Investigation: Police Shootings

Post by _asdf_asdf » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 7:45 PM UTC

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…

Post by jmuyskens » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 7:45 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #30

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…

Here's the data set as a spreadsheet, which I think is more helpful (I will feel dumb if they made it available as a spreadsheet themselves): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/100kWwv7vLl0ZAbtMn7lY... Oklahoma is pretty bad. California is in the top 15 for both fatal shootings weighted by population and for fatal shootings of people not attacking with a deadly weapon. Illinois, where I live, is all the way down…

Post by pboutros » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 7:47 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #40

hebdo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by shkkmo » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 7:48 PM UTC

harryh wrote: post #38

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…

> 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...

Post by kennelliott » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 7:53 PM UTC

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.