Police in the US Kill Citizens at Over 70 Times the Rate of Other First-World Nations
Let’s look at our immediate neighbors to the north, Canada. The total number of citizens killed by law enforcement officers in the year 2014, was 14; that is 78 times less people than the US.
If we look at the United Kingdom, 1 person was killed by police in 2014 and 0 in 2013. English police reportedly fired guns a total of three times in all of 2013, with zero reported fatalities.
From 2010 through 2014, there were four fatal police shootings in England, which has a population of about 52 million. By contrast, Albuquerque, N.M., with a population 1 percent the size of England’s, had 26 fatal police shootings in that same time period.
China, whose population is 4 and 1/2 times the size of the United States, recorded 12 killings by law enforcement officers in 2014.
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/pol...world-nations/
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Someone posted this on a different fora. I could be wrong but some members here are LEO in their respective countries. Just wanted to know the other side of the story.
Is it because of the constant threat of getting shot because of the increasing proliferation of guns or a result of increasing militarized LE and society in general?
Thanks.
Nothing but editorial pornography? No.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
slapout9
Cops shooting people and not reporting it.......really! This is nothing but left wing gun grab, social Justis, let's embarrass America propaganda. Nothing but editorial pornography.
Slap,
Perhaps you see WaPo as fitting such a description. Personally I don't think the Wall Street Journal fits your words.
What did the WSJ report in December 2014:
Quote:
A Wall Street Journal analysis of the latest data from 105 of the country’s largest police agencies found more than 550 police killings during those years were missing from the national tally or, in a few dozen cases, not attributed to the agency involved. The result: It is nearly impossible to determine how many people are killed by the police each year.
Link:http://www.wsj.com/articles/hundreds...ics-1417577504
Police-linked shootings like deaths in custody and deaths in police-related accidents can be an indicator of how the police perform their duties. They should not be ignored, indeed I would argue to do so is dangerous for the police and the public.
Back to WSJ, citing a law professor:
Quote:
When cops are killed, there is a very careful account and there’s a national database..Why not the other side of the ledger?
All manner of reasons can be cited about data problems, the facts matter.
Everybody Has A Death Certificate And A Cause Of Death InThe USA
David,
Article is behind a paywall. But everyone in the USA has to have a death certificate and a cause of death and must be reported to the Feds and should be tracked by Homeland Security for CT reason as I understand it, so how did this happen?. But as Bob said out of 330 million people that is statistically insignificant.
Statistically insignificant
Quote:
Originally Posted by
slapout9
David,
Article is behind a paywall. But everyone in the USA has to have a death certificate and a cause of death and must be reported to the Feds and should be tracked by Homeland Security for CT reason as I understand it, so how did this happen?. But as Bob said out of 330 million people that is statistically insignificant.
Slap,
Thanks the WSJ article - oddly here - was not behind a paywall and I assumed it was open access for all.:(
I appreciate data collection, especially one between so many agencies providing data to the FBI is fraught with problems. The WSJ and WaPo work suggests strongly that open source and FoI requests can generate a comprehensive picture.
I'll leave aside the DHS role; one which can be explained as removing data on "persons of interest", but also to take action to prevent the deceased's identity being used.
Factually true Bob's description of being 'statistically insignificant', but that is context and is not helpful. Even a former CIA Deputy Director has publicly commented on how IIRC "wrapped tight" police officers are, so one adjusts one's behaviour.
Major Marginal tweeted just after Ferguson a link to a PPT on how often the US public encounter the police and the chances of being IIRC arrested or worse, which showed how tiny the chances were.
“There are lies, damned lies, and statistics”
First of all, the link provided by the original posted does not seem to be the most credible source. According to Wikipedia (the most credible of sources), the UK had one person killed by police each year 2010-2014, but the article has a disclaimer saying the list is incomplete. The wiki for UK police killed in the line of duty lists 5 officers for the same period. The poster states there were 14 police killings in Canada in 2014. However, wiki lists 21 deaths. The Canadian Officer Down Memorial page lists 3 officers feloniously killed in the line of duty. I don’t even know where to begin with the Chinese numbers. China might be a “first world nation” economically, but it doesn’t strike me as the ideal when it comes to government transparency and constitutional policing. I would think any data provided on Chinese government/citizen encounters is skewed one way or another. But I do commend their creativity in using the “police restraint stick.” And I suspect both the Chinese and Japanese incorporate some serious martial arts training for their police, which is practical for countries with strict gun control.
