Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.
Zognob Gorgoff wrote: and thats the real issue here, trying to stop excessive force use and if thats not possible then altering that force should be next or prefereably concurrent.
The issue is that treating lethal force as anything other than "I am going to kill this person right now" encourages the police to use it more often. It's like how tasers, despite having a non-trivial chance of killing someone, are treated as a tool for forcing obedience rather than a defensive weapon. We really don't want to expand this effect to things with a much higher chance of killing someone.
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
2016/07/30 20:29:39
Subject: Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
Kilkrazy wrote: The USA has police shooting people multiple times and thereby killing them, who weren't a threat. This is the problem, not police shooting people who are obvious and immediate threats to public safety.
I was addressing the relevant point as the discussion evolved that you yourself are partially responsible for instigating.
Kilkrazy wrote: It's notable that European police officers have a lower rate of shooting suspects than US police, and are also more capable of shooting to disable rather than kill. There must be a reason for this.
At the time that I replied we were discussing the notion of shooting to kill v shooting to wound.
2016/07/30 21:10:49
Subject: Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
I think it's shooting multiple times to definitely kill rather than just shooting.
The black guy who was sbot in the arm three times, for example, and thereby dies, or the guy on the bus who was shot multiple times.
The objective becomes to definitely kill the person. US police seem to try to kill people once they start firing, and seem to be more likely to open fire.
Kilkrazy wrote: I think it's shooting multiple times to definitely kill rather than just shooting.
The black guy who was sbot in the arm three times, for example, and thereby dies, or the guy on the bus who was shot multiple times.
The objective becomes to definitely kill the person. US police seem to try to kill people once they start firing, and seem to be more likely to open fire.
If you are pulling that trigger, you are trying to kill. Believe it or not, a single bullet will not guarantee that outcome. Now, say there was evidence of firing the gun a time or two, seeing the man drop, no longer proving a threat, and then walking up and shooting him again? Yeah, that is murder. Simply shooting a person multiple times though, that cannot explicitly imply any negative malice.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/07/30 21:14:45
Full Frontal Nerdity
2016/07/30 21:21:25
Subject: Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
Kilkrazy wrote: The objective becomes to definitely kill the person.
Yes, because if you aren't shooting to immediately kill the person then you aren't justified in using lethal force. Put the gun away and find a different solution.
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
2016/07/30 21:27:37
Subject: Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
Kilkrazy wrote: Perhaps US police should be trained to resort to lethal force less than they do at the moment.
Has anyone been able to prove there is a real problem with their use of lethal force? I'm honestly tired of a handful of cases, with over a million law enforcement officers in this nation, being point to as a problem.
Full Frontal Nerdity
2016/07/30 21:35:13
Subject: Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
Kilkrazy wrote: Perhaps US police should be trained to resort to lethal force less than they do at the moment.
They should, but that's entirely different from the idea of using lethal force to "disable" a target.
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
2016/07/30 21:45:59
Subject: Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
Historic rates of fatal police shootings in Europe suggest that American police in 2014 were 18 times more lethal than Danish police and 100 times more lethal than Finnish police, plus they killed significantly more frequently than police in France, Sweden and other European countries.
By contrast, national standards in most European countries conform to the European Convention on Human Rights, which impels its 47 signatories to permit only deadly force that is “absolutely necessary” to achieve a lawful purpose. Killings excused under America’s “reasonable belief” standards often violate Europe’s “absolute necessity” standards.
According to Germany's Der Spiegel, German police shot only 85 bullets in all of 2011, a stark reminder that not every country is as gun-crazy as the U.S. of A. As Boing Boing translates, most of those shots weren't even aimed anyone: "49 warning shots, 36 shots on suspects. 15 persons were injured, 6 were killed."
Meanwhile, in the U.S., where the population is little less than four times the size of Germany's, well, we can get to 85 in just one sitting, thank you very much. 84 shots fired at one murder suspect in Harlem, another 90 shot at one fleeing unarmed man in Los Angeles. And that was just April.
They identified the number of people killed by police in several European countries and accounted for population by giving the number of people killed per one million residents. They used population figures from the year 2000.
