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Investigation: Police Shootings

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Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#191

Post by kbenson »

tptacek wrote: post #170
kbenson wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to see how well the numbers correlate to percentage of population in the state that lives in urban and rural areas, or even what percentage of the population is in heavily/dense urbanized areas.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ow1ktm5nwy6um5f/Screenshot%202016-... Excuse the formatting. That's the top 10 by fatalities weighted by population. Short answer: it's all over the map.

Ah, thanks! It looks like Percent Threat is minority deaths over total deaths for that state?

The other thing I wondered was how it looked when normalized to the racial makeup of the state (I'm not asking you to do this, just wondering).

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#192

Post by DanBC »

melted wrote: post #190
DanBC wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not just one person's insensitive comment, is it? It's a pattern of repeated behaviour. "I am the law, don't fuck with me".

Yes, that's how things are done in this country. You can fuck with them afterwards, in the court of law. When they're enforcing the law, fucking with police is the stupidest thing you can do. They have families to come back home to as well. I don't see what's so "insensitive" about that.

> When they're enforcing the law, fucking with police is the stupidest thing you can do

...in the US. In other countries you can fuck with the police and not get killed.

And, for the sake of clarity here, "fucking with the police" is for example asking if you're being detained or if you're free to go, or asking what grounds they have for a stop and search. It's baffling to me why asking police to obey the law is described, by police, as fucking with them.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#193

Post by DanBC »

notdonspaulding wrote: post #96
DanBC wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're trading youtube clips here's a police force who disarm a man armed with a machete. Armed police are available, (the UK has armed police, especially in London) but those police are not needed because our police force is not fucking incompetent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX5CPx4RKWw Here's another video of a man wielding a knife and approaching police. In the US he's much more likely to be killed. https:…

With no clips to trade, I'm merely spectating at a tennis match, but I remain unconvinced that the UK response is in any way better. In all 3 clips (your two, plus the parent's) what I see is that a person holding a knife is an immediate and real danger to anyone within 15 feet of them. Also, if I'm seeing correctly, both assailants had already been pepper-sprayed, is that right?

Yes, in the UK version the person poses a risk of very real harm to officers. People could die. Despite this, police manage to subdue him, and arrest him. They can do this because an officer didn't shoot him within six seconds of arriving at the scene.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#194

Post by DanBC »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #159
newman314 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source please for "in the US an officer is much more likely to be killed"? I took a quick look and found this. [1][2] Looks like number of cop deaths are at a 50 year low but can't find a country by country comparison. [1] http://www.groupnewsblog.net/2014/09/i-saw-posting-on-facebo... [2] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131230/15411225716/numbe...

It's surely anecdotal, however I have a hard time believing most of Europe, in particular the UK, has more mentally ill and/or drug addicts who are more prone to this kind of behavior than the general populace. You also have a variety of high profile examples of cop-killing in the US that play into this kneejerk reactionary arms race on the part of police.

> more mentally ill

Nice stigma. People with mental illness are not violent; mental illness does not predict violent behaviour. That's about as offensive and ignorant as saying "has more black people and/or drug addicts".

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#195

Post by tptacek »

spikels wrote: post #149
unit91 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your comment in relation to the male / female issue. Care to expound?

For the past year the black/white issue has dominated the discussion of police violence, not male/female. That 97% of those killed by police are male but on 52% of the population is male seems too be in a large part justified by the fact that men commit 90% of the murders and a similar fraction of other violent crimes. Given the dominant media narrative that cops are unfairly targeting blacks it was bit surprising to…

Among the many reasons you're being downvoted is the fact that you said black people are "only" 26% of police shooting fatalities in the US without acknowledging the fact that they make up only 13% of the population.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#196

Post by DanBC »

gohrt wrote: post #83
DanBC wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who are you going to call in an emergency? 911, or, um, what's the number of the suicide psychiatric emergency response team? You don't get to decide whether 911 dispatches police.

> You don't get to decide whether 911 dispatches police.

Maybe America should fix that, because in most other countries you get to ask for the service you want, either when you dial the 911 equivalent number, or by dialing the specific service emergency number.

Some countries have an emergency psychiatric numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emergency_telephone_nu...

