# Why are police so quick to kill?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [May 30, 2017, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689 "2017-05-30T00:48:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 7
### Author:  [@SigMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SigMan)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/121 "2017-06-05T20:24:50Z")
> [@CandidGamera](#):
>
> I’m sorry, I’m not racist , corrupt, or insecure enough to be a cop. Or did you mean something else with your nonsense refrain?
What I’m trying to say is that if you’re in their shoes, in other words, experience what they go through every day you won’t be talking like this. They have a fear, it gets real pretty quick.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/122 "2017-06-05T20:30:44Z")
> [@SigMan](#):
>
> What I’m trying to say is that if you’re in their shoes, in other words, experience what they go through every day you won’t be talking like this. They have a fear, it gets real pretty quick.
There’s nights by necessary or unavoidable about it. As people have said upthrrad, there’s plenty of evidence that a police force can generally be less fearful and ready to use deadly force.
That requires a combination of stricter hiring and retention practices, better training, and accountability. That last means that cops who screw up need to be punished and that cops, prosecutors, judges, and juries have to stop protecting fuckups.
The current situation is unacceptable. Period.
This can be done. In WWII, it was discovered that a huge proportion of U.S. soldiers fired over the heads of their enemy because it was difficult to overcome an aversion to killing. Training and a professionalized military changed that. What must be done is to similarly change the behavior of cops.
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/123 "2017-06-05T20:31:13Z")
> [@Bone](#):
>
> The elasticity of the impact of different rates of gun existence and crime would have to be established. In other words, if crime is one order of magnitude greater in the US, you seem to be drawing the conclusion that should translate into one order of magnitude greater police killings. I don’t know why that would be true and without that assumption the comparison falls short. There’s nothing to suggest that these differences should be 1:1 or even linear.
They may not be, but this logic suggests that police could kill everyone in Los Angeles in a single day and it wouldn’t count as evidence that US cops are quick to kill.
I’m just suggesting that this is worth looking at, and I personally find it troubling, especially when added to the many other pieces of evidence for widespread law enforcement mistreatment.
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### Author:  [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/124 "2017-06-05T20:36:21Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> US cops are 4 orders of magnitude more likely to kill than UK cops.
Cite?
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### Author:  [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/125 "2017-06-05T20:43:09Z")
> [@x-ray\_vision](#):
>
> Cite?
I think he meant 4 times there…4 orders of magnitude would mean US police kill more than 550,000 people a year, which I’m doubting iiandyiiii believes. 😛 (ETA I get about 20 times more likely with my back of the envelope calculations, which is still pretty bad)
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### Author:  [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/126 "2017-06-05T20:44:21Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> They may not be, but this logic suggests that police could kill everyone in Los Angeles in a single day and it wouldn’t count as evidence that US cops are quick to kill.
>
> I’m just suggesting that this is worth looking at, and I personally find it troubling, especially when added to the many other pieces of evidence for widespread law enforcement mistreatment.
If LA was infected with the zombie virus and 100% of the population developed an insatiable thirst for brains, it could be justified. The point is, only looking at one facet of the equation doesn’t paint an informative picture. Police either kill too fast, too slow, or exactly right. Comparing to the UK rates as evidence that the US is too fast begs the question, it assumes that the UK is closer to exactly right and there is no evidence for that.
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### Author:  [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/127 "2017-06-05T20:44:50Z")
> [@XT](#):
>
> I think he meant 4 times there…4 orders of magnitude would mean US police kill more than 550,000 people a year, which I’m doubting iiandyiiii believes. 😛
Then I’m curious what he meant by “a single order of magnitude.”
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### Author:  [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/128 "2017-06-05T20:48:55Z")
> [@x-ray\_vision](#):
>
> Then I’m curious what he meant by “a single order of magnitude.”
Well, wrt guns, I think there about a half a million guns in the UK (from memory) in private hands…while there are more than 200 million in the US (of course, there are only 65+ million people in the UK while there are over 300 million Americans, so you’d need to look at per capita…which we’d still be ahead on, regardless). So, that seems to be more than a single order of magnitude. As for crime, it depends on the type…some crimes are more prevalent in the UK than in the US on a per capita basis, but murder isn’t one of them and probably is approx. an order of magnitude different (though here I can’t recall what either is enough to know even roughly and I don’t feel like looking it up).
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### Author:  [@SigMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SigMan)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/129 "2017-06-05T20:48:56Z")
Every cop is accountable for whatever they did but not all of them are brutal, most are nervous as hell. Remember cops were being assassinated by random. Ask them how they feel.
I wouldn’t want to be a cop but I’m a licensed carry and I’m not going to play cop.
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### Author:  [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/130 "2017-06-05T20:52:25Z")
> [@XT](#):
>
> So, that seems to be more than a single order of magnitude.
