Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Investigation: Police Shootings

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 221 posts

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#41

Post by davidw »

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…

It'd be interesting to compare what the UK folks were armed with, including those not shot. My guess is that US cops are far more likely to face people carrying firearms of their own.

I figure if we're talking about gun laws, though, the article is probably political in nature, so I flagged it.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#42

Post by shkkmo »

rayiner wrote: post #27
cryptoz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What you call emotion, I call justice, and I think that matters. Consider, without any emotion, the issue of murder versus suicide. What are the negative impacts of those acts? From the point of view of that person's friends and family and society at large, leaving aside emotion or notions of justice, the impact of the acts is the same: loss of that person, loss of their financial and emotional support. In fact, the…

So you agree that the general lack of prosecutions for vehicle caused fatalities is a failure of justice?

The only difference between murder and suicide is if the person who dies chose to die.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#43

Post by tptacek »

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.

It's not in the data set, but the correct category for McDonald is "Deadly weapon" but not "Attack in progress".

McDonald is the reason I'd like the "firearm" breakout, because "deadly weapon", "no firearm", and "no attack in progress" describes a somewhat common class of police fatalities that are probably mostly unjustified.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#45

Post by notatoad »

RealGeek wrote: post #8
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…

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.

I've seen police shoot and kill a man "armed with a toy" and it's very, very hard for me to fault them for it. It sounds bad when you say it, but armed with a toy and armed should be treated as the same thing. When a man being chased by police stops his car, gets out, takes cover behind the door and starts pointing something that looks remarkably like a gun at police, he should be shot.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#46

Post by Someone1234 »

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…

> The same number of people died in car accidents during September 2001 as they did in terrorist attacks.

I was interested if this is true, and on the face of it it is. 2996 people died in 9/11, in 2001 (the entire year) 37,795 people died in car accidents (source: NHTSA), or an average of 3149/deaths per month.

Injuries are also higher from accidents than 9/11 for the month of Sept. 2001.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#47

Post by cmdrfred »

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

Male lives matter.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#48

Post by tptacek »

shkkmo wrote: post #42
rayiner wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you call emotion, I call justice, and I think that matters. Consider, without any emotion, the issue of murder versus suicide. What are the negative impacts of those acts? From the point of view of that person's friends and family and society at large, leaving aside emotion or notions of justice, the impact of the acts is the same: loss of that person, loss of their financial and emotional support. In fact, the…

So you agree that the general lack of prosecutions for vehicle caused fatalities is a failure of justice? The only difference between murder and suicide is if the person who dies chose to die.

We don't prosecute people for "fatalities". We prosecute them for homicide and manslaughter, which are offenses in which the prosecution must prove intent to commit harm.

Meanwhile we do in fact prosecute car fatalities when they are caused by recklessness, and, of course, when they're caused intentionally.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#49

Post by tptacek »

notatoad wrote: post #45
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.

I've seen police shoot and kill a man "armed with a toy" and it's very, very hard for me to fault them for it. It sounds bad when you say it, but armed with a toy and armed should be treated as the same thing. When a man being chased by police stops his car, gets out, takes cover behind the door and starts pointing something that looks remarkably like a gun at police, he should be shot.

There is probably a better way to word this.
Post reply on HN