By the numbers: US police kill more in days than other countries do in years

[Montjoy]

Maybe we should compare the violent crime rates between the 2 countries.

While I see where you're coming from, those sorts of gross (not meaning grotesque) statistics are not terribly helpful. At least not from a source like you cited. Often, the UK is seen as much more violent than the US because of the way that the categorize crimes. And so, depending on how a source -- like the, how to put it, political blog that you linked -- groups things together, a case can be made for pretty much anything.

 

[Montjoy]

There were 42 murders in May in Baltimore. Detroit and Baltimore and New Orleans are in the TOP FIFTY of the worlds most violent cities. No city in Wales or Iceland or Germany is anywhere near that amount of violence.

Well, perhaps their LE does a much better job in preventing crime.

 

[katydid23]

I do not see this as a public attack on the police, per se. I myself have already acknowledged the obvious point that most police officers are decent people doing a difficult and dangerous job. Incidentally, I respect them for it too. But in any job there will always be a few who might overstep the mark, and there need to be checks and balances to keep this to a minimum. And there certainly have been bad examples caught on film. To be critical of these is not an attack on all police officers.

And to say that "if you don't want to get shot by the police don't do crimes, and obey the police", it is for the courts to decide who has committed a crime, and to punish them for it. The job of the police is to apprehend the suspect, protect the public, and gather evidence. To shoot someone - whose guilt has not yet been determined in law - simply for disobeying any order is not acceptable behaviour and cops who do this will give all decent cops a bad name.

To be critical of certain things should not be taken so personally as an attack upon all cops. Most members of this forum want the cops to catch the bad guys out there and bring them to justice and are fully behind them. But no profession should ever be above criticism, and every barrel of apples does tend to include one or two rotten ones - in every profession.

Any decent cops out there or relatives or friends of decent cops who are members of this forum - I don't think anyone here is intending this to be a blanket attack upon all US cops everywhere. We respect you and the jobs you do. But valid criticism of certain things is always going to happen and it is right that it does so.

It is totally unfair to compare the cops in our urban environments to the unarmed cops in the UK. The violence in Detroit/Chicago/Baltimore is so out of control that it is impossible to make a valid comparison.

That article in the Guardian is laughable when they try and compare SHOOTINGS by cops to a police force in the UK without guns. How does that even make any sense?

 

[katydid23]

Well, perhaps their LE does a much better job in preventing crime.

Oh, yes, that must be it. Couldn't possibly be any other reason for the violence in the inner cities. Must be the fault of the police for not preventing it. It couldn't be the lack of fathers in the home, rampant drug usage, and severe poverty. It's the cop's fault.

 

[katydid23]

While I see where you're coming from, those sorts of gross (not meaning grotesque) statistics are not terribly helpful. At least not from a source like you cited. Often, the UK is seen as much more violent than the US because of the way that the categorize crimes. And so, depending on how a source -- like the, how to put it, political blog that you linked -- groups things together, a case can be made for pretty much anything.

It doesn't matter which source you look at. Germany comes nowhere close to the crime rates in the inner cities of the USA.

 

[Montjoy]

It is totally unfair to compare the cops in our urban environments to the unarmed cops in the UK. The violence in Detroit/Chicago/Baltimore is so out of control that it is impossible to make a valid comparison.

That article in the Guardian is laughable when they try and compare SHOOTINGS by cops to a police force in the UK without guns. How does that even make any sense?

I'm not sure from where you get your information the UK or its different constabularies.

 

[katydid23]

Oh, they have gangs there too. Wales is part of the UK, for what it's worth, and there are no real borders between it and England or Scotland -- so the same gangs work there too. But as for Iceland -- they were very rich for a short period of time, or at least some of them were, and then their economy collapsed, which makes a country (especially an island) very vulnerable to gangs.

Oh yeah, Wales. Very scary. There were 14 murders in Wales in 2014. I think Chicago had 14 murders last Sunday.

 

[katydid23]

I'm not sure from where you get your information the UK or its different constabularies.

Are you seriously trying to compare the violent crime rates of the US to those of the UK? Because it is really no comparison. And to compare the police shootings between the two is just silly. JMO

 

[katydid23]

No need to 'yell' with all capital letters, but how so? Do you have any idea of what has been going on in Iceland over the last 10 years or so? (I do.)

www.ibtimes.com/eden-shattered-peaceful-c...
International Business Times
Dec 2, 2013 - Iceland has one of the lowest crime rates in the world, including a near absence of gun violence.