There are many factors at play here. First and foremost is the availability of guns. US police have to be alert not just against armed criminals but the average (otherwise law abiding) citizen who just had a bad day. Even in encounters where the citizen is not armed, the police by their mere presence are introducing guns into a potentially volatile situation. For instance, a police officer might feel comfortable walking into a high crime area unarmed and out of uniform, especially if he/she has some common sense and some people skills. Millions of people do that on a daily basis and most don’t end up dead. But it’s completely different when you have to go into the same area as “the police” armed and with the intent of enforcing the law. An unarmed subject could try to arm himself with the officer’s weapon – each year several officers are killed in the line of duty with their own weapons. Even in a purely physical struggle, an armed officer cannot lose the fight too much because he risks having his weapons taken.
So in the case of the UK, one could hypothesize, strict gun control leads to less perceived threat and much higher threshold for deadly force, so less shootings. In the case of Canada, gun control seems to be on par with the US. But there might be other factors such as population size, population density, level of criminality, drug use, presence of gangs and organized crime, geo-location, and etc. There might be cultural differences that are missing from the analysis. For instance, fraternities and sororities are ubiquitous on US college campuses, but they are not as common in Canada (and almost unheard of in the UK, Australian, Germany, China, etc). We also can’t underestimate the role our shared border with Mexico plays in terms of violent crimes tied to human and narco trafficking. If you consider the numbers I cited above, 3 officers were feloniously killed in Canada compared to 21 citizens who were killed by police. In the US, 51 officers were feloniously killed in 2014, compared to the 623 citizens listed in wiki. While the numbers are not proportionate, the ratio of officers killed to citizens killed is not as dramatic as taking the raw numbers of citizens killed by police.
One thing Canada has going for it socialized medicine. Please correct me if I’m wrong but I would think there is better mental health care and social service available in Canada than the US. A significant number of police killings involved people with mental health issues (both real and sometimes manufactured by the family after the fact in order to cash out from a lawsuit…Oh, Johnny was depressed when he was 14, so the officer shouldn’t have killed him even though he lunged at him with a knife). Municipalities all across the US have been dramatically slashing mental health services and assistance to the homeless for decades. Consequently these people are out on the streets, and with no one else stepping up, have become law enforcement’s problem. The 9th Circuit recently issued a ludicrous ruling saying actively armed and dangerous suspect with mental issues should have ADA rights. Dozens of cities and counties in California submitted a brief in protest. They argued they lacked the funding to care for these people, so they were forced to turn them out causing issues on the streets which the police have to deal with, sometimes with deadly results, leaving the officers and cities potentially liable. SCOTUS reversed the decision.
There are of course, differences in use of force policies and tactics between the US and Canada, but I’m not informed enough about the policies of the latter to discuss that in detail. I know Canadian officers can upholster their weapons and keep it at the ready but cannot point it at a subject until they are ready to shoot. Pointing results in a lot of paperwork.
Statistics for homicides, violent crimes, or the feloniously killing of officers could be deceiving, because they don’t take into account things like advances in modern medicine, body armor technology, and etc. Maybe the same could be said about the modern battlefield. I think an American soldier’s chances of recovering from a traumatic injury are better today than they were 20 years ago, but I don’t know if one could say the modern battlefield is safer. One might argue a smaller percentage of the population is inclined to violence these days, but that doesn’t mean those who are inclined are not more lethal than ever. There seems to be a higher proportion of the criminal element that is better trained, more informed and more determined that ever. Let’s also not forget the much dreaded CompStat and the cooking of the books by top brass when it comes to crime stats. In a reasonable society having official stats compiled by DOJ or some official entity would be great, but we can’t misuse that data or draw unfair conclusions from it. The bottom line is, every police use of force, deadly or not, has to be judged individually.
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That is completely at variance with the USA. There are many reasons for this, which I expect have been exacerbated since 9/11 with the belief in a constant terrorist threat and a perceived increase in police readiness to shoot.
I don’t think the average US officer is too worried about terrorists. The biggest threat is the armed “common criminal.”
