I sincerely hope there’s some good excuse for you acting the way you do.
And you didn’t even get the stats right. US cops kill about 1200-1400 people yearly, which, while still making South Africa cops bigger killers, isn’t quite the same as what you were implying, at all.
Because your statement “WTF, America?” implies that America is worse than South Africa, or at least it did the way I read it. The statement “what the fuck” generally indicates a lack of understanding or more generally a disapproval of the actions in question. People rarely express contempt for someone else when their own problems are worse, unless they’re hypocrites. Hence the implication that you considered South Africa’s problems to be less severe in some capacity than America’s. And the statement that police in America are racist is pretty baseless as well.
And to you, likewise.
You’ll have to forgive me for using the number from the Economist article mentioned in post 7 rather than the outsourced “upwards of 1000 citizens” claim made in the OP.
Most of us don’t feel that the death penalty for pissing off a police officer, carried out instantaneously on the spot without trial, judge, or jury, is a conscionable way to run a civilized society. Your opinion obviously differs, but the question here in GQ is the factual one asked by the OP. And the answer to that question is “no”.
Fair enough. I thought that question had been answered.
You do realize that in the US police reporting of “justified killings” is voluntary and more importantly do not include unjustified killings.
In other words, this gentleman who was shot in the back would not make your list.
You didn’t actually click the link, did you?
It goes to a Wikipedia page that documents all known police killings regardless of justification or lack thereof. I’m aware that the list of justifiable police homicides is a subset of all police homicides.
The impression I get, is that police killings and by implication the police themselves, are openly racist in the USA while most in South Africa are not. It is significant that in SA only 10% of officers on the street are white.
He doesn’t care about facts, which is unfortunate considering the subforum he’s posting in.
No, it means I expect better of America, it being the rich, developed, longstanding democracy that it is. It say nothing about South Africa.
No. This is a fallacy - and it’s only hypocrisy* if they don’t acknowledge their own status* ,which I freely did in the post you quoted.
No - this is your wrong inference, not anything I actually wrote. I never said anything about South Africa not being worse. Which has fuckall to do with whether I can criticize America’s status or not.
Then maybe they should stop shooting unarmed Black men in the back, eh? “Baseless”, my ass.
It’s funny that in your rush to judgement you are objectively wrong on this specific issue. The linked list includes both justified and unjustified homicides.
Moderator Note
get lives, it’s also unfortunate that you also seem to be unaware that personal jabs of this kind are not appropriate to this forum. No warning issued, but let’s drop these kinds of remarks.
This goes for everyone.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I’m not that interested in gun reform; even if I didn’t admire the American freedom with guns ( although not the gun obsession ), these devolve to the usual pattern: gun nuts sink to their knees weeping: “Mah babies !” – “Ah love guns passing the love of women !”, whilst the gun-grabbers scowl and pronounce their enemies evil, and a lot of American-bashing happens to the enjoyment of all. Guns aren’t the problem.
Cops with guns are part of the problem though. I may suggest because it becomes the easy default facing alarming situations. Wikipedia has monthly reports on killings by police in the USA. let’s only look at January 2015.
A few excerpts since it would be tiresome to examine all 41 presented ( guess ).
Four of each where shooting seems reasonable; dubious; nutcase; according to my reading:
**
Bang To Rights**
Omaha : Omaha police responded to Terry’s residence after she had allegedly assaulted several people, including two of her children. Terry, wielding several knives, lunged at an officer on her front porch and then threw another knife at the officer before being shot multiple times. Terry later died on January 29, 2015, at Nebraska Medical Center.
California : Police responded to a family disturbance. Nuu struck a police dog with a hammer and reportedly moved to strike the K9 handler when police opened fire. Nuu died in hospital
New Mexico : Okeefe, suspected of criminal activity and wearing body armor, was shot and killed after running from and shooting at police officers
California : (Drunk & Disorderly) (Domestic Disturbance) Brandishing a knife and charging at a police officer, Ceja was shot multiple times by the officer. Ceja was drunk and was causing a disturbance at his home which prompted relatives to call police on him.
**
Woodman, Spare That Tree !**
Arizona : (Police Surveillance) A twenty-five (or 26)-year-old man was shot inside a car after exiting a motel and “began ramming the occupied police vehicle” with the his (stolen) vehicle. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Montana : Marshall, wanted on a felony warrant, was spotted outside a hospital. Six police responded and attempted to apprehend him. Police reported that he ran, fell, and a gun he was carrying discharged through the window of the clinic. Marshall reportedly tried to clear the gun while on the ground, at which point all six officers fired, killing him.
Arizona : (Police surveillance) Carr, unknowingly under police surveillance as part of an investigation into a credit card fraud ring, had his vehicle surrounded and blocked in by unmarked police cars. He rammed a police car and was shot by undercover police.
Arizona : (Mental Patient) While responding to a 911 hang-up call, police officers shot Guillory after he pointed a gun at them. Guillory was a combat veteran who had been a diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder.
Please Turn in Your Gun At The Desk
Texas : (Mental Patient) Coignard, a minor with a history of mental illness, walked into a police station lobby and used a lobby phone to request assistance from a police officer. She had the words “I have a gun” written on her hand and threatened police with a knife. After a Taser apparently had no effect, she was shot four times in the trunk and extremities.
California : (Mental Patient) (Suicide by Cop) Hoffman attracted police attention by being in a parking lot reserved for law enforcement officers near the Mission police station. Hoffman drew a replica airsoft handgun from his waistband in the presence of responding officers, two of whom fired five times each, hitting Hoffman a total of three times. Police found an apologetic suicide note on Hoffman’s cell phone.