So is it fair to compare the cops in the US withe the cops in Iceland?

 

[Montjoy]

It doesn't matter which source you look at. Germany comes nowhere close to the crime rates in the inner cities of the USA.

Again, perhaps they are doing something better -- both LE and society in general. If you (just speaking hypothetically) think that the USA has a problem with immigrant, or, say, folks who don't look like you -- well, Germany has had the same issues, and they've learned how to deal with them without shooting lots of people. They have a porous border, and have a thriving economy. Some Germans have had issues with immigrant groups -- need I say, and I'm not judging at all, that these groups are relatively recent -- and yet their economy, pound for pound, exceeds that of larger and resource rich countries like the USA and Canada. It's not hard to score drugs in Germany, either. But they are able to keep things going without LE shooting people.

 

[Montjoy]

www.ibtimes.com/eden-shattered-peaceful-c...
International Business Times
Dec 2, 2013 - Iceland has one of the lowest crime rates in the world, including a near absence of gun violence.


So is it fair to compare the cops in the US withe the cops in Iceland?

Can you be honest and answer two simple questions without googling (or an alternative) your answers? First, what is the population of Iceland? Second, what are its gun laws?

eta: what is the very significant source of socio-economic turmoil that they have recently experienced?

 

[BritsKate]

I am really tired of this public attack on police.These brave men and women put themselves in harms way everyday to keep us safe.Put yourself in their shoes and think about what kind of violent criminals they are in contact with everday and how difficult it is to protect themselves and civillians.If you are shot by the police while commiting a crime well thats on you.I imagine there will be many officers leaving the force because of all this scrutiny that will put their lives in danger because they can not do their job for fear of backlash.If you don't want to get shot by the police don't do crimes,and obey the police.

It just isn't that black and white though. Cops don't only injure/kill criminals and gang members. Many are injured or killed as a result of police responding to a domestic incident. What about an elderly man with dementia or a teenager with schizophrenia? What about people whom, by little to no fault of their own, are unable to follow the commands of an authority figure in a potentially highly charged situation? What about kids hit with a ricochet bullet from a cop's gun? Or a toddler girl getting mowed down during a high speed chase? Or a little boy not realizing his toy gun would be perceived as a threat? Would better training prevent some tragedies from occurring?

When people are dying - for whatever reason - shouldn't their deaths be scrutinized to see if there are measures that can be taken to ensure no one else dies as a result? When we know better, we can do better. These people are forced to make life and death decisions in an instant - so what resources, what training, can we provide to avoid senseless deaths? What would have happened differently had the officers who killed the 17 year old girl in Texas had specialized mental health training, or were taught to shoot to disable, or used a less lethal means of bullet?

While I, in theory, support those who go above and beyond to keep our communities safer I also cringe at there being no oversight, no accountability, and little in way of punishment even when obviously deserved. Anyone can succumb to abusing the power and trust bestowed on them - especially in a demanding, highly stressful, and dangerous job. Questioning why, and what could be done differently, isn't the same as bashing the police, armed forces, firefighters, medics, etc.

JMO and FWIW

 

[katydid23]

Can you be honest and answer two simple questions without googling (or an alternative) your answers? First, what is the population of Iceland? Second, what are its gun laws?

eta: what is the very significant source of socio-economic turmoil that they have recently experienced?

I google so I can provide links to support my opinion. I thought we were required to do so.

How would I know the population of Iceland without googling? :waitasec:

But from the research I have done, Iceland, as of 2013, has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. To compare the situation in Iceland to the situation in Baltimore or Detroit is ridiculous. The cops in Iceland are not afraid that a 16 yr old is going to pull a Glock out of his waistband during a traffic stop.

 

[katydid23]

It just isn't that black and white though. What about an elderly man with dementia or a teenager with schizophrenia? What about people whom, by little to no fault of their own, are unable to follow the commands of an authority figure in a potentially highly charged situation? What about kids hit with a ricochet bullet from a cop's gun? Or a toddler girl getting mowed down during a high speed chase? Or a little boy not realizing his toy gun would be perceived as a threat? Would better training prevent some tragedies from occurring?

When people are dying - for whatever reason - shouldn't their deaths be scrutinized to see if there are measures that can be taken to ensure no one else dies as a result? When we know better, we can do better. These people are forced to make life and death decisions in an instant - so what resources, what training, can we provide to avoid senseless deaths? What would have happened differently had the officers who killed the 17 year old girl in Texas had specialized mental health training, or were taught to shoot to disable, or used a less lethal means of bullet?

