US police is conditioned to react like unprofessional cowards and shoot first, ask questions later, even if the suspect is a kid playing in a playground, an old woman holding a knife 30 feet away, or an unarmed homeless person (I'm not making these cases up either).
As a counterexample, Eric Torrell was recently shot to death by Swedish police [0] (link is Swedish). He was 20 years old with Downs syndrome and carrying a toy gun.
The united states doesn't track the number of times police shoot a gun, only the number of times police murder somebody. That number is over 1,000 people per year.[0]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_firearm_use_by_country
The LAPD put over 100 rounds in one incident into two innocent women's truck when they were out delivering newspapers. The truck looked nothing like the suspect's vehicle. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/no-charges-8-lapd-s...
> When one of the women threw a newspaper onto the pavement in the early-morning hours, an officer believing the sound was a gunshot opened fire. Officers unable to see clearly into the truck sprayed it with 103 rounds, and hit seven nearby homes and nine other vehicles with gunshots and shotgun pellets.
That's more rounds than Germany uses in most years for its entire 80M population, and more than the UK discharged in what looks like the last decade or so. In one shooting, in one city, against people who'd done nothing wrong.
30 guns fired / 10.10^6 people vs 1 000 police murders / 325.10^6 people.
3.10^-6 guns fired per capita vs 3.10^-6 murders per capita.
Couldn't find the Swedish police murders stats. I'd estimate on their police murders per capita to be 2 or 3 orders of magnitude less than the USA.
[0]http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-chicago...
Statistics of police shootings.
>follow a similar policy as American police if their own safety is at risk
Doesn't take guns or actual risk. US cops thing their safety is "at risk" from a middle aged middle class black man sitting in a car with his kids beside them. Or an unarmed homeless person getting too rowdy.
Do you have any stats specifically on cases like this where the person killed was neither armed nor dangerous? Interested but haven't been able to find any.
It was an extremely troublesome case even here in Norway. It rocked the very principals that our societies are based on. So yes, it can happen (it has happened once) but it's not institutionalised.
I suspect this case will also be used in training in the future as an example of what not to do.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...
2) Think that doesn't happen in the EU ? Think again:
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/05/18/562151/Belgian-pol...
Please note that "police chase" here means that they ordered the van to stop and it calmly kept driving, less than 40km/h on an empty road. No police officer was in danger at any point, nor was anyone else.
So they shot "for the tires" (that wasn't their initial story, but oh well) ... through the backdoor ... and right through a 3 year old Kurdish girl. That girl is now dead.
Then they captured them and refused to bring these people to the hospital. Whether there was anything that could be done for the girl at this point is an open question, but the police did not make such a determination. They just refused medical care, pretending it was an escape attempt.
So just stop it. Police "gung-ho" attitudes are not a US problem. The whole appeal of working for the police obviously includes the power you get over others. Another attraction is the many movies about the police. And there's very few "let's get the legal details right" movies about police, isn't there ? This attracts exactly the sort of people that do shoot to kill in situations that absolutely don't justify it.
And it's not limited to the US.
What IS different however, is that the odds of anyone actually successfully mounting a legal challenge to such an officer afterwards are WAY higher in the US. There's more procedures, less immunity, and generally the system is much more aware of the fact that it makes mistakes in the US.
Does that make it better ? Don't know. At that point the damage is done, of course. Still, it's better than nothing I guess.
While that story is a tragedy, the US police kills about 1200 persons/year - or about 40 adjusting for the size of the population of Belgium. A single case doesn't not make the attitudes equivalent.
Plus it'll be fun. They may even let you fire a few of the weapons.
Thinking about what that means for their attitude in the street ... not so much fun.
Why ? Because the agents think they're cool.
Ok, apparently MRAPs are armored vehicles. Yes they do have armored vehicles. That specific one ? Probably not, but the same general idea ? Yes. They often use them for riots and protests and such.
There was something on the news about buying new ones that are more bomb resistant.
What an odd way to put it, you make it sound like "It's all a thing of the past", after you went through so much effort to explain how nothing was supposedly wrong in the first place.
I really don't get why some US Americans insist on this "not being a problem at all", even when literally all metrics point to exactly that: It being a rather big problem.
I mean, don't you even realize how macabre it is to point out "They have more chance of mounting a legal challenge in the US!"? Granted: If they have the money to hire a good lawyer and their case gets them anything.
But having the chance to get some money is rarely a good replacement for losing a family member in often completely preventable incidents.
Compared to absolutely nothing at all in the EU ? That's what I'm pointing out. It's not a good solution, imho, but it's better than anything the EU countries provide for sure.
It means police at least have to be aware that if they use these tactics against the wrong person, they could get seriously convicted for that. In the EU, what is there for them to fear ? I mean if it ends up on national TV then they have a problem. Otherwise ...
