>It's just that police in Europe and Asia don't really face dangerous and determined criminals.
That's just laughable. People in the US are not more dangerous than people in Europe or Asia. Lots of dangerous individuals get stopped by police without killing them with 41 bullets. What is more dangerous is the police's behaviour, behaving like an occupying force. US police would also rather kill someone trying to escape from s minor offence than let them get away. Different way of thinking. One values lives above killcount.
> The difference is perhaps that US cops are more happy nailing any convenient person, while police elsewhere rather want to nail who actually did it, which of course does not mean they actually do.
This seems like gross assumption. I have no doubt there are plenty of genuinely good American cops who want to do what is right. But the bad cases of the entire nation float to the top of the newspapers/internet and give the impression that the whole country is this way.
I've yet to see actual statistics of wrong imprisonment rates in the US vs. EU. And I'm sure if you broke if down by state you'd find some states have even better cops than EU.
>the only difference between a cop in the US and a cop in the UK is better training and less reliance on guns
Ah, so that’s why American cops routinely murder random people and go unpunished - it’s just the lack of training!
(The reality is that there’s a fundamental difference in that in Europe police is just another government branch that’s helping people, like firefighters and doctors; normal people don’t need to fear them and avoid any unnecessary interactions, which seems to be the case in the US.)
> incidents involving the police, isn't taken because somehow the people most affected are seen as somehow not really worth the time and effort
American police are significantly more dangerous than most European police forces because of this. The lives of those killed by police are deemed not to matter.
It's not something intrinsic to the nature of police, it's a set of local - often hyperlocal - policy choices.
> This is all part of a culture that tells cops they are above the law, they have the power, and everyone else just needs to bow down and accept that.
Certainly, I agree with that. And the US culture is very different from European cultures (which is not a surprise, given how quickly the country changes and how young it is). Comparing it to Europe where we're sitting on a very different (and much more stable still) culture with very different traditions, a completely different approach to individualism vs collectivism etc, isn't helpful, and you won't get anywhere if you dismiss 99% of the difference and then say (yes, I'm exaggerating, and no, I don't mean you specifically but people who like to point to Europe in comparison) "well, clearly, it's because the citizens don't have guns and the police wear friendlier uniforms".
> You haven't armed the populace, you haven't set up civilian watches, you haven't done any of the things that would happen in a society actually set up to be sustainably police-free
It's amazing how a population that suffers heavily from wide firearm availability (the only civilized country where you semi-regularly have school massacres) thinks that the solution to anything can be "more guns for everyone".
People are often irresponsible, irrational, intoxicated, etc. Making lethal force easily available to everyone won't solve your safety issues - will only make them worse. I think a big reason why cops are so violent in the US is that they need to be - any bum can have a gun and might kill them; that's not a concern for people in Europe, so police can be slightly more relaxed when dealing with a minority that is known to have above-average stats for criminals & general violence (e.g. gypsy here; yes, they may face many discrimination issues that black people face in US, but nobody shoots them just because they have the wrong skin color)
> I'm always amazed at how often cops approach every day tasks with weapons drawn.
That is IMO a side-effect of the (from an European POV) absolutely mind-boggling, ridiculous sentencing of criminals in the US. Here in Germany, when a drug smuggler gets caught, they can expect four, five years behind bars. Not worth to shoot the cop that just stopped your car full with meth and make a life sentence out of it for murder.
In the US however? Decades, sometimes centuries behind bars. Given that perspective, it does make sense for a criminal to shoot that traffic cop - the chance to get away and escape a death in prison is non-zero.
Add to that the fact that there are more guns than people in the US, plus extremely lax carrying laws, and "stand your ground" laws.
The result are (rightfully, I have to admit) afraid and thus extremely trigger-happy cops.
If the US wants to get rid of trigger-happy cops they have to get the gun problem and sentencing under control first.
> 3.) Policing is an adversarial job. This leads to a us vs them mentality and also contributes to the next problem
This has another point: America's desire for ... extremely long and, from an European POV, frankly ridiculous prison sentences.
In most of Europe, even someone carrying a car load worth of meth earns only a couple years of prison time in decent conditions (don't get me wrong, our prisons are not perfect, but generally mental and physical healthcare are given, food is decent and gangs/prison rape is nowhere near the widespread problem as it is in the US) if caught. There is no incentive to shoot a cop, in fact there is an incentive to be cooperative and friendly with cops at e.g. traffic stops (so that they don't search the car in the first place).
In America however? A drug runner often has to choose between either not shooting the cop and definitely earn decades of prison time in overcrowded prisons with inhumane conditions or shooting the cop and possibly getting away. This is why US cops are so trigger happy and assuming every person they interact with is out to shoot them, plus the ... extremely widespread availability of guns.
A huge part of solving the police violence problem will be gun control, sentencing reforms and prison reforms, as unintuitively as it sounds.
Have you seen the homicide rate in America? You cannot quell that level of violence with hugs.
Police in the US operate in an environment where every person they encounter may have the means to kill them within seconds. This is not to ignore police brutality, but these details matter.
To compare the situation to a tiny homogeneous country where guns are illegal is silly.
> Police in the US are the very model of probity, courtesy and professionalism compared to almost every country in the Western Hemisphere
You specified western Hemisphere, which includes only the eastmost edge of Europe, but still leaves (half) of the UK, France and also Canada and Ireland. US police is hardly going to beat those on many positive metrics.
Odd choice of geographic region for such a comparison in any case.
> The reality is that there’s a fundamental difference in that in Europe police is just another government branch that’s helping people, like firefighters and doctors; normal people don’t need to fear them and avoid any unnecessary interactions, which seems to be the case in the US.
