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 Ouze wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Has the shooter's home been searched?

Why are you hating on this brave hero, who just wanted to go home to his family?

Not the hero we need, but the one we deserve right now

Mario wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I'm no fan of the British police, and I've had plenty of bad things to say about them over the years, but after reading all this, I'll take the British police any day of the week.

Same here, just it's the german police. The US police overall just doesn't seem well trained when such things happen. If your job gives you the power to end a life with minimal penalties then you need to be held to a much higher standards than the rest of the population.

Here in the UK, we've only had something like 150 fatal police shootings in 30 years. Obviously, it's no fun for those killed, many of whom were innocent, but it does through it into stark contrast, especially given that a lot of these incidents have been subjected to judicial inquiries.

Your average UK beat cop is not armed with a gun, and access to firearms is restricted to those who have underwent serious training. Even with the terror situation, there was still opposition to armed troops on the streets and every policeman being armed. I suppose it could be a cultural thing.

The focus is on de-escalation, and the same is probably true of Germany as well.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It poses the question of why there is so much more human error in the USA than in Ireland, Sweden, or South Korea. I don't imagine anyone is going to argue that US policemen and/or their managing departments are more stupid than the other countries.

US cops aren't more stupid, not by a long shot. In fact US technical policing leads the world in many ways, the US develops all kinds of techniques that the rest of us follow. (and of course many other countries develop other techniques and lead in their own ways).

But culturally US policing does stand apart, it is particularly sensitive to threats to officers. The presence of guns has likely played a part in this, but that is only a part of the story. The bigger issue, to me, is that cultural changes were made to police at the peak of 70s crime spree, when a lot of cops were getting killed. But the number of officer deaths has been falling rapidly for decades now, without any change in police culture.


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 Jadenim wrote:
Negligence is a crime.

You are right that negligence is a crime. What you are missing is that not all mistakes are negligence. For it to be a crime it requires not only a mistake, but a mistake caused by reckless behavious.

And your comparison to engineering fails because the police officer is making a split second decision, he doesn't have the luxury of time to analyse his decision and get it reviewed by his seniors.

None of that means we can't punish cops for shooting innocent people, but we do need to be sensible about can and what cannot be prevented.


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 welshhoppo wrote:
My problem with America isn't the gun laws, it's that your gun safety laws are absolutely awful. You don't see any other country's police shooting people and then blaming stress, because they know not to unholster that gun until it is time to shoot.

That's not true. There is no country on earth where an officer will engage with a threatening suspect with his hands free, and only draw and fire when he has to. I mean, that idea is cool in the way that Westerns are cool, but it isn't real life.

If there is a chance that a suspect could become an immediate lethal threat, then officers will draw and aim at the suspect. This means they will be pointing guns at people they don't intend to shoot, that they still hope they can talk down. That is true in every country with armed police.


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 jmurph wrote:
On the one hand, it looks like they were looking for something to exonerate a bad shoot. On the other, a thorough investigation pretty much requires everything to be looked at and this should shoot down any claims that she was doing anything wrong.

Yep. You wouldn't want to not search her house, take the officer to court, and then have the defense team claim the woman was, I don't know, running a gun smuggling ring out of her house or something like that.

You have to turn over every stone. Build a solid case.

 sebster wrote:


Yep. You wouldn't want to not search her house, take the officer to court, and then have the defense team claim the woman was, I don't know, running a gun smuggling ring out of her house or something like that.

You have to turn over every stone. Build a solid case.

By the same logic also the shooter's house should be searched in order to find something that makes him look like a violent person or someone with specific issues/problems, not the average/standard cop that is supposed to be "the good guy" by the media and the politicians. But it never happens, or am I missing something?

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
The focus is on de-escalation, and the same is probably true of Germany as well.

I think the single biggest factor is the that the citizenry of the US is armed. It's far harder to even teach de-escalation when you have to be more concerned about people being armed.

According to wikipedia, 64 police officers have been feloniously killed on average per year in the USA from 1984 through 2014 (that's not including accidents). The number in Germany is fewer than 6 per year (I can't even find a number for recent years, 6 is the average going back to 1945 but it's currently less than that, so all I can say is < 6). Even after you correct for population that's a lot less.