Here’s what they found:
• Denmark: number of people killed by police between 1996 and 2006: 11 people — number of people killed per one million residents: .187 people
• Sweden: 13 people — .133 people
• Norway: 3 people — .060 people
• Finland: 2 people — .034 people
• Germany: 81 people — .089 people
• The Netherlands: 24 people — .137 people
• England/Wales: 25 people — .042 people
If we take Five Thirty Eight’s estimate that 1,000 people are killed by police in the United States every year and divide it by the 2000 population of 282 million, the American situation for just one year would look like this:
US: 10,000 people killed — 35.5 killed for every one million residents
Do not mistake this as saying that those who were killed were innocent. However, when we look at violent crime in this country, we can see that it is at an all time low.
While violence among citizens has dropped, violence against citizens carried out by police has been rising sharply.
When we look at citizens killed by police over the last two years, deaths have increased 44 percent in this short time; 763 people were killing by police in 2013.
As a comparison, the total number of US troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, in 2014 was 58.
Fewer soldiers were killed in war than citizens back home in “the land of the free” in 2014, by a large margin.
All the articles have reference to other articles and more data if you want to verify what they say.
2016/07/31 00:53:49
Subject: Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
In the UK you might go up to a policeman to ask he time or directions to a tourist location. Would that be a "police interaction"?
Sure, since your position is US cops are prone to gun down innocent folks when there was clearly no threat, that scenario sounds like a great example. How many folks have asked a cop for directions in the US and not been gunned down as opposed to those who were?
Or we could look at studies/articles that try to measure...
What’s striking in the progression of these later studies is a steady decrease in the number of people having interactions with the police—from about 45 million in 2002 to 40 million in 2011—or from about 21 percent of the 16-and-older population to about 17 percent. One clear reason for the decline has been the corresponding drop in crime: the number of people reporting crimes or other problems to the police fell by about 3.6 million from a peak in 2002. More important, perhaps, was that reports of use of force by police also fell, from 664,000 in 2002 to 574,000 in a 2010 report. Those declines occurred across all races. The number of African-Americans reporting that police used force against them fell from 173,000 to 130,000. Among whites, the number has dropped from a peak of 374,000 to 347,000.
According to that about 1.4% of 40,000,000 interactions in 2011 involved some use of force.
Also from that:
In the most recent survey, in 2011, 88.2 percent of those stopped by the police said they thought officers acted properly. There were few significant distinctions by race. Nearly 83 percent of African-Americans judged police behavior to be proper, for instance.
In 2002 C
21% of surveyed residents had a contact with police
40% of contacts were in traffic stops
26% of contacts were to report a crime or problem 1.5% of contacts involved police use of force
9% of white drivers were stopped
9% of black drivers were stopped
9% of Hispanic drivers were stopped
84% of drivers considered stop legitimate
The percent of U.S. residents age 16 or older who had face-to-face contact with police declined from 2002 (21.0%) to 2005 (19.1%) and declined again in 2008 (16.9%).
Now of course, 'use of force' in those does not equate to 'cop shot someone'.
But the data does not seem to support massive abuse and use of excessive force.
Of course when a cop does fire a weapon (or uses nonlethal force) there should be a fair investigation. Fair for all, victims and the cops. The perception (accurate or not) of the Blue Wall needs to be addressed and any officer or official who covers up or commits a crime should be hammered. I also think departments should consider 'leave without pay' as the default status for a cop being investigated, with pay given retroactively if the cop is cleared. I know the cops and their unions would fight such a policy in most locations.
Every time a terrorist dies a Paratrooper gets his wings.
2016/07/31 13:50:37
Subject: Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
Well imo there two ways of looking at this either the cops are using lethal force incredibly irresponsibly or america has a culturally endemic violent crime issue worse that any other comparable country on earth. Whats it going to be?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/07/31 16:45:27
3500pts1500pts2500pts4500pts3500pts2000pts 2000pts plus several small AOS armies
2016/07/31 15:17:05
Subject: Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
A common thing from the many videos of American police shooting people is that they don't de-escalate a situatuon. I've seen several videos where the person the policeman is trying to apprehend isn't putting up a fight but the police man goes in shouting and hitting them, throwing them on the floor. Then the person starts to struggle because they are trying to defend themselves, next the police is pounding them on the floor or reaching for their taser or gun.
It just seems there's a recurring issue where the officer inflames the situation and causes an escalation to the point where they draw their weapon. There was a video here on Dakka or elsewhere I saw in the past week where one officer is speaking to a woman, she seems calm as he starts putting the cuffs on, then another officer approaches to 'help' by grabbing her and roughly pushing her on the floor, then they end up with both officers rolling on the floor, knees in her back, and one going for his taser to 'calm' her down. A job well done.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nut. That seems to be the problem attitude underlying a lot of these situations that escalate.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/07/31 15:17:51
2016/07/31 16:00:05
Subject: Re:Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
I saw somebody somewhere here mention an example of how, when a person was being arrested, they were initially peaceful and cooperative but then a second cop weighs in an unnecessarily heavy handed manner and escalates things to the point were a taser is deployed? Things like that are a perfect example of why American police are a disgrace. Never mind shooting an armed cooperative man lying on the ground for, in their own words, reasons unknown.
