It's worth noting that while every unjustified shooting is one too many, the vast vast majority of shootings by police are unambiguously justified. The US has a lot of violent criminals, many of who are bold enough to even try to kill police officers.
Is there some independent research on the subject that you’re referring to? Note that the bar for “legally justified” is extremely low[1], so it would be nice to see some kind of audit that doesn’t rely on legal rulings.
WaPo did a whole series of articles on police shootings a few years back. Part of that was creating a database of all police fatal shootings since, unbelievably, none existed.
One of their articles looked at every fatal police shooting in 2015 and looked at the circumstances. They found 30% occurred when the victim had pointed or brandished a gun, 28% when they had fired a gun and 16% when they had attacked some other way. They identified 5% to have occurred in a manner likely to cause public controversy.
Slightly related: I saw a comment the other day by someone who had somehow managed to blame Obama for the rise in violence against minorities, with the rationalization being that “we didn’t have all of these problems until Obama was in office”.
It’s a classic case of correlation != causation. Smart phones with video cameras in them became ubiquitous during Obama’s time in office. Similarly, bodycams became more commonly used by the police. That’s the difference.
This has been happening all along, we just couldn’t prove it until now.
Also the ubiquity of auto-uploaded videos and livestreaming. Only in the last few years has virtually all video recording become online first. Before all police had to do was take a person's phone away to hide their actions.
That’s a great point. Oddly enough it works the other way too. My neighbor is a detective and told me that a young lady livestreamed herself looting Target. Shared it on Facebook.
Since they kill 1000 people a year (as cited early in the thread, didn't look it up), that would leave 400-700 controversial killings, or 1-2 per day on average...
No, because police are trained to not get into situations where they are at greater risk whenever possible (and it doesn't endanger others). Like it or not, a significant part of officer training in the US is for 'combat-like' scenarios that are active and violent, and risk management, and it's at least partially to keep the number of officer deaths down. That and they're basically allowed to shoot someone who maybe has a gun and looks like they're drawing it, which may also contribute towards the relatively low number of gun-related officer deaths. It also results in more people getting shot than need to.
And as others in the thread have said, it's actually really really hard to accurately shoot a target with a gun, and the number of non-fatal gun-related injuries probably far outweigh the fatal ones.
"The officers with SWAT and dynamic-entry experience interviewed for this book say raids are orders of magnitude more intoxicating than anything else in police work. Ironically, many cops describe them with language usually used to describe the drugs the raids are conducted to confiscate. “Oh, it’s a huge rush,” Franklin says. “Those times when you do have to kick down a door, it’s just a big shot of adrenaline.” Downing agrees. “It’s a rush. And you have to be careful, because the raids themselves can be habit-forming.” Jamie Haase, a former special agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement who went on multiple narcotics, money laundering, and human trafficking raids, says the thrill of the raid may factor into why narcotics cops just don’t consider less volatile means of serving search warrants. “The thing is, it’s so much safer to wait the suspect out,” he says. “Waiting people out is just so much better. You’ve done your investigation, so you know their routine. So you wait until the guy leaves, and you do a routine traffic stop and you arrest him. That’s the safest way to do it. But you have to understand that a lot of these cops are meatheads. They think this stuff is cool. And they get hooked on that jolt of energy they get during a raid.”"
"Narcotics investigators had made a controlled drug buy a few hours earlier and were laying plans to raid the suspect’s home. “The drug buy was in town, not at the home,” Taylor says. “But they’d always raid the house anyway. They could never just arrest the guy on the street. They always had to kick down doors.”"
