couldn't this just be grouped into "poor people" Are affluent blacks and latinos being killed?
I am not denying racism by any means, but it seems people of poverty are most at risk.
Don't blame either our messed up political system or our militarized police on us. At this point, our government is a corporate oligarchy that has been gerrymandered and rigged to the point that our vote does not matter, and the low pay of our cops combined with the stream of military gear and low amount of training made them trigger-happy.
It's not our people that want this.
The Sergeant (voice in the vid) thinks he's fucking Jigsaw, and he wasn't even the guy that pulled the trigger. America is fucked.
> America is fucked.
Yups. Unless when you have a lot of money/influence.
I don't understand why rich Americans let it sink so far...
No idea what you are trying to say here...
Even in this video the guy is reaching behind his back a couple of times, while being told to keep them visible.
The man in the video is clearly distressed and trying to obey. The officer escalates the situation significantly.
It's 5 minutes of conflicting instructions and repeated death threats by a man heavily covered in tattoos carrying an assualt rifle with the words "you're f*ed" engraved on it.
How were the multiple police officers incapable of handcuffing the clearly compliant crying victim in 5 whole mins? Am amazed anyone watching that could possibly defend it.
Also, how was not the behaviour "stay on the ground, and my colleague will come and handcuff you ASAP". Where the hell are _other_ cops?
Hold on. An unarmed person standing up an even yelling or walking towards the cop it's still clearly not a serious threat and would not justify shooting in most "first" countries!
Let's not normalize the idea of "extreme self defence".
But I can imagine being scared shitless and pulling the trigger because of a sudden perceived threat, which is why this video felt shocking to me.
I obviously don't see why the shooter thought shooting was reasonable, but I also cannot imagine why he felt so threatened to be forced to shoot.
via https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/12/0...
Maybe the courts wont punish them, but it shouldn’t be very hard to ensure that the label of MURDERER will follow them for life.
* Name, DoB
* Some decent photos for easy identification
* Footage of them murdering someone, pages like this without solid evidence don't seem like a good thing.
* Collection of news articles, court documents
* Contact information (social media, home address(es), phone numbers)
* Employers contact information
it's not nothing.
Hopefully it'll at least hurt their future employment prospects a little, maybe make it harder for them to find a place to rent. At the very least it'll be easier for their neighbors to find out that they're living next to a killer.
Best case scenario they'll waste a lot of their time and money trying to get the site taken down via legal means. From experience I would expect many of these folks to drive themselves crazy trying to do that, generating further source material and drawing even more attention to their past.
The somewhat unlikely worst case scenario is that it simply doesn't bother them at all.
People ask George Zimmerman for his autograph.
This is the antithesis of modern justice. Despite my personal feelings about their decision, jurors should never have to fear public opinion.
Cops should very much have to fear the public opinion, it is their job to serve the public.
Police should certainly worry about general opinion. They are public servants.
Police were called when someone saw an occupant of the hotel room brandishing a weapon. The responders don't just walk up and cuff the man and woman because they are not sure if these are the armed people and are trying to stay out of a theoretical field of fire from the room.
That's not to say this isn't an awful video to watch. The officers scared the guy so much that it was impossible for him to comply.
"theoretical field of fire" it's not a war zone. It's time to acknowledge that part of the job description of a police officer is that you can do everything right and still be shot by a maniac. That's no different to any of us.
Did you notice how the officer was constantly tucking himself around the corner? He had no way of knowing whether there were more individuals waiting to ambush the officers. And that is a perfectly justifiable fear given the context of this situation. And the victim in this case reached behind his back multiple times, even after being told precisely not to. He could have been reaching for a weapon or it could have been something for more dangerous - imagine he was reaching for a detonator. It's easy to condemn the police officer, but at the same time this shooting took multiple unbelievably provocative actions on part of the victim to reach this point: point rifle outside hotel room apparently in vicinity of other hotel guests, decide to reach around back when specifically told to keep hands visible, repeat that mistake and reach even more directly towards your waist. I obviously can't condone the act, but on the other hand I also can't entirely condemn it either. It's an extremely unfortunate scenario.
Police probably shouldn't ever fire their weapons first...
Of course that would make being an officer slightly more physically dangerous, but only slightly. Most never have cause to fire their weapons in the line of duty anyway.
Some areas of the USA are actually very dangerous. In these areas there is a much higher likelihood of suspects being harmed and dangerous.
You’re basically asking other humans to implement a sound system (where false negatives mean they die) in an area with relatively high event rates. This doesn’t give me any moral clarity.
In cushy neighborhoods sure police officers likely do implement a complete system and no one gets shot. That’s much easier to justify based on basic probabilities.
This study finds a substantial difference in high crime areas, but still most officers never discharge their weapon in the line of duty:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/08/a-closer-loo...
