I don’t think that’s certain at all. If you shoot someone who was pointing a gun at you, barring some extenuating circumstances on the side of the person you shot, I’d expect you not to be charged.
I think that depends heavily on where you live. In New Jersey you can at least expect to spend the night or a few days in jail no matter the circumstances. And most gun owners know that.
Not to mention the fact that a proportionate use of force is typically enforced much more strictly with civilians than it is with police.
Have you ever gone? Like I said, I went twice and once very early , No “performance mode”. Yes, if there was a dangerous firefight, the ridealong would not go there. Those are very very rare.
Police are the 14th most dangerous job in America. And in very few of those is the worker getting murdered. Being as there are thousands of different occupations, that does make being a Police officer quite dangerous-
Because it would massively increase the number of Police officers getting killed- and innocent bystanders getting killed.. And the number of people getting killed by police is mostly criminals, not innocents.
I think the “prioritizing their own personal safety over that of the public” is also revealed in an ongoing and if anything, expanding tendency to protect their own interests.
Specifically the (as reported in many threads) massive pushback on being recorded under any circumstance. THAT, to me is the clearest evidence that the public, and the public’s demands for accountability are a distant consideration far back from protecting their perks and jobs.
Not to mention the number of times body cameras are somehow “off” or non-functional or unavailable.
This sort of thing is, to me, clear proof of the sort of “gang-like” culture and police-state concerns raised upthread. Note, I have not said at any point this is all LEO, or true for every single district, but it’s pervasive enough to support the OP’s concern.
Do you have cites for any of these statements?
Because as I stated above (and provided cites to support this) the number of police officers killed by the felonious use of firearms last year was just 43, whereas in a typical year 1,200-1,300 people are shot and killed by police.
Maybe, just maybe, we could try to adjust that balance. Especially since the police are the ones typically in control of the situation.
That’s all standard equipment. And it’s been like that for a long time. There’s no reason to react in this way.
No kidding. That’s part of the problem. The police typically outfit themselves like they are going to war, even small-town police with areas with minimal crime.
From 2020, the height of the “Defund The Police” movement:
Yes he has as he later clarified.
When I started my ridealong, the officer showed me the shotgun that was attached to the car with a magnetic lock. There were four switches and two of them had to be pushed up. He asked if I knew how to operate a shotgun when I said yes, he said, “this is never going to be necessary but here is how you unlock it.”
That said, he did have me hang back when we went to a domestic disturbance and then waved me over when it was clear that it wasn’t a big deal.
Am I missing something? Did you link the wrong video? You linked to a video of a police officer with a taser and a pistol.
I’ve seen things that make me think “armed to the teeth”, like a motorcycle cop with a shotgun of some sort mounted on his bike. But a cop with a sidearm isn’t one of them.
How many of those are not criminals?
In the last 20 years only 4-7 officers were convicted of murder, and only 35 have been convicted of a crime resulting from the on-duty shooting.
In other words during that time, officers killed 20,000 people- of those killings only 35 were not justified.
So, per year about 43 officers are murdered- and less than 4 innocents are murdered by police officers. A ration of 10 to one.
Yeah, not “armed to the teeth” is more like it- and now police carry more NON-lethal weapons. (More correctly- “Less-Lethal”).
I politely disagree. The degree to which officers are given legal great latitude under “qualified immunity” means that the actions have to be excessive in the extreme before any investigation happens and charges are brought, much less actually convicted. Combined with historical trends where only one side is alive to report, blatant “missing information” like my cite above, and other issues leads me to find the actual conviction rate utterly unconvincing.
I’m sorry but that’s just nonsense. Police have always carried a gun and handcuffs regardless of the size of a town. The addition of a taser or tear gas gives an officer more options vs using a gun.
Qualified Immunity only effects civil lawsuits. Not criminal actions at all.
That’s also part of the problem. The typical police equipment keeps expanding.
So taser (which is definitely preferable to a gun), baton, semiautomatic pistol with 15-17 rounds in the gun plus one in the chamber, along with two spare magazines with 15-17 rounds each, and bulletproof vest / body armor.
I think that is excessive.
Compare this equipment loadout with a typical cop from our grandparents’ era.
I really noticed this on my Navy base once. The civilian police were much more heavily armed than the topside watchstander (i.e. guard) on my submarine.
Yeah, not answering this one again.
First off, police have not always carried a gun. The practice did not start until the mid- to late 19th century.
And it’s only in recent decades that police officers started carrying enough rounds in high-capacity pistols sufficient to engage in an extended firefight.
Plus body armor.
There’s the whole issue of the militarization of the police, with even small-town cops having body armor, assault weapons and armored personnel carriers.
Most Police forces as such were not organized until the early 1800’s, before that it was local Constables and elected Sheriffs- who did carry.
Police officers in the U.S. carried firearms unofficially or individually from the earliest days of American law enforcement (including colonial night watches and sheriffs).