Funnily enough it's harder to easily find numbers on the number of Police officers killed than people killed by Police officers, the cynic in me would guess because it doesn't suit the narrative being pushed.

US cops might be more jumpy, they also have more reason to be jumpy, when you give people a reason to be jumpy there's more chance they'll get spooked and have it end badly.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I think the single biggest factor is the that the citizenry of the US is armed. It's far harder to even teach de-escalation when you have to be more concerned about people being armed. According to wikipedia, 64 police officers have been feloniously killed on average per year in the USA from 1984 through 2014 (that's not including accidents). The number in Germany is fewer than 6 per year.

A good point, but maybe the training should focus more on identifying the really bad situations and taking proper precautions instead of just telling cops to empty their guns in the general direction of anyone who looks dangerous? It might have been necessary 40-50 years ago but these days police have access to much better gear if needed, and should have better tactics to use.

An example would be our little Finnish police force. They weren't too used to guns and such 50+ years ago, the sidearm they carried (and tactics/weapon training they had) pretty much an afterthought. There was an incident of domestic violence back in 1969 where a very drunk man threw his wife and kids out, who then called the police. He was known to be aggressive so the constables even brought along a SMG, but it was for nought. A guy with a blood alcohol content of 1.2 promilles killed all four policemen with 8 shots from an iron-sight 7×33 bolt-action rifle, then walked over to the neighbors and asked them to call the police. That's 4 dead, or 100% of the police sent to pick him up. It's only a couple years ago we had a similar incident, but this guy actually had a stolen army assault rifle, our improved AK version (7.62x39, semi- or full auto). No one knows why, but he opened fire on the constables sent to apprehend him. Maybe he feared losing his illegal weapon collection. He only managed to kill one police officer and wound another, out of five. Then he killed himself. So since 1969 our police training had improved enough that a guy with a far more powerful weapon didn't manage to kill more than one (ofc, if he'd not offed himself he might have hurt more in a siege - but they wouldn't have gone in without SWAT in an APC so probably not).

Fear of guns in a society where guns are common isn't unreasonable, but a policeman is supposed to "protect and serve". He'd be able to do that better if he had better training in assessing situations. And to be sure, in videos of US police shootings it often looks like none of the officers are in command, everyone is shouting and pointing their gun and once one shoots all the others open up too. There should be some system in place where one officer gets command of a call and the others should follow his lead instead of everyone nervously eying the suspect, gun in hand ready to fire.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
The focus is on de-escalation, and the same is probably true of Germany as well.

I think the single biggest factor is the that the citizenry of the US is armed. It's far harder to even teach de-escalation when you have to be more concerned about people being armed.

According to wikipedia, 64 police officers have been feloniously killed on average per year in the USA from 1984 through 2014 (that's not including accidents). The number in Germany is fewer than 6 per year (I can't even find a number for recent years, 6 is the average going back to 1945 but it's currently less than that, so all I can say is < 6). Even after you correct for population that's a lot less.

Funnily enough it's harder to easily find numbers on the number of Police officers killed than people killed by Police officers, the cynic in me would guess because it doesn't suit the narrative being pushed.

US cops might be more jumpy, they also have more reason to be jumpy, when you give people a reason to be jumpy there's more chance they'll get spooked and have it end badly.

I'm 50/50 on this, but I do think it's a cultural thing TBO.

Switzerland is even more heavily armed than the USA, but you never hear about this happening in Switzerland. That's not to say that the Swiss police are perfect, but I think culture has a lot to do with this.

Even in the past, when countries like my own, Britain, were amongst the most heavily armed nations in the world, our beat cops were never armed with more than a stout club and a whistle.

My understanding of Switzerland though is that while many citizens own guns, they do not have ready access to ammunition. As a point of comparison, it's kind of useless. A gun with no ammo might as well be a club. An awkwardly shaped club XD

 LordofHats wrote:
My understanding of Switzerland though is that while many citizens own guns, they do not have ready access to ammunition. As a point of comparison, it's kind of useless. A gun with no ammo might as well be a club. An awkwardly shaped club XD

From a logical perspective, they will have some ammo. They have too in the unlikely event that the Swiss ammo depots are overrun by an enemy or suffer some mishap that puts them out of action. Unlikely yeah, but you can imagine the Swiss would plan for that.

