This seems like a common refrain for most bad things these days, but I doubt it's true in the case of police killings. At the very least, it seems inarguable that related trends like police militarization have drastically increased.
I don't condone murder, but do you think it's possible the police deaths are a response to the police murders that have been happening for 100's of years?
Maybe some people realized that after constant harassment and threats, their only recourse was to get armed and protect themselves from the police.
I don't think that that's quite a reasonable take on things either--I do not believe that officers wake up every day going "Man, I hope I get to shoot some kids today".
Such hyperbole makes it harder to understand their position and hence to effect useful change.
The behavior of American police behavior cannot be explained by the number that have been shot. That number has been trending downwards over the last few decades:
Regardless, the current actions in question were inexcusable even if police incorrectly believe they are in increasing danger in general. They simply had no reason to be brandishing firearms in this specific case.
>The frequent (or at least frequent enough to be concerning) shootings of unarmed black men for example are generally excused with police officers saying they were "afraid for their lives."
Police officers only ever say that to lay the groundwork for a legal self-defense argument.
>Gun ownership is the smallest contributor to that problem
On the one hand, maybe, but on the other hand, it's difficult to stab someone from a distance, so the effect of guns as a force multiplier is relevant.
It might also go the other way. Many police killings are due to jittery officers in dangerous situations. Take that out of the picture and you might get better policing and fewer suspect deaths.
> 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.
I think that's why a lot of encounters, and with someone getting killed, they figure they are going to die anyways, so they run, or fight back. It makes me wonder if we're heading towards a future, where more and more average every day citizens refuse to engage with police on any level.
The statements I read defending police violence suggest that it's necessary and appropriate to protect the lives of police. I feel like the military accepts that if you carry a gun for a living, there's inherent risk in that, and it doesn't justify leading always with overwhelming force.
Police statements are predictably found to change under a thinnest level of scrutiny.
“Justifiable” use of force varies from department to department, police force to police force, state by state. It does not mean “the only or best option available” as any less controversial action would be equally as justified. US police, in aggregate, are known to escalate situations into something more dangerous or hostile than all of the options available. Of the 17,000 distinct autonomous paramilitary forced in the US, there is no way for a citizen to know what “threat matrix” they are currently being evaluated under, and if there even is a way to no longer be perceived as a threat without being eliminated, especially when the police are already operating under bad information that you are unaware of. Finding police actions “Justified” is a term used to resonate with the preconceptions of citizens, but actually means 17,000+ different things which no citizen knows the details of, only that particular department and scarred prosecutor.
Speaking of fear: Mayors, governors, prosecutors and juries are afraid of their police, just like they were afraid of the Mafia. This is not talked about. Equally dubious “I feared for my life” situations can happen to you and your family and law enforcement can rely on people like you believing the police statement verbatim.
Police are held to a high moral standard culturally, but are not trained in a way that reflects this. In a criminal investigation due to use of force, the person under scrutiny would be convicted of their statements changed so much. Police are able to operate under an abstraction of “justified” which is available at the discretion of the their supervisor, the DA, prosecutor, or a jury under randomly generated prosecutor instructions applicable in that one specific jurisdiction that nobody was aware of before that day in a private grand jury trial, before continuing to a less private jury trial with the same issues.
FBI has analysis of police in nationalist groups. There is no way for a citizen to differentiate any officer from another.
With this in mind, there is a lot less latitude to accept the deaths as stated. Cherry picking a few of the deaths and concluding so easily that its “justified” from description alone just neglects the inefficiency of the system. There are limitations in any of our abilities to judge the outcome. There are imperfections in our system of checks and balances.
Other developed countries have many people with knives and guns and the US is a total aberration in how these situations are handled.
Can we judge it on how the police interpret these things now?
For example, the police are only supposed to shoot people when there's imminent risk of death or great bodily harm. Yet there is routine, if not common, overreach there, including one notorious recent incident that people are currently protesting with great vigor.
If you can't reliably enforce the rule that police aren't supposed to kill people except in dire emergencies, how will you do it for cell phone kill switches?
I wonder that when (it is a when, not a if) several someones consider a cop a intruder and kill it, people will start to wake up that things are getting too far.
> And when they discharge their weapon they must shot for "centre mass" - shoot to wound is a myth.
This is true, for the US. It is also one of the symptoms of what is wrong with "enforcement" in that country.
Police officers in many other countries (such as Germany for instance) are explicitly instructed to shoot to wound if at all possible - and with good results both in terms of getting their suspects arrested but not killed, and in terms of not getting killed themselves. Indeed, this is not just the case for police worldwide, but even for the US armed forces when working under "nation building" rules of engagements rather than "total war" rules of engagements.
A shoot-to-kill doctrine is an obvious sign that rather than having an attitude of serving and protecting their community, the enforcers are serving/protecting themselves first.
On the flip side this also means if you're involved in high crime, you should expect the police to intend to kill you so you should prepare for killing them first.
It's surprisingly hard to get people to understand that police shouldn't be killing guilty people either if they have the option not to. Like that dude robbing a store doesn't automatically mean he should be gunned down without trial when he's not currently pointing a gun at anyone let alone after he's in cuffs. ESPECIALLY when we know cops can make mistakes with regard to identity.
If the police kills an unarmed and innocent man, it definitely means that police in general is not acting efficiently.
Right now, I see no movement with police higher officers to improve police response protocols to reduce fatal encounters.
The narrative is not about "all people are different" and "some neighborhoods are bad" and not about "some officers can use more training";
I think there is an institutional problem, with police protocols that prescribe police chasing/hunting, swarming, incapacitating, shooting, all topped up with officers having no strong knowledge of the law, and not being punishable for lying on duty and unnecessarily hurting during arrest.
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