> But why would you hypothetically remove bad actions from just the police?
Because the person I'm responding to is claiming that police kill more civilians than civilians kill police, with the implication that it's because police are corrupt.
I used a hypothetical scenario to point out that this doesn't follow, because the same would be true even if there were no police corruption.
> By the exact same argument, if you removed all bad actions from everyone who isn’t a police officer, then of course you’d expect police to kill more people.
Not clear what your point is here.
> In the original comment, before all the ridiculous hypothesizing, the actual world is what was being discussed.
Yes, some times people use thought experiments to highlight facts about the real world.
> I believe the reality you described is the basis for the movie minority report, where the cops are so good crimes are stopped before they happen.
Or maybe criminals are mostly nonviolent. Implementation details, anyway. What I was aiming at is: in a world where the only people killed are ones who absolutely deserve it, the statistics would likely show that close to 100% of homicides are committed by police.
> With the title in mind a third of strangers killed are killed by cops, shouldn’t they be better at not killing people?
> My understanding is cops kill way more often than they are killed.
Well, of course. That's expected isn't it? In an imaginary scenario where police act legitimately 100% of the time there are going to be situations where they have to use lethal force. In the same imagined scenario, there would be 0 legitimate police deaths.
If you're just going for some morbid score keeping, you would need to know illegitimate civilian deaths at the hands of the police vs illegitimate police deaths, as there are certainly scenarios where it could be justified to kill either. Directly comparing raw numbers doesn't say much.
> It can simultaneously be true that X causes more problems than it solves, and that the disappearance of X would cause even worse problems
No it can't, if removing X causes more problems then having X prevents those worse problems.
> Also, this is a common strawman: almost no one advocates police abolition over police reform
The person I responded to argued just this. This is what police being net negative means, that society would improve by removing the police. I wouldn't have said anything if he just thought that the police could use a budget cut or a reform.
> I think people don't really consider these situations in terms of context.
Then let's add some context to this conversation. This whole post was made because of the recently released video of a police officer executing a citizen[1]. That police officer was then acquitted. This kind of police response would never occur in other civilized countries, regardless of the relative murder rate.
> I don’t disagree that we should try to gear our society towards producing less dangerous people. It sounds like we have very different ideas on how to achieve that, though. My personal opinion is that the threat of severe punishment is enough to scare most people into line.
See my point #5 in the parent comment:
> This one might be a bit philosophical but when you have a police force you aren't reducing violence, you're just shifting the violence that is done to the state.
When you give the police overwhelming power to punish dangerous people, you have created a new class of very dangerous people. In my theoretical universe where cops are infallible this is not a problem, in the real world if you give an institution that much power what do you think would happen when they "solve crime". Would they willingly relinquish that power? Or would they aim to extend their influence onto larger swaths of the population with more draconian laws?
> If there was a way to solve these issues while also being really nice and compassionate then I’d be all for it, but if you’re getting bullied sometimes the best thing to do is to just sock the bully in the mouth.
I think you're missing the point. I am not saying there should be zero accountability for criminals and zero police. I am saying we should also attack the root causes of criminality instead of just using punitive measures. Right now we are treating the symptom and not the cause.
> Should we now also imagine/project the homicide death rates if all civilians were peaceful and happy and compare it with that of the real deaths caused by the police?
Almost. We'd need to compare actual homicides to an imaginary world where everyone cooperated with the police while being arrested.
The police killing someone is, on the face of it, a significant problem. But some percentage of police-caused deaths are justified and would be acceptable after careful review of what happened.
I think everyone would prefer 0 police-related deaths, and all options are on the table to get there. But to compare oranges to oranges properly it would be necessary to split the category into police abuses of power vs unavoidable/reasonable uses of force.
> Maybe. I think abusing citizens guarantees that the police will be demonized. We're currently in a downward spiral and it's only fixable by changing the status of the police.
And where is the bottom of the spiral? When police are completely hated by everyone, everywhere? You'll only get the absolute worst people to be police officers, as I said in my initial comment.
> You're arguing with an imaginary person in your head, not me.
I'm arguing against the idea that demonizing the police is an effective tactic.
Your comment sounds awfully disingenuous. I seriously doubt you do not see the huge difference between implementing official policies of extrajudicial imprisonments and having a random person murder people for their own personal reasons.
> the ideal scenario is for police minimize death (of criminals and police officers) at all costs
Do you really believe this in all situations? I don't. In a standoff between 5 cops and 15 criminals I'd rather see the cops kill them all than vice versa, since the cops didn't create the bad situation in the first place. We all weight lives based on their moral value and culpability in the situation.
Maybe that's an extreme example, but the way it happens more often is that a suspect pulls a gun, points it at a single cop, and the cop has to decide whether to kill the suspect or die him/herself. I'd always argue that in such a situation the cop should shoot.
Are you suggesting that shoot to wound is a better policy?
> Don't fight with a cop, don't resist arrest, you don't get shot. . Pretty simple solution.
Well, except for all those people who neither fought with cops nor resisted arrest and still got shot.
> I know far more victims of crime than I do victims of police brutality.