"The thing is, when law enforcement officials face suspects who present a genuine threat to officer safety, they do tend to be more creative. When the FBI finally located Whitey Bulger in 2010 after searching for him for sixteen years, the reputed mobster was suspected in nearly twenty murders and was thought to be armed with a huge arsenal of weapons. Of all the people who might meet the criteria for arrest by a SWAT team, you’d think Bulger would top the list. He was also aging, in poor physical health, and looking at spending the rest of his life in prison. If ever there was a candidate to go out in a blaze of cop-killing glory, it was Whitey Bulger. And yet instead of sending a tactical team in to tear down Bulger’s door, the FBI did some investigating and learned that Bulger rented a public storage locker. They called him up, pretending to be from the company that owned the facility, and told Bulger someone might have broken into his locker. When he went to the facility to investigate, he was arrested without incident. Why can’t investigators handle common drug offenders the same way? A big reason is a lack of resources. If your department is serving several drug warrants a day, you just aren’t going to have the personnel to come up with that sort of plan for each one. A second reason is that drug offenders simply aren’t all that likely to shoot at cops, and it’s easier to use violent tactics against people who aren’t going to fire back. It’s by no means a universal rule, but often when police do face a genuinely violent suspect like an escaped fugitive with a violent history, a suspect in a series of violent crimes, or a barricade or hostage situation, they don’t immediately storm the place. They set up a perimeter or try to figure out other ways to make the arrest safely. This again isn’t possible with drug warrants—there are just too many of them. But because drug dealers aren’t all that dangerous, it works out to raid them instead."
(all from Radley Balko's "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces")
A police officer is murdered every week on average. I imagine the numbers for those shot at is much higher, since most gunshot wounds don't result in death and most shots probably don't result in hits.
In one weekend, over a hundred people were shot in Chicago by criminals. I'm not sure you appreciate how many extremely violent, dangerous criminals there are in the US.
I hope you see the difference between people not being able to trust law enforcement and not being able to trust gangsters.
This crime is in many ways the result of the violence of the police which means other citizens are afraid to call and cooperate with the police. Exactly what you need to reduce this crime.
Similar stuff happened in Iraq. When civilians could not trust the American occupying force then militias and terrorists filled the power vacuum.
> the vast vast majority of shootings by police are unambiguously justified
Is that so? What counts as "unambiguously justified" to your eyes? I don't see how this squares. I mean... let's pick "the dead subject initiated lethal violence first" as a reasonable proxy for what you're talking about.
You're saying that in situations where someone attacks a police officer, the police are 1000/50 == twenty times more likely to win that deadly confrontation than lose? Really? They're well trained, they aren't that good shots.
I think the jury is very much out on that assertion. In this era of pervasive video, we're finally getting a look at a decent fraction of these confrontations, and a shocking number are not justified at all, much less "unambiguously". I don't see how you can reasonably assert that all the unmeasured ones must be...
The Seattle police department releases bodycam footage of lethal encounters. I'd encourage you to watch some of the controversial ones and draw your own conclusions.
What's been interesting to me is that the narrative that develops between the event and the video release almost always survives the video even though the video challenges the narrative.
For example, somewhat recently spd killed a man that was brandishing a knife. Reports indicated he was shot in the back, causing an uproar. The video footage shows that the suspect was twisting and lunging towards them when shot.
To be clear: citing one episode in Seattle against the dozens and dozens of "less justified" killings isn't really making the case the "vast majority of police killings are justified".
FWIW: I'm in the region, follow these things, and don't remember that episode. I'd be curious to follow a link to that video if you have it.
You are deliberately misrepresenting that video! The shots are fired at 1:06, and the guy was, MAYBE in the process of stopping and turning toward the police. He was not facing them, at all. There is absolutely no "lunging" happening. His arms are tight to his sides, the knife isn't even visible, much less extended. And the shots are fired from WELL out of arms range, maybe 8-9 feet away. Hell, if you told me he was trying to surrender I'd half believe it. I'm looking at this and thinking... sorry, that killing was needless. He wasn't a threat. Or wasn't enough of a threat to make it worth killing him over.
After watching the video again I stand by the description. At that position in the video the man faces them and has his knife arm fully extended before the shots are fired. There is a second perspective following the first that shows this more clearly.
Given he yells "you're going to have to fucking kill me" seconds prior to being shot it's hard to interpret any of that as a surrender.