My point was that it would be odd to use “a single order of magnitude” correctly right after using “4 orders of magnitude” to mean “4 times.”
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### Author:  [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/131 "2017-06-05T20:53:46Z")
> [@x-ray\_vision](#):
>
> My point was that it would be odd to use “a single order of magnitude” correctly right after using “4 orders of magnitude” to mean “4 times.”
Yeah, I figured. I’m just being pedantic. 😛
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/132 "2017-06-05T20:54:40Z")
> [@XT](#):
>
> I think he meant 4 times there…4 orders of magnitude would mean US police kill more than 550,000 people a year, which I’m doubting iiandyiiii believes. 😛 (ETA I get about 20 times more likely with my back of the envelope calculations, which is still pretty bad)
Isn’t 4 orders of magnitude ten thousand?
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### Author:  [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/133 "2017-06-05T20:57:19Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> Isn’t 4 orders of magnitude ten thousand?
Yes, so it would be 55,000 per year, not 550,000. It’s still wrong, but it’s funny (to me) that I sent that off with a typo as well. 😛
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/134 "2017-06-05T20:59:54Z")
> [@XT](#):
>
> Yes, so it would be 55,000 per year, not 550,000. It’s still wrong, but it’s funny (to me) that I sent that off with a typo as well. 😛
In post 27, I link to my back of the envelope math that shows US police kill about fourteen thousand times, per capita, the number of people that UK police kill.
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### Author:  [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/135 "2017-06-05T21:04:21Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> In post 27, I link to my back of the envelope math that shows US police kill about fourteen thousand times, per capita, the number of people that UK police kill.
I get around 776 times more likely, per capita. I didn’t see your post #27 though.
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### Author:  [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/136 "2017-06-05T21:06:01Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> In post 27, I link to my back of the envelope math that shows US police kill about fourteen thousand times, per capita, the number of people that UK police kill.
It might be just a teeny more relevant to compare recent years rather than going back to 1900.
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/137 "2017-06-05T21:06:36Z")
> [@XT](#):
>
> I get around 776 times more likely, per capita. I didn’t see your post #27 though.
Please check my math. It was comparing a contemporary month in the US to UKs entire history of police killings.
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### Author:  [@LicketySplit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LicketySplit)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/138 "2017-06-05T21:07:31Z")
> [@boffking](#):
>
> [York County deputies fatally shoot Arundel man](http://www.pressherald.com/2017/05/29/york-county-deputies-fatally-shoot-arundel-man/)
> This happened this morning.
> There doesn’t appear to have been any attempts at using pepper spray, tasers, or even attempting to talk to the person. They just shot him and killed him.
> I’ve noticed this pattern a lot recently, that police will ignore the possibility of negotiation or less-lethal weapons, and simply shoot the person dead. Why does this keep happening?
> Maine has had several fatal police shootings this year, and most of them very quickly escalated to the suspect being killed. Sometimes the victim didn’t even have a real gun.
Cops gave a very dangerous job. They are continually faced with hostile, dangerous dysfunctional people. They put their lives on the line for you every day.
Sometimes mistakes are made. Many of those so called innocent unarmed cop shooting victims are really deliberately committing suicide. This is a common ploy. So common that it has a name…death by cop.
And you say… Maine had had several fatal cop shooting this year? So…in the past six months? And that some…meaning more than one…were unarmed?
Gotta link for that? And a proof that the unarmed fatality was not a DBC suicide?
Thanks!
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### Author:  [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/139 "2017-06-05T21:14:49Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> Please check my math. It was comparing a contemporary month in the US to UKs entire history of police killings.
I checked recent years. From what I could see there was 1 fatal shooting in the UK by the police in 2015, compared to 965 in the US by police in that same time. I believe that only Authorised Firearms Officer actually carry guns in the UK (around 14K?), so you’d need to compare that to the 1 million plus armed US police to get a good number. The math doesn’t work out to 14K regardless. Last year it’s much the same. If your point is that in the US police shoot more civilians than in the UK, that’s true. Of course, in the US civilians shoot more civilians than comparable in the UK as well, so not sure what that proves except that the UK is not the US nor vice versa.
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### Author:  [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2017, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-police-so-quick-to-kill/787689/140 "2017-06-05T21:18:27Z")
> [@](#):
>
> 126 Law Enforcement Officer Fatalities Nationwide in 2014
>
> Firearms-related fatalities spiked 56 percent while ambush attacks remained the leading cause of felonious deaths
>
> …
>
> The number of officers killed by firearms in 2014 (50)
[http://www.nleomf.org/newsroom/news-releases/eoy-report-2014.html](http://www.nleomf.org/newsroom/news-releases/eoy-report-2014.html)
That’s for the US. I wonder what UK figures look like.
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