Why are American police more violent than in other first world nations?

[Underseer]

This is mostly a result of the drug war.

A greater proportion of American criminals are willing to go for broke and try to take out the cop rather than go to jail because they know they aren't coming back out.

Ah, so it's the fault of the populace, not the fault of the government.

Good of you to explain that this abuse of power by the government isn't really an abuse of power at all.

Things like this help us understand the difference between libertarians and conservatives. A conservative would not have tried to excuse it at all and would simply accuse everyone of being traitors for even thinking to question the government and its use of power over the people.

 

[Bronzeage]

A naked person is an obvious example.

How do they differ from a "probably unarmed person," or a "likely unarmed person"?

They're naked. The others are not.

We could crack down on police, but we won't...

That is my point.

, because we will not do anything to correct the real cause of the problem, which is there simply a lot guns and a lot of people have guns.

That is not the real cause of the problem. The real cause is that we tacitly encourage the police to be violent and we won't crack down on it.

How do we "refocus their efforts from protecting their asses from any conceivable threat regardless of its realistic possibility"? There is no defensive value in a gun. It cannot protect anyone from a bullet that is already in the air, on its way to whatever it hits. The only protection it offers against being shot, is the chance to shoot first and straight, at the other gun owner.

When you are finished splitting hairs, you cannot fire a gun if you don't have one. If there is no defensive value in a gun, then the police would not carry one.

"Refocusing" begins to sound like, "Stand still and present a better target, while you figure out if the other guy is armed and has hostile intentions."

Then clean out your ears and begin to really think. Like the police who are the subject of this thread - Another "they managed to not shoot him" knife-wielder arrest


A

There is nothing wrong with my hearing, or my reading comprehension. Of course we "tacitly encourage the police to be violent and we won't crack down on it," because we are not going to train our police to risk a fatal gunshot wound in order to arrest a suspect who may be armed.

The average policeman is not a fanatic who is willing to face death in order to perform his duty. We do grant our police special privileges when it comes to shooting people, because we want to keep a few policemen on the job. This is the reality of the situation.

The police will make mistakes from time to time and we will hear about it. A lot of noise will be made, but nothing will change, because the threat to life and health for a policeman, remains the same. If you have any solutions to this element of the problem, I would to hear them.

 

[laughing dog]

There is nothing wrong with my hearing, or my reading comprehension. Of course we "tacitly encourage the police to be violent and we won't crack down on it," because we are not going to train our police to risk a fatal gunshot wound in order to arrest a suspect who may be armed.

Apparently there is something wrong with your hearing and your reading comprehension, because nothing you have written addresses police violence against the unarmed or against suspects who clearly do not have firearms.

The average policeman is not a fanatic who is willing to face death in order to perform his duty. We do grant our police special privileges when it comes to shooting people, because we want to keep a few policemen on the job. This is the reality of the situation.

No, it is not the reality of the situation, because there are plenty of cases (some with threads in this forum) where the police are violent with people who do not have firearms.

The police will make mistakes from time to time and we will hear about it. A lot of noise will be made, but nothing will change, because the threat to life and health for a policeman, remains the same.

The threat of life and health for a policeman is overblown. Added to the hysteria rampant in the apologia for the police, it has unnecessarily ramped up the fear. I have a son who fought in Afghanistan. When he was on patrol, he was in much more danger in any given moment that most police ever are. And he was not allowed to shoot at someone just because he thought the person might have a firearm. And, he was paid a lot less than the typical police officer.

If you have any solutions to this element of the problem, I would to hear them.

Clearly, you have not.

 

[arkirk]

Apparently there is something wrong with your hearing and your reading comprehension, because nothing you have written addresses police violence against the unarmed or against suspects who clearly do not have firearms.

The average policeman is not a fanatic who is willing to face death in order to perform his duty. We do grant our police special privileges when it comes to shooting people, because we want to keep a few policemen on the job. This is the reality of the situation.

No, it is not the reality of the situation, because there are plenty of cases (some with threads in this forum) where the police are violent with people who do not have firearms.

The police will make mistakes from time to time and we will hear about it. A lot of noise will be made, but nothing will change, because the threat to life and health for a policeman, remains the same.