And it's more than likely that people have squirreled ammo away one way or another over the years.

What I mean is that citizens don't have ammo just laying around to use whenever. Even if they did squirrel some away, if they used it they'd then have to explain why they have it. It's different from the US where you have ready access to guns and ammo.

I think the distinctions are indeed cultural, but I think the physical realities play into that. You can't just walk into the corner Walmart and buy all the .45 ACP you want in Switzerland but you can in the US, along with all the 12 guage, .22, and 9mm luger you could ever want.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I'm 50/50 on this, but I do think it's a cultural thing TBO.

Switzerland is even more heavily armed than the USA, but you never hear about this happening in Switzerland. That's not to say that the Swiss police are perfect, but I think culture has a lot to do with this.

Even in the past, when countries like my own, Britain, were amongst the most heavily armed nations in the world, our beat cops were never armed with more than a stout club and a whistle.

Switzerland is heavily armed in that many people own guns, but my understanding is the citizenry uses them very differently. Most gun crimes in the USA are committed with hand guns, which people are carrying around with them, inside their vehicles, in their homes. My understanding Switzerland's guns were largely militia rifles and people aren't generally permitted to carry hand guns around with them on the street. They have a culture that means even when taking police out of the equation there'd be little gun related violence.

The increased gun related violence I feel is always going to cascade in to more jumpy cops who when they make a mistake are more likely to have it end up with someone dead.

I'm sure cops could be better trained in many circumstances and maybe that'd alleviate most of the problems, but I reckon if you gave US cops the same training as European countries you're always going to end up with more US citizens killed by police as long as the rate of gun violence is also higher.

 LordofHats wrote:
What I mean is that citizens don't have ammo just laying around to use whenever. Even if they did squirrel some away, if they used it they'd then have to explain why they have it. It's different from the US where you have ready access to guns and ammo.

I think the distinctions are indeed cultural, but I think the physical realities play into that. You can't just walk into the corner Walmart and buy all the .45 ACP you want in Switzerland but you can in the US, along with all the 12 guage, .22, and 9mm luger you could ever want.

True, but just because millions of Americans have millions of guns and hundreds of millions of rounds of ammo, doesn't mean they have to start blasting pistols at people.

You, I, and every other dakka member probably has kitchen knives, axes, hammers etc etc around the house.

But do we run out the house and start attacking people? Of course not.

The USA has lots of guns. Switzerland has lot of guns. Britain pre1920s was heavily armed. It made Texas look like California, but our police were mostly unarmed.

It's a cultural difference.


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AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I'm 50/50 on this, but I do think it's a cultural thing TBO.

Switzerland is even more heavily armed than the USA, but you never hear about this happening in Switzerland. That's not to say that the Swiss police are perfect, but I think culture has a lot to do with this.

Even in the past, when countries like my own, Britain, were amongst the most heavily armed nations in the world, our beat cops were never armed with more than a stout club and a whistle.

Switzerland is heavily armed in that many people own guns, but my understanding is the citizenry uses them very differently. Most gun crimes in the USA are committed with hand guns, which people are carrying around with them, inside their vehicles, in their homes. My understanding Switzerland's guns were largely militia rifles and people aren't generally permitted to carry hand guns around with them on the street. They have a culture that means even when taking police out of the equation there'd be little gun related violence.

The increased gun related violence I feel is always going to cascade in to more jumpy cops who when they make a mistake are more likely to have it end up with someone dead.

I'm sure cops could be better trained in many circumstances and maybe that'd alleviate most of the problems, but I reckon if you gave US cops the same training as European countries you're always going to end up with more US citizens killed by police as long as the rate of gun violence is also higher.

I done some research on this i.e comparing British police to American police, and the oversight and accountability of British police is miles ahead of the USA.

The USA, IMO, could benefit from copying some British police institutions e.g independent police complaints commission, a proper police inspectorate, and of course, politicians and judges having the ability to hold inquiries and judicial reviews.

 LordofHats wrote:
My understanding of Switzerland though is that while many citizens own guns, they do not have ready access to ammunition.

