American Police Kill a Lot of People

Great Debates
21

Dunno all that, nor is any much relevant compared to 2 deaths versus yearly American shootings by police x 12 years = whatever ( but more than 2 ).
For what it’s worth Norway has over 5 million population, and

*Because various nations differ in their definitions of homicide and the manner in which they gather data, comparisons are difficult—statistics will vary from one data-gathering source to another. In 1989, in a comparison of nineteen industrialized nations providing information to Interpol (the international police agency), the United States possessed the highest homicide rate in the world at 7.9 per 100,000. Neighboring Canada’s rate was only 2.7 per 100,000.
*
A more recent comparison of nineteen industrialized nations, published in 1997, indicated that the United States still had the highest murder rate in the world. In 1998, according to Henry Tischler, the number hovered at around 7.4 per 100,000, which was three to four times the rate for most European nations. Tischler noted that although “Russia and other former Eastern-bloc countries have experienced a great deal of social upheaval since the fall of communism, causing their homicide rates to increase dramatically … these countries do not have rates that have been typical of the United States in the past 10 years”

…

  • Data from 1999 showed that in a comparison with France, Norway, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Israel, Denmark, Scotland, the Netherlands, and England/Wales, the United States had an average annual rate of 13.6 per 100,000 population for deaths from firearms. This was more than twice the rate for the second highest country, France, which had a rate of 6.2 per 100,000. *

Homicide, Epidemiology of
So, yeah, I’ll give you that Norwegians kill each other less than Americans do.
However their ferocious penal system rivals the Gulag in brutality, and the GOP ( and the egregious Mr. Biden ) may want to model American prisons on the Norse to achieve what the article attributes Norway having the world’s lowest murder rate.
*The seagulls begin squawking at 6 in the morning and the cigarettes cost too much, but Lars, 41, knows there are worse places to call home. On Bastoy, an island 46 miles (74 km) south of Oslo, he and 124 other residents live in brightly colored wooden chalets, spread over one square mile of forest and gently sloping hills. Besides enjoying views of the surrounding fjord, they go horseback riding and throw barbecues, and have access to a movie theater, tanning bed and, during winter, two ski jumps. Lars’ neighbors often conceal the reasons they are there, but, as in any small community, word gets around. “I try to be as nice to the pedophiles as I am to the drug dealers,” he says. Despite all its trappings, Bastoy island isn’t an exclusive resort: it’s a prison. *

**Arne Kvernvik Nilsen, Bastoy’s governor and a practicing psychotherapist, describes it as the world’s first human-ecological prison — a place where inmates learn to take responsibility for their actions by caring for the environment. Prisoners grow their own organic vegetables, turn their garbage into compost and tend to chickens, cows, horses and sheep. They also operate the ferry that shuttles a number of them to school and jobs on the mainland, make their own dinner (they’re allowed to use knives) and chop wood (using axes and chainsaws). Although authorities carry out routine drug tests, the prison generally emphasizes trust and self-regulation: Bastoy has no fences, the windows have no bars, and only five guards remain on the island after 3 p.m. and on weekends. “They are among the worst criminals in Norway. They are murderers, they are rapists, they are Hells Angels,” says Nilsen. “But they keep the whole society alive and running.” **

Time ( 2010 )

22

I don’t think this, if it is the case, is unrelated to the crime rates or to the availability of weapons.

If it is indeed the case that UK police try to de-escalate, this may be because they don’t have the option to escalate to shooting, because they don’t carry guns as commonly as in the US. And de-escalation works more often, because they encounter fewer armed criminals. In the US a cop stands a higher chance of getting killed if “talking him down” doesn’t work.

So I guess what you say is possible, but I wouldn’t say it was likely. Not without some kind of evidence, at least.

Regards,
Shodan

23

All I’m suggesting is possibilities like this – I think there’s a good chance US law enforcement policies and practices aren’t perfect, and I think there’s a good chance that we might learn how to improve some of them by looking at the way some other countries do it. But I’m definitely not certain.

24

Tho Shodan has a point.

As long as guns are as prevalent in our society as they are, then police have good reason to think that the suspect they are dealing with is armed.

I don’t know that we can reasonably expect to get the police shooting numbers down significantly without reducing the number of guns on the streets, and that is a whole different issue.

Not that we cannot try and improve their training, and there may be some differences made there, especially when it comes to some of the completely unprovoked shootings that we have seen, but to compare it to a culture where guns are not common enough that the cops need to consider everyone they encounter armed shows that there are other factors in play that simply training will not solve.

