Checkout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
The USA is an outlier, by quite a margin, amongst rich countries. Of course there are differences in methodologies etc etc but nonetheless: USA is 34.8 per 10 million people. That puts it between Uruguay and Angola. Canada is 9.7. France, which has plenty of armed officers, is 3.8. The UK is 0.5. I come from the UK, it has plenty of violent people in it.
It's not enough to say this-is-just-how-it-is in the US, because the US is weird here. It's not normal for the security services to kill so many people in a rich country.
>The UK is 0.5. I come from the UK, it has plenty of violent people in it.
Far, far more violent crime in the US. And there's essentially no guns in the UK.
Even still, rates have been falling in the US to my knowledge.
Edit:
For perspective, I live in Chicago. There are usually 80-100+ shootings a weekend here. Since all US cops have guns that means cops just in 1 city could theoretically shoot 100 people a weekend and technically be justified.
This really isn't the case in any other "rich" country as you put it.
Not that this doesn't mean there's not huge issues with policing and society, it just doesn't make sense to compare US to other countries.
The US has probably one of the most disrespectful and outlandish fringe populations with higher crime overall than other rich countries. Compare the US to how people behave in Australia, Norway, Germany, etc... Have a feeling this will get down voted but you know its true.
That's interesting. One might also just say a lot of evidence points to the US being a "highly developed poor country" (or something) - a third world country for a significant part of its citizens.
But more broadly, the US should be compared to the broad range of countries in the world. Just comparing US indeed just makes the country look "weird". But looking India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, etc shed more light on the situation. Especially, as large country, the US contain a lot of development and underdevelopment (decay, corruption, etc).
> Moreover, many would argue that disproportionate poverty levels among black people render them more likely to encounter police officers in the first place—vastly unfair, but different from the problem being simply cops’ standing racist bias
Actually that's exactly the problem of systemic racism. Racism is at the level of the system and not the individual (though there are still individual racists out there for sure).
Cops kill and injure way too many people (of all races) (without due cause), and encounters with Police escalate much too quickly. This is a problem, and that's why a big conversation on the role and responsibility and methods of policing is happening. Though Police too exists within a system, such as the possibility of any civilian to be armed and carrying at any time, and so all that context must be considered.
Blacks are disproportionately a victim of this, so obviously they are more invested in this conversation, and leading the charge on pushing for changes.
It turns out that one of the likely reason for their disproportionate encounters with Police is their disproportionate socio-economic situation, which was likely created as a result of the racist history of the country and the heritage and legacy (or lack thereof) it left their communities with. And that would make it a systemic racism issue.
The amount of policing in this or other community does not change the fact that black people do commit a lot of crimes and more policing is at least to some extend justified. I'm not talking about bullshit, almost petty in comparison crimes like drugs or theft, but serious crimes like murder. There is a dead body and you have to find who did it and police can't just ignore it or turn a blind eye if it turns out that the murderer was white.
> "Blacks are disproportionately a victim of this, so obviously they are more invested in this conversation..."
while i actually agree with most of what you said, the focus on (disproportionate, but few) deaths by police is misdirectional. like much media reporting, it's premised on an emotional trigger meant to short-circuit rational thinking, which is decidedly a diservice to public discourse. arguments against racism can, and should, stand entirely on the merits of racism (systemic or otherwise) simply being unjust and irrational, not on outrage-bait like this.
that's to say that the murders of black folks by police should direct our attention towards racism, not the numbers of murders by police, because we'll end up trying to solve "murders by police" rather than racism, and then pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, when it was anything but.
Racism used to mean something related to human conscious , motivation, psychological leaning. Now any measured discrepancies in race is "systematic racism".
If a big asteroid dropped from the sky and killed thousands of people, it could turned out to be a racist asteroid.
>Actually that's exactly the problem of systemic racism. Racism is at the level of the system and not the individual (though there are still individual racists out there for sure).
This is a neat explanatory theory but it is only one potential explanation and the reason that the modern movements that are predicated upon it are so dangerous is that it is treated as though it is the only explanation.
>It turns out that one of the likely reason for their disproportionate encounters with Police is their disproportionate socio-economic situation
There is absolutely nothing outside of correlation to indicate that this is a "likely" reason. The influence of a totally broken culture is drastically understated in socially acceptable discourse. This disproportionate rate of police encounters is unique to blacks and not nearly as prevalent among virtually any other low income socioeconomic group. It's trivial to blame injustices of the past (which plenty of other groups have experienced to various degrees) but even discussing the necessary, drastic change in culture required to solve this problem is taboo. And, ironically, such a position is incompatible with the modern progressive framework, within which such a solution would be seen as whitewashing or gentrification. And rightly so, ghetto black culture is inseparable from glorification of crime and violence.
