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Police Homicides in the United States

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Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#91

Post by ewjordan »

keiferski wrote: post #45
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,…

This is based on a false assumption: that the proper police response to life-threatening criminal acts is to kill the perpetrator. If you get past the they deserve it Puritan mentality, the ideal scenario is for police minimize death (of criminals and police officers) at all costs. Numerous other countries handle violent criminals in ways other than "kill them immediately"; the tendency of police officers to use imme…

> the ideal scenario is for police minimize death (of criminals and police officers) at all costs

Do you really believe this in all situations? I don't. In a standoff between 5 cops and 15 criminals I'd rather see the cops kill them all than vice versa, since the cops didn't create the bad situation in the first place. We all weight lives based on their moral value and culpability in the situation.

Maybe that's an extreme example, but the way it happens more often is that a suspect pulls a gun, points it at a single cop, and the cop has to decide whether to kill the suspect or die him/herself. I'd always argue that in such a situation the cop should shoot.

Are you suggesting that shoot to wound is a better policy?

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#92

Post by vidarh »

keiferski wrote: post #45
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,…

This is based on a false assumption: that the proper police response to life-threatening criminal acts is to kill the perpetrator. If you get past the they deserve it Puritan mentality, the ideal scenario is for police minimize death (of criminals and police officers) at all costs. Numerous other countries handle violent criminals in ways other than "kill them immediately"; the tendency of police officers to use imme…

An example I tend to give is the case a while back where someone was wielding an axe. Two police officers went after him, and the axe-wielding man was shot and killed because he went for one of them.

Success, surely? He protected his partner, who might have been harmed.

The way something like this would likely have gone down somewhere like the UK would be that the first responders would have called for reinforcement, and then kept their distance and waited. You don't engage someone armed unless there is immediate danger to others. She should never have been close enough to be in danger.

In the UK they may or may not call in a firearms team in such a case, but if they did, they'd be brought in as a precaution. More likely they'd close down the area around him and wait, and wear the guy down, and then see if they could get him to drop the weapon peacefully.

For comparison there was a case of a man robbing a house near me a while back unarmed, and the police brought in 20 officers, chased him until he climbed onto a roof. Then they simply waited for 4-5 hours until he accepted he had no way out.

So many of the cases I hear about from the US is down to impatience and seemingly some kind of belief that they need to stop things as quickly as possible rather than trying to stop things with as little conflict as possible.

I don't think it's necessarily so much punishment as fear that if they don't do something, things will escalate. But most of the time if you contain a threat and wait, the level of conflict will de-escalate. So much violence boils down to fear that the other side will be willing to use more violence. And that fear is pervasive through some groups of people. E.g. we see that in the insistence of keeping or carrying weapons.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#93

Post by TeMPOraL »

StavrosK wrote: post #54
TeMPOraL wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe the reality you described is the basis for the movie minority report, where the cops are so good crimes are stopped before they happen. Or maybe criminals are mostly nonviolent. Implementation details, anyway. What I was aiming at is: in a world where the only people killed are ones who absolutely deserve it, the statistics would likely show that close to 100% of homicides are committed by police. > With…

In places without the death penalty, the set of people who "absolutely deserve it" is, by definition, null.

Touché.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#94

Post by thisacctforreal »

blattimwind wrote: post #69
keiferski wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is based on a false assumption: that the proper police response to life-threatening criminal acts is to kill the perpetrator. If you get past the they deserve it Puritan mentality, the ideal scenario is for police minimize death (of criminals and police officers) at all costs. Numerous other countries handle violent criminals in ways other than "kill them immediately"; the tendency of police officers to use imme…

I think your explanation is somewhat simplistic, but the observation that societies different from the US manage without the massive police violence is of course spot on. There was a (now deleted) comment a few minutes ago about a police response resulting in someone being shot by the police, the commenter concluded that it was overall reasonable given the circumstances, since no one else got hurt. That looks like a…

Mass shootings in America are not an easy problem to fix.

If 0.00005% of the population decides to spend the last 20 minutes of their life going on a murder spree, there's not much you can do, at least in the context of America.

Guns are prolific in the US: between 2000 and 2010, 2,000,000 AR15s alone were manufactured for domestic use.

Deciding on a set of laws to control that number of firearms to end these arbitrary events is not simple, and perhaps not feasible with how many citizens regard firearm ownership a right. California has some of the strictest gun laws, but has been victim to more mass shootings than other states (of course depends on the definition of mass shooting).