In the first case, the officer needs to be charged with assault and fired, never to wear a badge again. In the second case, the officer needs to be charged with attempted murder and imprisioned. And fired of course. They only do it because the chance of them being punished for it is non existent. They are a law to themselves.
As for payouts to the victims of these sorts of incidents, the money is always paid out by the department. The problem with that is, that's tax payers money. Ordinary people are paying for the actions of these bastards. The solution I think, which I've seen mentioned elsewhere, is to take the compensation money from the pension pot of the offending department. In other words, literally force all cops to pay for the mistakes of their own (brotherhood of the thin blue line and all that). I can garantee that they'll think twice if that was in place. Even if it's 'unconstitutional', make it happen. It's the only way.
2016/07/31 16:31:13
Subject: Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
Howard A Treesong wrote: A common thing from the many videos of American police shooting people is that they don't de-escalate a situatuon. I've seen several videos where the person the policeman is trying to apprehend isn't putting up a fight but the police man goes in shouting and hitting them, throwing them on the floor. Then the person starts to struggle because they are trying to defend themselves, next the police is pounding them on the floor or reaching for their taser or gun.
It just seems there's a recurring issue where the officer inflames the situation and causes an escalation to the point where they draw their weapon. There was a video here on Dakka or elsewhere I saw in the past week where one officer is speaking to a woman, she seems calm as he starts putting the cuffs on, then another officer approaches to 'help' by grabbing her and roughly pushing her on the floor, then they end up with both officers rolling on the floor, knees in her back, and one going for his taser to 'calm' her down. A job well done.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nut. That seems to be the problem attitude underlying a lot of these situations that escalate.
That might be true of the cases where someone gets shot, but in the 99.99% of other cases where someone doesn't get shot, the cops usually are trying to calm the situation down and make sure no one gets hurt.
A lot of the cases where people do get shot and it looks like the cops where being over aggressive, often they are going in with information like the person might be armed, have prior history of violence and so on. There are obviously also cases where the cops were just doing a bad job, but even if the US police training, screening and internal reporting systems need reform, it's important to remember these cases are a rarity, not the norm.
2016/07/31 17:41:20
Subject: Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
Zognob Gorgoff wrote: Here's a very interesting video from youtube about military training and shooting to kill. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zViyZGmBhvs: This is the videos blurb:
We ask soldiers to shoot people in combat, but how many men find this easy to do? What proportion can pull the trigger?
Modern techniques of training have enormously increased soldiers' willingness to kill, but the consequences of this success are yet to be fully understood. A man who is not a natural born killer may have a tough time dealing with the fact that his training led him to do things that his natural reluctance would have prevented.
My partner and I where having a discussion on if this is how police are trained to shoot in america and if this trigger method of training is partly responsible for the high rate of innocent gun shot victims by police forces in america.
Obviously there are other factors, like potentially high gun ownership or racial tension, but really i was interested in discussing a consensus of how it could be avoided as a lot of the variables seem to happen in other nations without the same casualty rate.
I'm breaking my self-imposed exile from OT to comment on this.because I have personal experience in this area, both military and law enforcement. So, I figured I would offer some insights, since this is a fairly good topic that won't get my blood pressure up.
First off, killing is never easy. And nor should it be. Sure it becomes easier over time for some (if they have a conscience) via rationalization and the need to survive. But it's still a gakky feeling, and something you never really get over.
Police in the United States are not taught to "shoot to kill". Anybody who says otherwise is full of it. Police are taught to shoot to stop the threat. Killing is not the goal within itself, even if death is a possible end result. The job of the police (and training reflects this) is to apprehend if possible. Deadly force is regarded as a last resort in American policing. The gun is there pretty much for the same reason as a private citizen who might be armed: to defend themselves and others from possible, deadly felonious assaults. Even SWAT's primary goal is to subdue and apprehend. Deadly force is only used to meet deadly force.