They are not a US-only occurrence. But they very much are a US problem (and a relative rarity elsewhere).
>And it's not limited to the US.
No, like incarceration is not limited to the US. But the US has 25% of the world's prison population for just 4% of its total population.
Something occurring elsewhere doesn't mean anything. Most things will happen elsewhere too, even mass shootings.
But some places are the undisputed capitals of those things, by a far margin, and instead of putting one's head in the sand, people should acknowledge the problem.
>What IS different however, is that the odds of anyone actually successfully mounting a legal challenge to such an officer afterwards are WAY higher in the US.
LOL.
That is a truly extraordinary claim. The idea that "law enforcement gets away with everything" is a true meme (not the funny, internet kind), the default expectation in the US among its inhabitants, a stereotype that foreigners have of us, and unfortunately our reality. This is a fact that law enforcement officials both recognize and abuse. I want to say that the template of "cop does [horrible thing] while 3 independent sources record it, and [is given paid vacation/was relocated/had his case dismissed by the DA]" is so pervasive that you might be able to get a matching news story like that every week here. And god help anyone who did not have a recording of their encounter.
Really ? And not in the EU ? Because there recently was a reality series about the Dutch police on TV. Which included one particularly bad scene in Rotterdam. It looked like some obviously North Africans saw the police and turned around (but was it actually that they saw the police ? And was it really that they were criminals because ... read on). The police pursued them, tackled them and, frankly, violently forced them to confess to possession of stolen goods. They had zero proof, or even justification beyond that some goods were stolen (in a neighbourhood of tens of thousands of people).
Are you going to claim that wasn't just outright racism ? And whilst on some level I might agree with the assessment that odds were perhaps good those youth did steal (in general I mean, they're not known for respect of property law is what I mean. Nothing whatsoever against those individuals), but I find the odds of them having stolen specific the goods the police accused them off ... generously (for the police) ASSUMING these kids were indeed thieves, it seems to me that those odds could not possibly have been more than 5%. Not that the police clarify what specific goods they were looking for/accusing them of, nor where they were stolen from, and they were asking people they had just tackled and left tied up on the pavement for several minutes and beat several times. Hell, I doubt the police even knew for sure something had been stolen in the first place (because reporting stolen goods in the center of Rotterdam ... why would you bother ?)
Next time you hear about youth riots in Western European cities you might want to remember that this sort of thing is what the police constantly subjects these kids to.
This was put, with their full permission, on TV, as an example of what they do, intermingled with a sort of recruiting effort. And I'm just sitting there ... FUCK YOU RACIST ASSHOLES. But seriously, this behavior is what they're proud off, or at least what they want to show off.
And let's not kid ourselves here: police in Rotterdam are better behaved than, for example, police in Paris suburbs, if even 5% of the stories are true. So it gets worse, much worse than this in the EU.
So not only are (at least some) US police officers insufficiently trained to de-escalate potentially dangerous situations, they are actively punished when they do de-escalate. They are expected to shoot people.
Equally bizarre is that law enforcement experts warn people not to talk to the police without a lawyer. Not even as a witness or to help them. The American attitude towards police and police work is utterly alien to me.
While cops can kill citizens with relative impunity (especially black ones).
Citation needed. I can't think of any peaceful fix that would get a reprimand unless other stuff fucked up badly behind the scenes.
He had autism and had run away from his family. He was sleeping under someone’s balcony, police came to remove him, ended up killing him.
This was in Hollywood. Los Angeles, off Sunset Blvd.
Edit: I believe this [0] is the case. Looks like those officers sued for being put on desk duty afterward and initially were rewarded $4M. That’s after the police settled with the mother of the man killed for less than $1M.
0 - http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-verdict-lapd-ove...
A caretaker, and the escaped autistic man he was trying to bring back with him to their facility, was confronted by a police officer. The caretaker, immediately realizing the danger of interacting with an American police officer, lays on the ground, puts his hands in the air, and then repeatedly states the man infront of him was 'autistic' and 'holding a toy train'.
While the caretaker was lying on the ground, on his back, with his hands in the air, the cop fires 3 rounds at the pair, striking the caretaker in the leg.
The caretaker, understandably confused and upset, asks "why did you shoot me?". The officer's response, "I don't know."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwHJL5X97Do
Or, refer the case where a Dallas Police woman broke into somebody else's apartment, and then proceeded to execute the man she encountered inside
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/us/botham-jean-dallas-sho...
Or refer to Daniel Shaver being executed at point blank range while crying on his hands and knees to "please not shoot".
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/12/0...
In all of these cases, the person shot was completely and obviously innocent of any sort of crime. The standard penalty for this type of officer behavior is: paid vacation, perhaps firing the officer if the murder is especially egregious.