About one-in-five officers (22%) in areas with at least six and but fewer than 10 violent crimes per 1,000 residents in 2015 have ever fired their service weapon. By contrast, about a third (32%) of officers who work in areas with a lower violent crime rate have discharged their gun. In areas where the violent crime rate is 10 or more, 28% of officers have fired their weapon. However, that proportion is not significantly different from the share that works in communities with fewer than six or six to fewer than 10 violent crimes per 1,000 residents.
Maybe the best way to stop them firing first is to not let them carry a firearm.
We can look at this this on a national level where we're already in pretty bad shape with a murder rate of 4.9 [1] compared to less than 1 for most of Europe. But where things get really insane is when you start breaking it down to where these events are often happening. Crime, especially violent crime, in the US is very centralized into a number of relatively small areas. For instance these [2] are the crime data for Ferguson, Missouri where Michael Brown was killed. In the year Michael Brown was killed, their homicide rate was double the US average. It's now skyrocketed to 42.8. To give some context to that 42.8 the murder rate in Mexico is 16.35. In Columbia it's 26.5. There are actually only 5 nations with a murder rate higher than Ferguson. And you'll find that these extreme rates of violence tend correlate pretty well to areas where the reported police violence is also coming from.
So the point here is that comparing how the police function in countries with little to no reason to expect extremely dangerous scenarios (or outcomes) to countries where such expectations are perfectly justified is not really logical. Here's an interesting thought experiment. Swap the police force of [less dangerous nation] with the police force of the US. Would you expect the behavior of the US police force in the now much more safe nation to change? What of the police from the safer nation now placed in a nation where people randomly killing police is actually a thing?
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
[2] - http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Ferguson-Missouri.html
sure, it could be worse...
America may not be "fucked" yet, but I've no idea how you'll stop the slide into becoming a police state.
Being shocked certainly hasn't stopped it from happening. So what's the secret?
I'm shocked this time because I haven't seen footage so bad. But I won't be shocked the next time...
As soon as you’re at the point where someone can say unchallenged something like “oh yeah, another black man’s been shot, who cares”, then perhaps there’s less hope.
The US isn’t there yet is it?
They don't, the shooter of that video has just been acquitted.
However, what baffled me in the end was this: "Ex-Arizona police officer acquitted of murder in shooting of unarmed man" [0]
To me this shows that the issue is not isolated to this single man, but points to a system that has become rotten.
0 - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/08/arizona-poli...
Is there a study anywhere that tries to correlate amount/quality-of-police-training and deaths involving police? I think that could be really interesting.
1) keep your distance
2) use pepper spray
3) wait for the right moment when no one (not even the suspect) will get hurt
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42277309
Just to reiterate:
> America is fucked.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/us/witnesses-told-grand-j...
Lumping him in with actual victims does actual victims a disservice.
I'd hardly describe a violent, 6'4", 300 pound guy charging at me as something that needs to be dealt with with kids gloves.
According to our legal tradition, you can use deadly force if you fear for your life. This is the universal right of all free people - to defend themselves.
Without exception, all the ones I have known have been good, helpful people who would not harm someone intentionally. (There are obviously a few bad ones, but none that I have known.)
It's one of the hardest, scariest, least fairly compensated jobs I can think of. Thank God for cops.
Don't get me wrong. I would be very interested in finding real solutions for the tendency to see Blacks gunned down by the police. My assumption is this known trend is the driving force behind this piece.
I just think this is the wrong way to approach the problem space.
How to lie with statistics is an excellent book. I highly recommend it. It is a large factor in my decision to not bother to read this piece too thoroughly.
Stop hiring racist police. Stop aquiting police of murder. Stop using tax payers dollars to pay for compensation claims.
One of the problems is that racism is insidious. People who self identify as idealists who are not racist will still agree with cultural norms that are secondary or tertiary forms of racism.
To try to illustrate this idea:
In my twenties, after months of hearing about my husband's new best friend from work, I finally met the man. He was black. My husband and I were both white. My husband had never once mentioned that his new best friend was black, even though he talked about him constantly.
I was shocked to realize that I had assumed he was white since my husband did not mention his race. In that instant, I realized this assumption was the product of a racist culture where such details mattered and needed to be stated privately ahead of time to avoid any awkwardness or misunderstanding.
I realized that was how racism worked -- you just have certain social norms that may seem innocuous, but that reinforce the ongoing issue. Many people will not consciously question myriad social norms. People soak up social norms by being exposed to them and trying to fit in. There usually isn't lots of overt instruction on how and why we do such things.
So, first you need someone to sort this out in their own heart and mind. Second, they need to disseminate this new standard, often at enormous risk to themselves. Questioning social norms is generally dangerous business and has a history of getting people killed.
Trying to find genuinely not racist people in a generally racist culture is very challenging. Most people from such a culture who see themselves as not racist will still have ugly bad habits and mental models.
And then, when they need to decide whether to pull the trigger or not, their biases will show, not because they hate Blacks so much that they want them dead, but because they don't trust Blacks as much as Whites.