The other controversial killing in recent memory is a non compliant armed man. The body cam footage is inconclusive on this one to me. The man certainly doesn't seem like a threat because he's on the ground. However, he was struggling and armed with a pistol. They gave him many opportunities to surrender.
I just stepped through it again, and you're spinning like crazy. He doesn't extend that knife. He doesn't face the police until after he takes a bullet in his side. He never got within knife range. He never approached the police.
He did not have to be killed. You're really telling me that we can't ask for three more seconds to let him drop the knife or actually approach an officer with it?
And that's the problem with this logic. You want to allow absolute hair trigger aggression by police officers. And when you allow that, you get innocent people killed. Because the cops can't make that decision correctly every time, and if you train them to shoot first, they will.
This guy didn't have to die. I don't know what was in his head, but I know he didn't have to die.
There's a 21-feet distance supposedly required for a trained shooter to draw and fire a gun before a knife attacker can close in. Sure, they had guns drawn, but you still cannot "wait" until they approach.
And, frankly, this "didn't need to die" perspective is alien to me, and I bet most people. If it was my life on the line, I wouldn't even allow a 1% increase in risk - the guy readying to, and obviously willing to, attack someone with a knife deserves to die. Does he "need" to die? No. Maybe event if he's literally in the process of stabbing someone, it would be wonderful if we could freeze time and just take him to a mental ward. But is it acceptable for him to be killed? Without a shred of doubt, yes.
But.... they were pursuing him! They chose the distance! If they weren't able to safely stop him because they were too close and had to kill him if he stopped (because let's be honest here: they killed the guy because he stopped)...
Isn't that STILL a failure of policing? It's it STILL true that he didn't need to die? Why were the cops' "lives on the line" if they were the ones choosing to engage?
They were not the ones initially choosing to engage. I wouldn't expect them to have sound judgment or impartiality after they were attacked in the first place and fired at with a taser. Again, he absolutely didn't need to die, but he totally deserved it and the cops' reaction is understandable. If I ever attack a cop, wrestle his taser off of him, and fire at him as I run away, I'd like to, in advance, absolve the cop of all responsibility of shooting me in the back. I understand he wouldn't quote need unquote to do it, but it is totally acceptable if he does.
You don't have to be within "arms range" of a police officer for them to shoot you if you have a knife. It's generally accepted that someone with a knife is a deadly threat at about 20 feet or so away, as it takes a little over a second for them to cross that distance. In that video, the man who was shot clearly drew a large knife and turned towards the officers before they started firing.
"You're saying that in situations where someone attacks a police officer, the police are 1000/50"
Are you claiming that it would be "more fair" if this ratio was different? Should it be 50/50? I think not, I assume that at least some members of this 1000 were indeed dangerous criminals, not innocent citizens murdered by cruel police officers?
The question wasn't about "fair", it was about "justified". And... yeah? The police aren't assassins or solidiers. They aren't supposed to kill anyone at all. When it happens, it's a tragedy that is supposed to be avoided.
So when must it happen? Well, when they need to defend themselves, I guess. So yeah, I think that kill ratio becomes an important point of evidence as to how dire the need for defense was. If you come to me and tell me that the police are dying as fast as the criminals, then OK, fine, I'll buy that those are just shootouts. If it's 2:1 in favor of the police, then I guess I'd be OK with that and rationalize it as the police being better trained and more worth preserving. Four to one? Maybe.
TWENTY to one? Come on. That's not reasonable on its face.
Again, the set of actions that would drive a reasonable person to use deadly defensive force is much larger than those where the subject is actually (with perfect knowledge) trying to kill the officer. E.g. a suspect might shoot at cops in order to get away, not actually trying to kill the officers.
Shouldn't we hold police to a slightly higher standard than what random-sally-with-a-gun is expected to do? Isn't that the whole point of having police in the first place: that we trust them with powers we don't give to ourselves?
