The US is roughly 5x the population of Britain - that doesn't begin to explain why US police killed twice as many people in one month as British police killed in the last century...
US police kill more than two people a day, report suggests
- Thread starter crimsonaudio
- Start date
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/...eople-than-police-in-Germany-the-UK-combined#
One small town's police have killed more people than police in Germany and the UK combined
With just 59,000 residents, the Pasco police department in Washington state have shot and killed four people in the past six months—more than police in the entire United Kingdom, which has over 60,000,000 citizens, in the past three years combined. In fact, Pasco police are on pace to have more police shootings than Germany, with 80,000,000 citizens, over the current 12 month period.On Tuesday, February 10, three Pasco police officers shot and killed an unarmed man who had been throwing rocks. It's hard to imagine, if the American public was told the below video was from Iraq or Syria or Cuba, that our entire nation wouldn't be disgusted at the abuse of power and unethical use of force to senselessly kill a man.
One small town's police have killed more people than police in Germany and the UK combined
With just 59,000 residents, the Pasco police department in Washington state have shot and killed four people in the past six months—more than police in the entire United Kingdom, which has over 60,000,000 citizens, in the past three years combined. In fact, Pasco police are on pace to have more police shootings than Germany, with 80,000,000 citizens, over the current 12 month period.On Tuesday, February 10, three Pasco police officers shot and killed an unarmed man who had been throwing rocks. It's hard to imagine, if the American public was told the below video was from Iraq or Syria or Cuba, that our entire nation wouldn't be disgusted at the abuse of power and unethical use of force to senselessly kill a man.
Once again - how you gonna shoot anybody with a billy club? Nobody has yet answered this OBVIOUS question.
Maybe our solution should just be to disarm the police, right? That would end cops shooting "unarmed civilians," right?
Come to think of it - if we legalized all crime, we could have a crime rate of 0%. Ok, so a lot of lawyers would be out of work and for that matter a bunch of journalists spinning yarns but.......that's two up sides right there.
One final note: in no way do I mind criticism that is justified. However - why are there so many threads here complaining about how POLICE should change THEIR tactics by people who are not even in law enforcement but not one wants to point out most of these "killings by cop" occur NOT to unarmed people but to actual dangerous folks?
After all.....how many COPS are killed in the UK and Germany is a good place to start.......and then how many here? I don't care for much for asymmetrical investigation. But that's not supposed to be brought up, right?
I would bet that we have had more police killed in the last two weeks than the UK has had in the last Five years
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German police carry firearms.
In fact, I'd be shocked if you could find any industrialized nation that had as many suspect deaths at the hands of police as the US does.
It's very easy to criticize without offering suggestions. It's also easy to look at numbers without context. Furthermore, it is easy to take reported numbers at face value without questioning them.
It's also easy gloss over glaring problems. It's also easy to refute numbers someone has researched without doing your own (or finding someone else's) research to refute it with actual evidence. It's also easy to simply take law enforcement's side as they are generally considered more credible than thugs and thieves.
I've said this before, but I used to simply take the cop's side and believe his story. Then video evidence proved I shouldn't always do that.
I personally know some good cops. A friend's brother was killed in the line of duty.
I personally know a cop that abuses his power, preys on old people, lies to cover his backside, and is a wife-beating teenage girls ogling general creep that has no business working security at a video rental store, much less in actual law enforcement.
Unarmed people are not always not dangerous. True enough. Can't always tell if a gun is real or a toy. Fair enough. But man, I have seen some pretty unsettling things. Like a kid shot in a park. Like a guy in Walmart carrying a toy gun - in an open carry state, no less (even for real guns) - killed without any attempt to determine if he was a real threat.
I've seen a homeless man taken down like a dog. I've seen unarmed fleeing men shot in the back. I've seen a guy selling cigarettes for Pete's sake taken down (without a gun involved). I've seen no-knock raids go horribly wrong with innocent people killed because they thought they were being attacked by intruders - and sometimes the police were at the wrong house to begin with or got a warrant with only the "evidence" of an informant's word.
I've seen cops shot dead an unarmed mentally ill man. Heard plenty of other stories similar to it. One recently was a suicidal guy with a knife in his bedroom whose S.O. had called for help getting him safely to a psych facility. There are several similar stories out there.
And as far as the drug trade, if it weren't a crime with harsher penalties than physically killing someone then the black market crime would not exist, nor the violence that goes along with it. And every cop out there would not use it as an all-in excuse to violate our inalienable rights. Not that I give those violent criminals a pass. I don't. But too many minorities are killed. Sometimes without justification.
And if you so much as threaten to kill a cop, that's on you.
Cops have a hard job. They are sometimes in horrible situations. Most do their best. Some pay with their lives. And that should never happen in a just world.
But there is (as Selma rightly said) no reason to pin anarchy up against a blank check for police to kill people. We HAVE to criticize police. And if they can't handle public criticism they should choose another profession. We HAVE to examine not only misconduct, but also better ways of policing to prevent police shootings that are preventable.
I can only bring up the health care field for comparison. We are very critical of ourselves, not to mention the public is always evaluating us. what we are paid by insurance will even soon depend on those evaluations. But we look for ways to prevent deaths that are preventable. Because the public depends on us. They place their faith in us. They place their very lives in our hands. Because it is our ethical and moral responsibility to do the right thing.
