“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.
I don’t think the average US officer is too worried about terrorists. The biggest threat is the armed “common criminal.”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.
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.
Originally Posted by JarodParker
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