The threat of life and health for a policeman is overblown. Added to the hysteria rampant in the apologia for the police, it has unnecessarily ramped up the fear. I have a son who fought in Afghanistan. When he was on patrol, he was in much more danger in any given moment that most police ever are. And he was not allowed to shoot at someone just because he thought the person might have a firearm. And, he was paid a lot less than the typical police officer.

If you have any solutions to this element of the problem, I would to hear them.

Clearly, you have not.

The cop bust of that guy outside the gym last nite is still with me. Seeing all those guns drawn and aimed at a lone figure obviously unarmed on the ground somehow seems to have burned its way into my brain. They took so long arresting this guy, I had a chance to look at the faces of these cops, with their guns pointed at this prostrate character on the ground. You could see them adjusting just where they would be shooting the guy and the serious looks on their faces. Something is WRONG with police training and culture here in L.A. I don't know how widespread it is, but these guys appear so cowardly and gun drawing crazy, it is scary. There were so many guns drawn the other nite, if they all shot at once, I think at least one cop would have taken a bullet. We need to see this let up.

By the way, the guy on the ground....black. And all the cops I saw were white.

 

[Bronzeage]

So far, your solution seems to be better policemen and making a policeman's job more difficult at the same time. It's certainly something we can try.

We can all apply this program to doctors in hopes of reducing healthcare costs, and mechanics as well, so our cars will run better.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The cop bust of that guy outside the gym last nite is still with me. Seeing all those guns drawn and aimed at a lone figure obviously unarmed on the ground somehow seems to have burned its way into my brain. They took so long arresting this guy, I had a chance to look at the faces of these cops, with their guns pointed at this prostrate character on the ground. You could see them adjusting just where they would be shooting the guy and the serious looks on their faces. Something is WRONG with police training and culture here in L.A. I don't know how widespread it is, but these guys appear so cowardly and gun drawing crazy, it is scary. There were so many guns drawn the other nite, if they all shot at once, I think at least one cop would have taken a bullet. We need to see this let up.

By the way, the guy on the ground....black. And all the cops I saw were white.

What you describe sounds like a felony stop. A white guy would be treated the same.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

For those of you saying cops are more dangerous because we are more dangerous, how does the fact that crime rates are lowest in 40 years bear on your opinion?

Yesterday, I witnessed an arrest of a black man in the street in front of a big window in the gym where I was working out. The man was wearing tight jeans, a tee shirt ,sox and shoes. There were eight cop cars and at least 20 cops. The suspect got on the ground with both hands open and widely spread. He was completely subdued simply by taking the position he was ordered to assume. No fewer than six cops kept their pistols trained on the man...even when two of their number approached him to cuff him. There was a short period where the cops were pointing their guns at their own fellow cops. This arrest was ridiculous, almost regardless of anything the suspect might have done. It took a few of the cops more than five minutes after the guy was cuffed and still on the ground before they put away their guns.

I have seen this exact pattern of behavior time after time in Chicago. I have heard many different (possible) explanations for this, a combination of training or the police officers' anxiety or various statistics about how quickly an unarmed suspect can suddenly become a threat if you let him.

But when it's all said and done, it still boils down to this: the cops are scared.

They're scared because they think America is full of dangerous lunatics with drug-induced superhuman powers.
They're scared because they think black people are violent and irrational thugs who are likely to be armed.
They're scared because they think any form of suspicious behavior is an indicator of some hidden sinister intent.
They're scared because they think anyone at any time could pull an AK-47 out of his ass and become a mass murderer.
Most of all, they're scared because they think that THEY will be the first ones targeted when their fellow Americans finally lose their shit.

To an overwhelming extent, most of these fears are utterly irrational and are not grounded in facts at all. Policework is dangerous enough WITHOUT this level of paranoia; on the other hand, to allow these fears to guide your behavior -- and to use these fears to justify this behavior -- is mere cowardice.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The cop bust of that guy outside the gym last nite is still with me. Seeing all those guns drawn and aimed at a lone figure obviously unarmed on the ground somehow seems to have burned its way into my brain. They took so long arresting this guy, I had a chance to look at the faces of these cops, with their guns pointed at this prostrate character on the ground. You could see them adjusting just where they would be shooting the guy and the serious looks on their faces. Something is WRONG with police training and culture here in L.A. I don't know how widespread it is, but these guys appear so cowardly and gun drawing crazy, it is scary. There were so many guns drawn the other nite, if they all shot at once, I think at least one cop would have taken a bullet. We need to see this let up.

