Any time you call a man with a gun to your location and they have immunity to shoot you based on their fear, you run the risk of being shot.
Lately it seems that risk has grown.
Lately it seems that risk has grown.
I have no evidence, but I feel that it only seems the risk has grown because technology has made it harder to cover up. I think as it gets more attention, the risk is going down.
Yes, the problem is bad and it exists. But we need more facts to see: Is it getting better? What's working to prevent it?
It used to be when a kid did something wrong there was tolerance for his youthful ignorance and he was allowed to learn from his mistakes without having a criminal record. Now zero tolerance has stopped the pouring out of beer with a stern warning next time parents / legal matters would be involved.
Law enforcement is the mission. It is not a good mission because it is actually disrupting a peaceful society.
I wish we could bring back the peace officers and the mission of keeping the peace using laws instead of enforcing the laws at the cost of social peace.
Radley Balko is a writer who's covered the issue thoroughly: https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...
I just think it's pretty clear by now that the primary driving factor for police criminality becoming a political issue is that very many members of the socio-economic underclass now have internet-connected video cameras on them at all times.
https://govtrackinsider.com/there-is-no-federal-database-of-...
But others are
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_deadly_force_i...
There is very little training on de-escalation as it's incompatible with Officer safety and often requires an Officer to relinquish control of a situation. And unfortunately when dealing with people who have mental health issues, you're often not in control of the situation and neither are they.
I have two brothers that are CHP. They have never discharged their weapons at an individual, but talking to them, this attitude of their personal safety being the most important part of how they handle a situation, makes it very difficult for them to understand how police actions can actually create the danger they are claiming to want to prevent.
There's also the unfortunate reality that practical techniques like securing your sidearm or anticipating a threat can be misconstrued as threatening or intimating and can often escalate a situation.
There could also be some benefit to providing some training the public on what to expect and how to behave in the presence of a Police Officer. I was pulled over when I was a teenager and I immediately started digging in my glove box for my insurance card and registration. When I pulled them out and turned to my window I was greeted by the Officer's gun in my face.
There's also a lot to be said for training Officers on how to deal with the public and de-escalate situations. I was the victim of a public assault and while I was waiting to be interviewed by the Officer conducting the investigation, another Officer casually approached me. She acknowledged that I was upset, fidgety, and gesticulated when I spoke. She provided some consultation and advised me to keep my hands at my side and speak slowly while being interviewed by the other Officer.
Most people after a specific age find it incredibly very difficult to maintain a physique of low body fat/no belly and muscles along with a stressful job and les hours available to yourself.
They end up using steroid. There is something called RoidRage. Once my best friend nearly beat me up badly, i figured all his muscular appearance with low body fat was owned to steroids.
"Although Congress instructed the Attorney General in 1994 to compile and publish annual statistics on police use of excessive force, this was never carried out, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation does not collect these data either."(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_deadly_force_in_...)
In 2013, Fatal Encounters (https://www.fatalencounters.org/our-visualizations/) was started by a single individual to collect statistics of police killings each year. Interestingly, part of the inspiration was an article from 2011, talking about how police may be killing more disabled people than necessary: https://www.pressherald.com/interactive/maine_police_deadly_...
In 2014, Deadspin (https://deadspin.com/were-compiling-every-police-involved-sh...) began a crowdsourcing effort to document police killings. Soon after, The Washington Post followed suit (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...).
In 2015, The Guardian started collecting its own statistics in The Counted (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/counted-us-police...).
Mapping Police Violence correlates and visualizes statistics from three different databases (https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/aboutthedata/). An updated 2017 report is here: https://policeviolencereport.org/
Whether the trend of police killing people is increasing or decreasing depends on what numbers you pick, as they vary in collection methods and sources. But one thing that hasn't changed is that black people are disproportionately affected. The 2017 PVR notes "Black people were more likely to be killed by police, more likely to be unarmed and less likely to be threatening someone when killed."
I did not see statistics specifically related to whether someone was disabled. However, the 2017 PVR notes that "Most killings began with police responding to suspected non-violent offenses or cases where no crime was reported". In addition, "1 in 5 people with a gun were not threatening anyone when they were killed. [..] If police did not kill people who were not posing a threat with a gun, there would have been 638 fewer deaths this year — a 57% reduction."