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In 2023 it's estimated police killed around 1,248 people. Notice I said killed vs Murdered as words matter. Out of that only 104 were unarmed. Now without looking at each case or example here, you can still account for the mass majority of police interactions ending in a death, the civilian was armed at a minimum.
Using the data provided we could say easily that 1,248 people is way too many. Hell, 1 is too many. That doesn't change reality though, if 1,248 deaths were related to individuals engaging in crime, this is a causality that you can lay solely on the civilian victim, as they chose to engage in this action.
We can argue how many were crimes, that's fair and i'm happy to throw out and say let's assume 25% were not crimes and really were just an escalated interaction. The bureau of justice statistics gave numbers for 2022 that estimated that 49.2 million people or 19% of the US had an interaction with the police. If that's true, napkin math would put the police murders at .0025% of the interactions, and assuming 333,287,557 million people in 2022 (census bureau) places it at .00037% of the population died by the hands of police.
Some related statistic. Roughly 500 people die from falling out of bed or off furniture, 300-400 die from drowning in a bath tub, 4,000 die from choking on food, 150 die from coconuts falling on their head, 500-600 die from falling from a ladder.
Looking at the numbers, it's very hard to say that police "Regularly murder people".
As for the "Everyone having guns" that's a separate debate, but I would posit you're correct with regard to criminals performing criminal acts, that are armed, increase the likelihood of a negative out come. Federal arrests for weapons offenses were around 8,000 with states being at close to 12,000. Putting that at 20,000 or so arrests per year. Even with those numbers if you're arrested with a firearm, you're still at around 6% chance of death. Again given the circumstances and propensity for needless escalation, these numbers while bad aren't crazy.
There are multiple problems in the US. We need better training and funding for police departments, we do need to weed out the bad cops (as with any field), but with all that the most common denominator is criminal behavior.
All of that said, If you've got data points or information that may be counter to the above, i'd be very curious to see it. I'm very much open to having my mind changed on the topic and encourage you to post it up for all of us here.
Pretty sure they managed to sneak this one (https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/john-fauver-harford-c...) in the armed category
Also dogs are not any more armed in the US than in Europe, yet American cops shoot a lot more dogs. They do so because they are antisocial and know they'll face no consequences (and even if they get fired from on PD, another will recruit them). I'd say there is both a recruiting issue and an immunity issue.
And that's ignoring any of the armed individuals who are not, in fact, threatening anyone or committing a crime.
And the people for whom a crime may be being committed, but for which "death" is not an appropriate punishment - even ignoring the police being judge, jury, and executioner in a society where we presume innocence and require conviction by a jury of our peers.
Would personal protection devices (mace, batons etc) count as armed.
Call me a cynic, but 104 people being 'unarmed' makes me think the reports in those cases simply lack creativity in defining "arms" and, (again cynically) I expect some number of the other cases the individuals were either helpfully discovered to be armed after the fact. (And in some cases actually provided with arms after the fact.)
Does the Second Amendment not exist? Which other constitutional rights do you think we should use to justify these murders?
More to the point, if you went to your local PDs website and watched body cam from the last 10 shootings, how many do you think would be involve law abiding gun owners with CCWs using guns in a way consistent with the 2nd Amendment vs people brandishing or using their guns in a criminal and/or dangerous way?
How many were using their guns in a dangerous and/or criminal way? We may never know, because they were deprived of their right to the trial by jury which would have determined that.
Legal gun owners not committing obvious crimes are only rarely accosted by police, and shootings are exceedingly rare, and they usually make the news and result in legal action. They also usually involve the victim doing something that's not advisable, even if they're not doing anything legally wrong. Philando Castile, for instance, or Johnny Hurley.
"Unarmed" doesn't represent what the suspect was doing that got them shot. Were they resisting arrest or being noncompliant and reaching for their waist or a center console or glove compartment?
There are cases where police shoot suspects, armed or unarmed, unjustifiably. They're not as rare as anyone wishes they were. They're still fairly rare. Behaving civilly, even while recognizing that many police are like barely constrained wild animals, goes a long way toward ensuring that an accidental furtive gesture isn't interpreted as reaching for a weapon.
(And it's exceedingly rare that cops will believe an upstanding citizen who's legally armed and behaving civilly is a criminal. It happens, for instance in the two cases I cited, but it's rare. They're a rounding error in the police killing stats.)
So you don't know about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Philando_Castile
> They also usually involve the victim doing something that's not advisable, even if they're not doing anything legally wrong. Philando Castile, for instance, or Johnny Hurley.
“Not advisable”, of course, being a goalpost on wheels that allows them to justify police misconduct.
Holy shit and we don't fire these maniacs?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...
Swatting just isn't a thing here - our armed officers are trained completely differently and held to much stricter standards regarding the use of force. American police do have to deal with much more widespread gun ownership and higher rates of violent crime, but that's only one half of the equation.
Policing in the US is exceptionally fragmented across thousands of agencies, with no consistent standards of training and supervision. Even if there was a clear political mandate to reduce the number of police-involved shootings, there's no effective mechanism to change how policing is carried out on the ground.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/319246/police-fatal-shoo...
More broadly, the British police are a service, not a force. A British officer would never refer to a member of the public as a "civilian", because our police are civilians in uniform. They have powers granted to them by Parliament, but their right to use those powers comes from the consent of the public that they serve. It's a radically different attitude that colours every interaction between police and the public.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_Federation_of_England_a...
Yeah, I don't think "armed" means "was an imminent threat to life" in the slightest. It's much more likely it's a cover your ass designation.
We should never criticize people for actually bringing real numbers into a conversation to clarify things. I didn't know that statistic, and I suspect many "disagreements" are things where if the actual numbers and facts were known to all, they would actually agree.
I didn’t want to open that can of worms. Even the inclusive stat I cited is small enough to support the point I wanted to make.
I believe the argument is that deliberately killing another person is always wrong. It does’t matter if it’s in self defense - taking a life is such a morally abhorrent thing to do that it’s always indefensible. It’s always murder.
Some who wouldn’t go that far would still argue that for police to do it - people who are in a position of power, and who should know there are risks associated with the job of protecting society - is indefensible even if it would not be for a regular person.
Not my position - self defense if you know you’d otherwise die is, I think, morally justified. But I can see the argument.