Ohio : (Police Action) At Port Columbus International Airport, Abdul-Rasheed was attempting to use a woman’s identity to buy a plane ticket and was confronted by police. He then took out a knife and lunged at them. He was shot by one officer.
Kansas : (Drunk & Disorderly) In 911 calls placed by his aunt, Quintero was said to have been possibly drunk or high and threatening his family with a knife. Police arriving at the scene found him and another family member in an SUV. After exiting the vehicle, he behaved belligerently and verbally threatened the officers. When he reportedly reached into his waistband he was Tasered, and then shot. He later died in the hospital. No weapon was recovered.
And this is just January.
I am disappointed in Texas. Kristiana Coignard probably was annoying, but even I could talk down a 17-yr-old girl without plugging her. Knife or not.
So from those 12 fairly random examples probably there was no reason to liquidate them as if one was part of Lepke’s mob. And I am saying I’m not blaming the police in all cases, America is a scary place.
But, it seems it may be more a matter of uniform national police training needed, veering officers to using their pieces as a matter of last resort and not blankly shooting off willy-nilly when they see a black shadow.
Huh? The discussion was about all police killings of civilians, in my understanding. As to which were justified, that’s too much a matter of opinion for GQ.
I suppose the implication of this thread is that in other countries similar to the US, police have different training and policies that seem to result in less use of lethal force. Could we learn from them and import the different training and policies to the US?
The next question to ask is - are the conditions in these other countries different enough to say that their training and policies are not appropriate for the US? Some suggest that the US is “more dangerous”, in that legal and illegal gun ownership is widespread and criminals are well armed. Is that condition similar in other countries? Others have suggested that in the US there is more of a likelihood of resisting/escaping/fighting against police apprehension. Is that a condition that is not present in other countries?
Could we do an experiment where we trade police forces between - oh, I don’t know - Kansas City, MO and Brussels Belgium? See how each does in the other environment? (Of course not. I’m just brainstorming…)
IMHO, the ubiquity of firearms in the United States makes all the difference in the world. In Germany (and I think the same is true for other European countries), your typical run-of-the mill drug dealer/mugger/hoodlum/suspicious-person-roaming-the-street-at-2am doesn’t have a gun. Law enforcement officers know this and the criminals know that the law enforcement officers know this as well.
It is this.
The USA has so many handguns and they are so easy to acquire that there is no reason for a criminal not to have one. So the default assumption by the LEO is that the wrongdoer is packing and the rest is sad, inevitable, history.
The more handguns you have spread around the population, the more handgun incidents you are going to have. Not rocket science.
There is nothing stopping the criminally minded in the UK from acquiring an illegal gun other than scarcity and the expense that comes with that.
I don’t buy that the immense disparities I pointed out in post #16 are explained solely by the differences in amounts of guns and gun violence in America. As I pointed out, US cops are more than 14,000 times more likely to kill someone per capita than the UK, and 200 times more likely to use deadly force per gun murder – 200 times more killings by police even when the difference in gun violence is factored out of the equation.
A large part of it is “shoot first and ask questions later”. Because a street criminal with a gun can be extremely lethal. That makes perfect sense if you want to avoid getting killed (and for a police officer his ass is covered, mostly. Just say the magic words “in fear for my life”). If the goal is to detain and investigate, it’s not so good.
So I agree with you but that’s not how I read what Donnerwetter said.
Solely? No. But the prevalence of guns – to an extent almost unbelievable to citizens of other industrialized nations – is a major foundational factor. Then add race issues to that and you have an explosive mixture.
“Race issues” is a lot more complicated than just cops being racist – some are, many others are not. It also involves a long history and a socioeconomic system of systemic discrimination where it’s just statistically self-evident that blacks are more likely to be involved in crime. And power structures where, as in Ferguson, you have almost all-white police forces in largely black neighborhoods, with said all-white police forces fully convinced that blacks cause all the trouble, with blacks under the circumstances happy to comply with their gangsta image because they don’t have a lot of choices. And “broken window” policing where, as in the New York shooting of Eric Garner, as in Ferguson, as in many many other places, the power structure encourages the arbitrary harassment of minorities.
It’s a complicated quagmire of vicious circles. But when one of the underlying foundations is the fact of guns being about as common as candy bars, it hugely exacerbates the problem because it turns out that cops prefer to not get shot, and, quite understandably, will act accordingly. And this leads to a police culture and policy regime where gun use is casual, and a cop might be as likely to shoot someone running away from him (as in the latest case of Walter Scott) as threateningly running towards him. In some other countries a police officer who merely unholsters his gun would spend the rest of the day filling out paperwork to justify it – and the justification had better be good. It’s a completely different mindset.
It is not the amount of weapons. It is (partly) the way weapons are viewed. After all, most Swiss males between 18 and 55 have one or more guns at home and it isn’t exactly the murder capital of the world.
In most other developed countries, a gun is a dangerous tool. It is used:
It is not something that represents your freedoms, your standing as a citizen - or your manhood. For many Americans, it is one or the other of these.
Other factors are the way police view themselves in relationship to the people they are supposed to guard and protect, and the way the police is viewed by people. In most other developed nations, cops are expected to be polite in their interaction with the general public. If they are asking the neighbors for information, they are expected to say “please” and “thank you”, not shove their badges into people’s faces. I’ve been pulled by Spanish cops once, and they were nacionales, who have a reputation for rudeness: it was a small woman and a large man; the man stayed in the car and shut it down, the woman came and told me that one of my tyres looked low and asked if I knew where could I have it checked in the area; when I said I was going home to (village) and that I would check it in the first gas station just a couple km ahead, she nodded and left. And those are our rude fucks…