Nah, it's the army reservists who don't usually get ammo for their service weapon anymore even if they are required to keep it at home. The owner of a civilian sport or hunting weapon can and will have ammo for it, and they do have quite a few of those.

Is turning this discussion back to firearms, or why X country's training is different, going to be productive or get us back to where we were pages ago?

Maybe a separate thread for the merits of police training by country would assist.

I think I agree. A different thread for police training.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:Here in the UK, we've only had something like 150 fatal police shootings in 30 years. Obviously, it's no fun for those killed, many of whom were innocent, but it does through it into stark contrast, especially given that a lot of these incidents have been subjected to judicial inquiries.

Your average UK beat cop is not armed with a gun, and access to firearms is restricted to those who have underwent serious training. Even with the terror situation, there was still opposition to armed troops on the streets and every policeman being armed. I suppose it could be a cultural thing.

The focus is on de-escalation, and the same is probably true of Germany as well.

Yup, also deescalation, and as far as I know our police officers are all armed (or trained to use a gun and get to have one if they need it). In the US the fear of gun violence is even bigger than the actual threat to the officers and they tend to just panic a lot. In 2011 the German police fired 85 bullets, total, including 49 warning shots while one incident in the USA can top that, more or less, instantly. In a country with so many guns they should be extra careful instead of being so careless.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:I think the single biggest factor is the that the citizenry of the US is armed. It's far harder to even teach de-escalation when you have to be more concerned about people being armed.

According to wikipedia, 64 police officers have been feloniously killed on average per year in the USA from 1984 through 2014 (that's not including accidents). The number in Germany is fewer than 6 per year (I can't even find a number for recent years, 6 is the average going back to 1945 but it's currently less than that, so all I can say is < 6). Even after you correct for population that's a lot less.

Correcting for population would roughly quadruple the number for Germany (depending on when you take your population count). And even then the number of killed police officers is tiny in the US (if I remember correctly the top ten deadly jobs are all heavy industries and the police or firefighters are nowhere to be found near those) and a comparison to the number of civilians killed by police officers is hugely different if you compare the US to other developed countries.

Deescalation is especially important because people could be armed. You don't want to agitate a random donkey-cave to start shooting, that's literary the point of deescalation. What does it help if you shoot someone "because he is or could be armed" but then have their buddy start shooting at you because you started shooting? Starting the whole interaction with the aim of using zero bullets is better than hoping you manage to disable all of them at once (without knowing if there are more of them who have guns).

It's similar to the "heroic bystander" idea of everyone needing a gun in case somebody starts shooting randomly. It usually just leads to more confusion for the police because they don't know that you—with the gun—are supposedly the "good guy" in that one case. More guns added to an existing panic and confusion lead to more deaths.

Funnily enough it's harder to easily find numbers on the number of Police officers killed than people killed by Police officers, the cynic in me would guess because it doesn't suit the narrative being pushed.

Not really, here are two lists for killed US police officers (just google: US police deaths, it's in the top five results… not that hard):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_police_officers_killed_in_the_line_of_duty
https://www.odmp.org/search/year
and here are two for civilians killed by the police if you want to compare numbers:
http://killedbypolice.net/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries

US cops might be more jumpy, they also have more reason to be jumpy, when you give people a reason to be jumpy there's more chance they'll get spooked and have it end badly.

Sure but their jumpiness is way out of proportion to the threat and the police side is technically the trained one that should be able to handle this better than the civilians who actually get shot. Civilians who have been shot by the police still manage to be calmer and more civil than the police officer who just shot them. Just watch the Philando Castile video from inside the car (with all the "Sir"s from his girlfriend). It's infuriating how calm people have to be just to not get shot even more (because the police have scared little trigger fingers). It was similar to the case of the autistic person and the helper (who got shot), or any number of people who were literary shot in the back (some while running away). And the police gets away with it because they were "afraid for their life" so it was justified. That just should never be acceptable, normal, or legal. Yet somehow it is.

It's worth noting that even at 64 police deaths a year, it is a very small risk each year. Obviously it's still tragic in each case, but you'll see more officers die on the job from heart attacks, and you don't see every single policeman refusing to end any kind of fattening food. So to a large extent the fear represents an over-reaction to a small risk. An understandable, entirely human over-reaction, but an over-reaction all the same.

