Tytalus
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RE: American Cops Killed More People in March than the UK Did in the Entire 20th Century
Again, I've posted this before, but in actuality, the American Police as a whole kill a HUGE, HUGE number of people, we almost talking Mexican levels of violence, it just simply doesn't get reported on very much until recently with cell phone cameras.
Yes, there are factors, gang violence, lax gun control.... But still! I think the bigger problem is police training and police procedure.
http://www.steynonline.com/6329/the-warn...ld-but-not
Quote:Mr Castagnoli would like a statistic, but the one he needs - law-abiding persons shot by police - does not exist. Okay, how about a broader category of total persons shot by police? Oddly enough, that's not kept, either:
Looking for the number of burglaries last year in Devils Lake, N.D.? How about the increase in property crimes in Caribou, Maine? The answers (34 and 23 percent, respectively) are readily available from the FBI.
Want detailed information on how many people were shot by police in the United States last year?
That's not so easy to find.
The nation's leading law enforcement agency collects vast amounts of information on crime nationwide, but missing from this clearinghouse are statistics on where, how often, and under what circumstances police use deadly force. In fact, no one anywhere comprehensively tracks the most significant act police can do in the line of duty: take a life.
"We don't have a mandate to do that," said William Carr, an FBI spokesman in Washington, D.C.
So the biggest government in the free world chooses not to keep statistics on how many people get shot by law enforcement. So be it. It does keep figures on "justifiable homicide", which it defines as "the killing of a felon by a law enforcement official in the line of duty". When is a police homicide not "justifiable"? Ah, well. At any rate, for 2012, the corpse count was 410.
By comparison, for the years 2012 and 2013 in England and Wales:
No fatal police shootings.
In the Netherlands:
The average for the last 35 years is three dead and 15 injured.
Fifteen injured per year in the entire nation? Pikers! Over here, the police can rack up almost that many in innocent bystanders at a single incident outside the Empire State Building:
New York (CNN) -- On a busy Friday morning in Manhattan, nine pedestrians suffered bullet or fragment wounds after police unleashed a hail of gunfire at a man wielding a .45 caliber pistol who had just killed a former co-worker.
So the problem here, to put it in Mr Castagnoli's terms, is that what are any other developed nation's annual statistics add up to one mere "anecdote" in the United States. In Germany, a nation of 80 million people, police in 2011 fatally shot six persons. In Denmark, police shot 11 people in 11 years, and this was felt to be so disturbing that the National Police Commissioner held an inquiry into why his cops had gotten so trigger-happy. In Australia, 41 people were shot by police in eight years, and the then Justice Minister Amanda Vanstone (whose friend thinks I'm "eminently shaggable", but I digress) thought that that was too high. In Iceland, police have fatally shot just one suspect. That's one guy in the entire history of the country. He was killed by police last December:
The 59-year-old was reported to have been shot on Monday after firing on police as they entered the building in the east of the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik.
Teargas canisters had initially been fired through the windows after the man continued shooting and two police officers are reported to have been slightly injured after they entered.
The gunman was brought to hospital but was pronounced dead there at around 10am local time. The case will be investigated by Iceland's state prosecutor.
The country's national police chief, Haraldur Johannessen, told a press conference in Reykjavik that the incident was "without precedent".
"The police are deeply saddened by this tragic event and would like to extend their condolences to the family of the individual in question," he added.
Iceland, a country where gun ownership is widespread, has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world.
So, whether you're talking about gun-controlled England or heat-packing Iceland, comparisons between American "justifiable homicides" and police shooting rates of other western nations are hardly worth bothering with. Indeed, the US police "justifiable homicide" figure looks more like the total murder count for most other developed societies. In Oz, the total number of murders per year is about 270, so a nation of 23 million would have to increase by 50 per cent to commit as many homicides as American law enforcement. In Canada, whose urban police departments have absorbed certain American practices, a dozen or so people get shot dead by cops each year, which is again somewhat short of the US rate. Indeed, that 2012 "justifiable homicide" figure of 410 compares to a total Canadian homicide count for 2011 of 598. In other words, in America 120,000 or so full-time law enforcement officers rack up the same number of homicides as about 24 million Canadians.
This strikes me as on the high side, no matter what "cultural factors" are considered - high rates of gun ownership, millions of illegal aliens, violent drug gangs, etc.
Police officer John Thomas disagrees:
You're an idiot on so many levals on the Texas teen shooting one scarcely knows where to start. Unfortunately officers are human, and transposing numbers in a registration plate dies happen. When confronted with two people getting out of a vehicle believed to be stolen, standard procedure is to have another officer respond. It is also not unheard of for someone to drive a stolen car around for a while before ditching it. Nor is it unheard of for a parent to insist their kid us pure as new fallen snow.
If you think this would be handled differently in some other country, say Germany, you're delusional. The suspect would have been smacked upside his head with a baton, as many an American GI can attest. German, indeed most if Europe, doesn't recognize the concept of excessive force. Go tell the Polizei to fuck off and see what it gets you.
Up to this point I have no issues with what happened. Since the facts of what happened after the Sgt. arrived are in dispute, a jury and court are the best place to resolve it. The Sgt., arriving later, should have been able to sort things out, but that assumes he and the parents were acting rationally. Judging from outcomes, both sides were probably not. Having said that, I would be hard pressed to give much leeway to the officers. It would be extremely difficult to justify someone whom at a minimum the officers should have known was not armed by this time.
But the difference between you and I is I've had 11 years experience as a police officer and deputy sheriff. I've worked in both a major metropolitan city and rual area. I analyzed the incident logically and objectively. I didn't have an obviously biased agenda.
I'm afraid "you're an idiot on so many levals" - but I'll stick just to your German example. You say, "Go tell the Polizei to f*** off and see what it gets you." In none of the examples I've cited has anyone told you or your colleagues to "f*** off". In the Supreme Court case, a law-abiding citizen was lawfully parking his lawfully-acquired and lawfully-registered vehicle outside his parents' lawful home when the police showed up and shot him.
How often do the Polizei do that?
Well, in 2011 the German police fired 85 bullets. That's all of them. The entire police force. The whole country. Eighty-five bullets in one year. That's seven bullets per month. One bullet for every million German citizens. The same year - 2011 - the Miami Police Department blew through the German Polizei's annual bullet allowance on just one traffic incident:
Police killed Raymond Herisse, 22, of Boynton Beach in a barrage of gunfire after they said he refused an order to pull over while speeding down a crowded Collins Avenue in his Hyundai...
Twelve officers – from Miami Beach and Hialeah – unleashed more than 100 rounds at Herisse, police said. The hail of bullets also struck and wounded three bystanders.
The good news for those three bystanders is that, as John Thomas can assure you, that's "standard procedure". And he's right. Which was the point of my original post: the "standard procedure" is the problem. It needs to change.
(This post was last modified: 04-11-2015 06:16 PM by Tytalus.)
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