By the way, the guy on the ground....black. And all the cops I saw were white.

What you describe sounds like a felony stop. A white guy would be treated the same.

Somehow I doubt that.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Your response does not explain police shooting obviously unarmed people. Your response does not explain our police beating obviously unarmed people. Your response assumes that people in the US are more dangerous. And your response ignores the obvious - that we allow the police to get away with their unnecessary violence. As a society, we could crack down on. Obviously as a society, we implicitly condone their actions. Hell, reading the apologia in some of these threads, we have a portion of the population who not only defends their violence but applauds it.

Our compromise over our gun rights and the danger of guns is to concede that policemen may use lethal force to respond to any perceived threat. There is no other viable solution.

Of course there are viable solutions. An obvious one is to crack down on their unnecessary violence. Another is to refocus their efforts from protecting their asses from any conceivable threat regardless of its realistic possibility to dealing with actually keeping the peace.

What is an "obviously unarmed person"?

A person whom the police have little or no reason to believe is actually armed.

For example:
[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/gM-tfj6lp6w?t=1m[/YOUTUBE]

How do we "refocus their efforts from protecting their asses from any conceivable threat regardless of its realistic possibility"? There is no defensive value in a gun. It cannot protect anyone from a bullet that is already in the air, on its way to whatever it hits. The only protection it offers against being shot, is the chance to shoot first and straight, at the other gun owner.

That's a really great way to start: we begin by training cops to STOP obsessing over the possibility of being engaged in gun battles and START training cops in conflict resolution, psychology and communications so that they are able to avoid potentially dangerous situations (or at least avoid making such situations MORE dangerous) and efficiently maintain orderly communications with suspects and bystanders alike while maintaining a rational, professional demeanor.

IOW, police officers need to stop worrying about loosing gun battles and start learning how to establish real order in their immediate vicinity. It remains the case that civilians are shot and killed by police officers ALOT more often than the reverse.

"Refocusing" begins to sound like, "Stand still and present a better target, while you figure out if the other guy is armed and has hostile intentions."

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG that guy's looking at me all angry and he's skeery and I don't know if he has a gun and my life is in danger!

 

[spikepipsqueak]

The US is a country where there is strong rhetoric about personal freedom and self determination but very little about fairness.

That translates into "I have the right to do what I want and everybody else has the right to keep out of my way." It also calls for a higher level of social control than the rhetoric implies, if the silent majority are to feel secure. The rhetoric is promoting the survival of the fittest but in reality most want to be safe, and want to outsource it. They perceive every death among the putative "criminal element" as a net increase in their own security.

I think that accounts for the way that much of the population seems to accept deaths amongst those who have even the appearance or possibility of wrong doing. (I'm talking to you, Loren. )

In US TV shows, the first response of authority figures is to point a gun at it. Nobody is saying "That guy was threatening to jump off a building, why did the police have 4 guns trained on him at all times? This show is shit." I don't think that is necessarily feeding into the problem, but I do think popular fiction is written from the stance of The Common Man and illustrates the state of a society and what people are prepared to accept.

OTOH I heard something on the radio the other day about a smallish town in the US where they were aware of the problem and were focussing on learning and encouraging less violent methods of apprehending suspects and generally taking people into custody. Mind you, this was unusual enough to have travelled across a very large ocean.



I was a little disturbed by the Aussie figure at about 5/year. In a population as low as ours, that shouldn't be happening. The mentally ill seem to trigger in our own police the same reaction that breathing triggers in US police.

 

[Bronzeage]

Your response does not explain police shooting obviously unarmed people. Your response does not explain our police beating obviously unarmed people. Your response assumes that people in the US are more dangerous. And your response ignores the obvious - that we allow the police to get away with their unnecessary violence. As a society, we could crack down on. Obviously as a society, we implicitly condone their actions. Hell, reading the apologia in some of these threads, we have a portion of the population who not only defends their violence but applauds it.

Our compromise over our gun rights and the danger of guns is to concede that policemen may use lethal force to respond to any perceived threat. There is no other viable solution.