To stop piling on just US cops for a second, here in Australia there's been a pretty extensive review of the Sydney Lindt cafe siege, in which ISIS inspired nutter Man Monis took a bunch of hostages, police laid siege, and then remained passive while Monis became increasingly erratic. He eventually shot and killed a hostage, at which point police still didn't respond straight away, delaying another 10 minutes, until they finally moved in and killed Monis and a hostage with a stray round.

What's come out in the subsequent inquiry is that police command was extremely reluctant to react because early reports indicated Monis had a bomb, and they were concerned they would be sending any police officers in to their deaths. A lot of police and former police have been highly critical of that, saying if there's a bomb that's a risk you have to accept, you can't let that possibility stop you from doing anything to help the hostages.

In Sydney the officers in command couldn't accept that risk, and the result was inaction that eventually led to tragedy.

I think there is a general principal in there that does, and should apply to policing in general. A really demanding part of the job is accepting personal risk to help others and achieve a non-violent outcome. If you can't accept that risk, and would rather shoot now than accept a small risk to yourself as you get a better assessment of the situation, then it probably isn't the job for you.

I'm not a cop and won't ever be, so I don't want to sound blase about the people who accept. I have absolute respect for them. But as member of society I believe that is an expectation we should put on every person that signs up and is paid and given authority as a policeman, and if people don't want to take that risk, don't sign up.

 Blackie wrote:
By the same logic also the shooter's house should be searched in order to find something that makes him look like a violent person or someone with specific issues/problems, not the average/standard cop that is supposed to be "the good guy" by the media and the politicians. But it never happens, or am I missing something?

I imagine it was searched. But that doesn't get reported as a story on the internet because it can't be spun in to a narrative about the police looking to blame the victim.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
It's a cultural difference.

The cultural difference is tied up with how the guns are treated and used differently. I mean yeah, if Zardoz came by and started dropping guns from the sky and all we did was pile the guns up in our basements and forget they were ever there, then there probably wouldn't be a spike in gun violence.

But it's also false to say it is just cultural. Proliferation isn't just about the sheer count of guns, but the presence of guns in every day interactions. If two dudes crash cars, start arguing and one grabs the gun from his glove box, that's a proliferation issue as much as a cultural issue.

 sebster wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
By the same logic also the shooter's house should be searched in order to find something that makes him look like a violent person or someone with specific issues/problems, not the average/standard cop that is supposed to be "the good guy" by the media and the politicians. But it never happens, or am I missing something?

I imagine it was searched. But that doesn't get reported as a story on the internet because it can't be spun in to a narrative about the police looking to blame the victim.

You imagine it but it's only a personal thought, there's no evidence about that.

The police and several media that try to blame the victim is something that happens everytime, it's part of a standard procedure. Not only in the USA, even in Italy when cops kill some civilians by excessive use of deadly force they always try to paint the victims as violent ones, thugs, drug addicted, with mental problems, criminals, etc... We don't have cops that shoot dead unarmed people (10 years ago we had one case, a policeman that shot towards a car driven by hoolingas that were fleeing a brawl against rival hooligans, and of course the cop was jailed) but beatings are quite common and sometimes it happened that some people died in the process of getting arrested or even after they get arrested. Everytime these victims are criminalized.

Now back to the specific case, it's difficult to criminalize the woman killed in Minnesota. She was white, rich, mid age and obsessed with health and fitness. On the other hand not only the cop was a stranger, black and muslim, but he actually had proven of being a violent guy in other circumstances.

The officer that was with him allegedly did nothing wrong, he may be the key element to put the killer on trial and hopefully convict him.


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 sebster wrote:


A really demanding part of the job is accepting personal risk to help others and achieve a non-violent outcome. If you can't accept that risk, and would rather shoot now than accept a small risk to yourself as you get a better assessment of the situation, then it probably isn't the job for you.

I'm not a cop and won't ever be, so I don't want to sound blase about the people who accept. I have absolute respect for them. But as member of society I believe that is an expectation we should put on every person that signs up and is paid and given authority as a policeman, and if people don't want to take that risk, don't sign up.