I don't believe this is a problem that will really be solved by simply punishing people more a la The beatings shall continue until morale improves. Instead, we need to improve trust and I don't how that can happen. But it certainly won't happen with our current approach to the problem space, where trust issues between the races in America seem to not even be part of the discussion.
My original comment was downvoted to the negatives and one of the first three replies is a personal attack. The US was founded on the idea of innocent until proven guilty, but the public is not willing to follow that precept for this issue. Witch hunts tend to result in finding people guilty because that is what they set out to do. It is a very serious and damning flaw in this paper, but my comment on that aspect is not PC and is reason enough to lump me in with killer cops as part of the problem.
In such an atmosphere, good luck with even having a productive discussion. And if you can't even discuss it, you are unlikely to solve it.
I actively avoid American police. Unlike in other developed nations, they treat civilians as the enemy. Yet, unlike in developing nations, you can't just bribe them and get on with your day!
The lack of accountability for murders committed by police in the US is not a difficult "issue" to isolate.
1. Doctors 2. Foreign combatants 3. Police 4. Motorists 5. Other
I can see how all of those groups perform tasks that might result in the death of strangers unavoidably. Doctors are the only ones who I’d actually pay to wager with my life, so I’d them to win.
I’d like a world without wars, but I’m happy that we have a stading military.
I lived in the UK for 30 years. It’s national news when they kill someone and they stand up and appologise for not having a better solution. That feels about right. But their number isn’t zero.
And finally, cars. We’re already talking about the trolley problem wrt automated cars. It seems we accept that death from going 2-3 times our natural speed in vehicles 10x our weight is dangerous. But It would be nice if technology could get that death rate to lower than law enforcement.
75% killed by people close to them (not sure if they showed police close to them deaths)
16.6% killed by a stanger
8.3% killed by a police stranger (not that that is good!)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_c...
Finland has a national murder rate of 1.6. [1] At first that doesn't seem too bad as our murder rate is "only" about 300% higher. But that comparison by itself is quite misleading. Crime, and especially the most violent crimes including murder, are not evenly distributed in the US. They're heavily centralized into relatively small areas. So for instance these [2] are the crime data for Ferguson, Missouri where Michael Brown was killed. In the year Michael Brown was killed, their homicide rate was double the US average. It's now skyrocketed to 42.8 - 2,675% higher than Finland.
To give some context to that 42.8 the murder rate in Mexico is 16.35. In Columbia it's 26.5. As a matter of fact, in terms of nations - there are only 5 places in the world more dangerous than Ferguson, Missouri -- a town of some 20k people. I'm certainly not condoning police actions, but at the same time I think people don't really consider these situations in terms of context. Somebody, seemingly without irony, suggested we ought disarm the police. Imagine disarmed police in Mexico.. now increase the danger they face by 300%. That's what disarming police in areas like Ferguson, Missouri would be akin to.
This sort of reality is very foreign to us, who I suspect for the most part have led very privileged lives. And so we extrapolate our lives to a situation where suddenly the police are just killing people. And that would indeed be insane. It's so foreign for us to imagine how dangerous many places in the US are -- and it's these locations where the systemic police violence tends to also be heavily centralized.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
[2] - http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Ferguson-Missouri.html
Then let's add some context to this conversation. This whole post was made because of the recently released video of a police officer executing a citizen[1]. That police officer was then acquitted. This kind of police response would never occur in other civilized countries, regardless of the relative murder rate.
The downside of threaded discussions!
e.g. Imagine a world where police do their job even better, and eliminate all murder. But, in some cases, they have to kill the murderer before he takes an innocent victim. They never kill unless it's absolutely necessary and justified. In such a world, this statistic rises to "All people killed by strangers are killed by police", which sounds worse than the headline, yet such a world is obviously better than ours.
e.g. Imagine a world where police never do anything. They drink beer in the station all day. All people killed by strangers are killed by non-police. Such a world is much worse than ours, yet this stat looks a lot better.
Just these very simple thought experiments should give you pause about what this statistical comparison actually means (or if it means anything at all).
---
My two questions to those who think this is some sort of obvious travesty:
1. What would be a healthy ratio between [people killed by non-police strangers] and [people killed by police]? 1:5? 1:10? 1:100? Why?
2. How is this random choice of two statistics not just another variation on the Chinese robber fallacy? [1]
[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chine...
Germany: 2155 homicides in 2011, 6 by the police.
http://www.dw.com/en/two-german-police-officers-killed-by-fl...
In most of Western Europe it's extremely rare that police officers are killed in the line of duty.
Note: most countries count the number of bullets fired by police, as well as number of times a weapon was drawn, in the US they don't officially count people killed.
http://m.rp-online.de/politik/studie-gewalt-gegen-polizisten...
Trust me: you do NOT want the police to be your friend. They tried that experiment here.