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Police Homicides in the United States

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Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#71

Post by gtirloni »

always_good wrote: post #21

One of the worst videos I've seen on the internet is the Daniel Shaver execution from last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M62Va6Ft2cw The Sergeant (voice in the vid) thinks he's fucking Jigsaw, and he wasn't even the guy that pulled the trigger. America is fucked.

After watching the video, I couldn't believe how badly trained the police officer was. It was pretty amateurish, which was very shocking in a situation were one person is carrying an AR-15.

However, what baffled me in the end was this: "Ex-Arizona police officer acquitted of murder in shooting of unarmed man" [0]

To me this shows that the issue is not isolated to this single man, but points to a system that has become rotten.

0 - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/08/arizona-poli...

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#73

Post by ci5er »

pron wrote: post #66
TeMPOraL wrote: post #13

Interesting analysis. As a counterpoint to the headline that might be little fear-inducing, my first reaction when reading it was: only so little? Things must be bad. I mean: the perfect situation is when there are no homicides at all. But in a little less perfect imaginary world, in which bad people never get the chance to hurt innocents because police stops it, some bad people might still go down resisting arrest,…

That's a good point, but much of social research breaks down when you start talking about imaginary worlds. For example, I see (mostly very young) people oppose affirmative action on grounds similar to, "but in a perfect world, skin color shouldn't matter, therefore such laws are bad." This may be true, but laws are aimed to tackle the world we actually live in, not the one we wished we lived in. I call that "spheric…

> I don't think resisting arrest qualifies

This pull quote isn't related to your main point, but to digress a bit on it...

The state, having a presumed monopoly on the legitimate use of pre-emptive force, reacts this way to application of laws, no? For example - there is a law that says that I can't plant pink flowers or sell looseys or whatever. I violate that law. The progression of consequences subsequently goes like this:

o I get a fine. I don't pay it

o I get a fine on that fine. And a stern warning. I don't pay it.

o They send a note or an armed-or-not person to invite me to go spend a few days in a metal box. I do not go.

o They send armed persons to forcibly retrieve me to put me in that metal box. I resist.

o They apply overwhelming force to ... well, force me. I resist more.

o They kill me.

It does NOT matter what the law is (chewing bubble gum, paying taxes, open container, lemonade stand licensure, drinking a beer outside of 7-11), the sequence of escalation is largely the same.

How can we NOT expect cops to kill us? That's what the state is - that's what it does - that's its function when faced with non-compliance with whatever set of rules our elected representatives have put into place.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#74

Post by [deleted] »

jopsen wrote: post #68
WillPostForFood wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many German police officers are killed a year? In 2011 it was 69 in the US (and another 58 died in accidents).

A Google search suggest 0-2 depending on what year you pick, see bottom of: http://www.dw.com/en/two-german-police-officers-killed-by-fl... In most of Western Europe it's extremely rare that police officers are killed in the line of duty. Note: most countries count the number of bullets fired by police, as well as number of times a weapon was drawn, in the US they don't officially count people killed.

[deleted]

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#75

Post by chrisan »

flexie wrote: post #53

In a few hours the Americans will wake up and a bunch of them on HN will say that it's a loaded or divisive or misleading title or that the statistics is flawed. And HN is decisively more progressive than most of the country which simply ignores this kind of news. It is the way it is in America, because - as a whole - they don't care that much about gun violence. It's mostly blacks and Latinos getting killed and they…

> It's mostly blacks and Latinos getting killed and they are still minorities. And the poor white Americans that also fall victim to police and other gun violence just don't have much political influence

Honest question: Couldn't this just be grouped into "poor people" Are affluent blacks and latinos being killed?

I am not denying racism by any means, but it seems people of poverty are most at risk.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#76

Post by aktiur »

usrusr wrote: post #67
oblio wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, maybe it helps to compare: Germany: 2155 homicides in 2011, 6 by the police.

2155 homicides of which the vast majority are likely by non-strangers, so they would not appear in the statistic the article is proposing.