America Uncovered (from Chris Chappel of China Uncensored) does a relatively good unbiased video on the topic https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hAtLnTyimT0

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/us/25shooters.html [2] https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/dec/17/how-ma...

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#95

Post by vidarh »

ewjordan wrote: post #91
keiferski wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is based on a false assumption: that the proper police response to life-threatening criminal acts is to kill the perpetrator. If you get past the they deserve it Puritan mentality, the ideal scenario is for police minimize death (of criminals and police officers) at all costs. Numerous other countries handle violent criminals in ways other than "kill them immediately"; the tendency of police officers to use imme…

> the ideal scenario is for police minimize death (of criminals and police officers) at all costs Do you really believe this in all situations? I don't. In a standoff between 5 cops and 15 criminals I'd rather see the cops kill them all than vice versa, since the cops didn't create the bad situation in the first place. We all weight lives based on their moral value and culpability in the situation. Maybe that's an ex…

If there is a standoff and the police does not have a significant advantage of numbers, they've already messed up. Maybe using their guns will be the right response at that point, but where they failed at minimizing death was when their response was so crazily inadequate in the first place that they got pinned down by superior numbers (if they're not pinned down, and there aren't civilians at immediate risk, they can/should wait for reinforcements).

In the UK for example, police is more likely to respond with a factor of 4x-5x more officers than suspected criminals, and will avoid approaching until they know they have numerical and tactical superiority.

Of course, sometimes that fails - you can't predict every possible situation, but it's rare.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#96

Post by ci5er »

ojbyrne wrote: post #65
gaius wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the tendency of police officers to use immediate lethal violence can most likely be explained by the aforementioned Puritan "punishment" mentality It must be horrible to be an American cop. All that training, the weapons, the body armour, the radio to immediately summon a whole squad of armed goons who may or may not even have a tank , and they regularly feel so terrified by women in pyjamas or pet doggos that they m…

Blame the NRA. The proliferation of handguns and the militarization of the police are a positive feedback loop.

The NRA is responsible for militarization of domestic police?

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#97

Post by KGIII »

ojbyrne wrote: post #65
gaius wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the tendency of police officers to use immediate lethal violence can most likely be explained by the aforementioned Puritan "punishment" mentality It must be horrible to be an American cop. All that training, the weapons, the body armour, the radio to immediately summon a whole squad of armed goons who may or may not even have a tank , and they regularly feel so terrified by women in pyjamas or pet doggos that they m…

Blame the NRA. The proliferation of handguns and the militarization of the police are a positive feedback loop.

Can you elaborate on why you want to blame the NRA?

I should disclose that I own a number of firearms, many of them sidearms, and don't like the NRA very much, nor have I ever donated to them or been a member. I'm just curious as to how you see them as being the source to blame.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#98

Post by ci5er »

stoolpigeon wrote: post #89
keiferski wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is based on a false assumption: that the proper police response to life-threatening criminal acts is to kill the perpetrator. If you get past the they deserve it Puritan mentality, the ideal scenario is for police minimize death (of criminals and police officers) at all costs. Numerous other countries handle violent criminals in ways other than "kill them immediately"; the tendency of police officers to use imme…

It's not a Puritan mentality. It's the fact that any person they interact with could be armed. The reason many other countries police deal with violent criminals in a different way is because it is very unlikely those criminals will be armed. Where I live (Hungary) there is almost no gun violence. The few instances I'm aware of that do involve guns are things where violent groups are involved like organized crime or…

1) Where did you live in the US? I'm in a medium-ish sized metroplex (whatever that means) of about a million people, and I never hear live fire.

2) Why would you worry about a (remote) gun-shot that you heard? By the time you hear it, you will be already shot-or-not. If not - why worry?

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#99

Post by tsmarsh »

Whats the ideal here?

1. Doctors 2. Foreign combatants 3. Police 4. Motorists 5. Other

I can see how all of those groups perform tasks that might result in the death of strangers unavoidably. Doctors are the only ones who I’d actually pay to wager with my life, so I’d them to win.

I’d like a world without wars, but I’m happy that we have a stading military.

I lived in the UK for 30 years. It’s national news when they kill someone and they stand up and appologise for not having a better solution. That feels about right. But their number isn’t zero.

And finally, cars. We’re already talking about the trolley problem wrt automated cars. It seems we accept that death from going 2-3 times our natural speed in vehicles 10x our weight is dangerous. But It would be nice if technology could get that death rate to lower than law enforcement.

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