So instead we blame the issue entirely on "systemic racism", the only proof of which is disparate outcome, and the solution will invariably lead the rest of society to suffer the effects of rampant criminality before leaders from black communities will, as has happened repeatedly in the past, later switch to complaining that black communities are underserved by police services, starting the cycle anew. Biden's now unpopular crime bill, along with disproportionate penalization of crack, had strong support from black leaders and black politicians, but today's ideologues class them with the same boogyman of so called systemic racism.
This seems to go against your claim of systematic racism[1]. More whites than any other race have been shot and killed by the police in the last 3 years.
> the likely reason for their disproportionate encounters with Police is their disproportionate socio-economic situation
Seems odd to omit the more direct cause - disproportionate homicide and violent crime rates [1] - and skip to socio-economics as the reason for police encounters. Especially since the black homicide rate is ~10x higher even compared with the same income brackets [2].
The [dangerous] implication behind saying "[...] Police Kill too many Innocent people" is that police have a right to kill criminals, which is not true. Whether or not you are innocent, police still don't have a right (and shouldn't) kill you, so I personally am rejecting your re-interpretation of the title.
Police are responsible for for apprehending the criminals and only are supposed to use deadly force in self-defense or in protecting other people.
I rather liked the meme that police shouldn't kill guilty people either.
So, the ideal number is clearly zero. Just the same as the ideal number of people to die in car crashes. Yes, you can acknowledge that zero is likely not going to get attained. No, you don't give up and argue over the number as a distraction.
This article doesn't seem to make the case that the police kill too many people. It's just observations that the police sometimes kill people.
What nobody ever seems to discuss is how many we should expect the police to kill. If the murder rate is 4 per 100k in the US, and there are a million police officers in the US, shouldn't I expect something like 40+ police officers murdering a year? Maybe a little higher because police tend to be male, younger, have guns, and are frequently in high stress situations. I'm not saying we should excuse the murders or murderers, but obviously we expect some to happen in the same we expect some number of truckers, taxi drivers, programmers, whatever to commit murder every year.
It's not unreasonable to demand a higher standard of the police.
The real flaw is in assuming that all "police killings" are murders. You would expect some proportion, and a higher number than the general population because of the nature of the job, to be legitimate self-defense or defense of others. So then you need to distinguish those cases from wrongful killings.
Which is hard, because the usual way to do that would be to look at how many of them are convicted of murder. But if the case you're trying to make is that not enough of the actual murders are successfully prosecuted, that's not satisfactory. And then what? Data not available, so everybody assumes what they want based on their own politics.
> If the murder rate is 4 per 100k in the US, and there are a million police officers in the US, shouldn't I expect something like 40+ police officers murdering a year?
Right now, police in the US kill about 1000 people each year. That amounts to about one in 15-20 non-suicide deaths caused by gun violence. You can argue that 40 is too many, but it's two orders of magnitude lower than the current number. 40 is the number of people killed by the Chicago police alone every 2-3 years.
Can't you make a reasonable comparison to other countries? At the least, it should be possible to see if there is a relationship between police killings and murder. Seems an even chance that they are rather unrelated.
You can have massive poverty, guns everywhere, a war on drugs, police as a revenue source and an uber "macho" culture OR you can have a reasonable number of police shootings (eg 10 a year).
Honestly I'm i
Surprised that the number is as low as it is. There are probably >100,000 cops on the streets at any given moment in the us and most have guns. There's also nearly 300MM guns owned in the country. Police make 10MM arrests for everything from traffic violations to murder.
The fact that this only results in 1k deaths is impressive
"US police officers are seen mocking a 73-year-old woman with dementia as they watch video of her shoulder going "pop" during her forcible arrest,"
How they enjoy themselves and congratulatory fist-bump each other on achieving that "pop" tells everything one needs to know about police brutality. All that while the woman with all those injuries to her shoulder (and still handcuffed - basically being subjected to medieval torture) was sitting right around the corner - something like for more than 2 hours before getting medical attention.
That psychopathic-level lack of empathy resulting in the culture of total disregard for human life and wellbeing is why other police were standing guard while Chavin was enjoying himself torturing Floyd to death for almost 10 minutes. One can imagine all the fist-bumps and high-fives he got after that.