You're avoiding the point. "Reasonable officer" then. My point is that suspects aren't necessarily trying to kill when they give the police officer good reason to think that they are using unlawful force that that threatens someone's life.
And MY point is that you are applying the wrong standard. Law enforcement policy needs to be aimed at optimizing the net good to society and not making individual police officers feel safer. Because the standard you want leads to horrifying rates of false positives where people end up dying needlessly.
No, they are supposed to arrest every criminal that tries to kill them. Sometimes they have no choice but to shoot (and maybe kill) someone to protect themselves or others, but that is not the goal.
The inverse is true though. They are not supposed to kill any person that doesn't try to kill them.
No they aren't. They are not mercenaries. They are supposed to arrest every suspected criminal and prevent those suspects from committing acts of violence. They are allowed to use violence to prevent loss of life, but they are not supposed to kill anyone.
The point is, if every one of those deaths were someone who presented a credible threat and were actually trying to kill an officer, why do so little of them succeed? If anything, they have the element of surprise on their side. Police are often only given little ammunition and training time every year, literally just a couple boxes of ammunition. Anyone just casually going to a gun range every couple of months for fun is going to have more experience than most law enforcement officers.
If they were only killing every criminal that actually attempted to kill them and had the means to, there's no chance the defenders in that situation are coming out successful 20 to 1.
Criminals using deadly force against police probably have intimidation/escape as their goal, not murder. But from the perspective of the police officer, you can't wait to find out. When a police officer starts to shoot, he has essentially made the decision to keep shooting until the threat ends.
What from the perspective of the police officer is reasonable grounds to fear for his life, is going to be a larger number of situations than those where someone is actually, with perfect knowledge, making an attempt on his life. Or put another way, people do things with (e.g.) the intention of injuring/obstructing/etc. and escaping, but that a reasonable person would interpret as being an attack on their life. If you wave a gun in someone's face, they are in their rights to shoot you, even if you had no intention of ever firing it.
> If you wave a gun in someone's face, they are in their rights to shoot you, even if you had no intention of ever firing it.
That is absolutely not the case. If so, there would be a bunch of very justifiably dead 2A protesters and some cheering hippies. You would NEVER say that about a white man holding a 5.56mm and yelling at someone outside your local state house.
Where exactly did you get that logic? Brandishing a weapon is a crime. Bearing one is not. The difference is squishy, and in neither case are you reasonably allowed to kill someone.
The only reason that makes sense to you is because you have a preconceived notion of whether the person "waving" the gun has a life worth preserving or not.
You took one very strange interpretation of the word 'wave' and really ran with it into a very ungenerous interpretation and attack. I'm not going to engage with that.
I interpreted it, and explained so, as "brandishment", which is the legal term of art for exactly that act of displaying a weapon in a threatening way. I submit that if you meant something different, you're the one who needs to clarify.
Both of these statements can be true: 1) the vast majority of shootings by police are justified, and 2) there are way too many cases of excessive use of force by police, including shootings.
You can look at the reports. They don't usually leave local news, if they even make it there, because there is nothing remarkable about them. People have done aggregations of the data. I'm not saying it's going to convince you if you're already convinced otherwise.
"But only a small number of the shootings — roughly 5 percent — occurred under the kind of circumstances that raise doubt and draw public outcry, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. The vast majority of individuals shot and killed by police officers were, like Snyder, armed with guns and killed after attacking police officers or civilians or making other direct threats."
Frankly, that’s incredibly difficult to believe. When the cameras are off, police lie about the circumstances to make their violence seem justified. (Or even when the cameras are on — for example, the NYC police union has opposed the firing of Eric Garner’s murderer.)
Maybe not backed by evidence, but definitely a reasonable extrapolation. Basic logic and social analysis will inform you that the role a police officer has attracts two mentalities: those who very strongly want to uphold law and help people, and those that enjoy abusing power and controlling people. Obviously these lie along a spectrum, and there is some overlap.