While I, in theory, support those who go above and beyond to keep our communities safer I also cringe at there being no oversight, no accountability, and little in way of punishment even when obviously deserved. Anyone can succumb to abusing the power and trust bestowed on them - especially in a demanding, highly stressful, and dangerous job. Questioning why, and what could be done differently, isn't the same as bashing the police, armed forces, firefighters, medics, etc.

JMO and FWIW

They killed a 17 yr old girl in Texas? I missed that one.

But I think there already is a tremendous amount of training going on. But when I look at your examples:

What about kids hit with a ricochet bullet from a cop's gun? Or a toddler girl getting mowed down during a high speed chase? Or a little boy not realizing his toy gun would be perceived as a threat-What about an elderly man with dementia or a teenager with schizophrenia?


When I see the above examples, a few things come to mind. A riccochet from a cop's gun? Very rarely has that happened, and yet that happens every day with gang members shooting in the inner cities.
A toddler getting mowed down in a police chase? That is something that many departments are looking at. Most have only one car chasing fleeing felons and use helicopters to track them, so it does not turn out to be a dangerous event on the roads. I think the kids and parents are the ones that also need training when it comes to realistic looking guns. Every kid knows they are perceived as threats if they have taken the red paint off the tip. JMO

And all departments do train their officers about dementia and mental health issues. But it is an erratic, unpredictable situation, and if a schizophrenic has a knife and refuses to put it down, it might end badly. You cannot expect an officer to open himself to being attacked instead of defending himself if necessary.

And who says there is no oversight, no accountability? That is incorrect and hyped up by activists that spin it in a warped way, imo/

 

[BritsKate]

They killed a 17 yr old girl in Texas? I missed that one.

But I think there already is a tremendous amount of training going on. But when I look at your examples:

What about kids hit with a ricochet bullet from a cop's gun? Or a toddler girl getting mowed down during a high speed chase? Or a little boy not realizing his toy gun would be perceived as a threat-What about an elderly man with dementia or a teenager with schizophrenia?


When I see the above examples, a few things come to mind. A riccochet from a cop's gun? Very rarely has that happened, and yet that happens every day with gang members shooting in the inner cities.
A toddler getting mowed down in a police chase? That is something that many departments are looking at. Most have only one car chasing fleeing felons and use helicopters to track them, so it does not turn out to be a dangerous event on the roads. I think the kids and parents are the ones that also need training when it comes to realistic looking guns. Every kid knows they are perceived as threats if they have taken the red paint off the tip. JMO

And all departments do train their officers about dementia and mental health issues. But it is an erratic, unpredictable situation, and if a schizophrenic has a knife and refuses to put it down, it might end badly. You cannot expect an officer to open himself to being attacked instead of defending himself if necessary.

And who says there is no oversight, no accountability? That is incorrect and hyped up by activists that spin it in a warped way, imo/

While money isn’t the deciding factor in the success of a mental health program, it is an important factor, especially within municipal police departments. Usher suggested that the scarcity of monetary and human resources has lead to the drought of mental health training hours officers receive.

“Most law enforcement agencies can’t afford to train everyone,” Usher said. “They’d have to pay someone else overtime, and that can be a big expense, especially if you’re a small office.”

Usher said that many police departments prefer to train only a few specialized officers to deal with crisis issues, rather than making mental health training mandatory.

“[The department] would be over-resourced for a certain small number of incidents,” Usher said. “Not everyone is well-skilled for a certain task. What most communities want to do is develop a group of officers who are highly trained, and they’re the ones who are called in a crisis.”

But what happens if the first responder isn’t properly trained to handle the situation?

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...re-or-aren-t-trained-in-mental-health/280485/

Police misconduct clearly isn’t as rare of an event as we’d all like it to be, though it does appear the majority of complaints are the result of actions by repeat offenders, the sad reality is that police officers aren’t likely to be charged for misconduct. That some officers are facing charges is the exception to the rule. For many — like Johannes Mehserle, who only served two years in jail after shooting Oscar Grant in the back — even a conviction doesn’t mean receiving more than a slap on the wrist.

Despite the physical harm done to victims of police misconduct, and the high financial cost of lawsuits for taxpayers, there is very little being done to curb the problem.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...-public-is-too-scared-to-cooperate-with-them/

Those who would commit crime as readily as they would fight it don’t belong in the company of the men and women whose high ethical and moral standards are the stuff of heroes. And for the most part, they’re never even allowed into the recruit academy. Those who do slip through are routinely rooted from the ranks.