I 100% agree with this.

 sebster wrote:
It's worth noting that even at 64 police deaths a year, it is a very small risk each year.

Your chance of being shot by a police officer is also pretty damned small. I spoke to half a dozen cops while living in the USA and never got shot, not even once

So to a large extent the fear represents an over-reaction to a small risk. An understandable, entirely human over-reaction, but an over-reaction all the same.

IMO that applies to both sides. The number of people killed by American cops sounds horrible compared to European countries until you start to take in to account cultural factors that American cops deal with compared to the rest of the western world.

Don't get me wrong, in this case for all I can see the cop was completely in the wrong and I think they should be dragged over the coals as much as is appropriate, but mistakes will be made and they'll be made more frequently when cops operate in a more dangerous environment, even if that danger is only relatively small.

A really demanding part of the job is accepting personal risk to help others and achieve a non-violent outcome. If you can't accept that risk, and would rather shoot now than accept a small risk to yourself as you get a better assessment of the situation, then it probably isn't the job for you.

People may have been willing to accept that risk when they were detached from a fear inducing situation, but when the panic sets in they are more prone to making an incorrect snap decision. We can sit back and armchair analysis their motives, but I think most the cases of cops shooting people the cop didn't go in to the encounter thinking "ya know what, I'm going to shoot first and think later", I reckon they're mostly snap decisions made poorly.

Obviously people who are too jumpy should be weeded out as much as possible, and I imagine there probably is some level of psychological screening in the US system the same there is in the Australian system. However I think there's almost always going to be people who slip through and you don't find out until they do something wrong, and "something wrong" in the USA is typically going to be more deadly than "something wrong" in other western countries that don't have the same culture.

Remember that to go along with their higher cop killing civilian rate, the US also has a higher murder rate than most western countries.

 LordofHats wrote:
My understanding of Switzerland though is that while many citizens own guns, they do not have ready access to ammunition. As a point of comparison, it's kind of useless. A gun with no ammo might as well be a club. An awkwardly shaped club XD

They can buy ammunition, they just don't get given it free by the government any more. I think this has translated on the internet to them not being able to get ammunition at all, which isn't true. Oddly, I was reading something on this very topic earlier today.

 Blackie wrote:
You imagine it but it's only a personal thought, there's no evidence about that.

There is also no evidence that it didn't happen. And if the deceased's house was searched but the shooter's was not, don't you think that would have been pointed out somewhere?

I mean, sites like Daily Caller are happy to run openly partisan articles whinging that her home was searched, don't you think they'd run even more emotive, and actually meaningful stories, if they pointed out that such thoroughness wasn't also applied to the shooter's house?

The police and several media that try to blame the victim is something that happens everytime, it's part of a standard procedure.

The fact that victim blaming takes place doesn't mean we should start pretending standard police procedures are part of victim blaming processes.


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AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Your chance of being shot by a police officer is also pretty damned small. I spoke to half a dozen cops while living in the USA and never got shot, not even once

Definitely agreed. Have you noticed how many threads we've ever had on dakka about heart disease? Not many, but it's the #1 killer in general. Instead we focus on police shootings, military operations, terrorism etc.

The primary risk from police shootings isn't to the public, but to police, who suffer a massive reputational impact and lose a lot of good will with the public each time one of these events occurs.

Don't get me wrong, in this case for all I can see the cop was completely in the wrong and I think they should be dragged over the coals as much as is appropriate, but mistakes will be made and they'll be made more frequently when cops operate in a more dangerous environment, even if that danger is only relatively small.

Agreed on all parts.

People may have been willing to accept that risk when they were detached from a fear inducing situation, but when the panic sets in they are more prone to making an incorrect snap decision. We can sit back and armchair analysis their motives, but I think most the cases of cops shooting people the cop didn't go in to the encounter thinking "ya know what, I'm going to shoot first and think later", I reckon they're mostly snap decisions made poorly.

That's a fair point, you never know until someone is placed in that situation. And in that moment a person isn't going to react the same every time. A cop might have made the right call a lot of times, held their fire, got more information, found a non-lethal solution etc, but then one time in a snap judgement they resort to a violent solution too soon and make a fatal mistake.