Since police brutality is crime, its impossible for the reverse to be true. But really, all that tells us (even assuming the characterization is accurate) is something about who you know, not what the relevant incidence of those things is in society.
> You're more likely to be shot by a gangbanger than a cop, thus shouldn't we be complaining about that?
I'm not sure law enforcement failing to do their job and thereby endangering innocents is a different problem than law enforcement failing to do their job and thereby endangering innocents.
Yes. Anyone who takes a moment to think through the numbers logically recognizses this. And the two replies that my comment have gotten pouncing on me saying that, including yours, is the reason why it must be said.
The thing about police is that it's one of those things where the routine interactions and police work, which is representative of the vast majority of what goes on, is boring and uneventful. There is no reason for it to ever make headlines.
But it only takes one incident of corruption or one costly mistake and everyone is talking about it. That's a good thing, it needs to be addressed. But it really skews public perception and makes people think that that kind of stuff is way more commonplace than it actually is.
> I don’t get it. Are we now advocating that police is overall more of a force of evil than good? Legitimate question.
Police, in the abstract, are still a force for good. But it's becoming clear to more and more people that the police we actually have commit an intolerable quantity of evil acts.
> I think you misinterpret my comment. I'm saying if you eliminate everyone who does the job incorrectly, you also get rid of the people who intentionally do it incorrectly.
I think you misinterpret my comment, which, is suggesting exactly why that doesn’t happen in policing in the status quo, and therefore what needs to change to achieve it.
> If the murder rate is 4 per 100k in the US, and there are a million police officers in the US, shouldn't I expect something like 40+ police officers murdering a year?
Right now, police in the US kill about 1000 people each year. That amounts to about one in 15-20 non-suicide deaths caused by gun violence. You can argue that 40 is too many, but it's two orders of magnitude lower than the current number. 40 is the number of people killed by the Chicago police alone every 2-3 years.
> Your entire claim is a red herring, unless you're claiming it's somehow better that cops murder non-black people and get away with it.
It's not a red herring. The implication that "police murder blacks" is that there is a racist component in police murder, but the data show that this isn't the case, at least not in the last decade. I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether or not this is better or worse.
> So I ask you: are you defending cops murdering people and getting away with it? If not, why are you posting? I suppose it's academically interesting if cops murder all the races evenly, but it sure comes across as if you're defending cops murdering people and getting away with it.
No, of course I'm not defending murder. I'm posting because fixing problems requires properly understanding them. I understand that many people have no qualm with worsening the problems they purportedly care about so long as it lets them get a punch in against some group of people they dislike; however, that's not really my style.
Even if all fatal police shootings were directly related to a crime committed by the person who is killed (they're not), we have to ask ourselves whether such shootings (or killing by other means, e.g. chokehold) are an appropriate technique for law enforcement.
Which crimes or actions warrant shooting or killing someone, in your opinion?
When we look at data that show killings by law enforcement officers by country, we learn that in the US people are fatally shot at 3.5 times the rate than they are in Canada and 9 times the rate as in France. You are more likely to be killed by the police in America than you are in Colombia, Egypt, Pakistan[1].
> you make it sound like the police are a murder cult.
I am not saying the police are a murder cult; I'm saying that they are here to protect us and that when innocent people are fearful of those meant to protect us, something's wrong.
>Better thought: Do you think a completely unarmed populace is a better idea given how bad police abuse their power?
Well, yes, I do.
The US is heavily armed. The US has a lot of poorly trained, unskilled, abusive police officers.
Gun ownership hasn't made US police any better. If anything it's made them far more lethal - one reason given (by both pro- and anti- gun advocates) for the shocking numbers of people shot and killed by US police each year is the presence of guns in the population.
When a police officer abuses their power I can grind through it, or I can pull a gun and get shot. In most cases getting shot is the worse outcome.
> There is a world of difference between poor enforcement and completely legalizing theft, which is what OP was advocating for.
I wasn't really weighing in on the OP, I was weighing in on the person I replied to:
> The entire point of living in a society is that the government maintains a monopoly on force, and therefore can provide security to it's people.
Which is not to say that that NEVER happens but it seems clear the monopoly on force is used as much if not moreso to maintain a status quo that benefits the power structure that wields it. "The sounds of children screaming have been removed" comes to mind, where police are in a place they are needed and resourced appropriately to respond and simply don't, because they don't have to. And the flip-side of that is, you have clear cut cases of people being harassed by cops because they're homeless, or outright killed by them for stealing food because they literally cannot pay for it.
There is absolutely a need in society for a police force, but our current one has demonstrated it's inability to meet that need over and over.
Because the person I'm responding to is claiming that police kill more civilians than civilians kill police, with the implication that it's because police are corrupt.
I used a hypothetical scenario to point out that this doesn't follow, because the same would be true even if there were no police corruption.
> By the exact same argument, if you removed all bad actions from everyone who isn’t a police officer, then of course you’d expect police to kill more people.
Not clear what your point is here.
> In the original comment, before all the ridiculous hypothesizing, the actual world is what was being discussed.
Yes, some times people use thought experiments to highlight facts about the real world.
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