But some interlopers defeat those barriers.

http://www.policeone.com/officer-mi...o-something-about-the-corrupt-cop-on-your-PD/

"Good risk management would suggest that resources should be allocated to problems that are seen frequently and to infrequent problems that are very severe when they do arise. We don't allocate resources that way in firearms training. In fact, training by and large has been part of the problem, not part of the solution."

Use of deadly force is infrequent in the full sphere of police performance, yet its consequences in terms of life and lawsuits are severe. Within the realm of police shootings, Aveni's findings identify commonalities that do arise frequently, such as confrontations in low-light settings, mistakes of fact and judgment and the phenomenon of multiple officers shooting. Yet for the most part "we have neglected these issues or have only paid lip service to them in training," he charges.

http://www.policeone.com/officer-sh...in-the-details-of-officer-involved-shootings/

And in the case of Kristiana Coignard, as in what advocates and sheriffs agree constitute more than half of US police killings each year, the victim appears to have had mental health problems.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/28/kristiana-coignard-longview-texas-police-killing

“The situation sadly is not going to be isolated to this incident, there’s going to be other issues and if one thing good comes of this, it’s that we create a national dialogue – we’ve got this crisis, how are we going to deal with it?” Maloney said. “It’s not a situation without an answer. It’s just simply whether or not we’re going to spend time and resources to adequately train patrol officers to de-escalate instead of confront.”

With better training, Erik Coignard said, he and his wife are convinced that “Kristiana would still be alive today.”

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...coignard-parents-lawsuit-police-station-texas

When police misread the circumstances of encounter with an individual with mental health crisis, the possibility for violence rapidly escalates. The only solution is for law enforcement to try to stabilize every encounter, to the extent possible, as if it involved psychiatric disability.

As a nation, we are in the midst of an extended conversation about police violence, and this case stands out as unusual. The victim was white and female, for one thing. Moreover, ugly use-of-force incidents usually result from police being too quick to escalate, rather than too slow.

In the last few years I've watched many videos, either from cell phones or police cameras, and read even more incident reports describing encounters between law enforcement and people with psychiatric disabilities. I cannot recall seeing a case in which an officer has a potentially violent individual so well subdued, and then just backs away. I wondered if just as being black and male sparks some officers to be overly aggressive, a confrontation with a slender white female might produce the opposite effect...

Her death demonstrates that the ongoing crisis of violent police encounters with people with mental health transcends race, class and gender. It requires fundamental rethinking of strategic approaches to these types of incidents on a national level. Until that happens, the unnecessary deaths will continue.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/02/03/opinion/perry-mental-illness-police/

 

[katydid23]

Oh, they have gangs there too. Wales is part of the UK, for what it's worth, and there are no real borders between it and England or Scotland -- so the same gangs work there too. But as for Iceland -- they were very rich for a short period of time, or at least some of them were, and then their economy collapsed, which makes a country (especially an island) very vulnerable to gangs.

So in Wales there were 14 murders in 2014. Iceland had one.

in Detroit alone, there were 333 murders in 2014. Similar numbers in Chicago, Baltimore, and New Orleans.

There were almost 15, 000 murders in the US in 2010. [And we will probably have increased that total this year. ]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

http://www.metrotimes.com/Blogs/arc...arly-25-percent-in-first-three-months-of-2015

So in this country we have about 15,000 murders each year. And this article in the OP wants to compare our police force and their number of shootouts with countries that have 14 or 22 murders a year? That hardly seems fair.

 

[katydid23]

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...re-or-aren-t-trained-in-mental-health/280485/


http://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...-public-is-too-scared-to-cooperate-with-them/


http://www.policeone.com/officer-mi...o-something-about-the-corrupt-cop-on-your-PD/


http://www.policeone.com/officer-sh...in-the-details-of-officer-involved-shootings/


http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/28/kristiana-coignard-longview-texas-police-killing


http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...coignard-parents-lawsuit-police-station-texas


http://edition.cnn.com/2015/02/03/opinion/perry-mental-illness-police/

Those cases are a very small percentage of interactions with the police. I am not saying they all go perfectly well. But I think there is an agenda which is trying to make it out to be a much bigger problem than it is. The activists, ginned up by groups like OCCUPY, with their own political motives, are purposely targeting our LaW Enforcement Officers.

We have about 15, 000 MURDERS a year in our country. It is not the police that are committing those murders. It is the violent gang members, drug dealers, felons and con artists that are killing our people.