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#197

Post by shkkmo »

tptacek wrote: post #189
shkkmo wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument appears to be: 1) We don't prosecute people for things that aren't crimes. 2) Thus our system and standards for prosecuting people for things that are crimes is just. I don't see the step from 1) to 2). I would guess you are making the following assumptions that I would disagree with: a) We do a adequate job of enforcing the current laws. (Prosecutions tend to be fairly rare due to low priority and lack…

No. You've shifted the goalposts. You began the thread by trying to argue that a lack of prosecutions for vehicular fatalities was evidence of injustice. But it isn't: it's evidence for the fact that most traffic fatalities don't involve conduct we recognize as criminal. Now you'd like to litigate whether we should pass laws that criminalize more kinds of driver error. I'm not interested in that discussion, and I don…

I'm not moving the goalposts, nor am I trying to litigate anyting. I'm simply trying to understand your argument and where we differ.

You think the current laws regarding driver culpability for errors are sufficient. Ok, fine. We've established a difference of opinion and don't need to argue it.

> You began the thread by trying to argue that a lack of prosecutions for vehicular fatalities was evidence of injustice. But it isn't: it's evidence for the fact that most traffic fatalities don't involve conduct we recognize as criminal.

From this I am going to assume that you also disagree that investigation and prosecution of traffic fatalities lack sufficient priority and resources.

If I am correct about this, then I now think the source of a disagreement is clear.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#198

Post by Mithaldu »

maus42 wrote: post #174
jeffmould wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, I am not a doctor and I didn't sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night. But as someone that was an EMT and who worked around law enforcement for numerous years in other capacities, I have seen this all too often. "like how dangerous tasers are." Taser stats can be a bit deceiving. In the vast majority of cases where a taser is deployed the individual is in a drug-induced state with increased heart activi…

"Taser stats are a bit deceiving (the death toll is surprisingly large), it's lethal only to drug addicts"? If Taser is dangerous to people high on drugs, it is a dangerous weapon, and we should care about that. Do you mean it's individual's fault that police uses a weapon that is lethally dangerous to "individuals in a drug-induced state" to apprehend individuals in a drug-induced state?

> Do you mean it's individual's fault

He actually did state exactly that:

> it is the situation the individual has placed themselves in that causes the danger.

Very sad to see even a medical professional take the tack that "serve and protect" is not the police's task anymore.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#199

Post by shkkmo »

spikels wrote: post #186
shkkmo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet it is misleading to support the claim of a "war on traffic fatalities" with a graph that measures something else. The first graph show we have made driving far less dangerous per mile . The second graph shows the likelihood that any given person will die due to traffic.

This a very dishonest argument. Fatalities per km travelled is the standard metric of safety for a good reason. Are you against hospitals too? Deaths in hospitals have skyrocketed since they were invented. You are being a pedantic jerk. Read this: http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html Here are some more reasonable discussions of the issue: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the... http://www.theat…

> You are being a pedantic jerk

"DH0. Name-calling. This is the lowest form of disagreement"

> Are you against hospitals too? Deaths in hospitals have skyrocketed since they were invented.

"DH1. Ad Hominem."

Good job, you've hit the bottom of the disagreement heirarchy. In my mind my responses are all on the level of DH4 and DH5. If I have failed to do that, please provide specific examples because I strive to disagree well and wish to improve.

> Here are some more reasonable discussions of the issue:

Neither of those are discussions of the issue at hand, which is the number of deaths due to cars. Nowhere, except in replies that attack a strawman argument, was the safety of driving a point of debate. I have even stated elsewhere that I agree that driving has gotten safer (though I do dispute that fatalities per distance is an ideal metric for measuring that since it is also affected by usage patterns in addition to safety).

I have made solid, non-pedantic points about the effect of using different metrics and what types of interventions will show up in those metrics.

If you are talking about traffic safety (say vs air travel or between countries), fatalities per distance is one of several applicable metrics (fatalities per trip being another).

If you are talking about traffic deaths, as a overall source of risk (say vs terrorism) then fatalities per capita is a more correct metric.

This is not a pedantic point, this is a very important point that is key to the discussion that you seem to be avoiding.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#200

Post by shkkmo »

harryh wrote: post #183
shkkmo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks less good when you compare our numbers vs. those of other countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r... We have higher traffic related death rates per capita than any other 'first world' country, including coutries with similar geograhpy such as Canada and Australia. We have higher traffic related death rates per distance than any other 'first world' country (other than New Zeala…

Interesting! I wonder why that is? I don't have a good hypothesis.

I don't know. If I were to guess, I would blame some combination of the large number of urban areas in the US that are pedestrian-unfriendly and the US's relatively lax punishment of DUIs. In Canada for example, a DUI is a felony. As a non canadian citizen, you will be bared from entering Canada for 5-10 years after receiving a DUI anywhere.
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