Anecdotally, I know many of the bullies from my high school ended up being police. They enjoyed the power and feeling of beating and subjugating their classmates, and they found a job that pays well and gives them fulfillment.
Let me posit this: if you were that type of individual, what better job is there to have than being a cop? Also, if you had that job, would you incriminate yourself after abusing your power, or would you lie, knowing that police protect their own and are often given the benefit of the doubt?
I think it's extremely naive to assume that the situation isn't exactly as I described above. The real question is what is the ratio of abusers and bullies to helpers and law upholders.
> I think it's extremely naive to assume that the situation isn't exactly as I described above. The real question is what is the ratio of abusers and bullies to helpers and law upholders.
And ignoring all the unsubstantiated claims you're making - it's completely compatible and most likely that the ratio is overwhelmingly good cops with a few abusers, and generally if/when present, concentrated in specific localities.
The generalization that cops are inherently predisposed to evil or something is bizarre, unhelpful and polarizing - not to mention inflammatory to all the cops that are in fact lawful and in many ways more honorable than most citizens in terms of sacrifice, risk, and social good.
We simply don't have any data of quality that could substantiate any claims on this subject. So all claims on it are unsubstantiated.
> it's completely compatible and most likely that the ratio is overwhelmingly good cops with a few abusers, and generally if/when present, concentrated in specific localities.
What is your reasoning? Not only is this an unsubstantiated claim, but it also comes with no logical reasoning describing how you reached this conclusion, unlike my original post.
> The generalization that cops are inherently predisposed to evil or something is bizarre, unhelpful and polarizing - not to mention inflammatory to all the cops that are in fact lawful and in many ways more honorable than most citizens in terms of sacrifice, risk, and social good.
You call this idea bizarre, inflammatory, and state that cops are in fact lawful and more honorable than most citizens. You haven't given any evidence to support this, nor have you explained any type of reasoning or logic for how you arrived at this conclusion.
I find this very ironic and hypocritical, as you directly accused me of making unsubstantiated claims; I at the very least provide logical reasoning, while you fail to provide anything other than vacuous conclusions.
> I at the very least provide logical reasoning, while you fail to provide anything other than vacuous conclusions
At least you're admitting to a priori reasoning and using that to conclude generalizations about an entire profession.
A cursory search tells me there's around 1 million law enforcement officers in the US. Like all conspiracy theories - what are the chances there's widespread and indefensible corruption such that all of them are complicit but very little ever leaks?
Clearly we see cases of indefensible abuse (as we'd expect in law enforcement given a population of 300+ million people), but perceived prevalence of abuse seems to be hysterically skewed towards "ubiquitous evil" when social media, etc. broadcasts local incidents directly onto everyone's radar where people are primed to view everything in terms of their preconceived narratives and worldviews.
I preceded my reasoning by stating that there wasn't good data; I'm not sure why you point that out as if it were some new development. In the lack of good data, logical reasoning is the only framework for generating a hypothesis. Am I wrong about that? Other than a priori reasoning, what should I have used; the same style of baseless claims that you make?
And if I was generalizing across an entire profession, I clearly did NOT state that the entire population of police is rampant with abuse. I extrapolated from well known understandings in economics that people who are attracted to the incentives provided by being a police officer indicate that some police officers will be amoral bullies who take pleasure in wielding unmitigated power over people, while others will be those who take pleasure in helping people and upholding the law. Feel free to reread my comments completely.
You still have provided no logical reasoning for your conclusions. I'd really like to hear why you think what you think.
> A cursory search tells me there's around 1 million law enforcement officers in the US. Like all conspiracy theories - what are the chances there's widespread and indefensible corruption such that all of them are complicit but very little ever leaks?
What are the chances that people who have immense power and immense protection from legal action will become corrupt? Quite high really.
Is your argument at this point summed up as "they haven't been caught misbehaving at scale, so let's generalize their entire profession with the benefit of the doubt"?
> Is your argument at this point summed up as "they haven't been caught misbehaving at scale, so let's generalize their entire profession with the benefit of the doubt"?