Accidental killings by police do happen, just not as often as it did thirty years ago thanks to improved training in law enforcement. The main reason it does still happen on occasion is that police are often on the scene after the fact, or while something is in the process of going down. They don't know the who, what, whens, and whys until they better access the situation. If it's a high-stress incident, anything can happen. Especially if somebody does something that any reasonable person may interpret as a deadly threat, even if they are uninvolved in the reason why the cops were called to the scene. There have been many instances over the history of American policing where cops have been killed by people, out of the blue, who were not involved in a call, traffic stop, response to an alarm, etc. for whatever reason.
In high-stress situations, when something perceived as a deadly threat, you instinctively fall back on your training. And reaction time can mean the difference between going home or ending up on a morgue slab. When somebody appears to be going for a weapon, or has something in their hands that appears to be a weapon (in low light situations or if the officer is surprised), and they fail to comply with lawful commands (if you even have time to bark them out), then it's game on. You have to make the call to shoot or don't shoot. And often it's a split second decision. Gunfights and violent confrontations are not the protracted crap you see in Hollyweird shoot 'em ups or in the vidya. They tend to start and end very quickly. And the officer's only goal in that situation is to survive by stopping the threat.
As for how accidental police shootings can remain a rare phenomena, stopping the bean counters from slashing training budgets is one way (which does happen in some jurisdictions). However, training, no matter how good, can only do so much to prepare you for the concrete jungle (some of it comes from the school of hard knocks) And modern police training regimes tend to be very good. Better than it was when I wore the uniform. They're MOST DEFINITELY better than it was when my late Pops was a cop back in the day (of service revolvers and Plymouth Furies with big-block V8s).
To summarize in a nutshell: Accidental shootings by police, while higher than they are by armed citizens in self-defense situations, are rare as a blue moon nowadays. And the training programs, while slashing such to tiny percentages, will not completely eradicate it.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/07/31 17:44:27
Proud Purveyor Of The Unconventional In 40k
2016/07/31 20:07:08
Subject: Re:Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
No one mention training to aim at "Center Mass" as LEO's who go to annual training (more/less).
If a ROE is imposed on all LEA's would that be misconstrued as Militarization of the Police Force?
Proud Member of the Infidels of OIF/OEF
No longer defending the US Military or US Gov't. Just going to ""**feed into your fears**"" with Duffel Blog Did not fight my way up on top the food chain to become a Vegan...
Warning: Stupid Allergy
Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend
DE 6700
Harlequin 2500
RIP Muhammad Ali.
Jihadin, Scorched Earth 791. Leader of the Pork Eating Crusader. Alpha
2016/07/31 22:00:27
Subject: Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
Honestly, I think the bigger issue is, more than any shooting itself, is the response we often get by the police departments, police unions and prosecutors, defending or failing to properly prosecute improper shootings by police.
People understand and acknowledge mistakes, but when, in a nation of 300 million people and several million police officers and several hundred police related shootings every year, the idea that margin of "bad shoots" (or other misuse of force incidents) that are acknowledged and prosecuted as such is so low as to be *far* beyond the realm of statistical reality that almost nobody is ever seemingly held accountable, that's where you run into issues. When shoots or other force-related incidents that would land a non-LEO in prison for decades are routinely passed off as justified as a matter of course, that's where you get problems with people trusting the police. The increasingly "military" look of police that many people perceive also tends to feed into that, and seemingly creeps into the mindset of many amongst the law enforcement community as well in some places, and when an "us vs them" mentality takes over, or a "I have to make it home safe regardless of the consequences" mentality is promoted in training, you get unfortunate incidents that then get waived off as being "within protocol" or something similar.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/07/31 22:03:14
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
2016/07/31 22:08:07
Subject: Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
CptJake wrote: Quick question: Do any of those articles give stats on use of lethal force as a percent of overall police interactions?
I admit I didn't read them all, but your selected quotes don't answer the question I asked.
There's this:
To make sense of these numbers, you need to know just how rarely police in other wealthy liberal democracies kill civilians.
Even when you account for population size, gun ownership, and violent crime rates, American police out-kill civilians by staggering factors relative to peer nations.
But how would you even get stats for "police interaction". Saying "hi" to an officer could be considered one. What's the threshold here? They work with the data they have and the USA doesn't even like to keep some of the data (the fivethirtyeight.com article below explains some of the problems, I quoted some bits).
As the quote says they are using "Five Thirty Eight’s estimate ". Lets see how valid that estimate is.
