There are around 700,000 police officers in the US. If one of them is caught doing something bad every day, that's 0.00014%.
US police in general have a lot of issues and need to improve dramatically, but the stories about cases of bad behavior are not representative samples, even if you factor in the amount of bad behavior that goes undiscovered.
But every one of those officers doing something bad every day has an entire department and union behind them that are very aware that that officer is bad. What do they do? They protect him. Every time. They are just as culpable. This is why the saying a few bad apples spoils the bunch exists.
On-duty cops shoot a thousand people a year. In the last several decades, three have been convicted of murder. How can we trust the system that produced such ridiculous numbers?
> There are around 700,000 police officers in the US. If one of them is caught doing something bad every day, that's 0.00014%.
I take your point, but not exactly. First, an officer that's planting evidence or attacking unarmed handcuffed civilians has been known to be a bad officer by say the other 50 officers in their department. Second, they're not caught on their first day. Third, the high profile ones are high profile because they're left on the force and continue being bad even after being caught.
So the 0.00014% of people being caught every day is _additive_ over time, this isn't a random sampling. It doesn't mean that 0.00014% of officers are bad, it means that we increase the pool of bad officers by that much every day.
The number was just intended to indicate what a small fraction any individual instance is. Even being additive, and even with undiscovered bad cases, these cases are still not representative samples of US police in general. In other words, as an earlier commenter said, this is partly confirmation bias.
That's not to say these incidents aren't indicative of systemic problems, but that's not the same as saying saying all or most police are like this. What "confirmation bias" means here is that people are looking at the exceptional cases to confirm their opinion of police as a whole, which is objectively a mistake.
That's sort of a biased source you link. It lists deaths, but often times these deaths come as a result of someone threatening a cop with a deadly weapon. There's been like two dozen shootings from the LAPD so far this year, and most were due to someone charging an armed cop with a knife or a similar suicidal incident. I think just looking at use of force without context will give you a pretty biased view. Certainly it's been overused, but a lot of times, especially with the mental health crisis going on where people who are insane and a danger to others are allowed to refuse treatment, it is justified when another life is at stake.
> It lists deaths, but often times these deaths come as a result of someone threatening a cop with a deadly weapon.
Other countries also have people who threaten cops with deadly weapons, and their numbers are far far lower. Hell, suicide-by-cop is a very real and common thing here in the USA.
Once again, you mention nothing about the rate or all the latent variables at play here. For example, other first world countries generally have stronger social safety nets, which means mentally ill people and aged out foster youth in those places are less likely to end up on the street in the first place compared to the U.S. We also have an issue at least in CA where jails are at capacity, and people are being turned out when they would have been held for bail, and often go on to commit more crimes while waiting to be charged for the first one.
> someone charging an armed cop with a knife or a similar suicidal incident
It's weird reading that when I was a kid I was constantly told cops are heroes because they put their lives on the line where most wouldn't or couldn't. Like I'm an untrained bumpkin, unfortunately if someone had a knife and I had a gun, I can't really think of much more than shooting them.
But somewhere along the line the standard for police dropped down to the standard for me? The untrained bumpkin?
Since pretty much every time I hear cop by suicide it's apparent, and people still say "well what would *you* do" like that's the smoking gun...
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It even extends to more casual cases, the other day there was a video of a lady mooning an officer. The thing is the lady was clearly let go before that fairly stupid act, and last I checked mooning someone doesn't imply you've suddenly become a lethal threat.. but the cop was just so out of shape that shortly after realizing they couldn't keep up with this not very fast person they ended up tasering this person on asphalt.
A fully grown adult out cold at running pace straight into asphalt because a cop is so out of shape they can't chase a person who mooned them
That's not the picture I grew up with...
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I honestly don't have a problem with that though! I don't think we have to force people to gamble their lives for others. There's a certain sense of, "if I can't do it, I can't make someone else do it".
But if that's the case then we need to drop a lot of the pretence to traditional policing cops have right now.