The article also says that 1500 police homicides a year accounts for 8 to 10 per cent of all homicides. The corresponding figure in Germany is less than 0.3 %

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#77

Post by leereeves »

jonchang wrote: post #29
leereeves wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the reporting jurisdictions are missing from the dataset not because there were truly no killings in those areas during this period, but instead because they chose not to report homicides by police That's a rather large assumption that needs to be justified.

It is justified, both in the citation and the actual text. The ARD dataset is driven by self-reporting from various local agencies. The fact that the FBI's SHR data and the ARD dataset have a mismatch (that is, there are police-related homicides in SHR that are not present in the ARD data and vice versa) is proof enough that there is underreporting in these datasets!

I just realized that underreporting is already accounted for in the 1,250/y thanks to the statistical analysis described in the article.

A = the number of jurisdiction-reported homicides

B = the number of media-reported homicides

M = the number of homicides on both lists

N = AB / M

Now, if jurisdiction-reported homicides are unreported by a factor of X, we can derive a more accurate figure for A by multiplying A by X. We also multiply M by X, because adding cases to list A also adds a similar ratio (on average) to the matches between both lists. And the estimate doesn't change.

N = (XA * B) / XM = AB / M

This assumes, of course, that homicides in the jurisdictions that don't report to the FBI or BJS are still reported by the media. That may not be true but if it's not true, it must be proven false.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#78

Post by pron »

ci5er wrote: post #73
pron wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point, but much of social research breaks down when you start talking about imaginary worlds. For example, I see (mostly very young) people oppose affirmative action on grounds similar to, "but in a perfect world, skin color shouldn't matter, therefore such laws are bad." This may be true, but laws are aimed to tackle the world we actually live in, not the one we wished we lived in. I call that "spheric…

> I don't think resisting arrest qualifies This pull quote isn't related to your main point, but to digress a bit on it... The state, having a presumed monopoly on the legitimate use of pre-emptive force, reacts this way to application of laws, no? For example - there is a law that says that I can't plant pink flowers or sell looseys or whatever. I violate that law. The progression of consequences subsequently goes l…

> How can we NOT expect cops to kill us? That's what the state is - that's what it does

That's not what happens in most countries, though, so clearly it's not a problem with "the state", but with American law enforcement. Police can overpower one unarmed person, regardless of how strongly he resists, without killing him. Not only they can, but that's what they do in most places: you resist -- they take you by force, but they don't kill you.

Also, using violence to enforce the laws long predates the state (what we call "the state" today was largely created only in the 17th century). The role of the state is to reduce the number of people who can employ violence when enforcing the law (and, of course, to centralize the law itself), from your local lord and his soldiers, the church and its inquisitors, your local robber-baron and his Pinkertons, to those whose training and licensing is, at least hopefully, supervised and sanctioned by the general public.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#79

Post by tomalpha »

gtirloni wrote: post #71
always_good wrote: post #21

One of the worst videos I've seen on the internet is the Daniel Shaver execution from last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M62Va6Ft2cw The Sergeant (voice in the vid) thinks he's fucking Jigsaw, and he wasn't even the guy that pulled the trigger. America is fucked.

After watching the video, I couldn't believe how badly trained the police officer was. It was pretty amateurish, which was very shocking in a situation were one person is carrying an AR-15. However, what baffled me in the end was this: "Ex-Arizona police officer acquitted of murder in shooting of unarmed man" [0] To me this shows that the issue is not isolated to this single man, but points to a system that has becom…

> I couldn’t believe how badly trained the police officer was

Is there a study anywhere that tries to correlate amount/quality-of-police-training and deaths involving police? I think that could be really interesting.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#80

Post by [deleted] »

foepys wrote: post #12

3 years ago German police officer /u/krautcop posted on reddit about his opinion on why police violence is much higher in the US than in Germany. [1] This might open a new perspective to some people. 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLEO/comments/2dgwkp/what_makes_a...

[deleted]
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