But these estimates can be wrong. Efforts to keep track of “justifiable police homicides” are beset by systemic problems. “Nobody that knows anything about the SHR puts credence in the numbers that they call ‘justifiable homicides,’” when used as a proxy for police killings, said David Klinger, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri who specializes in policing and the use of deadly force. And there’s no governmental effort at all to record the number of unjustifiable homicides by police. If Brown’s homicide is found to be unjustifiable, it won’t show up in these statistics.
The simple UCR database does have plenty of limitations. For one, the data has holes in it: Illinois, for example, changed its reporting guidelines in 2010 to comply with UCR methodology, and data is only available prior to 2010 for the state’s largest cities. And then there are cases like Dallas, which in 2007 quietly redefined what it considers an aggravated assault, lowering its violent crime figures in the database. Such discrepancies are a major problem for UCR reporting of non-fatal crimes.
1. Fewer local police agencies report SHR data than report standard UCR data.
2. “Felon killed by police” refers narrowly to justifiable police homicides, and “unjustifiable homicide by police” is not a classification. This means it’s difficult to combine unjustifiable police homicides — which could be listed as crimes elsewhere in the database — with “justifiable” police homicides.
3. If the legality of a police homicide is in question, it may not be reported to the FBI SHR until the investigation is resolved. If the investigation concludes in a new reporting year, the old SHR data may not be updated, regardless of whether the killing was found to be justifiable or not. Criminology professor Geoff Alpert of the University of South Carolina, an expert on police violence, said he has “never seen a department go back and audit their numbers and fix them.” (In a statement provided in response to emailed questions, the FBI confirmed that it generally does not reopen master data files to add or correct reports.)
4. Killings in federal jurisdictions, such as federal prisons or military bases, are not included in the database.
But the “legal intervention” deaths — an average of 406 per year from 1999 to 20113 — are not useful on their own since many police homicides are misclassified simply because the coroner’s report does not mention police involvement. This count, along with the FBI’s estimate and an independent count of “arrest-related homicides” by the Bureau of Justice Statistics from 2003 to 20094 complete the trio of official-sounding but incomplete police homicide stats.5
During this span, the NVSS database reported an average of 18,011 homicide deaths per year. The raw SHR data contained an average of 15,024 victims. (The spike in 2001 is due to 2,823 homicides associated with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.) That’s a roughly 3,000-person gap.7
Some of those 3,000 deaths are police homicides, justifiable and unjustifiable — there’s no way of knowing how many. They also include other homicides that are not reported to the SHR but which have nothing to do with police involvement — for example, killings that occur in federal jurisdictions.
It’s likely there are homicides recorded in the SHR that should be attributed to police as “justifiable” but aren’t. And, as I mentioned earlier, there’s an unknown number of unjustifiable police homicides that aren’t marked with any evidence of police involvement. Account for all that, and you would have the true number of police homicides each year.
So they have a minimum of 400 plus a chunk of these 3000 gap that don't get counted as police related. Their conclusion is more than 400. I don't know why they picked 1000 exactly (might be too low or too high) but even if you take half of that (or even a tenth) the US still has a multiple of any other western democracy they are compared against. Everybody else is between 0.050 to 0.150 deaths/million and the US is at 35. That's on the other side of the decimal point.
Yes, and the US is drastically different from every other Western democracy, as has been repeatedly pointed out, again, and again, and again.
You cannot apples to oranges the US and any European nation. Can't even do it with US and Canada (Canada has a much higher number the the UK and Germany, btw).
Full Frontal Nerdity
2016/07/31 22:22:02
Subject: Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
Kilkrazy wrote: Why is the USA drastically different to every other Western democracy?
Do you mean it's a very violent society? I think it's more violent than Europe, for sure, but is that what makes the difference?
I think in general the US isn't a violent society at all. If I were to guess, without actually knowing any stats, I'd say when it comes to poor and desperate folk living in rough areas the violence typically associated with that (drunken brawls, domestic violence, theft, drug abuse) is more likely to develop in to something fatal. It may also be there's more people in those poor and desperate areas, but I haven't looked at any stats to confirm that.
In general I think the US is actually less violent than a lot of places. I see a lot more general yelling and brawling and people being downright aggressive arses in the UK and Australia than I ever saw travelling around the USA. Even at times when I did venture in to what were apparently rough areas everyone seemed friendly. Every time I stayed at a pub until closing time people just calmly walked home afterwards, that almost never happens in my home town in Australia
2016/08/01 07:31:52
Subject: Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
djones520 wrote: Has anyone been able to prove there is a real problem with their use of lethal force? I'm honestly tired of a handful of cases, with over a million law enforcement officers in this nation, being point to as a problem.