I'm not giving them the benefit of the doubt. I'm saying that it's reasonable to assume that complete information suppression by a conspiracy of bad actors across independent localities is likely impossible. This is why most conspiracy theories are false. Information suppression is hard and even more rare is uniform behavior across many thousands of individual police departments.
It's definitely true that police act in their self-interest and corruptly sometimes. But sometimes is a term that represents vastly different circumstances with tons of different causations, effects, etc. Just saying "cops are unaccountable power-abusers" is simplistic, unproductive, offensive and wrong. There's an opportunity for conversation about reform, but the rampant groupthink, stereotyping and dogmatism is killing it.
> I'm not giving them the benefit of the doubt. I'm saying that it's reasonable to assume that complete information suppression by a conspiracy of bad actors across independent localities is likely impossible. This is why most conspiracy theories are false. Information suppression is hard and even more rare is uniform behavior across many thousands of individual police departments.
The only one in this thread that has mentioned either conspiracy theories or complete information suppression is you. You responded to this comment:
"Frankly, that’s incredibly difficult to believe. When the cameras are off, police lie about the circumstances to make their violence seem justified. (Or even when the cameras are on — for example, the NYC police union has opposed the firing of Eric Garner’s murderer.)"
With the following:
"This is technically a conspiracy theory right?"
I don't know how you arrived at "complete information suppression" from the first comment. I think that most cops, like most drivers, would lie to protect themselves. I also think that some portion of cops don't NEED to lie to protect themselves, because they aren't people who abuse their powers. There is some unknown portion, however, that became police because they enjoy the opportunities for power and domination over others, and use their power to abuse others.
> It's definitely true that police act in their self-interest and corruptly sometimes. But sometimes is a term that represents vastly different circumstances with tons of different causations, effects, etc.
This sentence is in line with my conclusions throughout this discussion. It is something we agree on. This is an argument along a spectrum; I've given solid logical reasoning for why I think there is some percentage of police that are amoral and abusive, namely that it is the MOST attractive job for people of that persuasion, and I am a first-hand witness of it with n=~7.
What I am still waiting for is any sort of logic behind claims you've made that are of this ilk:
"most likely that the ratio is overwhelmingly good cops with a few abusers, and generally if/when present, concentrated in specific localities."
Where's your reasoning for why cops are overwhelmingly good? You keep blasting a message without providing your reasoning. You've seen my reasoning, as I've repeated it several times now, but provided none for your claims. Please do so now.
>The real question is what is the ratio of abusers and bullies to helpers and law upholders.
The ratio is tilted heavily in favor of abusers and there has been ample evidence showing this since the dawn of modern policing. Modern policing descended from slave patrols and it shows. The militarization of police is a more recent abomination, but not the root cause.
There is a third category beyond abusers and "law upholders": those who stand by and do nothing, thereby enabling the abusers and silently endorsing their behavior.
This has been my personal experience, but I don't know of any statistics that capture this, so I don't think we can make that conclusion at this moment.
However, from my time in the Marine Corps, which also attracts some people who are amoral dominators, I can say it very much depends on the culture. The Corps pushes personal accountability and camaraderie very strongly in its culture. I witnessed people who were professed racists change in just a few months to accepting all skin colors, people who were completely self-centered narcissists turn into strong team players. It didn't work all the time, and wasn't uniform across the service, but a strong, zero tolerance culture can mold people into it.
> There is a third category beyond abusers and "law upholders": those who stand by and do nothing, thereby enabling the abusers and silently endorsing their behavior.
When I listed categories, I should have made it more clear that it's really a spectrum with opposing values on either end. People who stand by and do nothing would lie more towards the middle, not having a strong enough valuation of justice to step in and stop it, but not a strong enough desire for power abuse to join in. A random person on the street could have a strong sense of justice but still not condone police brutality by standing idly, but I think you are right that a police officer is responsible for violence by not attempting to circumvent it; stopping violence like that is the REASON they have special legal protections.