The public discourse on “the militarization of police” has been irrational because the public can’t make up its mind on what it wants. But I am glad to see the poster mentioned the “militarization of society in general”… and I would say more so of the criminal element. People are appalled when they see police departments equipped with rifles, Kevlar and armored vehicles, especially when you add color commentary by activists and the media. But anytime there is any type of stand-off or hostage situation, especially, if things go wrong, there is outrage that more wasn’t done and better equipment wasn’t used. One would think this argument was settled by the North Hollywood Shootout in 1997. On the other hand, I can see why some small podunk department with three officers might not need an MRAP… since they might be able to get by with a mutual-aid arrangement with the state or a nearby large metro. But the communities have to be ok with having less (and what that might entail), and that MRAP being sold for scrap, given/sold to another country. To try to turn every police officer into Andy Griffith and every force into Mayberry PD is unrealistic. At the same time, the police have to be smart about how they use their equipment.
In summary, trying to compare the US stats with other countries is like comparing apples, to cars, to water.
Law Enforcement’s “Warrior” Problem
An interesting argument and one that from "over here" could be a contributory factor to the issues raised here.
Here is a key passage:
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Under this warrior worldview, officers are locked in intermittent and unpredictable combat with unknown but highly lethal enemies. As a result, officers learn to be afraid. That isn’t the word used in law enforcement circles, of course. Vigilant, attentive, cautious, alert, or observant are the terms that appear most often in police publications. But make no mistake, officers don’t learn to be vigilant, attentive, cautious, alert, and observant just because it’s fun. They do so because they are afraid. Fear is ubiquitous in law enforcement.
Link:http://harvardlawreview.org/2015/04/...rrior-problem/
You can lead a horse to water...
A person who has never stepped foot in the US, doesn't have any law enforcement experience and can't accept new information... The US is waiting for your arrival, so you can fix our broke system of law enforcement. Until then, live long and prosper.
What can US trigger-happy cops learn from Britain's gunless police?
Note the author is a WaPO journalist, working in London and not a British police officer saying do this:
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...experts say the way British bobbies are trained, commanded and vigorously scrutinized may offer US police forces a useful blueprint for bringing down the rate of deadly violence and defusing some of the burning tension felt in cities from coast to coast.
The stats below give some context:http://www.independent.co.uk/incomin...rit-police.jpg
Link:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-10316119.html
A former cop who killed shares lessons on deadly force
One of the better articles I've read on police shootings:http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a5085...s-deadly-force
1 Attachment(s)
Is American Policing At a Crossroads?
A short "broad brush" review of American policing by a criminologist, Professor Ronald Witzer (GWU) so not just about shootings; this is the most current thread on US LE.
It is available free via the latest issue of the 'The Criminlogist':http://www.asc41.com/criminologist.html
Or on the attachment (minus references).
Glare of Video Is Shifting Public’s View of Police
A sometimes hard to watch video montage of recent and not so recent incidents from the NYT:
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Those videos, all involving white officers and black civilians, have become ingrained in the nation’s consciousness — to many people, as evidence of bad police conduct. And while they represent just a tiny fraction of police behavior — those that show respectful, peaceful interactions do not make the 24-hour cable news — they have begun to alter public views of police use of force and race relations, experts and police officials say.
Videos have provided “corroboration of what African-Americans have been saying for years,” said Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown University Law School and a former prosecutor, who called them “the C-Span of the streets.”
Link:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/us...f-police.html?
The article is also worth reading about body-worn and vehicle video systems are not a magic solution.
The County: the story of America's deadliest police
A long article in The Guardian; with a sub-title:
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Police in Kern County, California, have killed more people per capita than in any other American county in 2015. The Guardian examines how, with little oversight, officers here became the country’s most lethal
In 2015:
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In all, 13 people have been killed so far this year by law enforcement officers in Kern County, which has a population of just under 875,000. During the same period, nine people were killed by the NYPD across the five counties of New York City, where almost 10 times as many people live and about 23 times as many sworn law enforcement officers patrol.
Link:http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...olice-killings
There is an interesting table for:
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America's deadliest counties for police killings this year Among all US counties with five or more officer-involved killings logged by the Guardian in 2015, Kern County saw the most deaths per capita.*
The deadliest counties — those with 10 or more deaths – are show below
