Police in the US Kill Citizens at Over 70 Times the Rate of Other First-World Nations

[gute]

Yep, goes both ways.

[davidbfpo]

Note the author is a WaPO journalist, working in London and not a British police officer saying do this:

...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:
Link:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-10316119.html

[Bill Moore]

Blueblood,

We in the U.S. certainly have problems with our police, some due to bad policing, others due to social ills related to a prevailing drug culture, gangs, irresponsible media (right and left), and the confluence of numerous other issues. We can't deny we don't have policing issues due to statistics, the problem is perception. Some that perception is promoting by self serving scum like Al Sharpton who will never let facts get in the way of his agenda. While acknowleding that aspect, we also need to acknowledge the expectations for police behaviour are changing, and the police will have to adapt. Change will be difficult, but it will happen. New rules will restrict certain police behavior, then crime will increase, so rules will be adjusted resulting in a new normal. This is actually a sign of a healthy democracy where complex issues are hotly debated. The fact that someone lowered themselves far below their normal civil discourse to call you a troll just demonstrates how sensitive this topic is in the U.S.

[davidbfpo]

One of the better articles I've read on police shootings:http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a5085...s-deadly-force

[ganulv]

One of the better articles I've read on police shootings:http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a5085...s-deadly-force

That is a good one, thanks for passing it along. The following particularly caught my eye:

This spring, testifying at a U.S. Civil Rights Commission hearing on deadly force, one topic he discussed was "tactical positioning," a strategy in which officers keep a safe distance, unless there is imminent danger.

"Often times, officers find themselves in too close, too quickly, and they don't have any option other than to shoot their way out of it," Klinger says. "That's where I really think we fall down in American law enforcement."

He uses last year's police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, as an example. Though he agrees that Officer Darren Wilson was justified in shooting Brown, he also says that shooting might have been avoided if Wilson had waited and called for backup.

I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush, as I know a couple of career officers who are quite adept at deescalation. And I know that anecdotes aren’t data, but in my experience it seems much more common for officers’ efforts to “control” a situation actually result in an escalation of the situation. I’m not saying that that is what typically happens, but I’ve seen it often enough as well as had it relayed to me second-hand to be confident that it’s far from uncommon.

[davidbfpo]

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).

[Firn]

The Washington Post had an opinion which gathered a surprising amount of positive responses.

Of course, officers’ safety is vital, and they’re entitled to defend themselves and the communities they serve. But they’re failing to see the connection between their aggressive postures and the hostility they’ve encountered in Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and other communities. When you level assault rifles at protesters, you create animosity. When you kill an unarmed man on his own property while his hands are raised — as Fairfax County police did in 2013 — you sow distrust. And when you threaten to Taser a woman during a routine traffic stop (as happened to 28-year-old Sandra Bland, who died in a Texas jail this month), you cultivate a fear of police. This makes policing more dangerous for everyone.

It is important to keep the statistical context in mind. The Guardian initiated a fine project, aptly named "The Counted", as shockingly there is no official statistic keeping track of how those persons.