A) the US allows for a greater dispersion in economic outcome. More poverty = more crime
B) the US has more citizens owning weapons per capita than any other nation. More guns = more gun deaths
C) When you combine above average crime levels with above average levels of gun prevalence, you get more dangerous police encounters and more deaths
While this is extremely easy for the rest of the world to understand, I’m confident the US will never figure this out because:
D) the US is above-average at monetizing their media industry and creating distracting narratives, so they will spend decades of attention on the wrong things
[+] [-] mrwh|4 years ago|reply
It's not enough to say this-is-just-how-it-is in the US, because the US is weird here. It's not normal for the security services to kill so many people in a rich country.
[+] [-] rscoots|4 years ago|reply
Far, far more violent crime in the US. And there's essentially no guns in the UK.
Even still, rates have been falling in the US to my knowledge.
Edit: For perspective, I live in Chicago. There are usually 80-100+ shootings a weekend here. Since all US cops have guns that means cops just in 1 city could theoretically shoot 100 people a weekend and technically be justified. This really isn't the case in any other "rich" country as you put it.
Not that this doesn't mean there's not huge issues with policing and society, it just doesn't make sense to compare US to other countries.
[+] [-] trident5000|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joe_the_user|4 years ago|reply
But more broadly, the US should be compared to the broad range of countries in the world. Just comparing US indeed just makes the country look "weird". But looking India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, etc shed more light on the situation. Especially, as large country, the US contain a lot of development and underdevelopment (decay, corruption, etc).
[+] [-] didibus|4 years ago|reply
Actually that's exactly the problem of systemic racism. Racism is at the level of the system and not the individual (though there are still individual racists out there for sure).
Cops kill and injure way too many people (of all races) (without due cause), and encounters with Police escalate much too quickly. This is a problem, and that's why a big conversation on the role and responsibility and methods of policing is happening. Though Police too exists within a system, such as the possibility of any civilian to be armed and carrying at any time, and so all that context must be considered.
Blacks are disproportionately a victim of this, so obviously they are more invested in this conversation, and leading the charge on pushing for changes.
It turns out that one of the likely reason for their disproportionate encounters with Police is their disproportionate socio-economic situation, which was likely created as a result of the racist history of the country and the heritage and legacy (or lack thereof) it left their communities with. And that would make it a systemic racism issue.
[+] [-] ttt0|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clairity|4 years ago|reply
while i actually agree with most of what you said, the focus on (disproportionate, but few) deaths by police is misdirectional. like much media reporting, it's premised on an emotional trigger meant to short-circuit rational thinking, which is decidedly a diservice to public discourse. arguments against racism can, and should, stand entirely on the merits of racism (systemic or otherwise) simply being unjust and irrational, not on outrage-bait like this.
that's to say that the murders of black folks by police should direct our attention towards racism, not the numbers of murders by police, because we'll end up trying to solve "murders by police" rather than racism, and then pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, when it was anything but.
[+] [-] temp8964|4 years ago|reply
If a big asteroid dropped from the sky and killed thousands of people, it could turned out to be a racist asteroid.
[+] [-] golemiprague|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tryonenow|4 years ago|reply
This is a neat explanatory theory but it is only one potential explanation and the reason that the modern movements that are predicated upon it are so dangerous is that it is treated as though it is the only explanation.
>It turns out that one of the likely reason for their disproportionate encounters with Police is their disproportionate socio-economic situation
There is absolutely nothing outside of correlation to indicate that this is a "likely" reason. The influence of a totally broken culture is drastically understated in socially acceptable discourse. This disproportionate rate of police encounters is unique to blacks and not nearly as prevalent among virtually any other low income socioeconomic group. It's trivial to blame injustices of the past (which plenty of other groups have experienced to various degrees) but even discussing the necessary, drastic change in culture required to solve this problem is taboo. And, ironically, such a position is incompatible with the modern progressive framework, within which such a solution would be seen as whitewashing or gentrification. And rightly so, ghetto black culture is inseparable from glorification of crime and violence.
So instead we blame the issue entirely on "systemic racism", the only proof of which is disparate outcome, and the solution will invariably lead the rest of society to suffer the effects of rampant criminality before leaders from black communities will, as has happened repeatedly in the past, later switch to complaining that black communities are underserved by police services, starting the cycle anew. Biden's now unpopular crime bill, along with disproportionate penalization of crack, had strong support from black leaders and black politicians, but today's ideologues class them with the same boogyman of so called systemic racism.