Of course there are viable solutions. An obvious one is to crack down on their unnecessary violence. Another is to refocus their efforts from protecting their asses from any conceivable threat regardless of its realistic possibility to dealing with actually keeping the peace.

What is an "obviously unarmed person"?

A person whom the police have little or no reason to believe is actually armed.

For example:

How do we "refocus their efforts from protecting their asses from any conceivable threat regardless of its realistic possibility"? There is no defensive value in a gun. It cannot protect anyone from a bullet that is already in the air, on its way to whatever it hits. The only protection it offers against being shot, is the chance to shoot first and straight, at the other gun owner.

That's a really great way to start: we begin by training cops to STOP obsessing over the possibility of being engaged in gun battles and START training cops in conflict resolution, psychology and communications so that they are able to avoid potentially dangerous situations (or at least avoid making such situations MORE dangerous) and efficiently maintain orderly communications with suspects and bystanders alike while maintaining a rational, professional demeanor.

IOW, police officers need to stop worrying about loosing gun battles and start learning how to establish real order in their immediate vicinity. It remains the case that civilians are shot and killed by police officers ALOT more often than the reverse.

"Refocusing" begins to sound like, "Stand still and present a better target, while you figure out if the other guy is armed and has hostile intentions."

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG that guy's looking at me all angry and he's skeery and I don't know if he has a gun and my life is in danger!

I like the part about "stop worrying about loosing gun battles." That sounds like a plan. You may have something there.

 

[tupac chopra]

I think a big part of it is that so many people have guns.
Another view trying to take a bigger picture, is that that is what happens as an empire declines. Though I'm not sure how true that is in general.
License to Kill Dmitri Orlov

As empires collapse, they turn inward, and subject their own populations to the same ill treatment to which they subjected others. Here, America is unexceptional: the number of Americans being murdered by their own police, with minimal repercussions for those doing the killing, is quite stunning. When Americans wonder who their enemy really is, they need look no further.

But that is only the beginning: the precedent has already been set for deploying US troops on US soil. As law and order break down in more and more places, we will see more and more US troops on the streets of cities in the US, spreading death and destruction just like they did in Iraq or in Afghanistan. The last license to kill to be revoked will be the license to kill ourselves.

 

[arkirk]

The cop bust of that guy outside the gym last nite is still with me. Seeing all those guns drawn and aimed at a lone figure obviously unarmed on the ground somehow seems to have burned its way into my brain. They took so long arresting this guy, I had a chance to look at the faces of these cops, with their guns pointed at this prostrate character on the ground. You could see them adjusting just where they would be shooting the guy and the serious looks on their faces. Something is WRONG with police training and culture here in L.A. I don't know how widespread it is, but these guys appear so cowardly and gun drawing crazy, it is scary. There were so many guns drawn the other nite, if they all shot at once, I think at least one cop would have taken a bullet. We need to see this let up.

By the way, the guy on the ground....black. And all the cops I saw were white.

What you describe sounds like a felony stop. A white guy would be treated the same.

Loren, I can honestly say you don't know what you are talking about. An arrest, even a felony arrest should not have guns needlessly pointed at an unarmed man prostrate on the ground for more than 10 minutes. I wonder how you would stand up to have a number of loaded guns pointed at you for 10 minutes. These men are cowardly bastards. If you saw it in person you could only agree with me. Even if the man were a felon, still it was overkill in the worst way. These cops even endangered each other with their fucking guns!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What you describe sounds like a felony stop. A white guy would be treated the same.

Loren, I can honestly say you don't know what you are talking about. An arrest, even a felony arrest should not have guns needlessly pointed at an unarmed man prostrate on the ground for more than 10 minutes. I wonder how you would stand up to have a number of loaded guns pointed at you for 10 minutes. These men are cowardly bastards. If you saw it in person you could only agree with me. Even if the man were a felon, still it was overkill in the worst way. These cops even endangered each other with their fucking guns!

You may not like how a felony stop goes down but that doesn't change what actually happens. Cops there who aren't doing something else are going to be pointing guns.

 

[bilby]

Loren, I can honestly say you don't know what you are talking about. An arrest, even a felony arrest should not have guns needlessly pointed at an unarmed man prostrate on the ground for more than 10 minutes. I wonder how you would stand up to have a number of loaded guns pointed at you for 10 minutes. These men are cowardly bastards. If you saw it in person you could only agree with me. Even if the man were a felon, still it was overkill in the worst way. These cops even endangered each other with their fucking guns!

