I think there’s plenty of reason to suspect that cooperative jurisdictions might have different policies/practices/cultures than non-cooperative jurisdictions. Maybe there’s a reason they’re happy to share their data… and maybe there’s a reason the other ones refuse to do so.
That’s just one concern I have. There are many others.
I agree. Cops kill too much. We need more non-lethal methods of neutralizing threats. But they do not appear to be disproportionately killing blacks (when all other things are equal). And THAT has been the source of considerable outrage from places like BLM.
BTW I don’t think your math of the 10,000::1 is accurate. You would need to conclude that UK law enforcement only killed 28 people before 2000. I suspect that cops in this country use more unnecessary force than other countries. But I suspect that even a small elevation of the risk of police death has a fairly large effect on the use of force, particularly deadly force.
In any event back to the OP. Accusations of racism/sexism/bigotry are abused.
I suspect there will be a never ending parade of “concerns” that are not much different than the concerns of anti-vaxxers, global warming deniers, GMO alarmists, etc.
My suspicions must be too dangerous for you, then.
We should probably stop here; I attempted to step away from the silliness, but you decided to go back to it in this post.
Seems like one would need to know the number of people killed in the U.S. by cops who were armed vs unarmed, and then compare those numbers to the UK.
I don’t have those numbers. We could estimate - the US has, IIRC, about 5 times as many guns, per capita, as the UK. We probably have about the same number of knives, and other melee weapons, per capita. So we could expect that American suspects would have about 5 times the likelihood of being armed as UK suspects.
Which is pretty different than 10,000.
That doesn’t sound right First, the 5x number seems absurdly low. This Wikipedia page has the difference as 120.5 civilian firearms per 100 people in the US vs 3.79 civilian firearms per 100 people in the UK. That’s about 32X!
But again, to draw any comparison we need to know the number of people killed by cops that were armed. Without those numbers the conclusions you’re trying to draw are just wild guesses.
Okay, 32X. But that wouldn’t be a “wild guess”, it’d be an educated guess. It could be more or less than 32X, but the idea that it could be anything close to as high as 10,000X sounds totally nuts to me.
Yes, you were WAY off. But, AGAIN, you can’t just look at deaths by police, you need to look at deaths by police where they were confronted with an armed suspect.
From The Atlantic:
Do you have similar info from the UK to come to the conclusion you have? And here’s an interesting stat that has relevance on what cops are up against in the US:
Number of cops killed by guns in the US in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018: 177
Number of cops killed by guns in the UK in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018: 0
Also, I don’t know where your getting your 10,000X number. Can you explain?
The 10,000X (actually 14,000X, per capita) comes from a back-of-the-envelope calculation, linked in the post you quoted in post #305.
No, I don’t have more details about those shot by police in the two countries, I was just looking at the total numbers. And the utterly massive discrepancy, which completely swamps (by several orders of magnitude) any differences in per capita crime or firearm ownership, struck me as notable.
But it’s a back-of-the-envelope calculation, not a detailed study, so feel free to dismiss it if you like. I’m certainly not going to go to the mat to defend it.
Consider it dismissed. That’s some far-fetched guesstimating-squinting-hoping and then guesstimating again. And I’d suggest that you not cite it again as you waste people’s time thinking that it has any validity whatsoever. Because it doesn’t.
Hopefully the numbers I cited will give you pause before assuming the worst about the US and or cops in the US. Somehow, I’m not so hopeful on that.
LOL. Sorry that taking a look at big numbers and broad trends (and my calculation was indeed based on real historical statistics), just to see if anything is interesting, causes you so much heartache. I still find it interesting.
I don’t “assume the worst”, so nothing to worry about here. Thanks for the cites (which don’t refute anything I’ve said, aside from my guess on per-capita guns in the UK).
Any thoughts on what leads to such a dramatic lack of British police officers being killed by guns?
It’s a mystery. No one knows. I think the leading theory has something to do with a link between dental hygiene and poor eyesight which makes the British bad shots.
Ah…thanks. I thought it might have something to do with gun laws, but I guess I was mistaken.
Your suspicions are not dangerous. Its the practice of presenting “suspicions” as facts that is dangerous.
I don’t see what is silly about comparing you to a global warming denialist, anti-vaxxer of GMO alarmist. it’s what you are. You are willing to go where the facts lead you but only so long as they lead you where you want to go.
You hold on to that small shred of doubt that always remains in science and act as if we don’t really have any idea of what the answer is so your position is just as well supported as any other position. Its not. Your position has a calculation done by a partisan group with an agenda. My position has two peer reviewed studies, one by an award winning Harvard economist.
To be fair we do not have comprehensive data yet but 3000+ data points for a study is probably going to get us pretty close.
This is basically a “no u!” and has pretty much nothing to do with my posts, so it’s probably a good place to stop.
You reach that “big number” by relying on very dubious assumptions. Your “real historical data” is a wiki page that only shows 55 deaths between 1687 and 2000. I’m almost positive that this is incorrect.
It might be more accurate to look at the deaths since 2000, which seem to be better documented. ~2.5/year compared to 1200/year. That leaves us with about 400 times as many cop killings in the US compared to the UK. The USA has about 5.5 times as many people so that is a population adjusted 14 killings/year in the UK compared to ~1200/year in the US or about 90 times more. So the multiple is still staggeringly large but nowhere near the laughable 14,000 multiple you are presenting.
Have you considered that perhaps you are too attracted to big numbers. They are frequently wrong and/or deceptive. You seem eager to believe ridiculous things that align with your preconceived notions.
If I suspected you were actually interested in a discussion, rather than “gotcha” and points-scoring, I might go further with you on this. But I no longer think this is possible, so I won’t. Best wishes and happiness in your life.
Maybe I’m just too dangerous.
There are all sorts of theories depending on who you listen to.
The prevailing theory is that cops are not really killed that often:
As you can see, the spikes in police deaths have to deal with prohibition and fighting the war on drugs.
The easiest way to reduce police deaths is probably to legalize marijuana.
Gun laws might have some sort of effect. Cops are shot less frequently in places with strict gun control laws. But it cannot be the whole story. Mexico has pretty tough gun control laws and their police mortality rate makes ours look pretty rosy.