[+] [-] gher-shyu3i|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...
[+] [-] MikeUt|4 years ago|reply
Seems odd to omit the more direct cause - disproportionate homicide and violent crime rates [1] - and skip to socio-economics as the reason for police encounters. Especially since the black homicide rate is ~10x higher even compared with the same income brackets [2].
[1] African-Americans accounted for 55.9% of all homicide offenders in 2019, with whites 41.1% - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S...
[2] https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/9... - Table 6
[+] [-] surfsvammel|4 years ago|reply
Also, what would be the right amount of innocent people for the police to kill?
Edit: I reacted instinctively without thinking it through. I agree with the comments below that the word ‘innocent’ should have nothing to do with it.
[+] [-] aemreunal|4 years ago|reply
Police are responsible for for apprehending the criminals and only are supposed to use deadly force in self-defense or in protecting other people.
[+] [-] taeric|4 years ago|reply
So, the ideal number is clearly zero. Just the same as the ideal number of people to die in car crashes. Yes, you can acknowledge that zero is likely not going to get attained. No, you don't give up and argue over the number as a distraction.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mk81|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ALittleLight|4 years ago|reply
This article doesn't seem to make the case that the police kill too many people. It's just observations that the police sometimes kill people.
What nobody ever seems to discuss is how many we should expect the police to kill. If the murder rate is 4 per 100k in the US, and there are a million police officers in the US, shouldn't I expect something like 40+ police officers murdering a year? Maybe a little higher because police tend to be male, younger, have guns, and are frequently in high stress situations. I'm not saying we should excuse the murders or murderers, but obviously we expect some to happen in the same we expect some number of truckers, taxi drivers, programmers, whatever to commit murder every year.
[+] [-] AnthonyMouse|4 years ago|reply
The real flaw is in assuming that all "police killings" are murders. You would expect some proportion, and a higher number than the general population because of the nature of the job, to be legitimate self-defense or defense of others. So then you need to distinguish those cases from wrongful killings.
Which is hard, because the usual way to do that would be to look at how many of them are convicted of murder. But if the case you're trying to make is that not enough of the actual murders are successfully prosecuted, that's not satisfactory. And then what? Data not available, so everybody assumes what they want based on their own politics.
[+] [-] bastawhiz|4 years ago|reply
Right now, police in the US kill about 1000 people each year. That amounts to about one in 15-20 non-suicide deaths caused by gun violence. You can argue that 40 is too many, but it's two orders of magnitude lower than the current number. 40 is the number of people killed by the Chicago police alone every 2-3 years.
[+] [-] watwut|4 years ago|reply
Cops in other countries tend to be young males, frequently in high stress situations and have guns.
Also, civilians in the same stressful situation are supposed to keep calm and control over their fears.
[+] [-] taeric|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] himinlomax|4 years ago|reply
What's the rate compared to other countries?
[+] [-] losteric|4 years ago|reply
And many are ex-military as well
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] LatteLazy|4 years ago|reply
You can't have both.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] omosubi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unanswered|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimuffins|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trhway|4 years ago|reply
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56897186
"US police officers are seen mocking a 73-year-old woman with dementia as they watch video of her shoulder going "pop" during her forcible arrest,"
How they enjoy themselves and congratulatory fist-bump each other on achieving that "pop" tells everything one needs to know about police brutality. All that while the woman with all those injuries to her shoulder (and still handcuffed - basically being subjected to medieval torture) was sitting right around the corner - something like for more than 2 hours before getting medical attention.
That psychopathic-level lack of empathy resulting in the culture of total disregard for human life and wellbeing is why other police were standing guard while Chavin was enjoying himself torturing Floyd to death for almost 10 minutes. One can imagine all the fist-bumps and high-fives he got after that.
[+] [-] Google234|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cabaalis|4 years ago|reply
It's inhumane behavior, like one would see Roman soldiers in a movie or soldiers in game of thrones.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/30/us/loveland-police-officers-k...
[+] [-] pembrook|4 years ago|reply
A) the US allows for a greater dispersion in economic outcome. More poverty = more crime
B) the US has more citizens owning weapons per capita than any other nation. More guns = more gun deaths
C) When you combine above average crime levels with above average levels of gun prevalence, you get more dangerous police encounters and more deaths
While this is extremely easy for the rest of the world to understand, I’m confident the US will never figure this out because:
D) the US is above-average at monetizing their media industry and creating distracting narratives, so they will spend decades of attention on the wrong things