Like the pay and pensions are all based around the hazard, but it's safer than being a cab driver. Maybe because now fearing for your life is an out to kill people reaching for wallets.
And a lot of interactions they have with people, like speed enforcement should probably be dropped, if we're just admitting lethal force has moved up a few notches.
And maybe they need to have attachments with them for certain calls. If someone is showing signs of mental instability, someone experienced with dealing with that vs applying lethal force should be directly involved.
The fact that cops are trained is precisely why they shoot people who try and charge them or others with knives. The correct first-line strategy for dealing with a knife attack is not allowing the attacker to close enough distance with you to use the knife, because once they do, regardless of how well trained you are how untrained they are there's still a high chance you'll end up seriously injured or dead. It's that imminent danger that justifies the use of deadly force. As I understand it, every self defence course worth its salt teaches this - even the ones focused on bare-handed fighting. Any tactics for dealing with attackers who do close that gap are just a high-risk last resort for situations where that fails.
Humans are entitled to use deadly force in response to credible threats to life. Someone waving a knife around, or even running while waving a knife around, is not that. The fact that knives exist is the reason that police carry billy clubs. A normal who citizen shot and killed someone of his own race because they were waving around a knife, would be charged with murder. Police officers should be better trained and better able to deal with knives than the average person. Those few departments who have mandated effective training have seen significant results from that training. [0] Well-trained ninjas with swords are actually quite rare in the modern policing environment.
This is missing the forest for the trees so badly it hurts.
Why do you think I said I'd be forced to shoot? Because even without training common sense tells you "not allowing the attacker to close enough distance with you to use the knife" is a pretty good course of action
By your logic the moment a person calls 911, the people who are supposed to help, the person has been sentenced to death. Think about that for a second.
1. The cops will arrive
2. "avoid knife getting close to me"
3. Less than lethal is not reliable, hell even lethal force isn't instant, I feared for my life, they're shot very dead.
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It's not an easy problem, but how is that ok? There's not many ways to fix it other than trying something other than lethal force.
Like the stuff in those videos is not easy, I'm not trying to pretend I could do it, or most people could. It requires cops being able to put the most efficient response for self-preservation behind trying to save someone, which again, I'm not saying we require of anyone...
But let's call a spade a spade at that point. That's not the concept of policing I see paraded. That's not the "thin blue line", it sounds more like a cell of civilians that are deployed to bad situations where they then "apply self-defense"...
Thanks for making my point that the standard for officers is now people who are too scared to put the public before themselves... which is pretty much all of us. The opposite of a thin blue line.
> Like the stuff in those videos is not easy, I'm not trying to pretend I could do it, or most people could.
I'm not a police officer because I'm not brave enough. I'd fear for my life, and I shoot. So instead of putting myself in a profession that should ideally require more of me, I don't.
If everyone felt that way, and did it your way, the only ones left would betge criminally insane/psychopathic unfazed by the utilization of violence. Without those who are willing to counter that wanton tendency to violence with a principled, controlled application of protocol driven escalation of force, civilization devolves even further into barbarism and might makes right than the arguable state in which it is already in.
If the people who were police were better able to keep cool instead of jumping to shoot people in the face in fear... all that would be left would be the criminally insane?
And somehow we'd have less controlled application of protocol?
There really would be a line that separates them from the "rest of us", and anti-police sentiment would be a hell of a lot weaker. I mean, how often do we have national anti-firefighter sentiment? Maybe when police use them to mow down humans?
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If being a police officer is just about carrying a gun and looking out for number one, all we're looking for is people who don't hesitate to pull a trigger.
Just realize, lowering the bar to "willing to shoot to protect self the moment anything threatens me" is a hell of a lot lower than "willing to put other's lives at similar value to mine, even if it risks my own".
Ironically the lower bar sounds like how attract to the "criminally insane/psychopathic unfazed by the utilization of violence"... to become police.
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/