I'm German. Our cops are infamous for racial profiling and can, at least according to several independent investigations, even get away with murdering people in their jail cells (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oury_Jalloh).
> Perhaps another explanation for a disparity of police shootings in the US vs. UK is that US police are confronted with armed and/or aggressive criminals more often.
Even if you ONLY count the number of police shootings in the US which involved shooting unarmed individuals it would be higher than all of the UK's shootings put together.
> I rather doubt they are significantly looser than those in any other western nation.
You'd be entirely wrong. US police can get away with shooting people if they feel a "threat" which is entirely not the standard used elsewhere. Other places it isn't about a police officer's fear that determines the legality of firing, it is the actual factual threat the officer faced.
For example if someone fishes around in their pockets, if that person was shot that officer would be considered justified and they would not only not go to jail but keep their job. In the UK that police officer would definitely lose their job and MIGHT go to jail.
Everyone loves to point out the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting [0]. And as messed up as that was, that was a national scandal, there was two investigations, supposedly changes were made, but what is interesting is that those types of "incidents" happen it seems on a weekly basis in the US and nothing ever seems to happen and there is very little outcry about it.
Just this week a US police officer shot an unarmed escape convict in the back as they were running away. Nobody is even defending this as the default assumption is that that officer was justified. That is the new normal in the US. Shooting unarmed people in the back...
> In the US, this man would be dead. Here, he survived.
Well alright, that's one machete-wielding life that was saved. How many non-machete-wielding lives are lost by having an underpowered police force?
I guess we'll never know.
> That's not ridiculous.
It's ridiculous that it takes six or seven officers so long to neutralize the threat, which may not even have been a real threat.
> Yes - that's how it should be. Leave an actual firefight to specially appointed marksman with specialist weapons, not day-to-day officers waving pistols around. And they don't need those weapons when attending other incidents.
So, you get called to a minor domestic disturbance, the unarmed cops show up and it turns out that the guy in question "upgraded" to a kitchen knife. They'll better be good at keeping him occupied with trivia questions until the properly equipped force shows up.
I'm sure there's a trade-off between having police officers armed and dangerous versus having them be harmless. However, most countries in Europe - even those with low crime rates - choose to arm their officers. Deadly incidents remain rare:
>This trope about the risk of being shot by police in the US is kind of dumb. Yes police shoot about 1,000 people here a year, but on average only 50 are unarmed.
This makes it even worse... Since those armed people can also shoot you.
In constrast the German police kills about 10 people a year, which given the population would amount to the US police killing 45 people total (so 5% that of the US). France, the worst example, the analogy would amount to about 250 per year (so 25% that of the US).
For homicides, Germany had 260 in 2026. That would amount to 1135 projected to the US population difference. France (again a worst case) has 734 per year. In US terms that would be equal to the US having 3772 per year. Adjusted for population, the US has around 5x the number of France and 16x the number of homicides Germany has. Other western european countries are much lower.
> America is pretty good -- don't anecdotes from the internet says deter you.
It's not merely anecdotes; there's plenty of hard data. The US locks up more people in absolute numbers than any country in the world, including China, which has 4 times the population and a totalitarian government. Per capita, the only countries with more inmates are a handful of tiny Carribean islands, I believe.
Law enforcement is structurally not being held accountable. Stories about police officers killing or tazering unarmed and even disabled people abound, usually followed up by a story that nobody got charged with any wrongdoing (except maybe the victim).
In talks online, I notice that a lot of Americans are afraid of the police. Tons of websites warn not to say anything to the police. The message that the police cannot be trusted is everywhere.
This is not the image of healthy, democratic, rule of law. It's a police state.
>The danger of being shot every time they get a call to a scene is very real. This creates the mentality of shooting first and asking questions later.
>Hot headed officers?! In a country where everybody can own a gun there is a real fear of getting shot. The only worse profession is to be in the army.
>Surprisingly other countries have armed police as well, but somehow they wont pull the trigger that often then the Americans. Wonder why... Oh wait, maybe because there is a minuscule chance of being shot by another person?
Oh piss off. The danger of being shot is not nearly what the training videos and boot-lickers will have you believe. Cops don't even crack the top ten for dangerous jobs. As far as well paying blue collar jobs you can get with a highschool diploma goes it's one of the safer ones. Teenagers with light machine guns have no problem working under far more restrictive rules of engagement than the cops have. I think the cops can be reasonably expected to hold their fire until they see a gun or get charged by an armed individual. At the very least they have a responsibility to not unnecessarily escalate situations. This isn't a guns issue, it's an officers too eager to use force issue (as can be seen with how they use tasers and pepper spray).
> The relationship between the police and the public in the states also seems dangerously adversarial and does not inspire me with confidence.
This is greatly exaggerated. Not that the bad things you see in the news don’t happen. Just that most interactions with the police aren’t in fact any more adversarial than in other countries.
I am not white, and I have been stopped by police multiple times in the US, Europe, and Asia, as well as selected for additional screening in airports in the US, London, and the Netherlands.
Whether the police were adversarial or not was not a function of whether they were in the US. Indeed the one time the police actually behaved in a threatening way was in the UK.
> "well, he shouldn't have had a knife in his hand"
Right. German cops, for example, are trained to shoot people in the leg in that scenario. It happens quite frequently and successfully.
American cops seem like they're all on a hair trigger to kill at the slightest hint of danger, rather than as a last resort when they're truly threatened.
That's just laughable. People in the US are not more dangerous than people in Europe or Asia. Lots of dangerous individuals get stopped by police without killing them with 41 bullets. What is more dangerous is the police's behaviour, behaving like an occupying force. US police would also rather kill someone trying to escape from s minor offence than let them get away. Different way of thinking. One values lives above killcount.
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