No it wouldn’t.
Overall crime going down wouldn’t necessarily equate police being in more or less situations where lethal force was justified. I don’t think the two can be equated in cause/effect terms.
Lower overall crime means less criminals. Presumably the vast majority of (justified) lethal force cases involve actual criminals. I don’t think Shodan is suggesting that there must be a direct mathematical correlation.
Yeah. I mean, in the '60s, people loved the police.
I can buy that.
There’s simply not enough reliable data.
My WAG would be no.
When looking at how such things were handled in the past it has to be pointed out that Tennessee v Garner was only in 1985. Since that was the year I graduated high school it doesn’t feel that long ago. Although various states had their own limits on such practices, until 1985 it was legal at the federal level to use deadly force to stop a suspect from fleeing a non-violent felony.
Suppose 10% of crimes result in an arrest involving lethal force. In year One, you have 1000 crimes, therefore 100 lethal-force incidents. In year Two, the number of crimes drops to 800. How many lethal-force incidents would you expect?
Regards,
Shodan
Not fair. I became a cop so I wouldn’t have to do math.
So when I get pulled over and asked “Do you know how fast you were going”, I can answer “Six times faster than the square root of the highest ordinal less than 200” and you will let me off with a warning?
Regards,
Shodan
No kidding. Even Dirty Harry couldn’t count his shots. 
“Out of the car wise-ass. Spread-em, put your hands behind you back.” click.
Not enough information to answer the question.
It just doesn’t work that way in real life, Shodan. Overall crime and crimes involving violence or lethal force do not necessarily move in tandem. A lot depends on:
*the number and types of weapons that criminals possess
*the level of violence the criminals are willing to employ
*to some extent, the level of organization
*a bunch of stuff that’s I’m missing in this list
To wit, using numbers from this site(which were compiled from FBI crime reports) to compare population, overall crime and violent crime in 1970 versus 2013 shows that total crime as a percentage of population declined .89%, while violent crime as a percentage of overall crime rose 2.75%. To me, this indicates that criminals today are much more likely to be violent than they were in 1970. So, strictly by the numbers, one could expect police killings to have risen over that time. Per Loach, the opposite is true.
I said probability curves, not probable cause!
Regards,
Shodan
This is taking the discussion way too far, considering that I only said it was plausible. And I should have added “all other things being equal”. But you are assuming a correlation between violent crime, and arrests involving lethal force. We don’t have any hard data on that, either.
I can’t come up with a math joke about it, either - sorry.
Regards,
Shodan
Now I have no cites nor proof that the following is happening or has happened… it’s just a hypothetical that could be a cause.
Could it be possible that the reluctance of present-day cops to react quickly with violent nightstick force allows some situations to escalate (i.e. the suspect knows he’s not going to take a nightstick to the teeth if he mouths off or resists) past the point when the cops end up using guns or tasers/stun guns on them in order to get them to comply?
I mean, I get the impression that prior to the 1980s, if you mouthed off to cops, they’d properly fuck you up and not think twice, so most people absolutely did not mouth off to cops, much less resist them.
As for the incident in the OP, they have released the video of the incident. I won’t get into a discussion about it because such discussions are usually dominated by those who have an unrealistic idea of how these incidents should be handled.
If you don’t want to look at the video it is being reported that the girl came into the police station lobby and requested help but would not specify. When an officer entered the lobby she held up her hand and which had “I have a gun” written on it. There was an attempt to subdue physically which failed to get her cuffed. The officer broke contact when the officer said he saw her reaching for a butcher knife in her waistband. She is seen charging the officer. I could not see the knife in the video because of the distance and quality of the footage and I could not tell when the taser was deployed which was said to fail. She was fatally shot.
But regardless of how anyone feels about the use of deadly force in this incident, I don’t see how anyone can categorize this as just being non-compliant.
Whatever, you were wrong and I was right. I can live with that 
It does seem like there’s more uncooperative people these days. I’ve never found it difficult to say yes sir, no sir to people in authority. Listen carefully to instructions and make no sudden moves. Politeness may not get someone out of a ticket. But it certainly makes the interaction with the police much more pleasant.
The tragic situation in the OP sounds very much like suicide by cop. The girl had a long history of mental illness and multiple suicide attempts.
Would you really call a police officer “sir”? I can’t conceive of using such deferential language and that sounds very weird to me.
I grew up saying yes sir, no sir to my elders. Still do. Although I meet fewer and fewer people that are older than me. 
I often say thank you sir/ma’am to servers at restaurants. I try to be polite in my interactions with people.
I go with officer, deputy, or trooper as appropriate. Their title is respect enough.