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Investigation: Police Shootings

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#61

Post by Someone1234 »

ghshephard wrote: post #26
rayiner wrote: post #3

Worth reading through these. A lot of people with mental illness shot just for holding guns or knives or "driving toward police." Recently, an au pair we know (from Germany), had a gun pulled on her because she reached into her purse to get her ID when she was pulled over. The fact that Maryland's finest are totally mental and she could get killed for doing that never occurred to her.

On the flip side, if there really is a threat, police officers have standard training which makes it clear that they have less than three seconds to react, before they are killed. Bringing their weapon to a ready state, actually increases the time that they have to react, and lets them make more rational decisions.

> Bringing their weapon to a ready state, actually increases the time that they have to react, and lets them make more rational decisions.

Or one could argue that it reduces the amount of time they spend rationalising the situation, which could result in a "knee jerk" emotional overreaction to any perceived threat.

I'd argue we've seen so many completely unwarranted shootings in the last few years due to: cellphones, reaching for ID, hands in pockets, etc, that maybe police should be taught to slow down and consider the threat, not speed up, and start blasting on a whim.

The number of police officers dying on the job hasn't decreased with these new higher risk tactics. They're just killing more members of the public. It has stayed roughly around 50/year shot + 2/year from stabbings for the last ten years.

Most police officers die due to vehicle crashes/collisions and illness. None of which is resolved by shooting more members of the public.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#62

Post by knowaveragejoe »

DanBC wrote: post #53
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

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:…

In the first clip I wouldn't call that "competence" so much as "overwhelming force", something US police use frequently. It's worth noting that at the beginning of the video, an officer is trying to ram the perp with a trashcan found at the scene...

It's also worth noting that in the US an officer is much more likely to be killed. Hence why regular people are more likely to be killed by police. It's a fearful, kneejerk reaction thing.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#63

Post by kennelliott »

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…

Thanks for the constructive feedback, Thomas. These comments will be valuable when we build the 2016 database, if we decide to do so.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#64

Post by hebdo »

pboutros wrote: post #56
tptacek wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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? This is a fantastic, measured answer - I'm always pleased to see reasonable responses to unreasonable comments.

Sorry for the choice of words, but my point was that a person armed with just a knife can still be very dangerous. The use of a gun in such a situation cannot be simply called a deadly overreaction, without going into details. Therefore I do not see my comment as unreasonable.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#65

Post by tptacek »

kennelliott wrote: post #57

Hi everyone! I'm a developer who worked on this project, and I appreciate the comments and suggestions. If you enjoyed this piece, you might want to check out our related story about the six most important things we learned from a year of investigating and reporting this data: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...

Is there a way to get the union of "Fleeing suspect" and "deadly weapon" (or, better: "fleeing suspect" and "firearm") from the data?

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#66

Post by harlanlewis »

ghshephard wrote: post #26
rayiner wrote: post #3

Worth reading through these. A lot of people with mental illness shot just for holding guns or knives or "driving toward police." Recently, an au pair we know (from Germany), had a gun pulled on her because she reached into her purse to get her ID when she was pulled over. The fact that Maryland's finest are totally mental and she could get killed for doing that never occurred to her.

On the flip side, if there really is a threat, police officers have standard training which makes it clear that they have less than three seconds to react, before they are killed. Bringing their weapon to a ready state, actually increases the time that they have to react, and lets them make more rational decisions.

Whether the officer makes more rational decisions with a gun in a ready state is pretty debatable. People holding guns are reduced to instantaneous decisions with large consequences. A very basic, universal rule of responsible gun use is don't point it at things you aren't comfortable destroying. The important decision is whether to draw at all.

How is a suspect's decision making affected when they have a gun trained on them? How does provoking irrational behavior affect the outcome?

I certainly hope there's more governing an officer's standard readying of a weapon than the X seconds they have to quickdraw at the OK Corral.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#67

Post by tptacek »

hebdo wrote: post #64
pboutros wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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? This is a fantastic, measured answer - I'm always pleased to see reasonable responses to unreasonable comments.

Sorry for the choice of words, but my point was that a person armed with just a knife can still be very dangerous. The use of a gun in such a situation cannot be simply called a deadly overreaction, without going into details. Therefore I do not see my comment as unreasonable.

Nobody called it a "deadly overreaction", so I'm a little confused about this comment.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#68

Post by dudul »

I remember reading an article by a former military guy who was deployed in the middle east. Back home he had to deal with the police and basically said: "they reminded me of myself when I was deployed and operating in enemy controlled areas".

The guy goes on to explain on, according to him, the problem is that there is a narrative that cops should be allowed to do anything to protect their life, as opposed to protect the public.

This is always the excuse when a cop kills a civilian by mistake - "he feared for his life". Guess what? You're a freaking cop! Not a plumber, or an accountant. Cops should not be allowed to kill someone on suspicion that maybe there is a possibility that they will start shooting at them.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#69

Post by devy » 

  The FBI and CDC log fatal shootings by police, but officials acknowledge that their data is incomplete. [1]
This is a little bit ironic in that the government agencies cannot do their job properly and it has to take a news company and their great investigative journalism to get it done right?

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/how-the-washington-p...

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#70

Post by spikels »

rayiner wrote: post #9
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

See Table 5: http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf . Men are offenders in 92% of gun homicides, 93% of homicides committed in conjunction with another felony, 95% of drug-related homicides, and 98% of gang-related homicides.

See Table 7: http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf. Blacks are offenders in 57% of gun homicides, 60% of homicides committed in conjunction with another felony, 67% of drug-related homicides, and 42% of gang-related homicides.
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