And it's really not much different with cops. They are given great power over life, death, and freedom. They have a responsibility to the public. So no one should get upset when the public says to them, "You need to do better".
Frankly, I've always felt that most of the answers to how to do better will have to come from within the policing community in cooperation with the public. Many in the public can offer suggestions, but it will be up to cops how to implement them in a safe way.
But the conversation has to start somewhere. And the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. I don't believe closing ranks solves a single problem any more than false accusations do.
What I'm hoping for is some middle ground that keeps cops safe, but that keeps the public more safe as well. To be truly effective, that effort will have to reach far and wide ranging from how cops interact with the public to changing the very laws we ask police to enforce.
And just because we criticize cops does not mean we don't support them.
It's also easy gloss over glaring problems. It's also easy to refute numbers someone has researched without doing your own (or finding someone else's) research to refute it with actual evidence. It's also easy to simply take law enforcement's side as they are generally considered more credible than thugs and thieves.
I've said this before, but I used to simply take the cop's side and believe his story. Then video evidence proved I shouldn't always do that.
I personally know some good cops. A friend's brother was killed in the line of duty.
I personally know a cop that abuses his power, preys on old people, lies to cover his backside, and is a wife-beating teenage girls ogling general creep that has no business working security at a video rental store, much less in actual law enforcement.
Unarmed people are not always not dangerous. True enough. Can't always tell if a gun is real or a toy. Fair enough. But man, I have seen some pretty unsettling things. Like a kid shot in a park. Like a guy in Walmart carrying a toy gun - in an open carry state, no less (even for real guns) - killed without any attempt to determine if he was a real threat.
I've seen a homeless man taken down like a dog. I've seen unarmed fleeing men shot in the back. I've seen a guy selling cigarettes for Pete's sake taken down (without a gun involved). I've seen no-knock raids go horribly wrong with innocent people killed because they thought they were being attacked by intruders - and sometimes the police were at the wrong house to begin with or got a warrant with only the "evidence" of an informant's word.
I've seen cops shot dead an unarmed mentally ill man. Heard plenty of other stories similar to it. One recently was a suicidal guy with a knife in his bedroom whose S.O. had called for help getting him safely to a psych facility. There are several similar stories out there.
And as far as the drug trade, if it weren't a crime with harsher penalties than physically killing someone then the black market crime would not exist, nor the violence that goes along with it. And every cop out there would not use it as an all-in excuse to violate our inalienable rights. Not that I give those violent criminals a pass. I don't. But too many minorities are killed. Sometimes without justification.
And if you so much as threaten to kill a cop, that's on you.
Cops have a hard job. They are sometimes in horrible situations. Most do their best. Some pay with their lives. And that should never happen in a just world.
But there is (as Selma rightly said) no reason to pin anarchy up against a blank check for police to kill people. We HAVE to criticize police. And if they can't handle public criticism they should choose another profession. We HAVE to examine not only misconduct, but also better ways of policing to prevent police shootings that are preventable.
I can only bring up the health care field for comparison. We are very critical of ourselves, not to mention the public is always evaluating us. what we are paid by insurance will even soon depend on those evaluations. But we look for ways to prevent deaths that are preventable. Because the public depends on us. They place their faith in us. They place their very lives in our hands. Because it is our ethical and moral responsibility to do the right thing.
And it's really not much different with cops. They are given great power over life, death, and freedom. They have a responsibility to the public. So no one should get upset when the public says to them, "You need to do better".
Frankly, I've always felt that most of the answers to how to do better will have to come from within the policing community in cooperation with the public. Many in the public can offer suggestions, but it will be up to cops how to implement them in a safe way.
But the conversation has to start somewhere. And the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. I don't believe closing ranks solves a single problem any more than false accusations do.
What I'm hoping for is some middle ground that keeps cops safe, but that keeps the public more safe as well. To be truly effective, that effort will have to reach far and wide ranging from how cops interact with the public to changing the very laws we ask police to enforce.
And just because we criticize cops does not mean we don't support them.
The heart of the article:
Nevertheless, if blacks killing blacks doesn't spark media outrage but a black being killed by a white cop does, I know what my police department would do.
There is a Don Zaluchi quote from "The Godfather" that seems apropos when discussing inner city violence today.
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Great find and I agree 100% with what the author wrote.
This paragraph in particular jumped out at me:
From day 1 that Chris Rock YT video should have been played during every news broadcast.....I can't post to it here because of the salty language but it really drives the point home.
Anyway back on topic.....it's going to be real interesting to watch the murder stats of inner city people go up now that the cops are being a little more careful not to interfere with their social lives.
Great article. Ask the black residents in Baltimore how the police ending serious policing. They are under assault and scared to death. It's only going to get worse too. People want the police to admit the problem yet they refuse to address or admit to the problems that these inner city hellholes are caused by.
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That is a false choice. One has little if anything to do with the other. Inner city hellholes have many "causes". The most direct cause being a complete disregard for life and property. Other more indirect causes range from the structure of welfare to our drug laws and even go back to slavery and Jim Crow, if we are to be honest. But none of that explains why some cops feel a need to completely dishonor their fellow officers by abusing their power and/or killing someone unjustly. None of that means that I want disabled and mentally ill people killed when there are other choices that can be made. Goodness knows, I don't want lawlessness but I don't want cops to be lawless either.
I wouldn't say that but they have withdrawn somewhat (for other reasons) and as a result there were more murders (and assaults) in May than anytime since 1972.
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