You shouldn't confuse there being a handful of cases in the popular media with there only being a handful of cases in total. There was about 1,000 lethal police shootings last year, and this year will be about the same. This is miles above any other developed country, though the long term trend is down (it's about half what it was in the early 90s),
Of course, not every instance was a 'bad shoot'. In many cases the officer(s) fired when there was a real risk to their lives or to the lives of civilians. But even that should open a conversation - what is happening that US police are in situations that require the use of lethal force more than other developed countries? And if that is part of the story, is it all of the story? Are there instances where police have opted for more aggressive approaches and that has led to a shooting, where an approach of deescalation might have worked better, so that even if the eventual shooting was necessary, perhaps that final situation could have been avoided?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I think in general the US isn't a violent society at all. If I were to guess, without actually knowing any stats, I'd say when it comes to poor and desperate folk living in rough areas the violence typically associated with that (drunken brawls, domestic violence, theft, drug abuse) is more likely to develop in to something fatal. It may also be there's more people in those poor and desperate areas, but I haven't looked at any stats to confirm that.
The US is about on par with most other developed countries, including the UK and Australia, for violent crime. There are about as many muggings and assaults in the US as there are elsewhere. And in property crime the US is actually ahead of the curve, with less break-ins and thefts than most other developed countries.
The only crime in which the US stands out is murder, and it stands out by a long way - three or four times the rate per 100,000 in other developed countries.
So in general the US is no more violent, and no more criminal than anywhere else in the developed world. Except for that one thing.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mario wrote: But how would you even get stats for "police interaction". Saying "hi" to an officer could be considered one. What's the threshold here? They work with the data they have and the USA doesn't even like to keep some of the data
The bigger question is why you'd measure something as weird as lethal shootings per interaction. It'd give you a very low number*, something like 0.000004%*, and so that works nicely for people who want to claim there's no problem, but the number is total nonsense. I mean, over his life John Wayne Gacy only killed the person he interacted with 0.0034%** of the time, and that is also a very low number... but that doesn't mean he was an okay dude.
The only sensible comparison is to look at the police shootings per capita, and then compare to roughly similar countries - ie other developed countries. The US has way more police shootings per capita. This doesn't mean that it has more bad police shootings, but it does show that something is very different in the US compared to elsewhere.
*To give a very rough figure, with something 2million police in the US, working about 250 days a year, and interacting with 50 people per day, the lethal shootings to interactions would be 0.000004%.
** He lived 52 years, so that's 18,980 days, and he's also probably going to interact without about 50 people a day. So only 33 out of his 949,000 were murderous...
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/08/01 07:47:53
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Kilkrazy wrote: It seems obvious that you want your soldiers to be able to kill enemies, but you don't want your police to be trained to the same standards of engagement.
Essentially it isn't the government's job to go about your streets killing you. Police ought to be trained first to de-escalate tense situations.
It's notable that European police officers have a lower rate of shooting suspects than US police, and are also more capable of shooting to disable rather than kill. There must be a reason for this.
Whether it is the lower weaponisation of European society, or the different training of European police, or these two factors combined, or something else.
I want my police to de-escalate. I want them to talk down, diffuse, or otherwise end an "event" without hostilities.
But when it is time to shoot, you shoot to kill. If you want to disable, use a fething TASER, Pepper Spray, or dog.
Kilkrazy wrote: and are also more capable of shooting to disable rather than kill.
This is a myth that needs to die. "Shooting to disable" has a very high risk of turning into "shooting to kill", because any injury capable of disabling a person could very well kill them instead. It is lethal force, and needs to be treated as such. If you shoot you should be shooting to kill, period, because the immediate use of lethal force is justified. If you are not shooting to immediately kill your target then it is a concession that lethal force is NOT justified, and you should not be shooting at all.
Agreed.
Good reason to have an alternate ranged weapon. If you want to shoot to disable you draw a taser.
n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion.
2016/08/01 14:27:49
Subject: Police accidental shootings: Trying to see ways it can be explained and then prevented.
I think part of the problem was touched on. US police operate under the 'reasonable perception of a threat' to respond with lethal force. Other departments run on the 'absolute neccessity' for use of lethal force.
3500pts
1500pts
2500pts
4500pts
3500pts
2000pts 
2000pts plus several small AOS armies 
