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Comment by some_random | Hacker News Reader

While it is practically impossible in cases like this, there's still a huge difference between the US where police will at best begrudgingly acknowledge your rights and most other countries in the world where you do not have rights to begin with.

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On the other hand in the US police routinely kill unarmed people, which seems like it’s much worse for personal freedom. Do you have freedom to consider your rights when doing so gets you self-defenced to death for not cooperating?

Quick question, without looking it up what order of magnitude of unarmed people do you think the US police kill each year? 10s? 100s? 1,000s? 10,000s?

Per WaPo's police shooting database[1], there were 51 last year (going up to 71 if you include unknown, 173 including unknown and undetermined). Filter down to people who were not fleeing or having a mental health crisis and you get 8 (26 including unknown and undetermined). While that still represents a problem in the use of force by cops, to say nothing of the idea that carrying a weapon (which is legal in much of the US) means that your death at the hands of the police is acceptable, killings of unarmed people seem far from routine. I don't think you have any reason to believe you will be killed by the police for not giving them your ID.

[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...

Your link says 1141 killed by police right at the top and a quick search lead to https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de... which says 1160 last year. This is just the number killed not the number shot.

I was talking about unarmed people because we're specifically talking about people being shot just for not complying with orders they're not legally required to comply to. I didn't think about the possibility of people being shot and surviving, mainly because cops typically magdump people which seems to be reflected in the stats since the number only goes up by 19. In any case, I don't think the distinction is substantial to this discussion.

Edit: I'm not seeing 1141 anywhere, where did you get that number?

At the top of the page you linked, I think.

https://imgur.com/a/bRLYOLQ

Ah I see, idk how I missed that. I think it's 12 months rolling, and in any case includes things like armed confrontations which is outside the scope of this discussion

> Filter down to people who were not fleeing or having a mental health crisis

Why on earth should US police get a free pass on shooting people fleeing or having a mental health crisis?

Such things warrent an investigation with a real possibility of penalties and|or charges in Commonwealth countries.

Are you stating that it's OK to shoot people that run | are paranoid?

I filtered those out because we're specifically talking about people being shot just for not complying with orders they're not legally required to comply to.

I didn't read the parents comment as trying to make a point of nationalistic pride, but to frame the US in the broader international context. There are a lot of countries in the world. The majority of which rank below the US on measurements of corruption, and many on police violence.

https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/global/202...

https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/police-ki...

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