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Investigation: Police Shootings

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#31

Post by [deleted] »

jessaustin wrote: post #6
tptacek wrote: post #2

Some notes: * The Guardian has a very similar feature, "The Counted": http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0... The Guardian's feature is better in some ways; for instance, it attempts to account for all police engagement fatalities, not just shootings. Some of the worst police abuses in the US haven't involved guns, and if you read the data carefully you learn some surprising things, like how d…

Can we find out if e.g. Laquan McDonald is included in the "64%"? If not, I'd expect he was before the video came out. This is why I hesitate to consider "mitigating circumstances". Public safety officers should be judged by their effect on public safety, not by how well they cover their own asses.

[deleted]

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#32

Post by hebdo »

tptacek wrote: post #2

Some notes: * The Guardian has a very similar feature, "The Counted": http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0... The Guardian's feature is better in some ways; for instance, it attempts to account for all police engagement fatalities, not just shootings. Some of the worst police abuses in the US haven't involved guns, and if you read the data carefully you learn some surprising things, like how d…

If you think that a knife threat should never call for a firearm response then I recommend this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xpcrDzy344

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#33

Post by serge2k »

b_emery wrote: post #12
startupfounder wrote: post #5

I find this discrepancy very interesting, only ~4% of the people shot and killed by police were female. Police departments are male dominate and maybe this factors into the difference[0] Male - 952 Female - 41 Why such a discrepancy? I don't think males are 23x more dangerous than females. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_law_enforcement

Between 1980 and 2008 "Males committed the vast majority of homicides in the United States at that time, representing 90.5% of the total number of offenders" [1]. Men are much more dangerous. A general rule for a lost child is to seek out a friendly looking woman, since she would be much more likely to help and not harm the child [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_crime [2] http://gavindebecker…

Did you really have to add a second link which has no value except to imply all men are assholes or sexual predators.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#35

Post by tptacek »

hackuser wrote: post #13

Number of people killed last year by police in England and Wales: 3. That's the highest since 2008. [1] Why doesn't law enforcement seem to care? The government doesn't even track police shootings (one reason the Washington Post created its database) and, generally, law enforcement's reaction expresses no concern for the victims or for reducing this appalling behavior and widespread failure. [1] http://www.inquest.or…

While the police in the US are clearly more violent than those in the UK, it's also the case that there is more crime in the US, more variance in the population, and way, way, way more gun availability. So we may not have very much to learn from your simple comparison.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#36

Post by DanBC »

humanrebar wrote: post #23
rayiner wrote: post #3

Worth reading through these. A lot of people with mental illness shot just for holding guns or knives or "driving toward police." Recently, an au pair we know (from Germany), had a gun pulled on her because she reached into her purse to get her ID when she was pulled over. The fact that Maryland's finest are totally mental and she could get killed for doing that never occurred to her.

I don't know. Someone with severe mental illness and a knife (or a car) sounds way more dangerous than a calm person with a gun. It's hard to know whether the shooting was warranted without more details. Maybe better video records of these incidents will be helpful.

A lot of those people have no intention to harm anyone but themselves. They're suicidal. It's weird that emergency medical treatment for suicidal people is "call the police", but that's what their relatives do. The police turn up, see the weapon, hear "mental illness" and wrongly assume mentally ill people are violent, and shoot them.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#37

Post by dccoolgai »

jessaustin wrote: post #6
tptacek wrote: post #2

Some notes: * The Guardian has a very similar feature, "The Counted": http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0... The Guardian's feature is better in some ways; for instance, it attempts to account for all police engagement fatalities, not just shootings. Some of the worst police abuses in the US haven't involved guns, and if you read the data carefully you learn some surprising things, like how d…

Can we find out if e.g. Laquan McDonald is included in the "64%"? If not, I'd expect he was before the video came out. This is why I hesitate to consider "mitigating circumstances". Public safety officers should be judged by their effect on public safety, not by how well they cover their own asses.

I wonder if you would feel that way if one of your loved ones was serving as an officer of the peace - would you want them dealing with dangerous situations on a daily basis people with no regard for "covering their own ass"? Would you feel that way if there were an armed intruder in your home and one of those officers had to respond to protect you? Would you want them to intervene to protect you or your family or sit in your driveway deliberating about whether they should "cover their own ass" or yours?

We don't need to excuse unwarranted police violence as a society, but it's equally unfair to outsource dealing with violent and dangerous situations to others and then glibly remove any means they have to deal with those situations without getting killed themselves.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#38

Post by harryh »

cryptoz wrote: post #14
adam12 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, this highlights how overblown the terrorist problem is.

About 30,000 Americans die in car crashes every year. That's about ~400,000 Americans killed by other Americans in their cars since the 2001 terrorist attacks. It's pretty clear that the emotional appeal is what people seem to care about ("someone wants to kill us") and it has absolutely nothing to do at all with Americans dying. Terrorism has never been a problem. The same number of people died in car accidents duri…

> Where is our war on cars?

We do have a war on car fatalities. It's been remarkably successful:

http://www.donerdesigns.org/_/rsrc/1376697199749/other-cause...

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#39

Post by jrlocke »

adam12 wrote: post #10
RealGeek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

93 victims were unarmed, 33 were armed with a toy, and 27 unknown. That is a lot more than Americans killed by terrorists in US.

For me, this highlights how overblown the terrorist problem is.

In arguments over the relative safeness of the world it is often pointed out that relatively few people have died recently in terrorist attacks, but as N. N. Taleb points out, the distribution of deaths by terrorist attacks is a fat tailed one: the current average does not preclude much higher future numbers.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#40

Post by tptacek »

hebdo wrote: post #32
tptacek wrote: post #2

Some notes: * The Guardian has a very similar feature, "The Counted": http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0... The Guardian's feature is better in some ways; for instance, it attempts to account for all police engagement fatalities, not just shootings. Some of the worst police abuses in the US haven't involved guns, and if you read the data carefully you learn some surprising things, like how d…

If you think that a knife threat should never call for a firearm response then I recommend this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xpcrDzy344

I don't think that and don't appreciate the framing you're trying to impose on me. Could you perhaps word comments like this more carefully?

What I think is that people armed with firearms give the police much less reaction time, while people armed with knives can, if they're not on a vector that puts them in contact with other officers or civilians, be pacified more gradually.

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