Obviously people who are too jumpy should be weeded out as much as possible, and I imagine there probably is some level of psychological screening in the US system the same there is in the Australian system. However I think there's almost always going to be people who slip through and you don't find out until they do something wrong, and "something wrong" in the USA is typically going to be more deadly than "something wrong" in other western countries that don't have the same culture.

Remember that to go along with their higher cop killing civilian rate, the US also has a higher murder rate than most western countries.

I agree this definitely plays a part. However, as I've said a bunch of times in this thread, the murder rate in the US has dropped massively over the last couple of decades, but there's been no change in police culture. That's worth addressing.

but there's been no change in police culture. That's worth addressing.

But who will address it, though? In Britain, the Home Secretary can order a judicial review, an enquiry, a Royal Commission, or fire a police chief etc etc to get to the bottom of these problems, but because of the structure of the USA: federal and states rights etc etc with policing all over the place, then who can do this?

Well, if the murder rate is dropping like a meteor... And we would lump unjustified police shootings in with "murder". Then does anything have to change at all? Seems like if the murder rate is going down we're doing stuff right.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

but there's been no change in police culture. That's worth addressing.

But who will address it, though? In Britain, the Home Secretary can order a judicial review, an enquiry, a Royal Commission, or fire a police chief etc etc to get to the bottom of these problems, but because of the structure of the USA: federal and states rights etc etc with policing all over the place, then who can do this?

Filing criminal charges against an officer who makes (debatable) good faith mistakes has proven to be difficult to make those charges "stick" in the eyes of the jurors. However, a much easier way to address this, at least initially, is that when the mistake is his (or the department), then he should face strict liability, at the minimum, for all the harm he causes.

That would entail, in such events like this, that the officer (and department), would be stripped of Qualified Immunity.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, if the murder rate is dropping like a meteor... And we would lump unjustified police shootings in with "murder". Then does anything have to change at all? Seems like if the murder rate is going down we're doing stuff right.

We can always hope that things will change once police shoot children without the consent of their parents.

Do you know what this sotry needs? I do!

More Michele Bachmann!

http://www.citypages.com/news/michele-bachmann-was-justine-damond-killed-because-of-shariah-mindset/437894883

The latest version of events leading up to the Justine Damond police shooting is that she'd "slapped" the squad car, startling the cops inside.

Especially Minneapolis Police Department rookie Mohamed Noor, who took it upon himself to draw his weapon and fire it at the unarmed 40-year-old woman, leaving her fatally wounded.

But this explanation, made public last week via a police search warrant, is still missing one crucial element: the wildly uninformed yet sincerely bigoted guesswork of Michele Bachmann, former Minnesota Congresswoman and current self-appointed expert on Muslim culture.

In an interview with the right-wing news website World Net Daily, Bachmann says a series of things that will come as a surprise to people who live in the places she's describing.

Minnesota is no longer a "well-ordered society and a high-functioning population" like it was in the 1960s, says Bachmann. The collapse of society might be hard to see if you only pay attention to the state's low unemployment rate, budget surplus, physical healthiness, and lack of crime relative to the rest of the country.

But Michele's got plenty of reasons to be afraid. Like, 75,000 of them. That's the estimate of how many Somalis live in Minnesota.

Here's how Bachmann describes the effect they're having:

"This is a failed multicultural experiment that is killing people and destroying the future of the West."

Wow! Those are ... strong words. Wrong words, too. But that's never stopped Bachmann before. Watch this!

"Somali women in Minnesota are almost always covered in clothing head to toe," says Bachmann, speaking like someone whose knowledge of this state comes from a Fox & Friends segment she watched on her phone while cowering behind the couch.

Just wait, Bachmann's about to bring it all back around. She references a photo of Mohamed Noor, the rookie cop who killed Justine Damond, posed next to three women (family members of his, Bachmann claims) who are wearing "traditional Somali clothing."

Oh, God. Here it comes.

“Was Noor acting like the Muslim religious police, maintaining strict adherence to keeping women’s bodies covered when he shot Justine?" Bachmann wonders aloud. "Was he acting from a cultural instinct?"