Or that, "someone who has multiple police in his family" could be biased.
Given that police in the US are more likely to encounter dangerous situations than other developed countries [0], it seems plausible that officers in the US enter interactions with a higher level of fear are more likely to do something stupid as a result. Apparently whatever screening and training they get isn't enough because these are the people who are supposed to be able to handle these exact situations.
[0] https://www.vox.com/cards/police-brutality-shootings-us/us-p...
I can't remember the report anymore, but I remember this one incident where parents called the police for help to deal with their mentally unstable son, around 18 years, having a rage fit.
The responding officers managed to cuff the kid and get him to the ground, when one of the police officers just went "I've had enough of this", pulled his gun out, and shoot the cuffed kid on the ground in the back, literally executing the kid while his parents were standing like 5 feet away from it.
The kid ended up dying, can't remember if the officer got any real punishment, but I'm pretty sure his parents will never ever call the police for "help".
For a guy pulling the handwaving argument you don't seem to try too hard.
It's not right to characterize all US officers as horrible people but there's definitely something wrong here that seems to be distinctly American.
A good friend was an LAPD beat cop, then detective for 30 years.
Every single day he was on duty he took out his loaded firearm, pointed it directly in someones face and had his finger on the trigger, for fear they might pull a gun or do something else to harm him. Police friends of his were shot and killed.
He shot and killed two people on duty, and discharged his firearm many, many times.
He absolutely said "It's a war out there, and we want to come home alive"
I understand (although do not have evidence to hand) a number of LAPD beat cops manage to go quite a long time between instances of having to draw a firearm and point it at someone's face. If this officer was doing it every day, was he simply the world's unluckiest police officer, or was he the kind of police officer who makes situations more violent rather than less? I understand that typical US police training (if there is such a think in a nation with such a large range of police forces) does contain rather less "how to make situations less violent" training than their counterparts in other countries.
Police in the US are trained heavily in de-escalation, but sometimes overwhelming show of force lets everybody go home alive (yes, the offender as well), rather than allowing a situation to escalate to a point where deadly force has to be used.
[0] https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/05/05/police-de-escala...
Maybe sometimes, but I suspect in the vast majority of cases, a show of force is what causes the situation to escalate to the point where deadly force has to be used.
Who are you more likely to shoot? A policeman pointing a loaded gun at you, or one with gun holstered talking calmly (but maybe firmly) to you. Pulling a gun out automatically leads to a "shoot first or risk getting shot" situation.
You're absolutely going to need a citation for that. I don't believe US cops have to even report instances of upholstering their sidearm - It's such a common occurrence. Discharging a firearm is a different story.
Of course, my friend was a cop in the late 70s, 80s and 90s, and did all kinds of things that would land him in very deep water today. i.e. to disperse an angry crowd you just rack a round in a shotgun. He said it works extremely well without even firing it.
Here are a number of LEOs discussing how frequently they draw their weapon, but again nothing about actually pointing it at someone: https://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=432377 Other such discussion seem to indicate similarly; that even drawing is not common.
On such forums, detectives seem to indicate that they have even less need to draw firearms.
The 2016 LAPD review use-of-force review indicates that in 2016 there were 40 officer-involved-shooting. I understand the LAPD employs on the order of 9000 to 10000 police officers, so on the order of 95% or more of those police officers didn't shoot at anyone. However, it looks like they don't record drawing a firearm or pointing firearms at people's faces.
I suspect citations for your hypothesis - that LAPD beat cops draw and point their weapons every day - will be similarly hard to come by, but if you have some, please do present them.
You're right I don't have hard citations, only first-hand evidence from someone with 30 years actually doing it.
So if you might need to defend yourself, but you want to avoid escalating the situation by aiming a gun at someone, it makes sense.
Once a gun is pointed at a person, there are no more steps of escalation, no more ways to express how much you want them to do something; the only next step is to pull the trigger. The situation has suddenly become extremely dangerous and very volatile.
Warning: Articles contain some graphic but necessary images.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Raid_on_Armando_Diaz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Aldrovandi
https://italychronicles.com/the-shocking-case-of-stefano-cuc...
...etc.
As in many other countries, the real problem is not guns (clarification: I'm against guns) but selection; someone letting his political views or the level of testosterone screw up his personal control during service should never ever be given an uniform, let alone a gun, period. And I'm 100% sure if we publicly screened every cop after service for drugs or steroids use, the scandal would explode within days. Cops are violent because corrupt powers need them as such: once they get a minor punishment or are acquitted after an unprovoked beating/killing, they can become a paramilitary force in the hands of the same politicians who helped them, both during service and after they retire. As usual, it's all about corruption.