You may not like how a felony stop goes down but that doesn't change what actually happens. Cops there who aren't doing something else are going to be pointing guns.

Why?

Is this the police equivalent of walking around the factory floor with a broom, so that the supervisor doesn't realise you are not working?

Couldn't they just go back to patrolling, or head back to the station to do some paperwork, or go have coffee and a donut?

What do cops in England do? It must be pretty awkward standing around doing nothing because you don't have a gun to point.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You may not like how a felony stop goes down but that doesn't change what actually happens. Cops there who aren't doing something else are going to be pointing guns.

Why?

Is this the police equivalent of walking around the factory floor with a broom, so that the supervisor doesn't realise you are not working?

Couldn't they just go back to patrolling, or head back to the station to do some paperwork, or go have coffee and a donut?

No, it's called things sometimes go badly.

What do cops in England do? It must be pretty awkward standing around doing nothing because you don't have a gun to point.

They have armed cops to deal with the serious bad guys.

 

[arkirk]

Why?

Is this the police equivalent of walking around the factory floor with a broom, so that the supervisor doesn't realise you are not working?

Couldn't they just go back to patrolling, or head back to the station to do some paperwork, or go have coffee and a donut?

No, it's called things sometimes go badly.

What do cops in England do? It must be pretty awkward standing around doing nothing because you don't have a gun to point.

They have armed cops to deal with the serious bad guys.

You are so wound up in your fear of felons you are missing my point entirely.....THEY WERE WASTING TAX PAYER MONEY STANDING AROUND BEING UNNECESSARILY THREATENING TO A HELPLESS HUMAN BEING ON THE GROUND. You may have forgotten the basis of U. S. law...er it is supposed to be innocent until PROVEN GUILTY. This swarm of cops had this man completely at their mercy, yet they persisted in pointing loaded firearms at him. He had not the slightest chance of launching any kind of attack whatever upon them. He had to just lay there in handcuffs hoping nobody had a nervous tick.

I've seen swarms of cops like this only a few doors from where I live over a stolen soft drink and a sandwich...again an unarmed person. Four months ago, we had the cops chasing a guy who " insulted" a woman and they shot him with beanbags and made us all stay in our apartments for hours. More than fifty cops and half a block paralyzed. That night, the guy was back out of jail and back on the street. Was he a "felon?" We have given our cops far too much license and obviously not enough training. When I said something is wrong, I didn't mean we shouldn't have law enforcement. I mean't we really have a flock of paramilitary people in blue uniforms running roughshod through our community. These cops are killing people who AREN'T FELONS. You perhaps simply place way too much faith in the police always being right and fair. It's not working like that especially for black and brown and very poor whites in this neighborhood. Where you live, you may not be seeing this first hand and you frankly don't seem to care what happens out of your immediate location. People a little closer to the problem know we should not be listening to people like you.

 

[SimpleDon]

America has a problem with police killing people. They kill a disproportionate number of people compared to every single first world country. US Police self reported to the FBI that they killed 400 people in 2012, this is only those that were reported to the FBI the number is surely higher. In the same time police in Britain killed 0, German Police killed 6 in 2011 and Australia killed a whooping 105 over a period of 22 years. These are all large nations with diverse population and huge numbers of immigrants. Why do you think police in the US are worse than other developed countries?

Some factors,

• The war against drugs, in most countries drug addicts are ill, here they are the enemy in a war.
• The large number of weapons in the population.
• There are 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the US with different standards of training, most of them are poor.
• The distribution of the police by number and experience bears no relation to the need.
  • Areas with the highest rate of crime, the central cities, have the lowest number of police.
  • The central cities have the youngest, most inexperience police, because,
  • The areas with the lowest crime rates, the suburbs, hire the most experienced officers away from the cities, by
  • Offering them higher salaries with less risk.
• Most of the police in the US are not fighting crimes, they are collecting revenue from motorists
• The large number of police agencies creates confusion that serves to further separate the police from the people that they serve.

 

[angelo]

Could it be that the cops are jumpy because of the violence towards them by African \Americans as well as Caucasians?