This makes perfect sense! Noor must've been so upset when he saw a woman without "traditional Somali clothing," he shot and killed her on the spot. The only mystery is why Noor didn't kill the hundreds of thousands of other woman walking around Minneapolis wearing whatever the hell they want. Maybe he just hadn't gotten around to it yet.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
A different take about how this shooting and police violence is different from other incidents by the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-minneapolis-response-to-police-shooting-of-white-woman-by-somali-officer-has-been-different/2017/08/01/e14aec18-7237-11e7-803f-a6c989606ac7_story.html?utm_term=.01aaf382248b

MINNEAPOLIS — Kim Handy-Jones stands at the front of a meeting room in a working-class portion of southeast Minneapolis, large pieces of butcher paper labeled “Body Cams,” “Accountability” and “Training” hanging behind her. In the months since a police officer shot and killed her son in neighboring St. Paul, Handy-Jones has met here regularly with a dozen or so longtime Twin Cities advocates of police reform.

But this meeting is different. This time, the room is full. Some of the nearly 80 people present have to stand.

And this time, the majority is white.

Sounds like what some posters were saying earlier in this thread.

Bennett, a stocky, energy-packed white man who wrestled for Notre Dame, has practiced law for more than 40 years. He represented Castile’s relatives in a civil suit that resulted in a $3 million settlement with the city of St. Anthony, which employed the officer who shot Castile. An 11-pound pike that Bennett caught in 1984 hangs on his office wall, the sharp parts of its mouth, fins and tail harpooning nearly $10 million in checks paid after Bennett won settlements for clients maimed or killed by city workers and police officers around the Midwest.

“The usual dirty tricks and convenient rapid leaks from the department and the union about the victim just aren’t possible here,” Bennett said of Damond’s case. “On the other hand, race has a lot to do with who does and does not have a criminal record in this country.”

Again, I think we saw this though in this very thread.

*Update*

Murder charge on the officer.

Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor has turned himself in on murder and manslaughter charges related to the July shooting death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond. A warrant was issued Tuesday for Noor’s arrest on charges filed in Hennepin County District Court. Noor was booked into Hennepin County jail at 11:16 a.m., according to jail records, on a Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension warrant for third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Bail was set at $500,000. Jail officials declined to release his booking photo. The charging documents, which have been filed under seal, have not yet been made public.

According to jail records, Noor is charged with third degree murder “perpetrating eminently dangerous act and evincing depraved mind” and second-degree manslaughter, “culpable negligence creating unreasonable risk.”

County attorney Mike Freeman announced a 2:30 p.m. news conference Tuesday to discuss the case, which drew international attention and led to the ouster of former police chief Janeé Harteau.

Damond, 40, a native of Australia, was shot and killed July 15 after calling police to report a possible assault behind her south Minneapolis home. Noor was in the passenger seat and fired across his partner, Matthew Harrity, killing Damond. Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said he would decide whether to charge Noor in Damond’s death, but convened a grand jury to gather additional evidence. A spokesman for Freeman declined to comment, as did Noor’s attorney Thomas Plunkett.

Damond’s fiancé, Don Damond and his family, along with Damond’s father, John Ruszczyk and the Ruszczyk family, applauded the charges in a joint statement, calling it “one step toward justice for this iniquitous act.”

“While we waited over eight months to come to this point, we are pleased with the way a grand jury and County Attorney Mike Freeman appear to have been diligent and thorough in investigating and ultimately determining that these charges are justified,” the statement said. “We remain hopeful that a strong case will be presented by the prosecutor, backed by verified and detailed forensic evidence, and that this will lead to a conviction. No charges can bring our Justine back. However, justice demands accountability for those responsible for recklessly killing the fellow citizens they are sworn to protect, and today’s actions reflect that.”

Source: https://www.policeone.com/officer-shootings/articles/472514006-Officer-who-fatally-shot-Justine-Damond-charged-with-murder/

And you can 100% expect a conviction, as well. I'd be willing to put any amount of money on it.

Thanks for the update. I had forgotten about this and it was an interesting story.

I am in the area and missed this. Thank you for the update!

I haven't read the 10 pages, but...the policeman was somalian ? He wasn't American but was in the American Police ?