25

you should probably post this with a bit more honesty hmm?

Not saying the police are perfect or anything, but the American criminal populace kills a lot of people too, they are quite the rowdy bunch and dont respond well to de-escalation

26

Sure, I could be convinced with enough data. But I’d need to see it adjusted to the realities of the levels, types, and ratios of violence in the US compared with those same things in other countries. To me, as I said in the other thread, it’s not a very meaningful comparison between the US and UK, since on these things we are so very different.

No, I don’t think that’s it since you’d have to look at WHY US police are armed in such numbers as opposed to UK officers, who also have a smaller number per citizen. You’d need to examine the numbers of citizen on citizen killings that don’t involve the police at all to see if the number of US citizens who kill each other as a proportion of the population is different (it is…VERY different), and look at the number of citizen on police shootings and see if that’s different (again…very different) to really examine the issue. For instance, it’s a lot easier to de-escalate a conflict if you are pretty sure that the odds are you aren’t going to be hurt or killed than if you think, based on statistical probability, you have a higher chance of that happening to you. What are the chances whoever is in the confrontation will be armed, for instance? Higher in the US than in the UK? That is going to be a major factor in how the police train and how they attempt to de-escalate a given situation…and what their options are.

Like I said, I don’t think any meaningful comparison could be made between the police in the UK and those in the US since the job is different, the people and culture are different and the environment is different. It’s like asking why the police in some rural town who hasn’t had a murder in 30 years acts differently than a precinct in the worst parts of Chicago or LA or any other mega-city…they act differently with different outcomes because the situation is radically different. Because the police in the rural town don’t shoot a lot of citizens (or any, perhaps) we can’t really get a lot of takeaways from that as a valid comparison and say, well, perhaps the police in LA or Chicago need to drive pickup trucks and chew tobacco and that this will make the difference…or that the small town cops know everyone in the town, eat at the local restaurant and that if only the big city types would take note they could make a difference.

27

Basically, what you are are saying is that us 'muricans are a rowdy bunch of violent murderers, I can get on board with that. :slight_smile:

So, change the thread title to “Americans Kill a Lot of People.”

If the police are just responding to the violent nature of the people’s that they are overseeing, then you can make the argument that they need to do more killing, as there are americans who are violent and need to be put down for public safety.

Is there anything that you can think of that could be done to decrease the violence, or is it just inherent to our nature?

28

Honestly, it’s been happening over time already. I think you have to look at WHY Americans are so freaking violent. My own WAG on that is socioeconomics, this weird history we have with drugs and residue of prohibition and race relations (which connects to the weird attitude about drugs), but I’m sure there are a lot of other factors. However, if you look at the crime stats over time in the US, the trend has generally been downward. We’ve seen a spike in the last year or so of it going up in some areas (taking the country up because of that), but it’s not anything like the crime rates we had 20 or 30 years ago.

29

To be truthful, however inherent violence — and revenge — is to the American psyche, and I am certainly not saying America is not extraordinarily violent compared to most, I was under the impression that a majority, maybe less — even of males — were quite law-abiding and rarely fought or ever shot a gun even in play *.
There are no doubt many conflicting causes, ranging from the excessive over-valuation of masculinity to a proud — and completely unjustified — sense of self-worth, yet absolving police for responding with yet more conclusive violence seems somewhat like legally concluding: ‘They had it coming’…

  • Ignoring childhood when every kid would have a plastic toy or a BB Gun or a loaded Ruger found by a 3-yr-old in his parents’ bedside drawer.
30

Even if you are only talking about a few percentage points of people in the US who are violent you are talking millions of people…I think a lot of Europeans lose track of the scale of the US population. Most Americans are, in fact, law-abiding and today, a majority of Americans don’t, in fact, own a gun at least based on the last time I looked at this. But I think that Americans who aren’t law-abiding are more violent wrt murder or violent acts against other citizens and the police than their UK or European (or Japanese or other 1st or 2nd world nations) counterparts. And they are armed.

31

Yet another confounding factor is population density. Crimes of nearly all kinds are more common, on a per-capita basis, in high-density areas than in low-density areas, which is unsurprising given that most crimes (including murders) are basically interactions between two people. And yet, America has higher rates of violence despite a much lower population density than most developed nations. In other words, we’re even worse than the per-capita statistics suggest.

32

Population density by state doesn’t track with the murder rates by state, either though. My state is the 21st most densely populated state, and trades off the lowest murder rate with VT (31st most densely populated) and Maine (38th) virtually every year. That means there are between 12 and 29 less densely populated states with higher, sometimes much higher murder rates.