 

[JSinUK]

It is totally unfair to compare the cops in our urban environments to the unarmed cops in the UK. The violence in Detroit/Chicago/Baltimore is so out of control that it is impossible to make a valid comparison.

That article in the Guardian is laughable when they try and compare SHOOTINGS by cops to a police force in the UK without guns. How does that even make any sense?

Katykid23, some cops in the UK carry guns and most European police forces are fully armed. Yet US cops do shoot many more people per head than these other police forces. So far as that goes, the Guardian article is accurate.

But it is not the full picture because you are making a valid point. In terms of gun crime at least, the USA is far more violent, with many more shootings per head of population than in the UK or most of Europe. I believe that availability is an issue here, with guns being readily available to most people. Inevitably this means the bad guys can very easily get hold of them too and are mostly tooled up with them in consequence. This also means that the lawbreakers whom police confront or chase down are themselves far more likely to be armed and to start shooting. And even if they are not armed or don't use their guns, the fear that they might be armed and likely to shoot is bound to be much more in the forefront of a police officer's mind. I haven't researched the statistics but I'd be surprised if police deaths from shootings are not substantially higher in the US.

But the issue of availability is a political hot potato for Americans, with the right to bear arms enshrined in the constitution and regarded as a fundamental freedom by millions. I may be a Brit but I know enough to understand that. So as a politically controvertial subject, I'll stear clear of saying anything more about that. The right to bear arms versus gun control in the USA aint my beef. That issue is one I'll leave to Americans.

But to some extent, greater resort to firearms on the part of the police might be due to the fact that the bad guys shoot at them much more often.

However, having acknowledged that, there has emerged some video evidence of individual police officers shooting in very questionable circumstances, apparently believing that they can do so without consequences. The public has a right to feel safe from the police as well as to feel protected by them, and such episodes do much damage to that. Bad apples need to be rooted out and punished for the good standing of the great majority of decent officers out there.

Also, just because the job of anybody - police officer, soldier, sailor, fireman, etc - involves endangering themselves to protect others does not and should not exonerate them from all potential criticism. It is part of the checks and balances in any free society that those who uphold the law must be accountable for their actions and occasionally open to criticism. If they cease to be, that is dangerous.

 

[JSinUK]

It just isn't that black and white though. Cops don't only injure/kill criminals and gang members. Many are injured or killed as a result of police responding to a domestic incident. What about an elderly man with dementia or a teenager with schizophrenia? What about people whom, by little to no fault of their own, are unable to follow the commands of an authority figure in a potentially highly charged situation? What about kids hit with a ricochet bullet from a cop's gun? Or a toddler girl getting mowed down during a high speed chase? Or a little boy not realizing his toy gun would be perceived as a threat? Would better training prevent some tragedies from occurring?

When people are dying - for whatever reason - shouldn't their deaths be scrutinized to see if there are measures that can be taken to ensure no one else dies as a result? When we know better, we can do better. These people are forced to make life and death decisions in an instant - so what resources, what training, can we provide to avoid senseless deaths? What would have happened differently had the officers who killed the 17 year old girl in Texas had specialized mental health training, or were taught to shoot to disable, or used a less lethal means of bullet?

While I, in theory, support those who go above and beyond to keep our communities safer I also cringe at there being no oversight, no accountability, and little in way of punishment even when obviously deserved. Anyone can succumb to abusing the power and trust bestowed on them - especially in a demanding, highly stressful, and dangerous job. Questioning why, and what could be done differently, isn't the same as bashing the police, armed forces, firefighters, medics, etc.

JMO and FWIW

Spot on with some very good points very well made.

 

[JSinUK]

Those cases are a very small percentage of interactions with the police. I am not saying they all go perfectly well. But I think there is an agenda which is trying to make it out to be a much bigger problem than it is. The activists, ginned up by groups like OCCUPY, with their own political motives, are purposely targeting our LaW Enforcement Officers.

We have about 15, 000 MURDERS a year in our country. It is not the police that are committing those murders. It is the violent gang members, drug dealers, felons and con artists that are killing our people.

All this is true. And yes, there will always be those with an anti-cop agenda who will exploit any cases of bad apples behaving badly. But closing ranks to protect the bad apple, trying to close down all criticism whilst taking no action against he or she who has abused the authority of their uniform, simply provides those with anti-cop agendas with heaven-sent ammunition. It plays right into their hands and does all good cops no favours at all

The way to kick their agenda into touch is to be seen to weed out the bad apples, punish genuine wrongdoing, demonstrate that the police themselves are not above the law, and thereby reinforce the good standing of the vast majority of decent cops out there.