In 2015 Louisiana had the most murders after DC (which isn’t listed in the chart of pop. density by state in 2015 given it’s not a state) and is only the 23rd most densely populated. Louisiana has 2.5x as many murders per capita than New Jersey (most densely populated state), a hair under 4x as many as Rhode Island (2nd) and more than 5x as many as Massachusetts (3rd). We’re just all over the map, so to speak.

33

If you look internationally it is amazing how much geography influences the level of violence. The US has a huge amount of homicide for a European country but a tiny amount of homicide for a country in the Americas. There are four types of countries in terms of violence, American Countries which are extraordinarily high in homicides with the exception of Canada, Russia and its satellites, which have a very high rate of homicides, Europe which has a very low rate of homicide, and Africa and Asia which does not have enough countries reporting to draw conclusions. The US has the third lowest homicide rate in the Western hemisphere and lower than the Russian satellite countries. I
It makes a difference in the US too, the states that border Canada have a homicide rate that averages half of what the states on the southern border have.

34

It’s not an idea I’ve thought of before. I’m also considering putting educational attainment rates, or something of that sort, into the mix. My previous data mining application never really satisfied me that I’d incorporated everything I wanted into it. (Though, the big one I wanted to incorporate was the drug trade, and I simply couldn’t find any statistics on that in a nice table-form, including both importers and exporters.)

35

Who cares how many people were killed by cops?

What you should be concerned with is how many people were unjustifiably killed by cops, not all killings. And the vast majority of killings, in spite of the spin that American media is trying to put out, are justified. And just because a lot of people are killed by cops y’all assume it’s the cops who need training? How about training civilians to not point guns at officers? How about training civilians not to approach officers with knives? How about training civilians to comply with officers’ orders? Why is it that after every shooting there is a call for more training, yet nothing changes. Definition of insanity, anyone?

Additionally, cultures ARE different between countries. Someone pointed out the number of Use Of Force (UOF) complaints being much lower in the UK than in the US. You also don’t see stories coming out of the UK of juries handing out multi-million pound judgements to suspects regardless of whether the UOF was justified. Think that might play a factor??

Lastly, someone mentioned how few shootings Germany has. I had a friend who was an MP over there, and he said they aren’t very gentle with their suspects. Could it be that because people know that the cops don’t play around over there on the small stuff that they don’t play around with deadly force? Not to mention the fact that the German courts aren’t also handing out UOF judgements left & right like they are here, too. We’re dealing with very different cultures here.

36

Eh? You want to de-escalate because to kill is last resort, and a demonstrable failure.

Did someone need to say that?

It is after all call ‘The Police Service’ i.e. they serve the public. They are not some para-military enforcers, the public are not shooting practice.

37

Nor do people apply to become police officers to become target practice for criminals. Nor shanking practice. Nor batting practice.

Police don’t shoot to kill. They shoot to stop the threat (to themselves or others). To do that, they must shoot at the location that ensures the most likely success of stopping the suspect. And that location is the center of mass. Granted, the center of mass is where there important organs, but shooting a threatening person is not like shooting paper targets. In spite of what Hollywood shows you, cops don’t shoot to “wing” a suspect (and imagine all the innocent people getting killed/injured if they did!). So officers aim at the area of the body where they are most likely to effectively stop a person.

If people don’t want to get shot they need to comply with the officers’ orders. Yes, it is that simple. No, that is not to imply that every LE shooting is justified; as long as humans do LE there will be mistakes made (as in any other occupation). But the vast majority of shootings by American LE are justified uses of deadly force. Don’t buy the sensationalism that the American media spews out.

38

You live in a unique and extreme culture.

39

Actually, I think most Europeans would be surprised the US’s population is as small as it is, given the size of the country (I sure was, when I found out). We’re used to much higher population densities. Some examples: US, 35 people per sq. km. Switzerland, 210. United Kingdom, 265. Spain, 93. France, 122. Germany, 234. Denmark, 134. Sweden, 24. And the reason why Sweden’s total density is so low is that the areas north of the Stockholm metropoli are pretty much empty; the population density between Stockholm and Malmö is much higher than that.

40

This article tells me that the Norwegian police are generally unarmed (but with access to firearms), but that between November 2014 and some-point early 2016, they were required to be armed at all times. It also suggests that there was no material change in the number of police-involved shootings. I wonder if a year or so is long enough to provide any insight on whether arming the police is a major factor.